“Don’t believe what the media tells you about Afghanistan.”

That’s the line turning up on TikTok and Instagram five years after U.S. and NATO forces withdrew and the Afghan Republic collapsed. Travel influencers – even women – are touring bustling Kabul markets and showcasing pristine mountain valleys, telling their audiences that the world has gotten Afghanistan all wrong.

To the Taliban authorities, these foreign tourists are a PR goldmine – a chance to show the world that Afghanistan is safe, stable, and open for business.

What the media reports about Afghanistan is, indeed, bleak. Since September 2021 Afghan girls have not been allowed to attend school beyond the 6th grade. Women have been pushed out of most professional jobs, including in government offices and non-governmental organizations. In December 2022, mere months after thousands of women sat for university entrance exams, the Taliban issued an indefinite ban on women studying at all public and private universities.

And then in August 2024, the Taliban formally enacted a sweeping 114-page “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” law. The law introduced strict rules requiring women to completely cover their faces in public and forbidding their voices from being heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud outside the home.

Meanwhile, the U.N. reports that three out of four Afghans — roughly 28 million people — cannot even meet their basic daily needs. Over 64 percent of the population lives in what’s called multidimensional poverty. It’s a fancy term for a dismal reality: it means people are systematically deprived of clean water, adequate food, basic medicine, and housing.

How can the exact same physical space be a beautiful, welcoming “hidden gem” for a travel influencer, and an open-air prison for the women who actually live there?

We wanted to get the answer directly from the people of Afghanistan – not foreigners who parachute in for a vacation. Today, we bring you the voices of Afghanistan’s women, with the invaluable help of Rukhshana Media and other friends in Afghanistan. 

These women will be speaking to you directly, though most have asked to hide their faces and alter their names out of fear of retaliation. They see what the world sees of Afghanistan; and they see their own erasure from the Afghan story. 

Rukhshana Media is currently fundraising to continue paying their team of 10 brave reporters who work secretly inside Afghanistan. Please support them so they can keep telling the outside world the truth about Taliban rule.