These women fled Afghanistan. What’s at stake for those left behind?
BY Nina Strochlic
In the past month, Naheed Esar has spent her days settling into a new life as a doctoral student in the leafy college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas. At night, when her family in Afghanistan is just waking up, she calls them. “We try to calm one another,” she says.
“But it starts with: Are you alive? Where is this person, where is that person?”
She doesn’t get much sleep.
For 20 years, women in Afghanistan have gone to school, pursued careers, and fought to achieve a social standing equal to men. They’ve become artists, activists, and actors. Now, Esar and millions of women are grappling with the sudden Taliban takeover of their country. Thousands of women are fleeing or in hiding as they await an uncertain future.
For the past six years, 33-year-old Esar has served in the Afghan government, starting as a gender expert for the presidential palace and ending as a deputy foreign minister. By that time, the threats were constant: Esar traveled with five bodyguards in an armored vehicle, and dogs sniffed her Kabul home for bombs once a week. After the peace deal struck between the U.S. and the Taliban in 2020, the prospects for her—and millions of other ambitious Afghan women—to continue their lives grew increasingly tenuous.
Esar began preparing for her departure.
“I realized if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to leave Afghanistan alive,” Esar says.
When the Taliban last controlled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, women’s education was widely banned, stoning and whipping were punishment for crimes like adultery, and a male escort was required to leave home. After the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power, education of women and girls became a hallmark of the mission’s success. Millions of girls donned school uniforms. Today, half of Afghan women age 15 to 24 are able to read—double the literacy rate for women in 2000. And though their involvement in the labor market is still far below most countries, an increasing number of Afghan women have served in government, on the bench, and in the media. More than a quarter of parliamentary seats in the country of 39 million are reserved for women—more than in the U.S.
When Kabul fell in mid-August, the airport became a clearinghouse for those trying to escape Taliban rule and reprisals. More than 80,000 people have been flown out of Kabul since the country fell, but 250,000 who are eligible for U.S. visas are still standing by. Thousands more who believe they could be Taliban targets are waiting for help before the American military pull-out on August 31st. Among them are female journalists and parliamentarians, artists, members of the LGBTQ community, U.S. military translators, and others who fear for their lives under a Taliban regime. Large humanitarian organizations and private efforts alike have received an outpouring of support but have managed limited logistical success.
Through the maze of military bureaucracy at the airport, a trickle of Afghan evacuees have made it onto flights out of the country: A dozen teenage members of the Afghan all-girls robotics team landed in Doha on a special flight arranged by the Qatari government. One of the country’s first female mayors, Zarifa Ghafari, was smuggled to safety in Germany after telling the press she was just waiting to be killed. Students from the country’s only girls’ boarding school landed in Rwanda after its founder burned all the student records. (Founder Shabana Basij-Rasikh was a 2014 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.) Raheed Esar left Afghanistan on December 17, 2020, for Pakistan, where she had an appointment for a U.S. visa that would allow her to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Arkansas.
As she waited, the Taliban seized more and more of her country. When Esar’s visa arrived in mid-July, her father urged her to go straight from Pakistan to the U.S. What if the Kabul airport collapses? he asked. She couldn’t imagine that ever happening, but she agreed to go. She landed in Arkansas at the end of July and has replaced her belongings with thrift shop clothing and furniture donated by professors at the university.
When Kabul fell, the Afghan Fulbright class of 2021 already had their visas, Esar says. Those she’s in touch with have made it to the U.S. She hasn’t met them in person, but they chat on WhatsApp and she urges them to get off social media, focus on their studies, and take advantage of the opportunity.
She had dreamed of one day opening an all-Afghan research institution. Now she doesn’t know if she’ll ever go back. “Leaving your country without even being there—while your family is there, your loved ones are there—is basically moving a tree from one place to another,” she says. “Will that tree ever grow the same?”
Esar comes from a long line of female warriors. Her grandmother was a guerilla fighter during the Soviet invasion and later ran her village council. Under Taliban rule, her mother ran an illegal underground school for 60 girls. Esar, who was seven at the time, boastfully called herself the principal. But now her family seems to have given up hope. Her grandmother is dead and her mother, she says, isn’t interested in fighting again. Her parents talk about leaving, something Esar says they’ve never considered before.
Their prospects for escape are shrinking by the day.
