The Women Burning Their Degree Certificates

When the last of the remaining United States forces departed from Afghanistan this week, they took with them more than 100,000 people, some of whom were Afghanistan’s most educated and skilled citizens. For these politicians, artists, scholars, and activists, the withdrawal represented not only the end of their country as they knew it, but the end of any hope they might have had in helping shape its future.

These aren’t the only people Afghanistan has lost over the past few weeks. Perhaps just as important is another group: those still in the country who have gone into hiding in fear for their lives under Taliban rule, some erasing any remnants of who they once were—female journalists who