From Kabul words and images of war come our way. At a time of increasing violence, photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis explores part of the city’s underground rarely seen—the Sufi sect’s ecstatic ceremonies—in a photo essay he calls “mystical Kabul.” We see the Sufi tarighat (brotherhood) move to zikr rhythms, a practice banned by the Taliban, as he describes the comeback of Sufi mysticism. Many complexities of the Afghan story were brought into focus when Nieman Reports looked at coverage.
During election season, journalists should be ready for even more sophisticated attempts to plant false narratives and to spin disinformation via legitimate news stories