Category Archives: Afghanistan

‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded

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Months after Mohadese Mirzaee became Afghanistan’s first female commercial airline pilot, the Taliban took Kabul. Now a refugee in Bulgaria, she is determined to fly again

Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.

“Today, I don’t know where to go, but I’m not giving up. I’ve started applying for pilot jobs anywhere because I know I need to get back to flying,” she says by phone from the capital, Sofia.

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‘I loved my job in the police. Then the Taliban came for me’

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After a vicious beating, Fatima Ahmadi fled Afghanistan with her children for Pakistan. But her pleas for asylum in the west are met by silence

Fatima Ahmadi only stopped screaming when the Taliban held a knife to her child’s throat, and told her: “Shut up, or we will kill your son.” They had burst into the policewoman’s Kabul home one late September morning, demanding she hand over her weapons. She told the Taliban she had no guns at home, but they said she was lying, ransacked the house, then began beating her, pulling out handfuls of hair, and when she would not stop shouting, they grabbed her nine-year-old son.

The knife was pressed so violently into his throat it left a red welt, visible in photographs seen by the Observer. Ahmadi’s back was covered with bruising from an assault so vicious that she lost control of her bodily functions. The men eventually left, but with an ominous warning. “We will come back.”

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‘It’s our lifeline’: the Taliban are back but Afghans say opium is here to stay

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Despite talk of a Taliban ban, in Helmand’s poppy fields farmers and traders say they are not the only ones who depend on the drug to survive

The Taliban’s announcement that it plans to ban the production of opium in Afghanistan does not faze seasoned dealer Ahmed Khan*.

“They could not fund their war if there were no opium,” says Khan, who operates out of Baramcha, close to the border with Pakistan.

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Women’s rights activist shot dead in northern Afghanistan

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Frozan Safi, 29, is believed to be the first women’s rights defender to be killed since Taliban return to power

A 29-year-old activist and economics lecturer, Frozan Safi, has been shot and killed in northern Afghanistan, in what appears to be the first known death of a women’s rights defender since the Taliban swept to power almost three months ago.

Frozan Safi’s body was identified in a morgue in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif after she went missing on 20 October. “We recognised her by her clothes. Bullets had destroyed her face,” said Safi’s sister, Rita, who is a doctor.

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They stayed to fight the Taliban. Now the protesters are being hunted down

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Women’s rights activists fear for their lives as Afghanistan’s new rulers infiltrate, detain, beat and torture groups of protesters

A month ago, Reshmin was busy organising protests against Taliban rule in online groups of hundreds of fellow women’s rights activists. Now the 26-year-old economics graduate must operate clandestinely, dressing in disguise and only demonstrating with a select few.

“If things continue like this, there will be no future for women in Afghanistan. It’s better if the future never arrives,” says Reshmin, who spoke to the Guardian using only her first name, which means “silk” in Farsi, out of security concerns. “Each time we go out, we say farewell because we might not make it back alive.”

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‘Honest mistake’: US strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians was legal, says Pentagon

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US investigation finds civilian deaths did not violate law of war as strike attempted to target Islamic State

A US drone strike in Kabul in August that killed 10 Afghan civilians was a tragic mistake but did not violate any laws, a Pentagon inspector general said after an investigation.

Three adults, including a man who worked for a US aid group, and seven children were killed in the 29 August operation, with the target believed to have been a home and a vehicle occupied by Islamic State militants.

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Reclusive Taliban supreme leader makes rare public appearance

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Haibatullah Akhundzada said to have visited religious school in Kandahar, confounding rumours of his death

The Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, made a rare public appearance in the southern city of Kandahar, Taliban officials announced on Sunday, contradicting widespread rumours of his death.

Akhundzada, known as the leader of the faithful or Amir ul Momineen, had not been seen in public even after the Taliban’s August takeover of the country, giving rise to the speculation.

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Time running out for LGBTQ+ Afghans hiding from Taliban, warn charities

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Large numbers linked to previous administration are stranded in Afghanistan, with calls for the UK to broker rapid mass evacuation

Calls for the government to speed up the evacuation of gay, lesbian and transgender Afghans intensified on Saturday after the first LGBTQ+ group arrived safely in Britain but left many behind to face an uncertain fate.

The group of 29 is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, the Foreign Office said, hours after the Taliban announced LGBTQ+ rights would not be respected.

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Gunmen kill at least three at Afghan wedding to stop music being played

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Killers said they were Taliban but government denies responsibility and says two of them have been arrested

Gunmen presenting themselves as Taliban attacked a wedding in eastern Afghanistan to stop music being played and killed at least three people, the government has said.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday that two of the three attackers had been arrested, and denied they were acting on behalf of the Islamist movement.

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First group of LGBT+ Afghans fleeing Taliban arrive in the UK

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Students and activists in group that British foreign ministry hopes will be ‘the first of many’ in coming months

A group of LGBT+ Afghans has arrived in Britain, the first since the Taliban’s return to power in August caused panic among gay and transgender Afghans, who feared persecution and even death under the Islamists’ rule.

