A peculiar irony is found at the heart of the Amnesty International report on the 16 March strike on Kabul's Omid Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre, and it is worth naming before anything else.

Afghanistan, under the Taliban, is a country that has gone out of its way to keep independent eyes out. The UN's own special rapporteur on human rights, Richard Bennett, had been barred from entering the country in 2024, with the Taliban administration accusing him of "spreading propaganda". Women, who make up half the population and are often the only people local custom permits inside hospitals and shelters to treat other women, have been steadily pushed out of public institutions, UNAMA offices included. And yet, for all odd reasons, the official Afghan voices and UNAMA sourcing find their way into Amnesty Report's footnotes without much apparent difficulty. How is it that a country that closes its doors on the world's monitors seems able to get........

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