Afghanistan
Afghan Women Are Devastated by Suspension of Aid Under New Taliban Law
For years before the Taliban seized power and the economy collapsed, Jamila and her four children had clung to the edge of survival. After her husband died trying to cross the Iranian border, she and her children moved to a camp for displaced people in northwestern Afghanistan and relied on aid organizations. One group brought […]
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How the C.I.A. Tracked the Leader of Al Qaeda
WASHINGTON — Intelligence officers made a crucial discovery this spring after tracking Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, to Kabul, Afghanistan: He liked to read alone on the balcony of his safe house early in the morning. Analysts search for that kind of pattern-of-life intelligence, any habit the C.I.A. can exploit. In al-Zawahri’s case, […]
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What We Know About the Killing of Ayman al-Zawahri
The United States announced on Monday that it had killed Ayman al-Zawahri in a drone strike in Afghanistan, ending a 21-year-manhunt for the terrorist leader, who was instrumental in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and who took command of Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death. The killing of al-Zawahri, who was one of […]
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To Slow World Hunger, It Will Take More Than Ukrainian Grain Exports
NAIROBI, Kenya — In Afghanistan, starving children stream into hospitals. In the Horn of Africa, villagers trek for days across dust-blown wastelands to escape drought-induced famine. In cities from Syria to Central America, families go to bed hungry. On Monday, a ship carrying grain that left the Ukrainian port of Odesa, the first since Russia […]
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House Passes Bill to Expand Health Benefits for Burn Pit Exposure
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would make millions of veterans who were exposed to trash burn pits on U.S. military bases around the world eligible for medical care, the most sweeping action by the federal government to recognize that the sites may have caused a range of diseases. The legislation […]
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U.S. Repatriates Afghan Whose Guantánamo Detention Was Unlawful
The United States on Friday complied with a federal court order and released a former Afghan militiaman from detention in Guantánamo Bay, in a case that reflects the changing political realities of Afghanistan. Assadullah Haroon Gul, who is in his 40s, was held for 15 years at the military prison under the name Haroon al-Afghani […]
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These Veterans Started Businesses Inspired by Their Deployments
Over two decades of war, American service members overseas looked across the rubble, the destroyed fields and the ripped-up homes and saw possibilities. One tasted tea for the first time during his deployment; another was taken by flip-flops fashioned from combat boots. Female soldiers got to know women in Afghanistan and imagined economically empowered lives […]
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Afghanistan Tries to Stamp Out Opium Again
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — For years, opium has been the monster too big to slay. One Afghan government after another has pledged to stamp out opium production and trafficking, only to prove unable to resist billions of dollars in illicit profits. The Taliban government of the 1990s ultimately managed to reduce opium cultivation. But after the […]
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Afghans Urge Court Not to Give Frozen Central Bank Assets to Sept. 11 Families
WASHINGTON — Exiled Afghans are urging a federal judge to reject the effort by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to seize $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan central bank funds to pay off judgment debts owed by the Taliban, recent court filings show. In three filings, groups of Afghans argued that the frozen […]
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