Is it time to leave Afghanistan?

'Kabul is a war zone'

Famous actor says it's time to leave

By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN

Updated 9:32 PM ET, Thu February 1, 2018

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)Action movie star Massoud Hashimi has a painful cough, but it's not caused by the dirty Kabul air. Hashimi has a Kalashnikov round lodged in his ribcage that he needs swiftly removed.

The operation to remove the bullet from Hashimi's chest is scheduled to take place overseas. The 35-year-old actor has made numerous trips outside of the country, only this time he wishes he didn't have to come back.

For years, Hashimi has been a voice in Afghanistan -- in between the studio lights and theatrical fireworks -- urging its youth to stay in their homeland.

But no longer.

A deadly encounter in the Intercontinental Hotel -- one of several recent attacks to transform the capital into what many say feels like a new frontline in the war -- has changed his message to Afghans to something starker: Get out while you can.

"Kabul is not safe for anybody ... There is no hope. I am not feeling secure even inside my house," he says pointing around his apartment.

"Now Kabul has changed into a war zone, not a civil society for people to live in. Every night I wake up in the middle of the night."

Hashimi was discussing film projects in the hotel's luxurious salon when the violence he was used to seeing in staged productions became very real.

"I saw a German woman, very calmly listening to the music," he recalls. "They first shot that lady. It's really hard to see someone killing people in front of your eyes. It's unbelievable, unimaginable."

The gunmen calmly moved through the salon, shooting dead in front of him two of his friends. A bullet struck him in the chest.

When the lights went out, Hashimi used his knowledge of the hotel's layout to guide others into a dark room away from the fighting. Once there, the group threw their cellphones away, so their vibrations, ringtones and lights wouldn't give them up, and waited for help. For three hours.

"We all kept silent in a corner. I was bleeding, horribly bleeding. It's very hard, you see your death is coming to you."

The Afghan special forces then arrived. The commandos, recognizing Hashimi, held their fire as he and 14 others emerged from their hiding place.

Hashimi shifts awkwardly in his seat: "One bullet here," he says, pointing at his ribcage. "But a long time ago, another bullet was in my leg. So, it's two gifts that Afghanistan gave me".

Now he wants out. Surgery to remove the bullet in the Turkish capital of Istanbul first, and then perhaps America. Stark words from a man who once implored other Afghans -- even on US radio in Washington D.C. -- to stay, build and fight.

"Most people welcomed me that I was encouraging people to stay in Afghanistan," he says.

"But I'm not saying that again because I feel guilty if I do it publicly. I am a famous person, so if I say something people may just accept it."

Outside, the still Kabul air belies what should be the bustle and chaos of rush hour.

The decision by many to stay off the streets of Kabul follows a bloody 9-day period in which the Taliban attacked the hotel, ISIS hit a children's charity in the east of the country, the Taliban used an ambulance as a suicide car bomb to kill over a hundred, and ISIS attacked a secure military academy.

To some, the week of violence was a watershed moment. For US President Donald Trump, it was a reason to set aside, temporarily at least, a key tenet of the US military strategy: The idea of talks with the Taliban. The Afghan government has agreed, saying the attacks had crossed "red lines."

Political negotiations have remained a far-fetched prospect throughout the insurgency, but the open dismissal of them now has led many in Kabul to conclude that the situation is likely to worsen.

We are still in a bleak midwinter, with the violence of the summer months far off. Yet already the city is at times panicked, at times deserted, struggling to adapt to its new, frontline status.

Checkpoints and barriers provide a veneer of security. One near Abdul Haq Square appears most interested in checking cars with government plates. It's unclear if intra-government rivalries are at play, or if there is a genuine fear insurgents are disguising themselves as police.

At the checkpoint, soldiers demand documents. The arrival of one SUV sees soldiers rip out some police-style emergency siren lights from the car's front grill, crushing them underfoot.

Another SUV with black government plates is detained until it proves its association with a regional governor. But this is the nature of trust here in Kabul: there is little.

You can see why outside the Jamariyat Hospital, where days earlier one of the most vicious bombs the city has seen was detonated.

The bomb was in an ambulance. The vehicle passed the first checkpoint, and then loitered in the hospital car park for 20 minutes, hoping to avoid suspicion before then trying to pass another checkpoint into the more secure areas.

Now the patients at the hospital cannot be brought in by car: ambulances are banned unless the drivers are personally known to the staff.

Kabul's sick are hand-carried by relatives into a building whose windows were blown out by the blast.

A city that was once a safe sanctuary struggling, day by day, with less and less.

