“They led a cycling revolution in Afghanistan where women were forbidden to ride. When the Taliban returned to power, their only hope was a harrowing escape to an uncertain future.”
Kabul
Posted inEditor's Pick
America’s Monster
“Uncovering the brutal career of a crucial American ally. And the hidden truths of the war in Afghanistan.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Inside the Taliban’s Luxury Hotel
“The Intercontinental in Kabul was Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel. Once the site of legendary parties, the hotel is now in the hands of the Taliban, and their fighters are supposed to work with outsiders.”
Posted inUncategorized
‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’
“Army Rangers killed her parents. A Marine is raising her in America. But her Afghan family says she was taken under false pretenses.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
As the World Moves On, Veterans of the Afghanistan Withdrawal Struggle to Join Them
“‘I feel like I’m still there,’ a Marine told me. ‘I feel like everything that happened, happened five minutes ago.’” Reporting for Task & Purpose, Haley Britzky spoke to 15 soldiers, Marines, and airmen who were part of the Afghanistan withdrawal mission in August 2021. It’s a difficult read, but also a raw and visceral account […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Airport
Journalist Shannon Gormley weaves an astonishing narrative and beautifully written (and at times, very personal) meditation on one family’s escape out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’d never written Asghar’s story as I’d said I would, and I’d buried the thought of contacting him, too, until foreign sections of newspapers began to […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Hathi
“Millions suffered through terror and upheaval in the turbulent years following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of them was a baby elephant from India.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Story
A Music So Beautiful the Birds Fell from the Trees
How two exiled Sufi musicians returned to make traditional music in postwar Kabul, Afghanistan.
Posted inFood, Nonfiction, Story
The Oldest Restaurant in Kabul: Where Tradition Trumps Rockets
For over 70 years, Bacha Broot, located in the center of the Old City of Kabul, has been serving chainaki — savory lamb stew — despite Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban.
Posted inUncategorized
A moment-by-moment reconstruction of last year’s U.S. embassy attack in Kabul: In an image that remained strangely fixed in her mind afterward, Howell watched as he slowly peeled the skin off. As he was peeling off the very last bit, there came a heart-stopping screech and then the bang and shock of an impact. Something […]