Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan began, Taliban forces have recaptured more than a quarter of the country’s districts. Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the co-founder of the country’s only all-girls boarding school, and she is anxiously waiting to see if the Taliban—which brutally opposes the education of girls and women—will make inroads in Kabul. At SOLA, the School of Leadership Afghanistan, students are free from the threats and violence that are commonly suffered in villages, and also from the expectations of housework that interfere with studying. Basij-Rasikh told the New Yorker staff writer Sue Halpern how she was educated secretly, during the Taliban’s rule, and about her belief that Kabul will not fall to the resurgent group: “I was speaking with a young woman, and she said, ‘Yes, sure, the Taliban will kill more of us. The Taliban will kill a lot more of us. But they will never, ever rule over us.’ ”
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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Helen Rosner’s Summer Drinks
The food-and-drink writer picks three cocktails to toast the reopening world, and mixes them on a very hot roof. Plus, the perilous future of girls’ education in Afghanistan.
American Chronicles
Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads
As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
By Casey Cep
Essay
The Role of Words in the Campus Protests
In the campus protests over the war in Gaza, language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction.
By Zadie Smith
News Desk
The Fate of Israel’s Hostages After Iran’s Rocket Attack
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu oversees an increasingly fraught regional confrontation, the families of Hamas captives work to free their loved ones.
By Ruth Margalit