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When Radio Shaista goes silent, you know the Taliban are close. The female-run radio station was looted and wrecked when the group captured Kunduz, Afghanistans embattled northern city, in 2015, sending journalists fleeing. Even after the Taliban were routed, female journalists have been on guard, if they ever returned, that is.

Zarghoona Hassan, Radio Shaistas director, fled after armed militants knocked on her door at home. They accused her of converting listeners to Christianity and announced a date for her execution.

She says the Talibans anger was fuelled by talk of empowering women. The radio broadcast discussions with religious scholars about womens rights and called on mothers of Taliban combatants to prevent their sons from fighting.

We had conversations about women studying, and talked about female pilots, says Hassan.

Hassan now splits her time between Kunduz and the capital, Kabul. Since 2015 she has shut down her radio station twice in fear of Taliban advances.

A vibrant media is one of the great successes of post-2001 Afghanistan. However, womens position in it is fragile. For many Afghan families, when security worsens, protection of women overrides most other concerns.

[When we started], women flocked to the radio to work, even for free. But when the Taliban came closer, around 2012, peoples attitude changed, says Hassan, who founded two other radio stations in Kunduz. Many women in Kunduz want to work in media but their families wont let them.

This anxiety highlights the complexities around western endeavours to empower Afghan women, particularly outside liberal, urban classes. And when efforts to promote human rights do make Afghan women visible, they are usually cast as victims.

One magazine is hoping to change that. In May, the first issue of Gellara, Afghanistans first womens lifestyle magazine, hit the newsstands.

Until now, the media mostly focused on women facing violence, baad [compensating for a crime by giving a woman away in marriage], and women who had their faces cut, says Fatana Hassanzada, 23, the magazines founder and editor. We want to portray other faces of women.

Modelled on international magazines like Vogue, Gellara addresses Afghan women as consumers of fashion and culture, as book readers and as love seekers. As human beings, says Hassanzada.

The cover of the first monthly issue, 2,000 copies of which were printed at offices in Kabul, features Canadian-Afghan singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah, her hair unveiled. Inside, articles on breast cancer and yoga follow pieces on Iranian film and beauty.

We want to show that a woman can have a pretty face and be well dressed. We are trying to teach society not to be shocked by these things, says content editor Aziza Karimi.

Perhaps most controversial, in a country where arranged marriages are still widely enforced, is an introduction to the dating app Tinder.

When asked how that would go down in conservative rural areas, Hassanzada laughs. We try to target everyone. There is something for the cities and something for the villages, she says, while recognising that many rural women would probably only see the magazine if their husbands brought it home.

This month, Afghanistan also saw the launch of Zan TV (Womens TV), the first channel dedicated to women. Female presenters are common on Afghan television, but Zan is the first with all-female newsreaders (though its owner is a man).

Mehria Afzali, 25, a presenter, says her parents opposed her working in media until her husband convinced them. Some people in the provinces believe women on TV are destroying the unity of the family, she says. But we wear proper hijab. We are an Islamic channel.

Conditions for Afghan journalists are deteriorating. Last year was the bloodiest for media workers since 2001, according to the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee.

Though cities offer a larger, liberal audience, they are not always safe. A few years ago, Hassanzada, then a TV presenter, fled to Kabul from Mazar-i-Sharif with her family after a group of men stabbed her younger brother in the street, demanding that she stop working.

In Kabul, she faces threats, too. On a visit to Kabul University this week to promote the magazine, students from the Islamic law faculty tried to intervene, calling the magazine infidel, before security blocked them.

Hassanzada says she would not go back to the university. But three of our reporters study there. I am worried something will happen to them.

Yet, she says, reporting on controversial topics is worth the risk. We are the second generation of democracy in Afghanistan. In a revolution, there will always be sacrifices.

These issues are not dangerous. Its society thats dangerous.

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The female journalists defying taboos and braving death threats in Afghanistan - The Guardian

In the 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama declared that the war in Afghanistan is finally coming to an end. That was a quixotic proclamation. It was even bad strategy, just as the US was preparing to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of that year, to tell the American public and world and that an end to the conflict was near, when it was not.

The powerful May 31 truck bomb attack in the highly secure diplomatic area of Kabul, one of the deadliest in the Afghan capital that left nearly 100 people dead, is yet another painful remainder of that the war is nowhere near its end.

(Image: AFP)

Obamas successor, the self-styled deal-maker, has not even said anything about Afghanistan since he became President Trump. He spoke precious little about it on the campaign trail. As President, he apparently thinks that occasional bravados like inflicting a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) device, dubbed mother of all bombs, is the silver bullet to an out of sight and out of mind war. Such actions impress no one, not least the Taliban and their Pakistani backers.

