Afghan women’s rights activists opened a library in Kabul, hoping to provide an oasis for women increasingly cut off from education and public life under the ruling Taliban. We have opened the library with two purposes: one, for those girls who cannot go to school and second, for those women who lost their jobs and have nothing to do,” said Zhulia Parsi, one of the library’s founders. Western governments have stepped up their condemnation of the Taliban’s widening elimination of women from public life. Many Afghan women have expressed frustration and called for Taliban authorities to respect their rights. “They can’t annihilate us from society, if they annihilate us from one field, we will continue from another field,” Mahjoba Habibi, a women’s rights advocate, said at the library’s inauguration.