On December 1, 2020, students take their end-of-term exams in English class in Khandud,
in the district of Wakhan in the province of Badakhshan.
Getting out alive
Without clarity or a widely disseminated plan for evacuees to reach the Kabul airport, the onus to help Afghans escape has been on those with deep connections in the country.
Shannon Galpin hasn’t gone to bed in 11 days. Sometimes she lies fully dressed on her lumpy couch in Edinburgh, Scotland, and drifts into a half-sleep, ready to jump up if her phone rings with news of the evacuations. Nearly a decade ago in Afghanistan, Galpin helped establish the Afghan Women’s Cycling Team and the country’s first bike club. She spent the ensuing years supporting Afghan women pursuing athletics.
In 2020, there were girls’ teams in seven provinces and five bike races for women cyclists, along with BMX and mountain biking competitions. Athletics, like culture and art, can be a form of rebellion, says Galpin, who is American. “It’s truly universal that the bike is linked to women’s rights,” she says. “It’s a vehicle of freedom and mobility. That’s at the heart of your independence and equality.”
On August 15, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the Taliban seized the presidential palace, leaders from the global community of climbers, bikers, and other outdoor sports started building a database for evacuation. The 400-person list of Afghan athletes and coaches includes an all-girls’ climbing team, the Bamiyan ski club, marathon runners, mountain bikers, a parkour group, and women’s basketball and football teams. Galpin and her collaborators quickly compiled and shared safe routes to the airport, the numbers for private security firms, and charter flight contacts.
On a given day Galpin is coordinating evacuations on 20 different message threads. Her inbox is filled with recordings of hysterical crying, reports of Taliban patrolling door-to-door, and occasionally vitriol that she knows is just vented frustration. “Now 11 days in, how do you say, ‘I’m so sorry just wait’?” she asks. “It’s heartbreaking. What are we doing in comparison to the fear they are living with? It’s never going to be enough.”
Galpin launched a fundraiser to help cover costs: A $10 taxi ride to the airport now costs $4,000 from a private security firm. Galpin appealed to the cycling community that had cheered on the Afghan teams over the years and has collected $36,000. Galpin’s fundraiser is one of many. The founder of an Instagram meme account launched a GoFundMe drive to pay for private evacuation flights and raised $5 million in 24 hours. Now, a week later, it has surpassed $7 million.
But money is just one factor needed to navigate the chaos at the airport and the deadline of the American pull-out. Each seat on a plane is estimated to cost $1,500, but some flights have been taking off less than a quarter full after logistical snags kept passengers from boarding. At first, the Taliban was allowing passage to the airport, but as of this week the road is closed and cars are being stopped at checkpoints.
Hampered by the chaotic and changing regulations, supporters are getting a few out at a time. So far, Galpin believes 50 people from her list of 400 have evacuated, but she won’t know for sure until the U.S. pullout is complete. “This doesn’t end on the 31st,” she says. “Then we have to take care of the people left behind.”
As her fiance Hasib Sayed takes pictures for her social media accounts before recording an episode of “Afghan Star,” a talent quest TV show, on February 18, 2021. Threats against the show forced her and other participants to stay in a safe house during production. Saeed and Sayed fled Afghanistan on August 17.
Members of the Momtaz Yoga Studio picnic and practice yoga at the Chihilsottun Palace in Kabul.
The founder of the studio started it out of the office of an IT studio and it became a hub for more than 500 students..
An uncertain future.
Right now there are only clues of what’s to come in a Taliban-led Afghanistan.
The leadership in Kabul has been on a public relations offensive, but already Taliban soldiers have refused to allow female students and teachers to enter the university in Herat, a city in western Afghanistan, and girls’ schools in other provinces have been closed since the Taliban seized power. Women shopping alone in markets in Mazar-i-Sharif have been told to return with a male guardian, and female news anchors have been let go.
Over the past two decades, access to education in Taliban strongholds has varied widely. In some districts, women have been allowed to travel to attend government universities. In others, there are not even primary schools for girls. For the most part, education is restricted after a girl reaches puberty, or around seventh grade.
“The Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a press conference on August 17. “Our sisters, our men have the same rights; they will be able to benefit from their rights…They are going to be working with us, shoulder to shoulder with us.”
