In a country where official policy has literally erased the presence of women, the existence of Zan Times is proof of subversion—and resistance. The exiled media organisation led by Afghan women was set up in August 2022 with a “mission to report human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan”.

Over nearly four years, Zan Times has worked with over 130 journalists and writers inside Afghanistan as well as those in exile. Many who report cannot use their real names for fear of imprisonment, or even death. In 2025, the Courage in Journalism award by the International Women’s Media Foundation went to “Sana Atef”. It is not her real name and she can never be named.

Zan Times has reported on what it means to be a woman in a country where girls are not allowed to study beyond secondary school, where they cannot leave their homes without a male guardian (mahram), where they must be covered from head to toe, and where even the sound of their voice in public is banned. Most recently, the Taliban issued a decree allowing the beating of women by their mahrams, provided no bones are broken.

Stories published on the website raise global awareness of the world’s most egregious human rights violations. They also serve to record and document these violations.

I spoke to Zahra Nader, the founding editor-in-chief of this remarkable publication. In 2021 when the Taliban returned to Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US troops, she was doing her PhD and living in Canada with her Afghan-Canadian husband and young son. It soon became clear that she would not be able to return home.

Using the Canadian $30,000 she had saved to build a home back in Kabul, Zahra started Zan Times from Edmonton, Canada where she lives. I spoke to Zahra on the phone, on Whatsapp and on email. Here she is, in her words:

Why did you feel the need to start Zan Times?

After the Taliban returned to power, they began systematically removing women from public life, including from journalism. In December 2021, Reporters Without Borders reported that four out of five women journalists in Afghanistan had lost their jobs. I saw that women journalists were disappearing from newsrooms, and with them, women’s perspectives and stories were also disappearing from a country where the regime in power had waged a war on women.

That is why I felt we needed to create our own platform where Afghan women journalists could continue reporting on life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and ensure that women’s voices and experiences are not erased. I wanted us, as Afghan women, to be the author of our own stories.

As an exiled media organization, how do you report on the ground?

We work with two teams. One team is mostly in exile and consists primarily of editors and coordinators. The second team is inside Afghanistan.

Journalists inside the country work under extremely difficult conditions. For their safety, they report under pseudonyms, and they are individually connected to........

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