Afghanistan

The news that the Taliban gunned down a schoolgirl last week shocked the world, but not a young woman named Noorjahan Akbar. The 21-year-old Akbar has been leading a fight for women's rights in Afghanistan—and she's quite familiar with seeing women in her region get targeted for “crimes” such as seeking an education, refusing a forced marriage, or fleeing an abusive husband.

Outgoing head of the ICRC delegation in Afghanistan, Reto Stocker, a seven-year veteran of Afghan aid efforts, said as the NATO-led war against the Taliban dragged into a twelfth year, the outlook for ordinary Afghans was increasingly bleak.

"Since I arrived here in 2006, local armed groups have proliferated. Civilians have been caught between not just one, but multiple front lines," Stocker told journalists in Kabul.

“This is what I live for…,” Koofi writes. “…And what I know I will die for.”

Tuesday's New York Times carried a fascinating article on its front page about the prospects for peace in Afghanistan:

The once ambitious American plans for ending the war are now being replaced by the far more modest goal of setting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among themselves in the years after most Western forces depart, and to ensure Pakistan is on board with any eventual settlement.

Preparations for the 2014 presidential elections are under way in Afghanistan, and this campaign appears likely to be markedly different from preceding contests. Fawzia Koofi, 35, announced her candidacy in May and is campaigning across the country in hopes of becoming its first female president.

“We do not want to go back on our gains. Whatever we have gained in the past 10-11 years, we do not want to give an inch of it,” said Mahbouba Seraj, founder and director of the Organization for Research in Peace and Solidarity.

“There is no going back, we don't want to do that, so that's why we want the support of the world,” she told AFP during a whirlwind trip to Washington.

The centre is part refuge, part meeting place. She is part tutor and part mentor to her visitors. But for the Taliban, she is all irritant: the insurgents have said they will kill her if they catch her.

With a severe limp and no control over her bladder — caused by the blade scraping her spinal cord — the 22-year-old can no longer work at the Ministry of Public Works, where she was a financial assistant before the assault.

For many girls in Afghanistan, the simple act of walking to school can be a life-threatening journey.

"You close the door behind you, and you enter a war zone," said Nushin Arbabzadah, an American-based author and scholar who was raised in Afghanistan.

After conducting research in five main Afghan provinces – Kabul, Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Balkh, Herat – the group found that women have not been involved in the decision-making processes of the High Peace Council at the provincial and their role is only representative.