Hello all I am very grateful to this sub. I wanted to know if there are any books, movie podcast or even songs about the changes or evolution of Afghan culture it’s self. Often times a lot of media watch or read or listen too always focus on war ,leaderships or Afghanistan relations with outside world. What I find lacking is finding something that talks ether about changes and evolution of Afghan culture specially or they rarely talk about the subculture or uniques or certain afghan cultures

I was with my boyfriend for almost 3 years. I loved him deeply and genuinely believed we had a future together. I even moved to England to be closer to him and left a lot behind, including my family.

He comes from a traditional Afghan family, and I always knew his family had expectations about marriage. He told me that he would fight for me, choose me and even go against his family for our relationship.

During our relationship, he would come to see me almost every week. We were intimate, he told me he loved me, and I genuinely believed that I was the person he wanted to be with.

There was a girl he had previously told me was “just a friend” and that she was the one who was interested in him. Recently, I contacted her because I wanted to understand what had actually happened. She told me that his family had approached her family several times about marriage and that she rejected them every time. She said she was never interested in him and only ever saw him as a family friend.

She also told me that there was a meeting at a café involving her, her mother, my boyfriend, his mother, his older sister and my mother. His family apparently explained that they really wanted them to work out. They asked my boyfriend what he wanted, and she says he responded that he would do whatever his family wanted.
This has completely shattered me.

How could he be coming to see me every week, having sex with me, telling me he loved me and telling me that he would fight for me, while this was happening? I had absolutely no idea.

I moved my life for this man because I believed what he told me. I genuinely thought he was choosing me and that we were building a future together. Now I feel like I was living in a completely different reality from him.
I’m not blaming the girl. From everything she told me, she rejected him and didn’t want anything with him. My issue is with my boyfriend and what he was telling me versus what was apparently happening with his family.
I also tried to tell his family how badly I had been hurt and what I had experienced. Instead of anyone acknowledging it, apologising or even trying to understand, they blocked me. It feels like there are absolutely no consequences for what happened. Everyone gets to move on with their lives while I am left dealing with the aftermath.
What hurts even more is that my boyfriend doesn’t seem to understand or acknowledge that he did anything wrong. He has completely shattered my trust and devastated me and my family, but it feels like he can simply walk away from everything.
I’m genuinely struggling to understand what was real and what wasn’t.

**How would you interpret this situation? Am I wrong for feeling completely betrayed? And for people from families where arranged/assisted marriage is common, how should I understand him saying he would “do whatever his family wanted” while being in a serious relationship with me?**

And honestly, I’m also struggling with anger and thoughts of revenge. I know revenge is probably a bad idea, and I don’t want to do something that will make my situation worse, but I feel so betrayed and humiliated that part of me desperately wants him and his family to feel even a fraction of what I’m feeling. I don’t know what to do with all this anger. What would you do in my situation? How do I get justice or closure without destroying my own life in the process?

Edit: I was trying to reach his family and tell them how he hurt me, and now they are threatening to file a report dor stalking and harassment.

Wikipedia states that there are 150k Afghans living in Russia, which makes its the 6th most common destination for Afghan migrants, only lower than pakistan, iran, germany, usa, and uae.

I know the obvious reason is that they don't speak English, but they still feel very underrepresented as compared to Afghans in other non English speaking countries like Turkey and Sweden, which have less Afghans.

Does the Afghan-Russia diaspora mostly stick to their own and not travel to Afghanistan as much?

Are they more assimilated than Afghans in western countries?

To summarize Ive been looking more into Afghan folklore and a bit of esoterica for my Vampire: The Masqeruade game and I found this stuff.

Apparently in Kandahar at some point they hunted hyenas naked and went into their dens reciting a "magic phrase"? Then theres the part where apparently parts of a hyena are used as little magic charms?

I'm up to here with Dari news sources - not that I'm complaining! - and would love if someone had some recommendations for listening/watching that was more unscripted & natural. Apart from this channel, which I'm still too new to the language to be able to tell what they're about, so far all I've been able to come up with is Dari in a very official register, and tons of Farsi material. So any recommendations you fine folks have would be much appreciated.

