Five Years Into the Taliban’s War on Women

Under armed occupation, gender apartheid has become the governing order in Afghanistan—and the world is increasingly learning to live with it.

I was a child the first time the Taliban told me I did not belong in a classroom. I am an adult now, and they have told me the same thing twice. The second time, I was not a child hiding a schoolbook under my clothes. I was a woman who had built a company, a newsroom, and a life that answered to no man’s permission. On August 15, 2021, an armed movement…