Afghan Commentary Post

  The Hijab Is Vanishing from Iran's Streets—and So Is the Mask of the Mullahs A Stark Warning to the Taliban: The Wind of Change Is Coming for Them, Too. By Wahab Raofi The hijab is falling from the heads of Iranian women—and in the same moment, the mask of the mullahs is falling too. The upheaval sweeping Iran since 2025 has not only given women the courage to remove their headscarves; it has unmasked a regime that is no longer the force it once was. Decades of institutionalized gender restrictions have made women the unlikely catalyst for the Islamic Republic's deepest crisis of legitimacy in its 45-year history. Across the country, women are publicly casting aside their hijabs, defying a dress code that has been enforced by law and by force since the revolution. This is not a fashion statement. It is a generation refusing to accept the terms their parents were forced to live under. An Iranian woman writing under a pseudonym in Persuasion magazine recently descr...

  The great hall of Heaven was filled with angels. Gabriel, the Trustworthy, struck the gavel and announced: "Honored angels, today's agenda is an important address from the Almighty." He then turned toward God. "Almighty Lord, the floor is yours." God smiled and began: "Thank you all for gathering here. At our last meeting, I heard rumors circulating among some of you. Apparently, there are those who believe I have grown old and that it may be time to replace me with another god. To be honest, such rumors do not offend me. I have heard many like them before. But today I want to clarify something once and for all. Listen carefully. I am less a person than I am a symbol—a symbol of the order and the laws that govern the universe. I have neither created a Heaven nor a Hell. Those who, throughout history, have claimed to be my representatives on Earth were never appointed by me. In fact, I do not even know many of them. I have never called any human being my s...

  ده هزار سال بعد فرشتگان در تالار بزرگ آسمانی گرد هم آمده بودند. جبرئیل امین، پس از نواختن زنگ آغاز جلسه، گفت: «حضار گرامی، دستور جلسه امروز این است که ذات اقدس الهی درباره موضوعی مهم با شما سخن خواهند گفت.» سپس رو به خدا کرد و گفت: «ذات اقدس الهی، بفرمایید.» خداوند لبخندی زد و گفت: «از حضور همه شما سپاسگزارم. در جلسه گذشته شنیدم که شایعاتی در میان بعضی از فرشتگان رواج یافته است؛ شایعاتی مبنی بر اینکه گویا من پیر و فرسوده شده‌ام و عده‌ای در فکر انتخاب خدای دیگری هستند! راستش را بخواهید، این حرف‌ها مرا نمی‌رنجاند. من از این گونه شایعات بسیار شنیده‌ام. اما امروز می‌خواهم حقیقتی را برای همیشه روشن کنم. خوب گوش کنید. من بیش از آنکه یک شخص باشم، یک نمادم؛ نماد نظم و قانونی که بر سراسر هستی فرمان‌روایی می‌کند. من نه بهشتی ساخته‌ام و نه دوزخی. کسانی که در طول تاریخ خود را نماینده من بر زمین معرفی کرده‌اند، هرگز از سوی من مأموریتی نداشته‌اند. من حتی بسیاری از آنان را نمی‌شناسم. من هیچ انسانی را «بنده» خود نمی‌نامم؛ زیرا نه به بندگی کسی نیاز دارم و نه به عبادت او. من همه آفریدگان را یکسان ...

  PROLOUGE   The Checkpoint   In a searing summer, when the heat melted the asphalt, the smell of it hung in the air. A line of trucks and buses and passenger cars inched along, waiting to pass the Taliban checkpoint. A group of young boys ran alongside the moving traffic, tapping on windows — some offering bottled water, others chewing gum and maswak toothbrushes. A tall man with a long beard and long black hair resting uncombed on his shoulders, half-naked, wrapped only in the Taliban banner, ran up and down the line, tearing at his own hair, his face bloody, the blood dripping down and staining the white banner red. He had been fine a few days before. He was the commander of this checkpoint. Later, one of his mujahideen brothers described the story this way: The road between Kabul and Kandahar ran straight through Maidan Wardak, and on that stretch stood a checkpoint that had been there long enough to look like it had grown out of the ground — half mud...

  Juma Khan Fateh's rebellion grabs the headlines. The deeper threat is a government that has never earned its people's consent. Juma Khan Fateh is not the Taliban's real problem. The regime is. For the past month, Fateh, a former Taliban commander from Badakhshan, has dominated headlines after breaking with the group. A farmer, warlord, and opportunist, he took to the mountains and is said to command hundreds of fighters. His refusal of the deputy governor post in southern Zabul Province — he chose to go home instead — has been read by anti-Taliban observers as a major security threat, the start of a political earthquake in the non-Pashtun north that could, in time, bring the regime down. In a country with five decades of war behind it, anything is possible. But I don't believe Juma Khan is the greatest threat to this regime. The greater threat comes from the Taliban's own hands. Their policies are weakening the foundation of their rule the way rainwater seeps into...

  The Population Paradox: Why Afghanistan's Growth Is a Barrier to Stability Afghanistan cannot even agree with itself on how many people live within its borders. On July 11, 2026, marking World Population Day, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) put the country's population at 48.6 million. The Taliban's own National Statistics and Information Authority, using a different methodology, put the figure at 37.2 million — a gap of more than 11 million people. Independent demographic models, including the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects, converge closer to 45 million. That the country's rulers and the international community cannot settle on a shared set of facts is itself a symptom of the crisis: a state too fractured to count its own citizens is unlikely to be able to employ, educate, or feed them. In aging societies such as Japan or Germany, population growth is often welcomed as a remedy for shrinking workforces and decl...