The correct answer is Latifa compares the Taliban's oppression to a slow death. A metaphor is when you compare two things subtly. In this case, Latifa compares the Taliban's opression to a slow death.
I would choose a. Simply because the author talks about it as if it's all that really ever existed and that nature cannot take over what it is not. However, it goes on about seeing how erosion and rot can affect such things and tries to compare it to things in nature as if it were nature itself.
Hyphen's will be used when a word is hyphenated. Hyphens join words together, while dashes separate them.