Each ferocious and brutal Taliban attack, such as the biggest attack ever on Afghan security forces in Mazar-i-Sharif on April 22 that occurred just a week after the MOAB show targeting Islamic State-Khorasan in Nangarhar, underlines an unpalatable truth for the Americans: nearly 16 years, $1 trillion and 2,400 casualties later, it is still an awful, costly stalemate. Each Taliban offensive not just erodes the stability of the fragile unity government in Kabul led by President Ashraf Ghani and debilitates the national military, both of which the US struggles valiantly to prop up, it also serves as a grim reminder that the longest war in American history is flailing.

That is the stark assessment the US military itself seems to have made after 16 years of military engagement. During a Congressional testimony in February this year, the supreme commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, was asked whether the US would be vulnerable to an attack planned and directed from Afghanistan if the US withdrew its troops. His reply: Yes, definitely. About the worsening security situation about Afghanistan, he said: I believe were in a stalemate.

Gen Nicholson called for expanding the USs military presence, saying that they have a shortfall of a few thousand. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are trying to take the fight to the Taliban, Gen Nicholson said, but they are doing more losing than winning. To turn the tide, Afghan security forces need more training, according to the general.

The word stalemate resonates eerily. It was the word successive US administrations and their war generals used in the 1960s and early 1970s to escalate American troop levels to half a million in Vietnam in their futile attempt to permanently divide the nation and install a client state in Saigon.

Stalemate, in reality, was a steady loss of territory by the US-backed weakly regime whose corrupt, demoralised and desertion-prone military forces were getting outflanked by insurgent forces. In Afghanistan, every offensive is either part of the Talibans drive to increase its share of territory in outlying parts of the country or to completely demoralise the ANSF. In this, they are winning. A report released early this year by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction made clear that, despite the Pentagon pouring some $70 billion into arming and training the ANSF, the force is steadily losing ground to insurgent groups, while suffering record casualties. The report cited wholesale corruption as a major reason for this. It estimated that more than 40 per cent of the Afghan population lives under areas of either total or partial Taliban control.

After the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), under Natos umbrella, ended its combat mission in December 2014, it launched a new non-combat Resolute Support Mission (RSM) to train, advise and assist Afghan national security forces. The RSM currently has about 13,000 troops, of which about 8,400 are American soldiers. The US soldiers are deployed in as trainers and advisers of ANSF units involved in search and destroy missions.

Currently, the Trump administration is reportedly weighing whether to send up to 5,000 additional American troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces, to be sent to Afghanistan in a mini-surge. In the Nato summit held in Brussels last week, the US was pushing its allies hard to commit more troops to the country.

However, adding a few thousand troops appears a quick fix than a strategy. The US cant disengage from Afghanistan, which is clear. Nor can it passively cede the momentum to the Taliban. The first big question to ask then is, whether the US still can live with a stalemate while spending several billions dollars in a year supporting the Afghan government and its security forces? If the US could not win the war or force the Taliban to a political settlement when the ISAF had 130,000 troops at its height, how can it do so with a few thousand? If it could not prevent the Pakistani establishment from double-dealing and supporting the Talibans Haqqani network in 16 years, which, along with narcotics trade, kept the insurgency going, how can the US do so now? How can it bring the Taliban around to a negotiated end to the conflict, a dim prospect at any point in the war? What constitutes a victory, after all? None of these fundamental questions has a satisfactory answer.

The war has not ended for the US in 2014; rather, it is caught in a quagmire in Afghanistan, with no good way to get out of it.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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The truth about 'stalemate' in Afghanistan - Economic Times (blog)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) The Afghan government's media center has raised the death toll from the massive suicide truck bombing in Kabul to 90 killed.

The center also says that 400 people are now reported to have been wounded in the attack on this morning. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing that hit in a highly secure diplomatic area of the Afghan capital.

The media center quoted a statement from the Afghan Ulema Council, the country's top religious body that includes Muslim clerics, scholars and men of authority in religion and law, as giving the new casualty tolls.

The council strongly condemned the attack, saying that "carrying out such attacks in the holy month of Ramadan is completely against humanity."

Germany's Interior Ministry says deportation of Afghans whose asylum requests have been rejected has been temporarily suspended in the wake of an attack in Kabul that seriously damaged the German Embassy.

A flight to Kabul planned for today has been put off, and spokesman Johannes Dimroth says other deportations will be postponed for the time being.

Germany considers areas of Afghanistan, including Kabul, safe and has been regularly deporting Afghans whose asylum requests have been rejected, particularly those with criminal records.

