It was almost 3 a.m. in New York, but Nazdana Hassani refused to fall asleep. She stared at her phone, closing and refreshing WhatsApp, hoping that her mother’s internet had been restored at her home in Afghanistan. She tried three more times, but the call would not go through. The last time Ms. Hassani saw […]
Read More It was almost 3 a.m. in New York, but Nazdana Hassani refused to fall asleep. She stared at her phone, closing and refreshing WhatsApp, hoping that her mother’s internet had been restored at her home in Afghanistan. She tried three more times, but the call would not go through. The last time Ms. Hassani saw […]
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And how might we consider the long-term psychological or spiritual trauma that those who experience war so often suffer? I’m talking about those who died from substance use, excessive risk taking or the cumulative stresses of homelessness. Even if they were not killed in action, many no doubt were killed by action. Should we inscribe their […]
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Just weeks before President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the city of Bakhmut in December, a soldier with the military call sign “Bear” stared out from the window of a ruined sixth-floor apartment overlooking the city’s eastern reaches. I quietly stood next to him. The battle below played out in muted ferocity. Rockets lit the […]
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Taiba estaba siendo perseguida por los hombres que había puesto tras las rejas. Las amenazas de muerte, dijo, se produjeron mientras los estadounidenses se retiraban de Afganistán y los talibanes marchaban por todo su país. En medio del caos, las puertas de las celdas se abrieron de par en par, liberando a los violadores y […]
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Taiba was being hunted by the men she had put behind bars. The death threats came as the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban marched across her country, she said. In the chaos, cell doors were flung open, freeing the rapists and abusers she had helped send to prison. “We will find you,” the […]
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WASHINGTON — Before her country and her life were suddenly and fundamentally changed in 2021, Mahnaz Akbari was the trailblazing commander of the Afghan National Army’s Female Tactical Platoon, an all-female squad that accompanied elite U.S. Special Operations troops as they carried out daring mountain missions, hunted ISIS combatants and freed captives from Taliban jails. […]
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WASHINGTON — Just hours after formally kicking off his re-election campaign, President Biden appeared on Tuesday before a crowd of union supporters chanting “four more years” to outline his case for a second term. In his telling, unsurprisingly, the record sounds pretty good — more jobs, more roads and bridges, more clean energy, more opportunities […]
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WASHINGTON — The Taliban have killed the leader of the Islamic State cell responsible for the suicide bombing at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. troops and as many as 170 civilians, four senior American officials said on Tuesday. The administration on Monday began calling relatives of the […]
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SABZAK PASS, Afghanistan — The hotel is perched on the side of a mountain blanketed in snow. The ice-slicked road outside is treacherous. It stretches for miles in either direction through jagged peaks as it winds around the edges of cliffs and dips past piles of boulders left over from frequent rockslides. It’s 6:30 a.m., […]
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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump revived familiar falsehoods and returned to old themes in a speech Saturday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Here’s a fact check of some of his claims. What Mr. Trump said “Killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.” False. Murders […]
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Scattered across a neighborhood in central Kabul are the ruins of another empire come and gone from Afghanistan. Tattered sandbags and piles of discarded barbed wire. Metal hulls of tank traps sitting unused on the side of the road. Red-and-white metal barriers, once lowered to stop vehicles at checkpoints manned 24/7, permanently pointing toward the […]
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WASHINGTON — Bilal al-Sudani was no stranger to American counterterrorism officials. Before joining the Islamic State affiliate in Somalia, Mr. al-Sudani was subjected to punitive sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2012 for his involvement with Al Shabab, Al Qaeda’s branch in the East African country. But it wasn’t until American officials started digging […]
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A Chinese balloon seen hovering over Montana this week has been described as an “intelligence-gathering” airship by the Pentagon and a stray civilian research airship by China. Whatever its intended use, the balloon offers a reminder of how for more than a century, governments have used balloons for surveillance and observation, most often during times […]
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