The day Kabul fell to the Taliban, August 15, 2021, Basir and his family made their first attempt to get into the airport and onto a plane. It would be nearly a month before they escaped into Pakistan. Over the next weeks they would be beaten at Taliban checkpoints, endure crushing crowds and be threatened and sworn at by soldiers from around the world.
Night after night (daytime in Afghanistan) I used real-time on-the-ground intelligence information provided by vets and other organizations also working to evacuate people, to try and help guide families around the violent Taliban checkpoints, through the crushing crowds to the 20’ high walls of cement and barbed wire.
The filmmakers that participated in the New Immigrant and Refugee Visions project got together in person on July 30 for the first time since the beginning of COVID. They were joined by volunteers and CSFilm staff alumni who made the 15-week training and 1 year filmmaking project possible.
The war on terrorism will not be won with targeted strikes on leadership. That will require political and economic reforms to address popular grievances and create more responsive governance in Muslim-majority countries.
The men were ordered to spend 32 days in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. One man — Garsumo Dorley, 34 — was sentenced to an additional 22 days after asking to see his psychiatrist, leaving him in segregation for a total of 54 days.
19 million people in Afghanistan will encounter “potentially life-threatening levels of hunger” from June to November of this year, while 6 million people will be under “near-famine conditions.”
The lack of food will leave 1.1 million children at risk of death due to malnourishment if they do not receive more help.
“When [news] organizations spend valuable resources uncovering corruption, abuse, or neglect, they want to see the problem addressed. Cross-field collaborations between media and civil society organizations are one way to achieve that goal” Adrià Fruitos
From the Soviet invasion to the Taliban regime, a new series narrated by ‘The Kite Runner’ author @khaledhosseini explores Afghanistan’s complex past, present & future. Watch ‘#Afghanistan: The Wounded Land’ on Sundays starting 7/10 on #DocWorld. https://worldchannel.org/show/doc-world/ #AfghanistanWoundedLand
‘Most of our friends didn’t make it to their 18th birthdays.’
Many of these gang members are under 24. Some are children as young as 11.
With few work or educational opportunities, many gang members say they have turned to the armed groups as a way of earning quick cash or gaining power. Some even say they are doing what the government has failed to do – taking care of its population.
The Russian invasion is sucking up attention, funding, and resources. Aid workers say it’s starting to cost lives. The UN’s appeal for Ukraine is more than 80 percent funded for this year. In comparison, the UN response plan for Afghanistan is around 38 percent funded, Yemen’s is around 27 percent funded, and Sudan’s is around 20 percent funded.
The trend will not merely exacerbate the income divide of local communities, it will worsen the cultural and ideological divide. Local news vacuums tend to get filled by national news — which is more partisan and more ideological — or through social media.
While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit ended with net commitments to double spending on weapons and to increase by eight-fold the number of troops in Europe, the total of hungry people worldwide now marks an unprecedented record.