January 2012
5 posts
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The woman who wants to rule Afghanistan →
Fawzia Koofi has survived ambushes and assassination attempt. Yet still she wants to become the first female president of Afghanistan
The Times Magazine By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
There is a large, imposing picture of Fawzia Koofi hanging on her sitting room wall. Dressed in a leopard-print headscarf, she stands next to Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. Barely an inch apart, their hands...
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Old Volks in happy hippy home →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kabul
It’s pure pleasure driving my Beetle around Kabul.
Originally painted in VW’s Toga White with a crank-operated sunroof and factory fitted with a then state-of-the-art Emden radio, she rolled off the production line in Germany on October 28, 1968 but exactly how she came to Afghanistan remains a mystery.
By the time we met, two years ago, the Gala red “permeable...
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Seven US troops die amid spike in Afghan violence →
The Times Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Eight Nato soldiers and seven Afghan civilians were killed in a spate of explosions across southern Afghanistan, as new Nato figures showed violence actually increased there last year — undermining earlier claims to have reversed the insurgents’ momentum.
In southern Afghanistan, the main Taleban heartland which absorbed most of Barack Obama’s surge, violence...