Source: Al Jazeera
It was a split-second decision. Mirza Ali Ahmadi and his wife Suraya found themselves and their five children on August 19 in a chaotic crowd outside the gates of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan when a US soldier, from over the tall fence, asked if they needed help.
Source: CBC
Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada said he and his staff are still working and committed to representing the people of that country, despite its new government.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
With their hopes high a year ago that decades of war in Afghanistan would soon be over, they named their newborn daughter Peace.
Rafiullah Arman was a reporter for Afghan state TV, and enjoyed playing the traditional rubab lute for friends. His wife, Khalida, also worked as a journalist.
Source: Foreignpolicy.com
Afghanistan’s newly appointed minister of interior and acting minister of refugees each have $5 million bounties on their head for their involvement with international terrorism. Sirajuddin Haqqani and his uncle, Khalil, are members of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Sunni Islamist militant organization that is functionally part of the Taliban and which the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2012.
Source: The Guardian
A Pentagon investigation that found a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 Afghan civilians was an “honest mistake” and recommended no legal or disciplinary action has been met with widespread outrage from Congress and human rights groups.
Source: Al Jazeera
The supreme leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhunzada, has warned the group that there may be “unknown” entities among their ranks who are “working against the will of the government”.
The warning came in a statement attributed to Akhunzada that was circulated widely on Taliban social media accounts on Thursday.
Source: RFE/RL
Turkmenistan says the Taliban-led government in neighboring Afghanistan has vowed to ensure the completion and security of a pipeline project to bring Turkmen natural gas to Pakistan and India via Afghan territory.
The 1,800-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is projected to run from the Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan to the Indian city of Fazilka, passing through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan and Quetta and Multan in Pakistan.
Source: CBS News
Two months after the Taliban re-took Afghanistan, thousands of Afghans continue to flee the country on evacuation flights organized by the government of Qatar. Young and old, they consider themselves the lucky ones, and carry just a few precious possessions with them as they take a chance at new lives abroad, away from the extremist group.
Nabi Roshan, one of the country’s most popular comedians, is among those fleeing. Before the Taliban takeover, he hosted a nightly TV show where no jokes were off limits, including ones about the group.
Now, after he received death threats, he and his family are on the run.
Source: Voice of America
U.S. officials have confirmed that a newly formed armed group resisting Taliban rule in Afghanistan has registered with the Justice Department to carry out political lobbying in the United States.
The confirmation came in response to claims by the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front (NRF) that its international office has “received authorization to officially open” in America.
Source: NPR (radio)
Among the many problems that people in Afghanistan are dealing with: acute power shortages. And there’s a possibility that things will get worse as winter approaches.