1922
1923
1924
1925

now it’s ISIS vs Taliban

1926

image

1927

Shame they think fighting necessarily involves blowing up civilians.

1928

What’s that from?

1929

Godzilla

1931

Thanks. I think I heard good things about the most recent one. I’ll have to see if it’s on one of the streamers.

1932

[…] the Taliban spent its early days as Afghanistan’s de facto sovereign trying to persuade the West that its Islamic Emirate was up to the task of governance. Central to this endeavor: paying lip service to the rights of Afghan women.

“Our sisters, our men have the same rights; they will be able to benefit from their rights,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on August 17, as the final U.S. troops evacuated Kabul. “They can have activities in different sectors and different areas on the basis of our rules and regulations: educational, health, and other areas. They are going to be working with us, shoulder to shoulder with us.”

Not many Afghans or experts bought the act, and for good reason. By day’s end, Taliban leadership announced the “indefinite suspension” of female journalists working at state-run television channels. The directive was just the beginning of the Taliban’s systematic dismantling of women’s rights nationwide.

1933

The Taliban are maybe the most contemporary example of how human rights and religion are often at odds. Among the ghosts of the 20th Century looking to pounce in Russia and China, it seems the 21st still has to deal with how a globalized world and religion can coexist. In Afghanistan, at least, it’s clear that the answer the Taliban came up with is that they cannot.

1934

There are fears for the safety of dozens of worshippers in the Afghan capital of Kabul after a Sikh temple was hit in an explosion.

The blast occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning and it is unclear if there are casualties.

One local official at the scene, Gornam Singh, told Reuters news agency there had been up to “30 people inside the temple” at the time of the blast.

“We don’t know how many of them are alive or how many dead,” he said.

[…]

The building is the last remining Sikh temple in the capital, and community leaders recently estimated that just 140 Sikhs remain in predominantly Muslim Afghanistan, down from 100,000 in the 1970s.

1935

It takes a real fucking monster to bomb a Sikh temple.

1936

Kind of the feelings the Sikhs had for Indira Ghandhi I bet…

1937
1938

I’ve seen suggestions that if we lose the House, we’ll have non-stop televised Afghanistan committee hearings.

1939

“Prevent Afghanistan Committee Hearings” sounds like a good plank for the Democrats to run on.

1940

Of course, had we stayed there, people would be bitching about the cost, the occasional casualties, the occasional errant drone attack, etc.

1941
1943

Zan Times is a women-led newsroom that covers the human rights situation in Afghanistan with a particular focus on women, the LGBTQ community, and environmental issues. Zan Times covers human rights violations from the perspectives of those living and resisting it rather than the perpetrators.