In Kabul, first evening soccer match in nearly four decades defies Taliban attacks

By Antonio Olivo October 22 

KABUL — The lights beamed on inside the Afghan Football Federation soccer stadium and 5,000 people, drawn to a spectacle unheard of for nearly four decades, came out to see.

Security in Afghanistan’s capital is tenuous, proved earlier in the week by several attempted suicide bomb attacks around the city while, elsewhere in the country, dozens of Afghan police and soldiers had been killed by Taliban fighters in one of the year’s deadliest spates of violence.

But, on Thursday night, another battle was taking place between the De Maiwand Atalan soccer club from the Kandahar province and the defending champion De Spin Ghar Bazan team from Nangahar province for a shot at this year’s title in the Afghan Premier League .

This was the first evening spectator event held in the country since the 1979 Soviet Union invasion.

Mostly beside the point was that the “Maiwand Champions” cruised to a 2-0 victory over Nangahar’s “Eagles of the White Mountain” in the semifinal match, which was also broadcast across the country on television and radio.

Wearing his Kabul police uniform to Afghanistan’s first night spectator event in more than 40 years, Mohammad Anit Watandost, left, cheers for his favorite team from the Kandahar province with his son Irfan, 5. (Antonio Olivo/The Washington Post)

Instead, the men and women who crowded into the outdoor soccer stadium — tooting horns and cheering loudly at each shot on goal — were out to win back something far more valuable: a sense of public joy that has long eluded the nation locked for decades in a perpetual state of tyranny and war.

“It’s a very different feeling,” said Sayed Omar Anmadi, 23, who brought his brother Alyus, 12, to watch their favorite team from Kandahar’s Maiwand district play live, while dance music thumped over loudspeakers beneath the bright stadium lights.

“We don’t usually go out at night because of the security situation,” Anmadi said. “This offers a fresh kind of hope.”

The event, several years in the making, is part of a larger campaign to reintroduce a sense of normalcy into Afghan culture led by the Dubai-based Moby Media Group, which, with the Roshan telecommunications company, created the Afghan Premier League in 2012.

With some U.S. State Department backing, the effort also includes a popular Afghan “Sesame Street” children’s program on Moby’s TOLO TV channel and a music production house for budding artists in Kabul.

But a fun night inside a Kabul soccer stadium carries extra symbolism for millions of Afghans.

Many remember the gruesome public executions held inside Kabul’s older Ghazi Stadium — about a half-mile away from the Afghan Federation Football stadium — during the Taliban regime in the late 1990s.

Fans who couldn't get tickets to the sold-out game pitting Afghanistan and Pakistan's soccer teams Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013, scaled the walls for a peek at the action. The match was the first international held on Afghan soil in 10 years.

Abdul Hameed Mubarez, a local historian, said those days epitomized the fear of Taliban reprisals that still permeates Afghan society, keeping many home at night and away from large crowds vulnerable to suicide bomb attacks.

Before the Soviet invasion, night events in Kabul were routine, said Mubarez, who was deputy minister of culture under former Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shar.

Crowds gathered inside Ghazi Stadium to watch the Afghan national soccer team compete against Iran or Pakistan. During Eid or Independence Day festivals held in August, live music filled the air as families traveling to Kabul from nearby provinces celebrated with elaborate picnics, often sleeping overnight in outdoor camps.

Now, with the Taliban insurgency raging for 16 years after decades of conflict before, many Afghans are weary of their limited lives and yearn for that same sense of freedom, Mubarez, 83, said.

“People have decided that they will go on with their lives,” he said. “They will enjoy it as long as they’re alive, because nowadays whenever we go out from our homes, we are not sure if we’ll come back alive or not.”

As the sun fell over the mostly commercial section of Kabul where the Afghan Football Federation stadium is located, the stadium lights — brought in from China and installed this month — lit up the night in an otherwise pitch-dark section of the capital.

Fans made their way past a perimeter of security checkpoints, with Afghan national police inspecting bags and frisking everyone who walked through.

In September, three people were killed in a suicide bomb attack outside an afternoon cricket tournament held nearby, so the police — aware of the high stakes surrounding this event — were on high alert. Several hundred officers manned posts or conducted surveillance, a federal Interior ministry spokesman said.

[Dozens dead in mosque blasts in Kabul and central Afghanistan]

Mohammad Anit Watandost, an off-duty Kabul police office officer, passed through security with his son Irfan, 5. Watandost, 32, wore his police officer’s uniform. His adoring son wore a mock camouflage military uniform and sported a plastic toy AK-47 rifle.

Watandost said he came dressed in uniform to show pride in his role in fighting against a sense of insecurity in his native city that he views as a cancer in Afghanistan.

“I’ve gone through so many factional battles,” said Watandost, citing the Afghan mujahideen uprising against the Soviets during the 1980s that marked his early childhood, followed by civil war, the Taliban regime and today’s ongoing insurgency.