To Rada Akbar, these promises ring empty, if not darkly ironic. Akbar, a photographer, painter, and activist based in Kabul, has been a vocal critic of the Taliban. Earlier this year, she found herself on a released list of assassination targets. “The Taliban have been targeting women like me and my friends for the past 20 years,” she says. “People must be so naïve to trust that they have changed. Twenty years of killing and destruction and overnight they change? No. They are the same.
“The irony is that when they took Kabul they announced amnesty and they said, ‘We forgive every Afghan.’ What do you mean you forgive us? You killed us. You killed our friends and colleagues. You forgive me for what? For being an artist? You forgive us for losing our lives?”
Three months ago, Akbar’s family met over dinner and discussed leaving. Her mother flatly refused: The family had fled to Pakistan as the Taliban took power in 1996. She would not be a refugee again. Still worried, Akbar began sending her paintings and hard drives with friends traveling overseas.
On August 15, Akbar received a hysterical call from a photographer friend in Kabul. “Rada,” she screamed, “they are coming, they are coming!” Akbar left behind a half-eaten lunch and the better part of a decade of work and drove to the French Embassy. After a few days, she was moved to the airport in a convoy of 15 minibuses and armored vehicles. She’d wished they’d done it at night so she didn’t have to see her city overrun by Taliban soldiers. Now, she’s quarantined in a hotel in Paris with hundreds of other Afghans waiting to hear where they’ll go next. Her family is scattered across Germany, the U.S., France, and Turkey.
The village has hosted a celebration for perhaps over a hundred years.
Under Taliban rule, the holiday was banned for its pagan traditions.
Soon there will be thousands of Afghan refugees across the world and many more left behind with no means to escape. “When the U.S. toppled Taliban rule, there was an effort to really try to help these women move forward. And after the last 20 years there have been so many achievements in education and professional life,” says Melanne Verveer, who runs the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. “The thought now of that being erased is something I think is really hitting people. Oh my god, what is going to happen to them now?”
Yet, according to data from the institute, Afghanistan still ranks as the second-to-worst country to be a woman due to the instability and gender-based violence.
Women gained significant political power during the past nearly 20 years, but now the future is uncertain. Some women political leaders have said a return to Taliban rule would be unacceptable, but others expressed hope that there would be a place for women’s voices and Islamic values.
“We don’t know yet really what the Taliban wants us to lose and to sacrifice,” said Shinkai Karokhail, a parliamentarian and women’s rights activist, in a 2020 National Geographic story. “We are not against peace, we are not against bringing the Taliban back to [politics in] Afghanistan to at last end this long war.”
Under President Barack Obama, Verveer served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues. During one trip to Afghanistan, she met with a group of female journalists. One handed her a small bouquet of plastic flowers and recounted a saying: “One flower won’t bring spring, but many will.” She gestured at the female journalists in the room to show that spring had come.
This memory haunts Verveer, who now is spearheading a campaign called Protect Afghan Women that is helping evacuate judges, journalists, and human rights activists. “I keep thinking that spring has turned into a terrible winter right now,” she says.
SOURCE: These women fled Afghanistan. What’s at stake for those left behind? (msn.com)
Friba Rezayee in Vancouver, Canada, where she moved in 2011.
The uncertain future for women and girls in Afghanistan – Bing video
Afghanistan’s first female Olympian says women will not give up their liberties easily
By Ben Church, CNN
Friba Rezayee struggled to train in her home country where even a 10 minute jog outside is risky and made history in 2004 when she became one of the first two Afghan women to compete at the Olympic Games. When the judoka competed in Athens, her father and one of her brothers told her it was as if she had taken the “first step on the moon.”
It wasn’t just a special moment for Rezayee: it was a momentous moment for women across Afghanistan. The judoka was now a symbol for a society that, although far from perfect, was finally changing. Women had more opportunities and the future, after years of Taliban rule in the 1990s where basic human rights were taken away from them, was looking brighter.
But now the Taliban has returned to power in Afghanistan and Rezayee fears that the progress that has been made for women’s lives over the last 20 years will be lost. Taliban leaders have recently expressed their commitment to a “blanket amnesty” for all in Afghanistan, including members of the Afghan military and interpreters, but Rezayee says the future will be bleak for women in the country.
