“In a heavily guarded sports complex in Kabul, Afghanistan, loud thumps echo from the hall as young girls grab their partners by the arms and hurl them onto a thin mat covering the carpeted concrete floor. At times, some of the girls pause to adjust their headscarves, partially covering their all-white judo uniforms, while others have not covered their heads at all. This, despite the fact that their trainer is a man.

Afghanistan, a country that is often in the headlines for its dismal record with women’s rights, is perhaps the last place on earth where one would expect to find enthusiastic girls practicing a combat sport and dreaming of making it to the Olympics one day. But in Kabul, increasing numbers of girls have been flocking to judo classes.”

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“I was the first woman to end up living here under this bridge. Before me, there were only male drug addicts here. I used to wear men’s clothes because of that, and everyone thought I was a man. Now there are some other women here, and that’s why I have started wearing women’s clothes again.

I try to do little jobs to be able to buy drugs. For example, I buy pipes for five Afghanis and sell them for 10. I spend all my days thinking about what to sell and who to sell to. Whatever money I manage to make, half of it I spend on drugs and the other half on food.

If I find something to eat in the morning, then there is nothing for the evening. If I find something for the evening, there is nothing for the morning. Every day I must smoke heroin at least twice, once after I have woken up and once when it starts getting dark. I haven’t smoked today yet. If I don’t smoke, my body hurts from head to toe. I smoke only to feel normal, to feel happy for a while. Do you mind if I smoke now? ”

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KABUL

”MOI”, Safar Alizadeh, 29, huikkaa suomeksi ränsistyneen talon ovelta Afganistanin pääkaupungin Kabulin laidalla. Tie Alizadehin tädin talolle on niin kuoppainen, ettei sinne pääse autolla.

”Elämä on todella vaikeaa täällä. Tiedän, että henkeni on vaarassa. Afganistanilla ei ole tulevaisuutta”, Alizadeh puuskahtaa.

Hän ei ole nukkunut kunnolla viime aikoina ja vilkuilee levottomasti ikkunasta ulos.

Alizadeh on yksi Suomessa kielteisen päätöksen saaneista turvapaikanhakijoista. Suomi tiukensi linjaansa toukokuussa 2016 päätöksissä, jotka koskevat Afganistanista, Irakista ja Somaliasta saapuneita turvapaikanhakijoita…

Lue koko artikkeli täältä.

THE CROWDED AND OFTEN PERILOUS THOROUGHFARES OF KABUL, the capital city of Afghanistan, are no place for children. But still, between frequent car bombings and the ever-present hum of military helicopters overhead, the youth of Kabul flock to the city center, often forced to work long days alongside their elders to make ends meet. But for the lucky few there is a small refuge. Najib Safi is one of them, and he is getting ready to skateboard.

The 12-year-old boy puts on his protective gear and patiently waits his turn. Finally he jumps on his skateboard and rolls down a ramp in Kabul’s only skate park. His grey shalwar kameez, a traditional long shirt, flaps in the air as he whizzes past his friends, a wide smile on his face…

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On September 29, the Afghan government signed a peace agreement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami party, also known as HIG.

Hekmatyar, in hiding since 1997, has been on the US state department’s list of designated terrorists since 2003. The agreement allows for his return, calls for the removal of sanctions against him and pardons him of the crimes he has been accused of committing.

The deal has met with a mixed reaction from Afghans, with opponents and human rights activists criticising it for the impunity it grants him, while some see it as a necessary step towards peace.

Hekmatyar was one of the most influential leaders in the fight against the Soviet forces in the 1980s. When the Soviet-backed government in Kabul fell in 1992, Hekmatyar locked horns with important leaders of the resistance. After briefly accepting the position of prime minister in the interim government, he resorted to firing countless rockets at civilian neighbourhoods in Kabul, earning him nicknames such as “Rocketyar” and “the Butcher of Kabul”.

When the Taliban took over in 1996, Hekmatyar was forced to flee the capital, while some of his followers joined the Taliban.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Hekmatyar declared war against coalition forces and allegedly formed alliances with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, although he has denied this.

HIG has taken responsibility for a number of attacks in Afghanistan and is suspected to be behind an assassination attempt on former President Hamid Karzai.

While a faction broke from Hekmatyar’s HIG and joined the government after 2001, questions remain about how the peace deal will affect politics in Afghanistan.

As Kabul prepares for the return of Hekmatyar, Al Jazeera spoke to Muhammad Amin Karim, Hekmatyar’s representative and chief negotiator of the HIG delegation…

Read the entire interview here.

Shireen Rahmani knows firsthand that operating a 21st century corporation in a conservative Muslim society presents unique challenges. She is the director of human resources at Roshan, Afghanistan’s largest telecommunications provider. When she heard late one evening that her colleague’s brother had been killed by the Taliban, she knew it was her responsibility to visit her bereaved co-worker, who was living alone in Kabul.

“The minute I walked in, [he] was totally shocked to see a woman out at that time of the night,” Rahmani says. In Afghanistan, families are often reluctant to even allow women in business, much less a position that requires traveling across the capital city alone at night — so much so that Roshan’s leaders have met with parents to assure them of their daughters’ safety while at work. At Roshan, women make up 20 percent of the staff and 17 percent of the senior management team in a country where the International Labour Organization found that as of 2014 only 16 percent of the workforce was female…

 

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Kabul, Afghanistan – Abdul Aziz Oryakhil sat behind his desk in his office in Kabul. The events of the past few weeks in Afghanistan were nothing new to the 54-year-old firefighter.

Sipping on his tea, he seems relaxed. His walkie-talkie crackles with a male voice delivering intermittent reports. The firefighter claims to have witnessed countless horrors in his lifetime – perhaps more than anyone else in the country, he says – during Afghanistan’s tumultuous past, beginning with the Soviet-Afghan war, through the Taliban era of the 1990s.

But over the past two years Oryakhil’s units have been spending more time cleaning up after the devastating blasts that continue to rock the country than they have spent extinguishing fires…

 

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KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — At a school in the capital of Afghanistan, little boys wearing oversize white uniforms hurry down a flight of stairs to make it to judo practice, while girls in colorful headscarves eagerly wait for their tailoring class to begin upstairs. Hashmatullah Hayat, a project supervisor at the school, offers advice to the children who pop into his office asking about their computer classes or English homework…

 

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In April 2015, when the Indian soap opera Banoo Main Teri Dulhann—“I Will Be Your Bride”—appeared on Ariana TV, a channel in Afghanistan, something was amiss. As the title song rang out, women in bright salwar kameezes danced onscreen, and the lead character, dressed in shiny, red bridal wear, ran into the arms of her lover. The characters spoke Pashto, and “Ram” had been changed to “khuda.” The actresses’ uncovered shoulders and midriffs appeared blurry and pixelated. In another scene, a man held a plate full of candles in front of something, but it was not quite clear what. The Hindu idol he was worshipping had been censored from the episode…

 

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KABUL – Karte Seh in western Kabul can feel like a slice of Iran tucked away in the Afghan capital. An imposing madrassa, built by Iran in 2006, dominates with its Persian domes and arches. Women eschew the Afghan burqa for Iranian-style chadors, and Shia imams preach to congregations drawn from the area’s Persian-speaking Hazara community.

Iran’s influence has long been felt in the area and its political offices. Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s pushed many Hazara to seek out Tehran as a counterweight to the onslaught of the Sunni Taliban, and Iran hosts millions of Hazara refugees and migrants who fled the fighting looking for a better life…

 

Read the entire article here.