Peer into The Economist’s decision-making processes with Tom Standage, our deputy editor, who explains how we select and design our front cover. Cover Story shares preliminary sketches and documents the—often spirited—debates that lead each week to a design seen by millions of people.
But Afghanistan is also hungry, poor and repressed. Music is banned. Armed men rule the streets. Women are barred from workplaces and universities, and cannot travel without a male guardian. Foreign aid has been cut, food prices have risen and the government is focusing spending on security, motorways and mosques, while defunding health and welfare. The challenge for our cover was to indicate that we were presenting an assessment of this complex situation, based on first-hand reporting. The photo we went with, of a woman grasping the curtain, was the one that we felt best captured this quiet frustration.
Girls over 12 are banned from school and, since child marriage is now legal, many have been forced into wedlock. The country’s fast-growing population of 45m—almost two-thirds of whom were born after 2001—can see no path to prosperity.
The headline “Inside Afghanistan” neatly encompasses both the isolation of those shut indoors, and the on-the-ground nature of our coverage.
