CNN’s Clarissa Ward Spent 36 Hours With the Taliban. This is What She Learned Mark Leon Goldberg March 14, 2019I caught up with CNN's Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward not long after she returned from reporting inside Taliban controlled territory in Afghanistan. She is one of the only western journalists to access Taliban territory to see what life is lik...
What Happens When Women are Excluded from Peace Talks? Mark Leon Goldberg February 22, 2019The United States is deep into negotiations with the Taliban over some sort of political arrangement that would enable the Taliban's entrance into Afghan politics while the US drew down its troop levels.The specifics of these negotiations are opaque--not m...
What Happens if the ICC Investigates Afghanistan? Mark Leon Goldberg October 31, 2018The International Criminal Court is likely to open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Afghanistan. Much of the focus of the investigation would be crimes committed by the Taliban, but actions by Americans coul...
For the First Time Since the US-Lead Intervention, the Rate of Children Not in School in Afghanistan is Rising Joanne Lu June 8, 2018 For the first time since 2002, when a US-lead intervention toppled the Taliban government, the rate of children not in school in Afghanistan is rising. According to a new report by UNICEF and the Afghan government this week, almost half of the country’s 7- ...
The Most Recent Terrorist Attack in Kabul Was Uniquely Politically Devastating Kimberly Curtis April 25, 2018Afghanistan was rocked by violence once again this past Sunday when at least 57 people were killed in Kabul as they lined up to register to vote for upcoming elections. On the same day, another attack on a voter registration center in Baghlan killed at least f...
PODCAST: The Steve Coll Interview Mark Leon Goldberg April 9, 2018 Journalist Steve Coll is a staff writer at the New Yorker, dean of the Colombia School of Journalism and former president of the New America Foundation think tank.Tn 2005 he wont he Pulitzer for his book Ghost Wars, which examines the secret ...
What The Saga of the Afghanistan Girls Robotics Team Can Teach Us About Girls Education Worldwide Coby Jones July 19, 201716 years ago, a girls’ robotics team from Afghanistan could not even exist. During the brutal rule of the Taliban, Afghan girls were not allowed formal education. At all.Yesterday, a team of Afghan girls who participated in an international robotics compet...
Refugees who have fled the carnage in Afghanistan are being deported in record numbers Kimberly Curtis June 23, 2017This has been a particularly bloody "fighting season" in Afghanistan. Now that winter has ended and the opium poppy harvest is over, the annual summer “fighting season” is in full swing in Afghanistan. This year, the normal uptick in violence overlaps with Ra...
What’s Next for Afghanistan Mark Leon Goldberg April 27, 2017When I reached former UN Dispatch contributor Ahmad Shuja in Kabul, the country was still reeling from the deadliest single Taliban attack since the start of the insurgency nearly 15 years ago. Some 160 young soldiers--mostly recruits-- were massacred in a...
