Tag: afghanistan
An astronomer uses stargazing to give young Afghans some much-appreciated perspective, all the while taking care not to tread on anyone’s religious sensibilities.
JALALABAD — It’s early morning in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. Haroon Sarwari, 17, and Manzoor Ali, 18, are wearing their backpacks and walking quickly to get a taxi to reach Kabul on time. These close friends have laid out plans to travel to Europe illegally with the help of a smuggling agent. Haroon’s cousins managed to get to Germany three months before, so his father, Sarwar Khan, supports the plan. “My father sold a few of his cows and borrowed some money from his friends to send me to Europe,” the teenager explains. “He has already agreed with the agent on […]
ISIS has launched a radio program on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, airing programs that target jobless youths and encourage them to adopt extremist views and join the fight in Syria.
JALALABAD — Shah Zaman, 11, spends his days carting people’s luggage to earn a few cents. His mother died during his birth and soon after, his father remarried. “I wish my mother had been taken to the hospital,” he says. Shah lives in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, where war and internal conflicts have weakened the local economy and health system. Like in so many parts of the country, health facilities lack trained staff. In more remote areas, health facilities can also be hours away, making it difficult for pregnant women to reach them in time. This, in a country where […]
The terrorists attacks in Brussels last week provided instant fodder for the U.S. presidential campaign. Republican front-runner Donald Trump had already boasted last month that he would order the U.S. military to “target the families of terrorists,” also pledging to reinstitute waterboarding and “a whole lot more” as a tactic to extract information from terrorists. […]
KABUL — Inside the Afghan capital’s soccer federation stadium, dozens of Afghan women, some of them recently returned from a training camp in Japan, are practicing their skills. “From 2006 up to now, the Afghan women’s national soccer team has conducted several different trips abroad, for training and matches,” says Zohra Mihree, chief of the Afghan women’s soccer committee. “The team participated in SAFF (South Asian Football Federation) tournaments in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Our team came in third place in 2014.” Currently, more than 100 women soccer players are training in different clubs around Afghanistan, up from just a handful […]
KABUL — Here at Pol-e Sokhta, in a spot in western Kabul where hundreds of drug addicts gather each day, Afghan government workers have become a regular presence. The government workers have been given the mission to round up the city’s drug users and move them to a former NATO base, less than 10 kilometers away. The Afghan ministries of counter-narcotics, public health and economy have joined together in the initiative to provide treatment for drug addicts at the camp. Salamat Azimi, Minister of Counter Narcotics, says the state has the means to treat thousands of drug addicts, and will […]
While most people around the world consume news and information from TV, radio and the Internet, a centuries-old tradition that has mostly died out is still being practiced in one Afghan province where literacy rates are poor. Meet Bamyan’s town c
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February 2
In recent months the Taliban has destroyed three radio stations in Kunduz province. But it hasn’t stopped 28-year-old Maryam Durani, who remains determined to continue broadcasts for women.
A group of well-educated Afghans with credentials to work in Europe are instead committing to stay in their troubled homeland – and using Facebook to encourage others to do the same.
KABUL — Eyes are always described as a symbol of beauty in art and eastern literature, but the two eyes painted on a wall in Kabul’s Share New neighborhood have literally beautified an ugly security wall. And in this case, eyes are used as a symbol of monitoring corruption. These “we are watching” eyes were created by the ArtLords, a group of young creatives who paint war-torn walls across the city of Kabul. “We have been facing cultural and social problems in Afghanistan, and art has never been used to solve disputes,” says the group’s leader Kabir Mokamel. “Instead force […]
U.S. SAYS RUSSIA TARGETING REBELS, NOT ISIS Russia’s intervention in Syria has elicited anger from U.S. officials who are accusing Moscow of aiming at the region’s Western-backed rebels — not ISIS fighters, as the country claims. The New York Times reports that Russia’s participation in the civil war is an effort to help Syrian President […]
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Why Afghans Don’t Go To The Movies
You can’t blame the Taliban anymore.
ISLAM QALA — It’s almost midday when, under a blazing sun, the first bus transporting Afghans expelled from Iran arrives. At the border crossing of Islam Qala, in western Afghanistan and 460 miles from the capital Kabul, two metal sentry boxes are built opposite one another. Over one flaps the Iranian flag, on the other […]
Thousands of asylum seekers are passing through the small Balkan nation on their way to the European Union, but the short journey is far more arduous than it seems.
