A human rights activist from Afghanistan, Habib Rahiab, stopped by yesterday at the editorial rooms of the Sun. He was in New York for Human Rights Watch’s annual dinner, which will take place tonight at the American Museum of Natural History. Mr. Rahiab told us that our newspaper’s name reminds him of a newspaper in Kabul that is also named the Sun – Aftab, in the local language. And therein lies a story.

The Kabul Sun is a feisty, independent paper that, like our own from time to time, annoys some people. Last year, when the newspaper published articles and cartoons critical of Islamic leaders in Afghanistan, the Afghan agricultural minister ordered that the paper’s electricity be cut off, according to a Human Rights Watch report. In addition to the power problems, there were death threats and kidnapping threats. The editors were eventually arrested on charges of blasphemy. One editor, Hussain Mahdavi, now lives in exile at Canada. Mr. Rahiab is in exile, too. After Human Rights Watch released a report he helped research, 17 armed men showed up at his home. He received asylum in America and is now a visiting fellow in the human rights program at Harvard Law School.

Mr. Rahiab says that everyone in Afghanistan welcomed the election there this fall and accepts it as “a great and significant achievement.” There is no question that the situation in Afghanistan is better than it was under the Taliban. But Mr. Rahiab says he hopes that the election is considered not an end but a beginning of the still incomplete effort to bring freedom, democracy, and the rule of law to Afghanistan. Now there is a point on which The New York Sun and our colleagues at Aftab can agree.