Stories from Afghanistan and India
It was just after 7am when the car carrying Colonel Saba Sahar, one of Afghanistan’s most senior female police officers, came under fire from armed insurgents. In the back seat, Sahar’s four-year-old daughter began screaming as bullets shattered the windscreen […]
The deputy governor of Kabul was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his armoured vehicle detonated in the centre of the Afghan capital on Tuesday. Mahboobullah Mohebi and his assistant died in the blast, which happened in the PD9 area […]
WHEN SAIDGUL WAS around 6 months old this past March, his parents decided to take him to Herat, a city about 80 miles from their hometown in Shindand District in Herat Province in western Afghanistan. The road between the two towns […]
At least 35 students and professors were killed and many more were wounded in an armed attack on Kabul University on Monday, which was claimed by the ISIS group. Three gunmen stormed the university building on Monday morning, marking the […]
Fifteen Taliban members thought to be responsible for a spate of assassinations in Kabul and beyond were captured on Tuesday, Afghanistan’s primary intelligence organisation announced. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said the men were tasked with carrying out assassinations […]
LAM GUL ALAM’S symptoms had been steadily worsening for weeks when he decided to visit an herbalist named Haji Mohammad Alkozai. The 30-year-old civil servant from Kabul had intently watched a video clip making the rounds on Afghan social media, in which […]
KABUL, Afghanistan—There were few things that scared Fatima Khalil, a 24-year-old human rights activist who torpedoed her way across an increasingly volatile and patriarchal landscape of Afghanistan. One of them, Lima Ahmad, her older sister, told me in July, was […]
Freshta had spent months building up a franchise business to help to feed her family – and break a few taboos on women at the same time – when coronavirus hit Afghanistan. In November, the engineering student, (who has asked to […]
Sitting in a dimly lit cell, Mariyam described her journey from growing up as a Catholic in the south Indian state of Kerala to languishing in an Afghan prison as a member of the ISIS affiliate known as Islamic State […]
Abdullah’s new job is to lead talks with Taliban at a time when President Ghani is going for war. After months of political discord, following an already delayed election and disputed results that saw two simultaneous presidential inaugurations, Afghan President […]