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No More Big Fat Afghan Weddings
KABUL — Big weddings, music and dancing were banned in Afghanistan under the Taliban. So after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the regime in 2001, Afghans who could afford it began throwing large, loud and expensive weddings. But the government says the tradition has become a burden for grooms’ families, who are obliged to underwrite wedding costs, and the parliament has passed a law to makes lavish and expensive weddings illegal. The new law limits the number of wedding guests to 500 and caps the per-head cost at around $7. “This law will solve huge problems facing young people that make […]
Rights groups say that cops in Herat are cracking down on “adulterers,” stopping couples on the street,even brothers and sisters, and demanding proof of marriage.
New Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is betting on Beijing to cement peace and help rebuild the economy. But China will play its cards carefully, especially its historic alliance with Pakistan.
The quotes making news, and the news making quotes…
Catching onto “the gentleman’s game” later than its neighbors India and Pakistan, the Afghan team is currently ranked 9th in International Twenty20 cricket.
-OpEd- BERLIN — American Foreign Policy magazine’s home page is a little bit like a quotation board for security policy strategies. Here you see not only how various players evaluate the world’s conflicts but also how much support there is for their point of view, because the number of times the article has been shared […]
KABUL — It took me eight days to convince 37-year-old Gul Rukh to let me conduct this interview. The Afghanistan woman living in Kabul feared talking openly about her waitress job at the Mumtaz Mahal Wedding Hall. “I earn $200 a month at the hotel,” she says. “I am very happy doing my job, but I am treated very badly by society, my relatives and neighbors for doing it. They scoff at me and believe working as a hotel waitress is not a good job for a woman. But when my husband became disabled, I had to find work to […]
BEIJING — With President Barack Obama’s recent announcement that the United States will remove all military forces in Afghanistan by the end of 2016, American foreign policy is preparing to turn a page full of blood and tears. But this also may mark the beginning of another era: when China will play a prominent role […]
Newsmaking images that caught our eye…
KABUL — Boxing is Shigofa Haidari’s passion. But in Afghanistan, that means practicing three days a week in Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium, where the Taliban used to organize public executions. Haidari is wearing a light headscarf today. An injury prevents her from training, but she is happy to watch her friends go through all the basic […]
Justin Bieber’s graffiti global tour continues, Berlusconi lingers, Pope Francis surprises again, and other notable quotes from around the world…
A quick trip around the world in six photographs, from London and Paris to Tokyo and Kabul…
Peace is a process, never a single event. Negotiations for peace are always far more complicated than the public understands, and the results are not always miraculous. Even so, the majority of modern conflicts — 80%, according to the School for the Culture of Peace in Barcelona — eventually end after negotiations. The school’s reports […]
BISHKEK — Russia has reached a deal with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to provide military aid to the two Central Asian nations. Though the details are still being hammered out, Moscow appears to have netted a deal with potentially major geopolitical implications. “We have agreed with our colleagues regarding the delivery of weapons, […]
BBC (UK), AFP Worldcrunch LOGAR– At least 8 Afghan workers were kidnapped and shot dead on their way to jobs at a U.S. military base in Logar province, south of Kabul. No group has taken responsibility for the attack, however, local officials blame the Taliban terrorist group, BBC reports. The workers, aged from 15 to […]
FIGHTING CONTINUES IN EASTERN UKRAINEUkrainian troops have launched a new offensive against pro-Russian militants in the eastern city of Sloviansk, with reports of shootings at rebel-held checkpoints outside the city, forcing them to retreat deeper into the town’s center. At least one woman was killed and another 11 pro-Russian militants were reported injured in the […]
WASHINGTON POST (U.S.), BBC, SKY NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch LOS ANGELES – In his first speech since resigning in November, former CIA director David Petraeus has apologized to those he says he let down with the extramarital affair that lead to one of the most sudden and dramatic public falls from grace in recent memory. In […]
The Microsoft founder and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are active in trying to eradicate polio. But immunization efforts have led to deadly attacks from Nigeria to Pakistan.
AP, CNN, REUTERS, NEW YORK TIMES (U.S.), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch FORT MEADE– Wikileaks whistleblower, Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 22 charges he is accused of in what the U.S. government calls the largest leak of classified documents in the nation’s history, writes CNN. There are many moving parts to […]