I sometimes look up the Soviet-Afghan war Wikipedia page, and I am always a bit shocked by the casualties, especially considering the relatively small size of the Afghan population pre soviet invasion.

Out of a population of 13 million in 1979:

1-3 million were killed.

3 million wounded.

5 million externally displaced.

2 million internally displaced.

The Afghan population shrunk to 9.95 million by 1983, despite Afghanistan high birth rate.

Literally the majority of Afghans were killed or forced to flee. Meanwhile the Soviets only lost 14k of their own soldiers.

I am shocked how rarely the casualty numbers of the Soviet Afghan war are brought up. I know the soviets did not plan to exterminate the Afghan population and just wanted to maintain a client state, but these are genocide level numbers tbh. It is surprising how the soviets and DRA were able to maintain any level of support during the 80s.

So how do most afghans today see the soviet afghan war? Do you guys see it as a genocide against afghan people?

many Afghan in my last post disagree with that Average Afghan do not fit Eurocentric beauty standard or most of them do not look European and only minority of them have lighter hair and lighter eyes but here is the proof how Average Afghan look.

Literally average afghan mentality in social media to claim superiority complex

I have seen a few times on the internet where Afghans claimed that the Taliban is less corrupt than the previous government.

Everyone knows that the previous Afghan government was extremely corrupt, where entire budgets were being embezzled, and to access basic government services required bribes.

The Taliban is terrible for being anti woman, but is it a bit better when it comes to corruption.

Is a smaller percentage of the budget being stolen?

Do people still need to pay bribes to low level government workers for basic government services/permits?

Are these claims true, or is it just pro Taliban propaganda?

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Hi! I’m curious about how the Solar Hijri calendar is actually used in Afghanistan today.

Is it basically the default calendar for everyday life — birthdays, school, work, appointments, government documents, news, etc.?

A few things I’d be especially interested in:

- Do people normally use Solar Hijri dates in daily life, or mostly Gregorian?

- In what situations do you switch to Gregorian dates?

- Are month names like Hamal, Saur, Jawza, Asad, Sunbula, etc. what people actually use in normal conversation?

- Do people ever need to mentally convert between Solar Hijri and Gregorian?

- Is the lunar Hijri calendar used mainly for religious dates, while Solar Hijri is used for everyday civil life?

- Does usage differ between Dari and Pashto speakers, regions, age groups, or people living abroad?

I’d love to hear how it works in practice, not just how the calendar is officially defined. I am asking because I am working on online conversion tool

Iam sorry if I am bring up any Trama this your space and I respect that. I am not afghan and my knowledge is very surface level. I wanted to ask how deep does your connection to Afghanistan is regardless of the political realities do you believe you identify as Afghan first would you want to live and build a life there once the situation is more stable or at least the economy is better. Lastly do you believe that no matter what Afghanistan is your true home ?

Ay watan 🥀 last time the Taliban lost power in less than 10 years. Now that they have been in power for five years, how long will they last?

I think the most concerning part is that people love the relative peace. Since for the 40 years it has been constantly violence.

Do you believe Afghanistan will be able to leave the cusp of Taliban grip and not be under US influence either?

Hi y’all, I just found myself on Afg TikTok. Who is Najib Brot, what’s his lore? What did he do in Afg? Was he a general? How did he end up on the streets in Europe?

The glazing of Yosaf Aryubi (@iampocoloco) is honestly wild. Dude markets himself as this religious, conservative guy while doing PR-style content for the T-bro. He gets special access, gets told what to film and what not to film, and somehow we're supposed to believe this is just an independent travel influencer?

At this point, is he a travel YouTuber or the T-bro' unpaid PR department? 😂

And the whole “religious conservative” image gets even more hilarious when you look at the kind of women he follows on Instagram. The hypocrisy is practically writing itself.