"Girls, if they're silent when they're being married, that counts as consent... Even if in fear they don't say anything, it's considered consent."
It's a detail Stephanie Sinclair shares early in this conversation — one small example of how the architecture of child marriage in Afghanistan works, and how silence itself can be turned into a weapon against the people forced into it.
Sinclair is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who first travelled to Afghanistan in 2003. What she witnessed there — including encounters with young women who had set themselves on fire rather than remain in forced marriages — became the foundation for Too Young to Wed, the nonprofit she went on to found. TYTW now works with girls and families across several countries, including Afghanistan and Kenya, combining documentary photography with direct support on the ground.
In this conversation with Tahir Shah, Sinclair talks about her enduring love for Afghanistan, how the country and its people first drew her in, and the realities facing girls there today. The Scheherazade Foundation has previously supported TYTW's work, and this conversation continues that relationship.
https://tooyoungtowed.org/main/index
Azada Women, a project of The Scheherazade Foundation, funds mobile internet connections for women inside Afghanistan — one woman, one hundred dollars, one year online.
Support the campaign: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women

"Yes, we have war, yes we have conflict — but what you're seeing is not our culture. We have so much beyond that." — Tamanna Easar
In this episode, Tahir Shah speaks with two remarkable women about Afghan women's voices, their resilience, and the power of telling their own stories.
Lucy Hannah is a British writer who lived in Afghanistan in the 2000s and founded Untold Narratives — an organisation that supports Afghan women writers and has published their work in Dari, Pashto, and English translation. She talks about falling in love with the country and its people, and what moved her to create a space for those voices to be heard.
Tamanna Easar is an Afghan artist and writer now based in London. She left shortly after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Her work has appeared in Untold Narratives' publications. She talks about the pain of separation from her homeland, the healing power of writing, and what she most wants the world to understand about Afghan women — their individuality, their strength, and everything the Taliban's rule is not.
Together, they make the case for something simple and profound: Afghan women are not just victims of what is happening to them. They are writers, artists, thinkers — and they are still here.
Azada Women funds mobile internet connections for women inside Afghanistan — £100 connects a woman for a year.
Support the campaign: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women

Untold Narratives: untold-narratives.org

📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

Marina Legree spent five years in Afghanistan before founding Ascend Athletics — a nonprofit that used mountaineering to develop leadership and self-confidence in young Afghan women. After the Taliban takeover in 2021, she helped relocate more than 130 Ascend alumni to safety. She knows what Afghan women are capable of. And she knows what they've been forced to find other ways to reach.
In this conversation with Tahir Shah, she talks about her time living in the country, the warmth and humour of the Afghan people, and — above all — the extraordinary appetite for learning she witnessed among women and girls who have been told, again and again, that the world is not for them.
"I really think in a generation or so we're going to have so many incredibly talented Afghan women who've just said, 'OK, I'm not allowed to physically go here or there, but let me get online and I will do everything!'"
For many of those women, the obstacle isn't a Taliban ban on the internet. It's the cost of a connection. Azada Women — a project of The Scheherazade Foundation — funds mobile data for women inside Afghanistan. A connection costs around $100 a year.
Support the campaign: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women

Ascend Athletics: ascendathletics.org

📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

Andrea Morris is a New Zealander who decided she couldn't simply watch from the other side of the world. Through Noor Women for Afghanistan, she runs clandestine schools in the north of the country — educating around thirty girls up to Grade 12 in a country where such schooling is forbidden — and the Noor embroidery project, which connects Afghan women to global markets for their traditional needlework, allowing them to earn an income and support their families from home.
Tahir Shah spoke with Andrea about what it takes to keep these quiet acts of resistance alive — the schools that don't officially exist, the women whose work travels the world while they cannot, and what it means to build something durable in a country under siege.
To support Afghan women's access to the internet — the invisible lifeline connecting them to education, work, and each other — visit the Azada Women crowdfunder:
🔗 crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