“We all want peace and the same kind of situation that we are in here,” Watandost said, gesturing to the crowded stadium of cheering fans. “I played football in my youth and I want my children to play football and watch football. This is what I want.”

With that, he turned his attention to the soccer pitch and, clutching his son, cheered a Maiwand Atalan goal.

On another play, the ball soared high over the players on the field, eliciting a roar from the crowd.

In one set of stands, fans from the conflict-ridden Nangahar province tooted their horns, including the veiled women who were seated in a section apart from the men.

On the other side, more noise came from the fans of the team from Kandahar, a province with portions under Taliban control.

Maiwand Habibi, 18, rooted for the Kandahar team, while his friend Mustafa Sultanzoy, 20, backed Nangahar.

Both are from Kabul and are too young to know much of the history behind either province, other than the constant reports of violence that hit their social media feeds.

But, after spending most of their youth indoors and socializing as young men at small gatherings inside hotels or friends’ homes, they said it felt good to be outside on what was a mild autumn night.

“There is a lot of security around here, which gives us confidence,” said Habibi, who works as a waiter inside a city cafe. Referring to the Islamic belief in fate, he added: “On the other hand, if anything happens to us, it is already written in the book.”

The following day, another semifinal night match took place without incident before an even larger crowd of 8,000 fans, setting up a final this Friday between the Maiwand team and the victorious “Falcons of Asmayee” from Kabul.

While the crowd’s cheers echoed into the night, a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque nine miles away, killing 39 people.

Sharif Walid contributed to this story.

The Kites of Kabul

This isn't a kite photo, but a stunning panorama of Kabul.

Kabul River

A few old, and many new photos of the Kabul River.  Happy to see cleaning crews.  



Kabul River, Old Bridge, Bala Hissar in the Distance (date unknown)








Stream of water flows in the dry bed of the Kabul River in Kabul, Afghanistan. 2006.

Shamsia Hassani: ‘I want to colour over the bad memories of war’

Shamsia Hassani: ‘I want to colour over the bad memories of war’

Afghanistan’s cultural image is changing, thanks in part to the strong, graceful and dynamic female silhouettes emerging from this bold graffiti artist’s spray can

·         Shamsia Hassani’s Afghanistan street art – in pictures

 Shamsia beside what's reckoned to be the first ever piece of 3D street art on Afghanistan. Photograph: Shamsia Hassani/www.kabulartproject.com

Steve Rose

Wednesday 17 September 2014

Shamsia beside what's reckoned to be the first ever piece of 3D street art on Afghanistan. Photograph: Shamsia Hassani/www.kabulartproject.com

Just over a decade ago, the abiding image of art in Afghanistan was theBuddhas of Bamiyan being destroyed by Taliban dynamite, but Shamsia Hassani is proof of how much has changed since. Hassani is the country’s foremost graffiti artist, and her work is respraying Afghanistan’s cultural image.

“I want to colour over the bad memories of war on the walls,” Hassani told Art Radar last year, “and if I colour over these bad memories, then I erase [war] from people’s minds. I want to make Afghanistan famous because of its art, not its war.”

Graffiti has proved the perfect artform for modern-day Afghanistan, practically as well as metaphorically. It is the ultimate democratic medium, freely available to spectators and artists alike (save for the spray-can budget) and capable of transmitting a powerful idea or message without words (Afghanistan still has one of the world’s lowest literacy rates). Art galleries are scarce in the ravaged cities, but there are blank walls and pavements in abundance. Hassani even sprayed one of her pieces on the ruins of Kabul’s Russian Cultural Centre. And where graffiti is an outlaw activity in the west, policed with Taliban-like vigilance, in Afghanistan, it is embraced (Hassani teaches at Kabul University’s faculty of fine arts). For extra irony, she took up the art after being inspired by British artist, Chu, who held a graffiti workshop in Kabul in 2010.

A 3D-style floor painting inside the faculty of fine arts, Kabul University. Photograph: Shamsia Hassani

 A 3D-style floor painting inside the faculty of fine arts, Kabul University. Photograph: Shamsia Hassani

Not that Hassani doesn’t have problems. The security situation is still far from ideal. And being a female artist, she is not always greeted with enthusiasm when she’s out working. Some regard her as a vandal, others believe a proper Afghan woman’s place is in the home.

Women are very much Hassani’s subject matter. She often draws them in stylised blue silhouettes, wearing burqas, or, more recently in a hijab. They’re far from Taliban-sanctioned stereotypes, though. Hassani’s figures are active subjects: strong, graceful, dynamic, often depicted emerging from depths, lost in reflection, even dancing. “I want to show that women have returned to Afghan society with a new, stronger shape,” she told Art Radar. “It’s not the woman who stays at home. It’s a new woman. A woman who is full of energy, who wants to start again.”

