Stories from Afghanistan and India
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 […]
Dr. Bina Najeeb grew up during the civil war in Afghanistan, a period of extreme bloodshed and destruction in his country. He graduated from medical school when the fundamentalist Taliban regime was in charge, in the late 1990s. He has […]
Firoza Omar was nursing her four-month-old son at her home in Kabul when she heard of reports of an attack on a maternity hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan capital. In one of the most brutal incidents […]
The terrorist attack on a Kabul hospital that killed 24 is likely to delay the intra-Afghan peace talks The journey from the cradle to the grave lasted only a few hours for some Afghan babies at the 100-bed Maternity Hospital in the […]
There is a certain method to having the chainaki, a wholesome meat soup made in a teapot, called “chainak” in the Afghan language of Dari. First, you take the large naan that comes with every serving and break into tiny […]
ON MARCH 13, 50-year-old Sayeed Karim attended Friday prayers at his mosque in Mangalha, a remote village in Baghlan Province in northern Afghanistan. While there, he and his neighbors were presented with a unique public information session issued by local Taliban […]