Kabul (Afghanistan)
For the Taliban, a New Era of Isolation Has Arrived
Hours after an American drone strike killed the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, in downtown Kabul, Taliban security forces rushed to seal off the site. Green tarps were thrown over destroyed windows. Checkpoints were put up, and shops were closed. But there was no hiding the damage that had been done to the Taliban’s […]
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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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Far From Kabul, Building a New Life, With Music and Hope
LISBON — On some nights, when her dorm room here turns dark and the church bells stop ringing, the young trumpet player thinks about the distant afternoon when her uncle took her to the graveyard to gather stones. That was in Afghanistan, in the chaotic days after the United States withdrew last year and the […]
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Attack at Sikh Temple in Afghanistan Kills Several People
KABUL, Afghanistan — Militants stormed a Sikh temple in Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday, leaving several people dead and others wounded, and stoking already heightened concerns among the country’s religious minorities about whether the new Taliban government will be able to protect them from rising violence by extremist groups. The assault, which lasted over an hour, […]
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Eid Under the Taliban Shows a Changed Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — Thousands of Afghans had piled into buses and set out down the country’s once perilous highways bound for relatives they had not seen in years. Afghanistan’s only national park was filled with tourists who had only dreamed of traveling to its intensely blue lakes and jagged mountains when fighting raged across the […]
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The One Item They Had to Take When These 6 Afghans Fled
Neither Maliha Karimi nor most of her family members had ever been on a plane or even inside the Kabul airport, but the idea of leaving gathered momentum, and they set off for the airport. “I just took my passport and one phone,” she recalled, “We had no food, no water.” Ms. Karimi, 27, the […]
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Taliban Free 2 Westerners Working for U.N., Days After Quiet Detention
ISTANBUL — The Taliban on Friday released two Western citizens and two Afghan colleagues who had been working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, hours after the U.N. had announced that they had been held by the Taliban for several days in Afghanistan. The team members, including Andrew North, a British citizen and former BBC […]
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On Patrol: 12 Days With a Taliban Police Unit in Kabul
KABUL, Afghanistan — A young Taliban fighter with a pair of handcuffs dangling from his finger warily watched the stream of approaching cars as he stood in front of a set of steel barricades. Friday prayers would begin soon at the Sakhi Shah-e Mardan shrine and mosque, a holy Shiite site in central Kabul that […]
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Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban With Protests
KABUL, Afghanistan — On a raw January morning, Khujasta Elham trudged through a snowstorm to sign her name on a government register. Before the Taliban seized power in August, Ms. Elham was director of women’s programs for Afghanistan’s Civil Service Commission. But she and most other female government workers were prevented from returning to work […]
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