Free Republic

Few countries have been battered so violently as Afghanistan. It has been roiled for decades by a war that is expected to escalate in coming months as foreign forces withdraw. There's deepening hunger and starvation. A severe drought is expected to displace hundreds of thousands as summer heat intensifies Then there's the pandemic. In recent weeks, there's been an exponential rise in cases, even with limited testing. (The Ministry of Public Health reports there's just been over 500,000 tests since the start of the pandemic for a population of about 40 million.) On June 16, there were 2,313 new cases,...

KABUL, Afghanistan — It's not the risk of contracting COVID-19 that keeps journalist Fatima Roshanian home. It's the murders. Roshanian scaled back her movements after she found her name on three different lists circulating on Afghan social media, claiming to be of people the Taliban want to kill. On one list, she's number 11. "They are after people who are well-known, who are against the values of this society, who speak out," she says. It's not the first time Roshanian has been threatened. She's offended plenty of conservatives in her life in her job as the editor of an Afghan...