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…

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…

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…

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."

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…

According to a document sent to The Sunday Times, the Taliban might be, could be, fingers-crossed ready to promote women's education as part of a bid to restart peace talks with the West. Though The Times couldn't independently verify the paper's authenticity, it reportedly demonstrates current thinking among among…

It's happening: the Marine Corps officially announced — as expected — that it will allow women to start training at its intensive infantry officer school at Quantico, VA and join some ground combat battalions. The changes will provide the Marine Corps' 13,800 women (out of 197,800 men — the Marines are the most…

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…

Last April, the Marine Corps announced that it would begin integrating female officers into its Infantry Officer Course, a monumental step towards allowing women to serve in front-line combat that would also open up more promotions for women, some of whom have been complaining for decades that prohibiting women from…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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.

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.

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…

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…

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…

In a truly awful act of violence, an Afghan man strangled his wife to death after she gave birth to a second daughter instead of the son he had wanted. The 22-year-old woman, whose name was Estorai, had previously told her family members that her husband was unhappy with the birth of their first daughter and had…

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…