• This article was amended on 18 September 2014 to clarify that the quotes from Shamsia Hassani came from an interview with the website Art Radar.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/17/shamia-hassani-i-want-to-colour-over-the-bad-memories-of-war

Girls skating in Kabul

Photos of Kabul & Afghanistan in the 50's and 60's. (From a Russian perspective)

(All captions and descriptions translated from Russian)

Bruised internal conflicts and foreign intervention in Afghanistan for centuries took a step towards modernization in the mid-20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s have been great strides towards a more liberal and pro-Western lifestyle. Although Afghanistan was officially a neutral country during the Cold War, he also was influenced by both the United States and the Soviet Union, with Soviet equipment and weapons and financial assistance from the United States. At this time, the streets of Afghanistan prevailed relative peace and tranquility in Kabul were built modern building, the veil for a time became optional, the country embarked on a path towards a more open and prosperous society. Progress stopped in the 70s, when a series of bloody coups, invasions and civil wars shocked the country. All steps taken earlier in the direction of modernization, proved futile. The average life expectancy of Afghans who were born in 1960, was 31 year, so the vast majority of the people depicted in the photo, did not survive to the present day.




Roadside vendors on a busy street in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 1961.












Two Afghan students from the Faculty of Medicine listening to their professor (right), 1962.


Kabul 1968


Kabul, November 1961

People walking through a market in Kabul in May 1964.

US President Eisenhower in Kabul, December 9, 1959, Eisenhower met with the 45-year-old King of Afghanistan Mohammad Zahir Shah to discuss the Soviet influence in the region and an increase in American aid to Afghanistan.


Afghans lined up during the visit of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the United States Kabul, December 9, 1959.


 Dancers perform on the street during the visit of President Eisenhower in the United States Kabul, December 9, 1959 after a five-hour visit to Kabul by plane Eisenhower went to New Delhi.


Selling fruit and nuts on the market in Kabul, November 1961.


Children on the street in Kabul in November 1961.


Modern traffic lights on the corner of a street in Kabul, May 25, 1964.


 Afghans ride in a cart through arid rocky region of Afghanistan in November 1959.


A worker checks a truck Russian production at the plant for the manufacture of chassis for the cars in the center of Kabul. The plant, like many other industries in the Afghan capital, was looted during the reign of the Afghan mujahedeen from 1992 to 1996.


Log in Karkar coal mine, located approximately 12 kilometers from the provincial town of Puli Khumri in northern Baghlan province. Karkar coal deposits at the same time fully meet the needs of Kabul.


Caravan of mules and camels moves along the winding paths Lataband Pass on the way to Kabul, October 8, 1949.


King of Afghanistan Mohammad Zahir Shah and President John F. Kennedy talk in the car on the way to the White House in Washington, DC, September 8, 1963.


Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (in black hat) and Marshal Nikolai Bulganin make a review of the Afghan guard of honor during a visit to Kabul on 15 December 1955 left the Afghan Prime Minister Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, behind Foreign Minister Prince Naim.


Street scene in Kabul in November 1966.


City park in Kabul, May 28, 1968.


Now destroyed Kabul-Herat highway that connects the Afghan capital with the Iranian border town of Mashhad.


The modern building of the Ministry of Finance in Kabul, June 9, 1966 The building also houses a restaurant in western style. Fountain had a night light.


Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 1961.


Inside the modern government printing plant in Kabul, June 9, 1966.


Amanullah Khan Palace in Kabul, October 8, 1949, the King of Afghanistan in the early 20th century, Amanullah Khan tried to modernize his country by means of reforms and the elimination of the age-old customs and traditions. He acted on the basis of what he saw during his visit to Europe.


Bazaar in Kabul, December 31, 1969.


Old and new buildings in Kabul, August 1969 In the background at the top of the hill stands the mausoleum of the late King Mohammed Nadir Shah.


An Afghan man leads camels and donkeys through arid mountainous region in November 1959.


King of Afghanistan Mohammad Zahir Shah rides his limousine on the main road Kabul Idga Wat, 1968, Zahir Shah, being the last king of Afghanistan, lived in exile in Rome after the coup in 1973. He returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after the removal of the Taliban from power in Kabul, and died in 2007 at the age of 92 years.


Afghan boys play with a kite, in November 1959.


Selling fruit and nuts on the open market in Kabul, November 1961.


cobbled streets in Kabul, 1951.


A new mosque in the outskirts of Kabul, in November 1961.


Street scene in Kabul, March 26, 1954.