Habibur Rahman Taseer is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan.
War, poverty, and an entrenched patriarchy are forcing an increasing number of Afghan women, mostly direct victims of violence, to beg on the streets for survival.
The Taliban now controls stretches of major highways across Afghanistan, and thousands of people are stopped each week at makeshift checkpoints where the hard-line militants comb through their smartphones for content, contacts, and social media accounts.
