About Freshta
Freshta is a journalist and writer focused on long-form reporting on war, political violence, and their impact on civilians, social structures, and memory.
She holds a postgraduate degree in politics from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.Her journalism career began in the early 2000s, on the streets of Kabul, at the opening of the U.S.-led war on terror, reporting with a pen and notepad as she documented a country in transition.
Over more than 15 years, she has reported on the war in Afghanistan and the implications of U.S. foreign policy in the country and the wider region. Her conflict reporting also includes the U.S. war in Iraq, the war in Syria, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Her work has appeared in The Diplomat, New Lines Magazine, The Markaz Review, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and has been translated into Arabic, Russian, and French, circulating across media in South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Her reporting has also been cited by institutions, including the Asia Foundation and Cambridge University Press.
In 2024, she was commissioned by The Diplomat to write the first-person reflective long-form essay “Kabul Will Never Be the Same” on the U.S. war in Afghanistan (2001–2021), examining how the war was experienced by civilians on the ground and how it is remembered in post-withdrawal Afghanistan.
In 2023, based on her master’s thesis at Columbia, she published the essay “The Little-Known Story of Afghanistan’s Last Jew” in New Lines Magazine, documenting a vanishing minority community through the testimony of a woman survivor and examining questions of identity, gender, and memory amid war and cultural erasure.
In 2012, she received Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Presidential Award for research on the challenges faced by Afghan women journalists during the first ten years of the country’s democratic transition, work that contributed to the founding of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, aimed at advocating for media workers in rural Afghanistan, especially women.
She is fluent in five languages.
She holds a postgraduate degree in politics from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.Her journalism career began in the early 2000s, on the streets of Kabul, at the opening of the U.S.-led war on terror, reporting with a pen and notepad as she documented a country in transition.
Over more than 15 years, she has reported on the war in Afghanistan and the implications of U.S. foreign policy in the country and the wider region. Her conflict reporting also includes the U.S. war in Iraq, the war in Syria, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Her work has appeared in The Diplomat, New Lines Magazine, The Markaz Review, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and has been translated into Arabic, Russian, and French, circulating across media in South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Her reporting has also been cited by institutions, including the Asia Foundation and Cambridge University Press.
In 2024, she was commissioned by The Diplomat to write the first-person reflective long-form essay “Kabul Will Never Be the Same” on the U.S. war in Afghanistan (2001–2021), examining how the war was experienced by civilians on the ground and how it is remembered in post-withdrawal Afghanistan.
In 2023, based on her master’s thesis at Columbia, she published the essay “The Little-Known Story of Afghanistan’s Last Jew” in New Lines Magazine, documenting a vanishing minority community through the testimony of a woman survivor and examining questions of identity, gender, and memory amid war and cultural erasure.
In 2012, she received Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Presidential Award for research on the challenges faced by Afghan women journalists during the first ten years of the country’s democratic transition, work that contributed to the founding of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, aimed at advocating for media workers in rural Afghanistan, especially women.
She is fluent in five languages.
