Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. It was a throwaway line in a grim Human Rights Watch report that sent me on my quest: “The Taliban run dozens of unacknowledged prisons.” Here, for me, was a new and sinister aspect of the kind of parallel government that this insurgent group has constructed in Afghanistan. These prisons were an overlooked element in the Taliban’s terror campaign: a below-the-radar network of incarceration that is waiting to arbitrarily swallow up and punish citizens who are considered enemies of the group. As the Kabul bureau chief for The New York Times, I surmised that this network must have affected a substantial number of Afghans. My goal was to describe the physical features of these prisons as closely as possible, the conditions under which the Taliban’s prisoners are held and the psychological aftermath.

Source: New York Times March 13, 2021 17:15 UTC