Human Rights

Zahed Missed His Garden All These Years

Zahed is a forty some­thing years old Afghan-Ger­­man who lives in Ger­many with his fam­i­ly. He’s lived there for over two decades now. About two and a half weeks ago, he came back to Afghanistan to vis­it his home­town in Surkhrod area of Nan­garhar Province. He missed his rel­a­tives and friends and his gar­den. He had a beau­ti­ful gar­den near his Qal­la or vil­lage house where he used to sleep under the shade of its trees in some peace and…

Support Afghan Female Boxers Fighting their Way to London Olympics

In the base­ment of once noto­ri­ous Ghazi Nation­al Olympic Sta­di­um of Afghanistan is where the Afghan nation­al team of female box­ers train tire­less­ly hard for the Olympics 2012 in Lon­don. Once known as the sta­di­um of death the venue was used for hold­ing pub­lic exe­cu­tions and ston­ing under the bru­tal Tal­iban rule, 1996 to 2001. Under the Tal­iban women were com­plete­ly for­bid­den from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any sports, not even as spec­ta­tors. Refur­bished by the US gov­ern­ment, Ghazi Olympic Sta­di­um reopened…

That’s what I do

I was in Dara-e-Noor, a dis­trict far to the north of Jalal­abad city. My team mem­bers and I were there for a map­ping sur­vey for which talk­ing with a local res­i­dent helped us make bet­ter and more accu­rate maps for any giv­en area. Here, we ran into Baghcha Gul. We were talk­ing about the vil­lage and names of the roads, pub­lic build­ings, etc. and my col­league, Akbar asked this ran­dom ques­tion: “How many chil­dren do you have?” “I have only one…

No, There Is only One God!

When I was tak­ing this pic­ture I raised my index and mid­dle fin­ger and part­ed them ask­ing the gen­tle­men to make peace ges­ture. The senior man in the back shout­ed, “No, there is only ONE God!” “There are not two Gods”, he added. I almost got into a big trou­ble. They prob­a­bly thought I was try­ing to con­vert them or some­thing. It was in my own city of Jalal­abad but these folks seemed alien. Some peo­ple in Jalal­abad know what…

Plucked from Garbage Scavenging, Sokha Becomes an Inspiring Girl Worldwide

“When my father died, I lost every­thing: my edu­ca­tion, my strug­gling spir­it and my parental love and even the love from my sib­lings because I had to go away and live with others,” she said. If there is one les­son she’s learned, it’s that “you must nev­er give up hope,” she said. “You must strug­gle and strug­gle until one day you see success.” Arti­cle on VOA Cam­bo­dia: Plucked From Garbage Scav­eng­ing, a Girl Makes Good

A “Step Backwards” for America in Afghanistan

A video post­ed online last week show­ing US Marines uri­nat­ing on the corpses of unknown Afghans was tru­ly deplorable.  Asia Times Article

Malala Was Inspired by Her Great Leaders

Malala is a 14-year-old coura­geous Pak­istani who has chal­lenged the local Tal­iban that she’d do the oppo­site of what they’re doing. They destroy schools and Malala who was inspired by her great lead­ers, will spread edu­ca­tion in Pak­istan by set­ting up Malala Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion. Read the mul­ti­ple prizes win­ner’s inspir­ing sto­ry here.

Google Contractor Accused of Vandalizing OpenStreetMap

Bust­ed! Some­times, when they try to win the com­pe­ti­tion they com­mit crimes against human­i­ty. Mil­lions of peo­ple use the open source maps of Open Street Map for human­i­tar­i­an projects. For full sto­ry, link here.

The World from Under my Mom’s Burqa

Hav­ing seen my mom wear a burqa to school and out­side home for sev­er­al years, I want­ed to see how it feels to wear one. I took my mom’s ‘mobile jail’ and put myself in it for a minute. I felt so bored and depressed. Every­thing seemed blur­ry and I had no periph­er­al vision for that one minute. I felt dizzy when I took it off. Then I gave my mom a very long hug to show my sym­pa­thy. The…

First Graduates of Shaheed Mirranay Education Center

Sha­heed Mir­ranay com­put­er and Eng­lish lan­guage cen­ter was built in April 2011. It’s locat­ed in South­west of Jalal­abad city- one hour dri­ve from Jalal­abad city. Togeth­er with my team I set up it’s solar pow­er sys­tem and the com­put­er lab. We installed five com­put­ers and a print­er, four solar pan­els with a pow­er invert­er, and four car bat­ter­ies. The solar pow­er sys­tem gen­er­at­ed enough pow­er to run the five ener­gy effi­cient lap­tops for six months sev­er­al hours every­day (After six…