Girls are barred from school, women can’t work. But too much reporting and diplomacy fails to note their absence
In the days after the Taliban took Kabul, more than one correspondent shared clips from its streets, marvelling at how fast the city had returned to “surprisingly normal”, with shoppers back out and a sudden sense of quiet in a place that had been constantly braced for the next suicide bombing.
The correspondents were men, who apparently didn’t register one stark difference; it was also largely men in their videos. Most of the city’s women had vanished into their homes, terrified of what Taliban rule would mean for them.
