Kunduz is a city in northern Afghanistan, the capital of Kunduz Province. The city has an estimated population of about 268,893 as of 2015, making it about the 7th-largest city of Afghanistan, and the largest city in northeastern Afghanistan. Kunduz is in the historical Tokharistan region of Bactria, near the confluence of the Kunduz River with the Khanabad River. Kunduz is linked by highways with Kabul to the south, Mazar-i-Sharif to the west, and Badakhshan to the east. Kunduz is also linked with Dushanbe in Tajikistan to the north, via the Afghan dry port of Sherkhan Bandar. This city is famous in Afghanistan for its watermelon production.
Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is an Afghan former politician, academic, and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.
Shukria Barakzai is an Afghan politician, journalist and Muslim feminist. She was the ambassador of Afghanistan to Norway. She is a recipient of the International Editor of the Year Award.
Sahraa Karimi is an Afghan film director who was notably the first female chairperson of the Afghan Film Organization. She has directed 30 short films, 3 documentary films and one fiction film Hava, Maryam, Ayesha which had the world premier at the 76th Venice Film Festival. Prior to the fall of Kabul to the hands of the Taliban, she was the first and the only woman to be directing Afghanistan's film entity.
Zarifa Ghafari is a former female mayor of Maidan Shahr, capital city of the Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Ghafari was one of the few Afghan female mayors, next to the first Afghanistan's mayor, Azra Jafari and Khadija Zahra Ahmadi, and was also the youngest to be appointed, at the age of 24. She is known for her efforts to advance women's rights in Afghanistan. Ghafari was chosen as an International Woman of Courage in 2020 by the US Secretary of State. She has survived three assassination attempts.
Laila Haidari is an Afghan activist and restaurateur. She runs Mother Camp, a drug rehabilitation centre she founded in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2010. She also owns Taj Begum, a Kabul cafe that funds Mother Camp. Taj Begum is frequently raided because it breaks taboos; the cafe is run by a woman and allows unmarried men and women to eat together. Haidari is the subject of the 2018 documentary film Laila at the Bridge. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.
Laleh Osmany is a women's rights activist from Afghanistan, who founded the social media #WhereIsMyName campaign which opposes the tradition that women's names were not used publicly in Afghanistan. For her work she was recognised on the BBC's 100 Women Awards in 2020.
2021 (MMXXI) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2021st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 21st year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 2nd year of the 2020s decade.
Sam Mort is currently Chief of Communication, Advocacy and Civic Engagement for UNICEF Afghanistan, based in Kabul. Officially based in New York, she is currently 'one of the few Westerners left' after evacuations from Kabul. Afghanistan is in the midst of a Taliban offensive, where the insurgents have now taken over from the elected government. She previously announced that Unicef had made a historic deal to have girls educated in the Taliban-controlled areas of the country in 2020.
Rangina Hamidi is an Afghan-American writer, educator, social activist, and politician. She is well known as an advocate for women's rights in Afghanistan and has engaged in various social projects to empower girls and women in Afghanistan. Hamidi has served as an education minister of Afghanistan, until the Taliban takeover. She was the first female education minister of Afghanistan. During the Afghanistan being taken over by the Taliban, she vowed to stay in Afghanistan and continue her humanitarian efforts by actively involving in empowerment of Afghan women. However, after several weeks, she fled with her family to Arizona.
Protests in Afghanistan against the Taliban started on 17 August 2021 following the Fall of Kabul to the Taliban. These protests are held by Islamic democrats and feminists. Both groups are against the treatment of women by the Taliban government, considering it as discriminatory and misogynistic. Supported by the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the protesters also demand decentralization, multiculturalism, social justice, work, education, and food. There have been pro-Taliban counterprotests.
On 15 August 2021, the city of Kabul, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, was captured by Taliban forces during the 2021 Taliban offensive, concluding the War in Afghanistan that began in 2001. The fall of Kabul provoked a range of reactions across the globe, including debates on whether to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, on the humanitarian situation in the country, on the outcome of the War, and the role of military interventionism in world affairs.
MahboubaSeraj is an Afghan journalist and women's right activist.
Fatima Gailani is an Afghan political leader and women's rights activist, who previously served as president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.
Zahra Joya is an Afghan journalist. She is the founder of Rukhshana Media, an outlet in Persian and English which she runs from exile.
Khadija Zahra Ahmadi is an Afghan politician who was mayor of the city of Nili, in Daykunidi province, in central Afghanistan, from 2018 to 2021, until the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. She grew up in Iran in a refugee family who fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. She is the second Afghan female mayor belonging to the Hazara ethnic group after Azra Jafari to achieve that rank. Zarifa Ghafari is a Pashtun native and the third women to be a mayor in post-Taliban era. During the time Ahmadi was a mayor, she received death threats from fundamentalist and Islamist groups like the Taliban. Like many other Afghans, she was forced to leave the country after the fall of Kabul and later resettled in Spain. On April 25, 2022, she was awarded with the "Reconocimiento Mare Terra" prize for her fight and advocacy for Afghan women's rights.
Tamana Zaryab Paryani is an Afghan journalist and women right's activist known for her protests against Taliban rule in Afghanistan. She is widely recognised as a symbol of the women's struggle in Afghanistan. In December 2022, Tamana was named as one of BBC's 100 Women. She is a member of an Afghan women's rights activist group called Seekers of Justice. She presently lives in Germany after fleeing from Afghanistan in August 2022.
Basira Paigham is an Afghan LGBT-rights activist.
Wahida Amiri is an Afghan librarian and activist for women's rights. She was featured in the BBC 100 Women 2021 for her continued efforts protesting against the Taliban and their ban on women's education and right to work.
Summia Tora is an Afghan campaigner for women's and refugee rights, and social entrepreneur. In November 2023, she was included to the BBC's 100 Women list.