'Complex' world of Taliban home: Wife embraces Taliban 'brothers', asserts women's right to freedom

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 05:54 Issued on: 31/08/2026 - 09:24Modified: 31/08/2026 - 09:35 Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Elise Blanchard, award-winning photojournalist and author of “Dans la Maison d’un Taliban” (In the House of a Taliban). Blanchard’s work challenges narratives that reduce Afghan women to passive victims. Drawing on rare access to a Taliban household, she describes a social landscape shaped by profound contradictions. In drought-stricken Badghis province, Blanchard traces child marriage through a chain of material pressures exacerbated by climate change. Gendered violence is explained through the prism of patriarchy, poverty, environmental crisis and political instability. Keywords for this article