The evacuation of the 29 Afghans is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, hours after a Taliban spokesman said LGBT+ rights would not be respected.

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Islamic State in Afghanistan could have capacity to strike US next year

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Pentagon says Afghan-based group and al-Qaida have intention to attack US and Taliban’s ability to fight them is ‘to be determined’

The US intelligence community has assessed that Islamic State in Afghanistan could have the capability of attacking the United States in as little as six months – and has the intention to do so, a senior Pentagon official has told Congress.

Colin Kahl, under secretary of defense for policy, also said it was still “to be determined” whether the Taliban – which is an enemy of Islamic State – has the ability to fight Islamic State effectively following the US withdrawal in August.

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‘Gunmen killed a midwife who refused to leave a woman in labour’

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Zahra Mirzaei pioneered ‘groundbreaking’ maternity services in Kabul, but has been forced to flee. She says she won’t stop fighting for dignified care for Afghanistan’s women and girls

When Afghanistan’s first midwife-led birth centre opened in the impoverished district of Dasht-e-Barchi in western Kabul this year it was a symbol of hope and defiance.

It began receiving expectant mothers in June, just over a year after a devastating attack by gunmen on the maternity wing at the local hospital left 24 people dead, including 16 mothers, a midwife and two young children.

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‘The most difficult journey of my life’: an Afghan family’s escape to the UK

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One of just six female judges who have so far managed to reach Britain speaks of fleeing Kabul and finding refuge in Manchester

The day the Taliban arrived in Kabul, Dina* went to her office in the city’s law courts as normal. It was deserted. “Only the cleaner was there,” the 41-year-old supreme court judge remembers. “The cleaner said: what are you doing here? Go home!”

Dina gathered as many legal papers and personal documents as she could carry and drove back to the four-storey home she shared with her husband and three children. There, she scanned in the most important bits of paper and burned the lot on her roof terrace. It was painful watching evidence of everything she worked so hard to achieve going up in flames.

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‘Countdown to catastrophe’: half of Afghans face hunger this winter – UN

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An economic crisis aggravated by conflict and drought have caused a collapse in food security since the Taliban takeover

More than half of Afghanistan’s population is facing acute hunger as the country has been thrown into one of the world’s largest food crises.

Almost 23 million Afghans will be hungry due to conflict, drought and an economic downturn that is severely affecting livelihoods and people’s access to food as a harsh winter looms, the UN has warned; an increase of nearly 35% compared with last year.

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Home Office refuses to reveal details of Afghans’ resettlement

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Complaints emerge of ‘chaotic’ system as local councils try to find suitable homes for refugees

The Home Office will not say how many of the airlifted Afghans qualify to be rehoused in the UK and has refused to reveal how many families have already moved out of hotels and into homes.

By calling around local authorities and devolved administrations, however, the Guardian has started to build a fractured picture of which areas have stepped up to do their bit.

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‘We planted a seed’: the Afghan artists who painted for freedom

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The Taliban has whitewashed Kabul’s political murals – and those who created them have fled into exile

Negina Azimi felt shock and fear like never before when she heard that Taliban fighters had entered Kabul on 15 August. As an outspoken female artist in Afghanistan, she knew they would come for her.

“We heard reports that the Taliban might raid houses. I was scared because I live in a very central neighbourhood and every room in my house is adorned with the kind of art the Taliban won’t approve of,” she says, referring to paintings that feature messages about women’s empowerment and are critical of the Taliban’s atrocities.

Negina Azimi, who is now in a refugee camp in Albania with others of the ArtLords collective. They are now planning an exhibition

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Taliban ‘forcibly evicting’ Hazaras and opponents in Afghanistan

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Human Rights Watch has logged illegal seizures of land and homes then given to Taliban supporters

Thousands of people have been forced from their homes and land by Taliban officials in the north and south of Afghanistan, in what amounted to collective punishment, illegal under international law, Human Rights Watch has warned.

Many of the evictions targeted members of the Shia Hazara community, while others were of people connected to the former Afghan government. Land and homes seized this way have often been redistributed to Taliban supporters, HRW said.

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Russia holds high-profile Afghanistan talks with Taliban

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Moscow calls for aid to avert refugee crisis but also demands more inclusive government in Kabul

Russia has hosted the most high-profile international talks on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, calling for an injection of aid to help the crippled economy but also demanding a more inclusive government.

Senior Russian diplomats made clear that formal recognition of the Taliban regime was not on the table until it does more to improve human rights and broadens an all-male cabinet, most of them clerics from the Pashtun ethnic group.

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Afghanistan to restart polio vaccination programme with Taliban support

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The WHO and Unicef campaign will restart after three years, and the hardliners say they will assist and allow frontline female staff

Afghanistan will restart nationwide polio vaccinations after more than three years, as the new Taliban government agreed to assist the campaign and to allow women to participate as frontline workers, the UN said on Monday.

The World Health Organization and Unicef said the vaccination drive would begin on 8 November with Taliban support.

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