“After they [the Taliban] settle down, they have their government established, they will go after the individuals who spoke against them,” Rezayee, 33, told CNN Sport.”Women who went to school, women who went to universities and women who played sports.” Born and raised in Afghanistan, Rezayee moved to Canada as a refugee in 2011 and has since set up a non-profit organization, ‘Women Leaders of Tomorrow,’ which advocates for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
The initiative GOAL (Girls of Afghanistan Lead) also looks to support female judokas to compete and represent their country on the global stage. Since the Taliban swept into the capital of Kabul, Rezayee says the women she works with now fear for their lives. “I’m in contact with them every day. They send me heartbreaking messages,” she said.
“Recently, the Afghan female athletes visited the dojo (judo training gym). They held each other’s hands. They hugged each other. They also kissed the mats because that was the last time they’re going to see them and that was the last day of their freedom. “They’re also sending me messages, pleading for their life, for their safety. All these women leaders or human rights, women’s rights activists want to flee the country. They want to flee the Taliban for obvious reasons.”
‘A movement for freedom, for liberty, for life.’
Rezayee says she still remembers the brutality and oppression of the Taliban’s “unimaginable” regime. She fled to Pakistan with her family after the start of the group’s first rule in 1996 but returned after the US invasion in 2001 and set about making the most of newfound freedoms. It was as a refugee in Pakistan that Rezayee says she fell in love with boxing.
She remembers watching heavyweight champion Mike Tyson on a small crackling TV screen and being inspired by Laila Ali, the daughter of sporting legend Muhammad Ali. “I fell in love with how powerful Laila Ali was, what an icon she was. I wanted to do the same thing,” says Rezayee. On her return to Afghanistan, she enrolled at an all-girls school and started training with a boxing coach, feeling empowered by the sport.
“The last two decades, Afghan women worked so hard, they had so many achievements,” she said. “Women went to school, they had careers. Women ran for office, women ran businesses — you name it — the Afghan women did.” Except not all sections of Afghan society were ready to accept these freedoms for women.
Video: Clarissa Ward pushes Taliban fighter about Afghan women’s rights (CNN)
Rezayee says she started to receive death threats and her coach eventually said it was too dangerous to keep training. The coach put her in touch with another trainer, who introduced her to judo. With the help of a charity, she fell in love with the martial arts discipline and trained alongside two other girls — the only women in the entire country to compete in judo, she says.
“It was a milestone for us and a significant moment,” Rezayee added.
“[It was] very dangerous because the society was not ready to see female athletes at that time because they were just finishing and just coming out of the dark regime of the Taliban. “It was extremely dangerous, but I would train hard. I did not care about the social stigma, what my relatives and the society…said. “I believed in myself and I believed in the other girls and I believed in the sport.”
After competing locally, Rezayee was eventually selected to represent her country at the 2004 Athens Olympics. She was one of only two Afghan women to compete in Greece — the other being 100m sprinter Robina Muqim Yaar — but the scheduling of the judo and track and field events ensured Rezayee was the first woman to step into official competition, she says.
She faced a four-time world champion from Spain and lost in the first round but nonetheless made an indelible mark on Afghanistan’s history. “I did not win. I was very sad, I was heartbroken. I called my father and my older brother back in Afghanistan and said that I was so sorry I didn’t win, I let you down,” she said. “But my father and one of my brothers said: ‘Don’t worry, you didn’t win, but you made history.'”
However, on her return to Afghanistan, Rezayee says she was forced into hiding for a few months. She said fundamentalists in the country “wanted her dead” and that she also feared for the safety of her family. After a family tragedy in 2005, Rezayee fled to Pakistan again before finally seeking refuge in Canada in 2011. She has not returned to her beloved country since 2013 but has no regrets about her decision to represent Afghan women on the global stage.
“I wanted to show the patriarchy in Afghanistan that women are equal (to) men and they can participate,” she said. “And I also wanted the women’s competition, women’s sports, women’s rights to be very normal in the eyes of the patriarchy and other people and also to show to the world that there are women in Afghanistan and they play sports.”
‘We will become a resistance group’
Watching the news unfold over the last few days has devastated Rezayee, and she says she is frightened of what this regime will do. Despite their public pronouncements, she doesn’t believe that the Taliban have changed and called on world leaders to topple the newly formed regime. More positively, she believes there is still a chance that women can represent Afghanistan at future Olympic Games. She is working on a project to send Afghan women judokas to Paris in 2024 and called on the world’s sporting governing bodies to assist Afghan athletes.
