Poverty

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…

Afghan Security Forces to Be Reduced after 2014

Afghan Defense Min­is­ter, Gen. Abdul Rahim War­dak said on Tues­day that the Afghan secu­ri­ty forces (ANSF) will like­ly be reduced from its peak strength of 352000 to 230000 after the NATO with­draw­al from Afghanistan in 2014. This will be a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the Afghan Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Forces. Now, some might argue that these 122000 per­son­nel will be unem­ployed. No, they will not. The ques­tion is who will con­tin­ue employ­ing them beyond 2014? The Tal­iban is long­ing for an opportunity…

From Missouri to Nangarhar

Video cred­it: AFAfghan Mis­souri Agri­cul­ture Devel­op­ment Team has helped farm­ers in Kama dis­tricts and equipped some of them with advanced tools of farm­ing. They’ve also taught new approach­es of farm­ing and how to har­vest more healthy crops.

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…

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

Team Work

Pho­to cred­it: Najib Bis­mil Peo­ple in rur­al Afghanistan build their mud hous­es with thick and high walls, Qal­la. They usu­al­ly tie two or more lad­ders togeth­er to pass the mud to the mason.

The Irrepressible Pashtun Sense of Humor

Pash­tuns like to have a very loose sched­ule. We spend a lot of time trad­ing jokes with oth­er ‘com­rades’, espe­cial­ly if there is green tea and a nice lit­tle Hujra(guest room). No mat­ter how sad or trou­bled we are, we make fun of the mis­ery and laugh about it. Inter­est­ing read in Dawn: The Irre­press­ible Sense of Humor of the Pash­toons Part of the arti­cle: ‘Where is Com­rade Amin, our first Social­ist Leader?’ ‘He’s dead, Comrade.’ ‘And where, Com­rade Infor­ma­tion officer…

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…