
ISLAMABAD -- When she finds time to relax, Afghan journalist Salma Niazi likes to stroll around her new home city of Islamabad, Pakistan, and play tennis. Her husband takes pictures to send to their relatives -- the latest, snaps of her throwing white rose petals in the air.
In skinny jeans with blue sneakers and a loose headscarf, Niazi recalls how her life in Kabul -- which she fled last year -- was not so different from this until the Taliban government announced restrictions for women in the media industry. Then everything changed worryingly fast. The only option she had to safeguard her future was to leave.