"Is the iron hand of the Taliban going to be capable of sustaining itself?"
It's the question Tom Freston asks at the start of this conversation — and it's one that feels all the more urgent coming from someone who has known Afghanistan across five decades.
Freston first travelled to Afghanistan in the early 1970s, when the country was a place of extraordinary openness: hippie trails, ancient hospitality, a society on the cusp of something. He returned in 2007, during the brief window when a different future still seemed possible. What he witnessed across those decades — and what has been lost since — gives his perspective on today's Afghanistan a weight that few outsiders can match.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Tahir Shah, Freston reflects on what Afghanistan was, what it became, and what the women living there now are up against. He talks about the simple, transformative power of connectivity — and why he believes that giving Afghan women access to the internet is not merely a practical act, but a statement of faith in the human spirit itself.
Tom Freston is co-founder of MTV and one of the most influential figures in the history of global media. His connection to Afghanistan is personal, longstanding, and undiminished.
To support Afghan women's access to the internet — the invisible lifeline connecting them to education, work, and each other — visit the Azada Women crowdfunder:
🔗 crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

When we asked Afghan women what they most needed, we expected many things. What came back, clearly and consistently, was a single answer: an internet connection.

In this conversation, Tahir Shah and Jason Webster — co-founders of The Scheherazade Foundation — talk about Azada Women, the Foundation's campaign to fund mobile internet access for women living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. They discuss how the project began, how it operates, and why something as simple as a data connection has become, for millions of women, the difference between isolation and the world.

Today, 20 million women and girls in Afghanistan live under more than 250 Taliban edicts restricting their freedom to work, study, move, and speak. One hundred dollars connects a woman for a year — including secure access tools to keep her safe online.
Azada — from the Dari word for free.

🔗 Support the campaign: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
🌍 Learn more: https://www.sf.charity/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]

The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.

#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

Safia Shah grew up with the same tales her brother Tahir did — teaching stories passed down by their father, the writer and thinker Idries Shah. Those stories, she says, work differently at every stage of a life. As a child you understand one thing. As an adult, decades later, you find something else entirely waiting inside them.
In this conversation, Tahir and Safia talk about what it meant to grow up in that tradition, how Hoopoe Books has distributed over five million illustrated editions of those stories in Afghanistan alone — and millions more in dozens of languages worldwide — and why that work feels more urgent now than ever.
The UN has called the situation facing Afghan women today "gender apartheid." Safia doesn't flinch from the phrase. This conversation doesn't either.
Hoopoe Books & Hoopoe Share: hoopoeshare.org
Support Azada Women — the Scheherazade Foundation's campaign to fund internet access for women inside Afghanistan: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
🌍 Learn more: sf.charity/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

Darya grew up in Afghanistan, became an artist, and eventually had to burn everything she had made — on a rooftop in Kabul — when the Taliban returned to power. Creating art had become a crime.
She made it out. Most of the women she knows did not.
Today, from Canada, Darya runs online art therapy sessions for women still living inside Afghanistan. In this conversation with Tahir Shah, she talks about her journey from refugee life in Pakistan to Kabul, the reality of women's lives under Taliban rule today, what it cost her to leave, and what it means to stay connected — however tenuously — with the women she works with.
At the heart of it is a simple truth: for Afghan women, internet access is not a convenience. It is a lifeline.
Azada Women is a project of The Scheherazade Foundation that funds mobile data connections for women inside Afghanistan. A connection costs around $100 a year. 
🔗 Support the campaign: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
🌍 Learn more: sf.charity/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]
Darya's website: https://soulwomen.org/
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #SteveMcCurry #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder

Steve McCurry first went to Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion. He was there when the Soviets were driven out. Over decades, he fell in love with the country and its people — hospitable, funny, generous, alive.
He has watched what has happened since 2021 with horror.
In January 2026, the Taliban passed a law making it legal for an Afghan man to beat his wife — provided he doesn't break her bones. McCurry's response is unequivocal: "You wouldn't even do that to a dog. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable."
In this conversation, one of the world's great photographers talks about Afghanistan across half a century — the country he knew, the people he loved, and the women now living under more than 250 Taliban edicts stripping them of the right to work, study, move, and speak.
He also talks about Azada Women — The Scheherazade Foundation's campaign to fund internet access for women inside Afghanistan. One hundred dollars connects a woman for a year.

🔗 Support the campaign: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/azada-women
🌍 Learn more: sf.charity/azada-women
📧 Contact: [email protected]
The Scheherazade Foundation is a UK-based cultural organisation harnessing the power of traditional stories and wisdom to address modern global challenges.
#AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #AzadaWomen #SteveMcCurry #WomensRights #HumanRights #Crowdfunder