In a statement to CNN, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it was “monitoring the situation and is in contact with the sport community in Afghanistan.” “At the same time, we have forwarded relevant information to a number of responsible governments. For obvious reasons of security of concerned people, we would not comment further at this stage,” the statement continued. CNN has also contacted the Afghan Olympic Committee but has yet to receive a response.
Despite the chaos and traumatic pictures coming from the country this week, Rezayee still has hope. That, she says, is something the Taliban can never take away from the women of Afghanistan. “My message to Afghan women in Afghanistan right now is to stay strong. This is a nightmare, but nightmares don’t last very long,” she said. “We will make this through. If nothing else, we will become a resistance group. We will fight for our rights no matter what.
“Once, we lost our rights in the 1990s — we are not going to let that happen again. Stay strong. Stay in touch. Also stay very intelligent.
“I believe in peace. Peace, prosperity and human rights will prevail.
“Everybody’s dying for peace.”
Sen. Thom Tillis: Mr. Biden, 70,000 need to get out of Afghanistan. Don’t let the Taliban dictate terms.In a one-hour span on Friday, I heard two completely different messages in two different settings coming from President Biden and his administration. In an address to the nation on Friday, the president pledged that he will see to it that all Americans will be evacuated from Afghanistan.
However, in a call with U.S. senators just an hour later, a high-ranking official only promised that “we will get as many as we can.” Let’s do the math.
We have less than 10 days until the August 31 deadline.
As of Friday, there were an estimated 10,000 US citizens, an estimated 10,000 Afghans who have been issued a special immigrant visa (SIV), 40,000 SIV-eligible Afghans, nearly 6,000 U.S. troops, and another 1,000 U.S. personnel at the Kabul airport. That’s nearly 70,000 people to evacuate over 10 days.
DEROY MURDOCK: BRACE FOR AN EPIC FAIL — BIDEN’S TWIN MESSES, IN AFGHANISTAN, AND AT THE BORDER, COULD MERGE
The president must accept the reality that if he is going to live up to his pledge, we cannot be held back by another artificial timeline. Doing so would further harm America’s reputation around the globe, and worst of all, it could leave American citizens behind enemy lines and tens of thousands of Afghan men, women and children left to die.
The consequences of failure will not be limited to those the president would leave behind on August 31. Countess veterans who served in Afghanistan are despondent as they watch the events unfold in Afghanistan.
They are not getting their information from the news or the internet, they are getting it from real-time communications from their brothers and sisters-in-arms. They are hearing stories of Afghans who were deployed with them, slept in tents together in between live-fire encounters with the Taliban, and cried over the bodies of men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield.
JACK CARR: US HUBRIS IN AFGHANISTAN – HERE’S THE PRICE WE PAID FOR NOT LEARNING LESSONS OF HISTORY
They are hearing stories of them being detained, threatened, and beaten by the Taliban. Their brothers and sisters in arms are sharing their frustration with being told to go to the Kabul airport only to find a line of armed Taliban between them.
And once you get past the line? One told us the story of a horrifying account of a Taliban shooting and killing two people outside the gate in front of his family of three small children. Sadly, they did not get through so they had to retreat and try again, and again, and again.
These are only a few of the stories I have heard from veterans in North Carolina.
The president and the American people need to know that active-duty servicemembers and veterans who served in Afghanistan have a bond with tens of thousands of men and women with whom they’ve built and maintained a friendship with. They share memories. They’ve kept track of their lives—marriages, children, and their progress in healing from the wounds of war.
They are like family—they are a part of them. Now, these Americans are seeing a piece of them at risk of being tortured, raped, and murdered. I know of one Marine who had these conversations with his brother-in-arms in Afghanistan and am now haunted by the tragic news late this week that the same Marine became hopeless and took his own life.
Mr. President: you’ve made a promise, but your math does not add up. Do not allow the Taliban to dictate the timeline and terms of our evacuation. You must fulfill your promise, or we will lose innocent lives in Afghanistan and the United States. You must move heaven and earth and take whatever time is necessary to ensure that every American gets back home safely and we honor that same commitment to the Afghans who risked their own lives to protect our troops.
