Category Archives: Afghanistan News Wire

President Hamid Karzai has accepted the support of powerful mujahedeen leaders for the presidential elections scheduled for September, indicating he will continue an alliance with them in a future government. His move has dismayed many Afghans who were hoping that the nation’s first democratic elections would herald an end to the power of the warlords, who have dominated politics for the past decade. Continue reading →

The road from the village of Ozbin Khol is safe no longer. The eight aid workers packed into a Toyota LandCruiser were keen to get to their destination, Sarobi, before nightfall. But a punctured tire stopped them. Two young men, carrying Kalashnikovs, their faces covered by keffayahs, came out of the darkness, lined up the passengers and opened fire, killing five. Continue reading →

The growing instability in Afghanistan — a country under virtual military occupation by U.S. and other western forces — has been overshadowed by news of the escalating violence, torture and killings in U.S.-administered Iraq. But analysts who closely monitor the region say security in Afghanistan remains “tenuous” and “has shown no signs of improvement.” And they predict the explosive situation there might soon turn out to be as bad as Iraq – but on a smaller scale. Continue reading →

“A vivid celebration of a contemporary heroine.” – Kirkus Reviews

Click here to purchase a copy of the book.

“This is a book not only to read but to urge others to read. It provides, in its devastating way, a measure of hope. Another way of preventing violence exists: not through repression but through the expansion of civil liberties.” — Susan Griffin, LA Times Review Continue reading →

As Afghanistan continues to receive the brunt of US military attention in the post-September 11th world, the first Afghan Loya Jirga in decades will meet for six days in June 2002. AWM Co-Directors Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls recently published this analysis of what’s expected. Continue reading →

Sept. 11 made punk rock put its militancy where its mouth is: after America entered a permanent yellow alert, criticizing the government wasn’t quite so simple. Heela Naqshband even remembers punk kids wondering if they should turn their flag patches upside-down—which for every not-punk American means right-side up.

But Afghan-born Naqshband and her husband, Shahab Zargari, think progressive kids need to stick to their politics now more than ever. So Naqshband and Zargari—who, with about a half-dozen friends, run a punk label called Geykido Comet Records out of a Fullerton apartment—stepped in to help the sometimes-overlooked victims of the war on terrorism. Their recent compilation CD, Dropping Food on Their Heads Is Not Enough, is a fund-raiser for both the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM). Continue reading →

On November 12, Sonali Kolhatkar, the vice president of the Afghan Women’s Mission, interviewed Tahmeena Faryal, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan during Tahmeena’s visit to the United States. Continue reading →

For many Afghan women, their struggle against the Taliban has been paid for out of a coffeehouse in Old Town Pasadena. Step upstairs at the Zona Rosa Cafe, and you’ll enter the de facto office of the Afghan Women’s Mission. The AWM is the money-managing intermediary of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the much-in-the-news underground human rights group now based in Pakistan Continue reading →

“Today, in Afghanistan… thousands of women, they’ve had to go to beggary or into prostitution… it’s not a normal country anymore… for people and also for women in particular it’s a real hell.” — Sahar Saba, RAWA Continue reading →