Last night's AMAs were a blur of metallic outfits, celebrity antics, and Miley Cyrus with a giant crying cat as a backup dancer. Perhaps you'd like a little palate cleanser? If so, consider the story of Paradise Sorouri, who is probably Afghanistan's first female rapper. Read… 11/25/13 12:10pm 11/25/13 12:10pm

Since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, when the status of women in Afghanistan was arguably at its lowest in recent history, Afghani women have made meaningful strides in gaining rights. During the brutal Taliban years, women were banned from going to work or even leaving their house without a male to accompany… Read… 7/29/13 6:00pm 7/29/13 6:00pm

The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women, a 2009 mandate approved by President Hamid Karzai's decree that aims to protect women's rights — specifically, one that bans child marriage and the practice of "baad," selling and buying women to settle disputes — was shot down in Afghani Parliament today. Read… 5/18/13 4:30pm 5/18/13 4:30pm

There’s a huge barrier standing between Afghanistan’s female police officers and on-the-job security. Want to guess what it is? Here’s a hint: it has nothing to do with, say, needing more kevlar vests or working in a destabilized, war-ravaged country. What the Afghan women serving in the police force really need are … Read… 4/28/13 8:25pm 4/28/13 8:25pm

One intrepid way to discourage girls from going to school is to shoot a 15-year-old education rights advocate in the head. Another innovative tactic: mass-poisoning. Read… 4/22/13 5:20pm 4/22/13 5:20pm

Earlier this year, we asked if you remembered Afghanistan. The answer then, obviously but somewhat unofficially, was no. Now, with the release of several news organization's year-end top stories lists, we know that, objectively, no one gives a shit about the 11-year-old war. Read… 12/30/12 10:00pm 12/30/12 10:00pm

Najia Siddiqi, Afghanistan's Director of Provincial Women's Affairs, was assassinated this week. She had been filling in for her predecessor, Hanifa Safi, since July — guess what happened to her? Assassinated, too. Could the Taliban's message be clearer? Support women's rights in a visible way (starting with "dare to … Read… 12/12/12 6:30pm 12/12/12 6:30pm

Another day, another horrific tale of abuse against a young woman. According to the Telegraph, a 15-year-old girl named Geesa was allegedly attacked and killed "earlier this week by two men from the spurned family as she went to collect water from a stream in her village in northern Afghanistan." The men responsible were … Read… 11/29/12 10:00am 11/29/12 10:00am

When Australian skater Oliver Percovich first visited Afghanistan a few years ago, he was surprised by how excited the children he encountered were by his skateboard. Since then, he has started Skateistan, a skate school in Kabul that draws in nearly 400 students a week. Most thrilling of all is that 40% of these… Read… 11/26/12 6:15pm 11/26/12 6:15pm

Maria Bashir, Afghanistan's only female prosecutor general, has been internationally praised for defending women's rights in a country where they are too often ignored. But according to figures leaked to The Times of London, Bashir has jailed more than 100 women for adultery, making her "the most prolific prosecutor of … Read… 10/22/12 10:00am 10/22/12 10:00am

For many, hip hop is the sound of rebellion, and Sosan Firooz — Afghanistan's first female rapper — has pro-Afghanistan and anti-Taliban messages in her track "Our Neighbors." Read… 10/09/12 3:20pm 10/09/12 3:20pm

Ahhhhh yes, the old "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" gag—a stalwart of soft-focus TLC reenactments, prom bathrooms, and, now, the war in Afghanistan. Good one, secret baby! The legion of women who've lived through the trauma of unexpected childbirth grew by one this week, when a Royal Artillery gunner stationed in… Read… 9/20/12 7:00pm 9/20/12 7:00pm

In a significant departure from its restrictive attitude towards female education in the 1990s, Taliban leaders are at least passively okay with British-based charity Mercy Corps running vocational colleges for young Afghani women. The approximately $8 million program includes English and computer classes, and — after… Read… 7/08/12 10:15pm 7/08/12 10:15pm

One hundred sixty students from an all-girls school in the Afghan province of Takhar province were admitted to the hospital yesterday after being poisoned yesterday, the second mass poisoning of schoolgirls in the country in a week. US, Afghan, and NATO authorities believe that several of the Taliban's army of… Read… 5/30/12 2:20pm 5/30/12 2:20pm

This sounds pretty awkward. A California serviceman who was killed in Afghanistan has been survived by a forecasted category 5 shitstorm, as he neglected to tell his second wife that he hadn't yet divorced his first wife. And now the two wives are locked in a heated, terribly depressing fight over his stuff. Read… 5/08/12 7:00pm 5/08/12 7:00pm

Just when you think all of the horrible things in the world have already happened, something like this comes along. Last week, Susan Orellana-Clark was Skyping with her husband, Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark, a 43-year old Army chief nurse who was stationed in Afghanistan. Everything seemed completely normal when Clark… Read… 5/07/12 11:10am 5/07/12 11:10am

The issue of women in combat has long been a thorny one for the military. While laws forbidding women from serving in combat were repealed 20 years ago, there have been Pentagon regulations that have essentially done the same thing since then, and women have been relegated to support roles rather than combat positions. … Read… 4/20/12 2:00pm 4/20/12 2:00pm

No matter how one hears about it, finding out about the death of a loved one is bound to be awful. But one military wife had a particularly terrible experience—she found out her husband had been killed in action via Facebook. Ugh, yet another downside to being able to instantly contact anyone. Read… 4/19/12 11:00pm 4/19/12 11:00pm

Probably not. But Afghan Parliament member and now declared Presidential candidate, unabashed women's rights supporter, and overall badass Fawzia Koofi hasn't seen a battle that wasn't uphill. Read… 4/16/12 5:45pm 4/16/12 5:45pm

Women in Afghanistan marched in Kabul on Saturday, continuing popular resistance to what many Western critics of President Hamid Karzai's new power-sharing deal between the government and the Taliban fear is a growing trend of violence and discrimination against women. Activists were outraged last month after Karzai… Read… 4/14/12 6:00pm 4/14/12 6:00pm

The new warden in charge of Pul-i-Charkhi, Afghanistan's largest prison, refuses to stop subjecting female visitors to invasive and humiliating vaginal searches unless someone gives him an X-ray machine to play with. Human Rights Watch released a statement today asking the Afghan government to immediately take action, … Read… 3/20/12 1:15pm 3/20/12 1:15pm

A little girl in Utah named Bailey got quite an amazing surprise on her sixth birthday. She was in the middle of talking to her classmates, when in walked her dad, Sargent Adam Page, who'd returned home early from serving in Afghanistan. Bailey was as shocked as you'd expect to see him, but her reaction is so poised … Read… 2/01/12 10:00am 2/01/12 10:00am

Ladies and gentleman, grab your tissues because this is one emotional roller coaster of an animal rescue story. Okay, here we go... While stationed in Afghanistan, some marines were on patrol when a man walked up and handed them a box with a tiny puppy inside. He was only about 10 days old and clinging to life. The… Read… 1/22/12 11:00pm 1/22/12 11:00pm