Analysis: America’s role in resettling Afghans becomes next political battle in the fallout over US withdrawal – APADANA MEDIA
Editorial: Biden sidesteps responsibility for the mess in Afghanistan even as he claims to own it.
Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News
Joe Biden told a nationwide TV audience Monday that the horrifying scenes in Kabul, with desperate refugees fleeing the rule of a resurgent Taliban, aren’t his fault. He also says he won’t “shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today.”
Look up “cognitive dissonance” in the dictionary.
The problem, Biden explained, is that the Afghan army that we and our allies stood up, fell down the moment the U.S. troops pulled back and the Afghan government hightailed it out of the country. Fair enough: How can we fight their war if they won’t even fight it themselves?
But what Biden fails to face candidly is why the withdrawal had to be so chaotic, so seemingly haphazard, risking the lives of those who helped America fight its longest war. That was transparently a failure of planning and intelligence and leadership.
Our National Nightmare continues.
Our President is mentally unqualified to be President! He’s weak & being run by a group including HUSSEIN OBAMA! He’s given comfort to the ENEMY! He’s broken his constitutional oath of office! IMPEACH & TREASON are what needs to be prosecuted! Biden refuses to identify the Taliban as an enemy.
In making the broader case against staying in that dysfunctional land for another five or 10 or 20 years, Biden could have cited one of his predecessors on a different war: “We are not about to send American boys nine or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing themselves.”
Of course, Lyndon Johnson said that — two weeks before his 1964 election,
then soon enough sent huge numbers of American boys to Vietnam to fight.
But like Vietnam, the Afghanistan war is ending, and in much the same way with us closing our embassy and flying away, leaving terrified people to the mercy of the conquering enemy. For that it’s impossible to blame the weak will of the Afghan forces, or Ashraf Ghani, who was Afghan president before he skipped out. Ghani wanted to avoid the fate of Najibullah, the Soviet-installed Afghan president who didn’t escape when the Taliban conquered the country the first time in the 1990s. Najibullah was caught, tortured, castrated and dragged to death behind a Jeep.
America is right to leave. “The buck stops with me,” said BIDEN.
Wow! This is real!
#PatriotMust Listen
via @SiriusXMKathy McCollum, Mother of Fallen US Marine Rylee McCollum
What we’ve lost: Hold him to his word.
My goal in life for now is to pass on true information about what’s actually going on to the people who don’t know or who don’t understand.
You can find me somewhere in between inspiring others, working on myself,
dodging negativity and slaying my goals
The 95% Rule States: in Any Nationality 95% percent of the crowd is good everyday working people with 5% of those remaining making it look bad for the rest. Taking that one step further in any given person you are good 95% of the time. Whereas the other 5% of the time you may have done something you may not be so proud of having done…
America First 
Don’t like it, get off my cloud.
Christ is my Savior, Trump is my President!
Conservative Activist and Seeker of Truth Zephaniah 3:17
11.11.18. 141…? Z I Was Destined For This Moment = 333
This is a tough season for America & the world.
Let’s pray for each other & encourage one another!
#Art 
#Healthcare #TrumpWonAnalysis: America’s role in resettling Afghans becomes next political battle in the fallout over US withdrawal – APADANA MEDIA
The right to run: Afghani female Olympian fights stigma with ‘Secret Marathon’ race in Vancouver | CBC News
Hundreds of Afghans arrive at Northern Virginia Community College, greeted by outpouring of support (msn.com)
A marine killed in Kabul attack was pictured cradling baby at the airport in her last social media post (msn.com)
Nazira Karimi tells ‘Justice with Judge Jeanine’
‘I’m so upset and I’m so concerned about future kids in Afghanistan’
Afghan journalist hopes to be a ‘voice for Afghan voiceless’
An Afghan woman came to the United States to study.
Her family is stuck in Kabul and she can’t go home.
Donald Trump’s recounting of his 2020 conversation
with a Taliban leader is something else (msn.com)
The Bible tells us so: Why American Christians
should welcome Afghan refugees (msn.com)
Where does the Taliban get its money and
who’s funding the militant group in Afghanistan?
US military finds ‘alternative routes’ to Kabul airport
amid ISIS-K threats: reports
Biden: Another attack likely, pledges more strikes on IS
Pope Francis is tearing the Catholic Church apart (msn.com)
Smerconish on Afghanistan: Was it all in vain? (msn.com)