Dimroth says the decision to postpone deportations was not due to a reassessment of the danger, but rather because the embassy in Kabul is not in a position to deal with the return of the deportees after being damaged in the attack.

He says Germany's position that deportations, particularly of convicted criminals, are necessary.

France's foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says the French Embassy in Kabul suffered material damage in the car bombing.

Le Drian said in a statement today that French authorities have not had information on potential French casualties "at this stage" but that they're still checking.

The minister expressed his "indignation" at the "terrorist attack" in a country that "is paying a heavy toll on terrorism again." He offered his condolences to "families of the many victims" in the massive bombing.

Le Drian stressed that "France stands by Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism."

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Afghanistan: At least 90 dead in Kabul attack - Times Daily

Boys at a Glenist high school in Kabul. Photograph: Sune Engel Rasmussen for the Guardian

Afghan authorities have drafted a deal giving the Turkish government control of more than a dozen schools in Afghanistan affiliated with the exiled cleric Fethullah Glen.

Western and Afghan officials believe the agreement is part of a bargain allowing Afghanistans vice-president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been accused of abducting and torturing a political rival, to seek exile in Turkey.

Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, claims Glen masterminded a coup attempt last year.

Turkish teachers at Glen-linked schools say the Turkish embassy in Kabul is refusing to issue them passports, rendering them unable to travel.

The Afghan-Turk CAG Educational (ATCE) runs 16 schools across Afghanistan. Widely considered some of the countrys best, they teach science classes in English and boast a 98% success rate in university entrance exams. Thirty per cent of the 8,000 students are girls.

Our schools fight radicalisation and uphold human values, said the ATCE chairman, Numan Erdoan, who is no relation to the president.

It is proposed that the schools will be assigned to Maaref, a Turkish government-run foundation.

Turkey is a long-standing patron of Dostum. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, is believed to have discussed his exile with Erdoan. Dostum has denied the claims against him.

This month an Afghan government commission drafted a memorandum reportedly recommending dissolving ATCE. A week later Dostum boarded a plane to Turkey. Mujib Mehrdad, a spokesman for the Afghan education ministry, confirmed the existence of the memorandum but denied its recommendation was related to Dostum.

Ahmad Fawad Haydari, the vice-chair of ATCE, said: We are hoping the president will not heed to the unlawful suggestion. We havent done anything to deserve to be dissolved.

Mathias Findalen, an external associate professor in Turkish affairs at Copenhagen University, said international Glenist schools were often founded by private individuals without an explicit political doctrine. They adhered to a philosophy of peace and dialogue between religions, he said.

Generally, the schools have had an extremely good reputation, Findalen said, though he added that some schools had been accused of corruption and operating cult-like payment schemes.

In Afghanistan, more than 700 of ATCEs 900 staff are Afghan, and school curricula are approved by Afghan authorities.

We dont want to be victims of politics, said one students mother at a recent rally in Kabul to defend the schools. We are a poor family but I still sent my son to study here.

After the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, in which Glen denies involvement, Erdoan banned the movements 300 Turkish schools and increased pressure on its estimated 1,000 schools worldwide.

Findalen said Erdoan had brokered trade agreements in Africa, Asia and the Caucasus in return for control of Glenist schools. Often the schools were then shut down.

In Pakistan, more than 100 Turkish teachers have been in UN protection since November after authorities ordered them deported following Turkish demands to close their schools.

According to teachers in Afghanistan, the pressure goes beyond politics. In February, Fateh Karaman, the vice-principal of a Glenist primary school in Herat, requested a passport for his six-week old son Yavuz from the Turkish embassy. His son needed surgery abroad for an intracranial haemorrhage, he said.

At the embassy, a passport officer said he did not believe the boy was sick, and would only issue temporary travel documents if Karaman brought passports for the whole family, instead of just copies, Karaman said. The Guardian has seen a letter from a French clinic confirming the boys diagnosis.

Fearful of arrest upon returning to Turkey, Karaman decided to stay. His sons haemorrhage was for now being held at bay with daily doses of vitamin K, he said.

Onder Akkusci, a teacher in Kabul, had his passport confiscated when applying for documents for his infant daughter. In an email correspondence seen by the Guardian, the Turkish ambassador told Akkusci he might lose his Turkish citizenship if he did not return to Turkey.

Citizenship carries obligations, the ambassador, Ali Sait Akin, told the Guardian in an email. If my authorities lawfully ask me to go there and give statement on some issues, I do. Every citizen should do. Innocent is not afraid of justice, Akin wrote without explaining what the issues were.

Akin previously wrote an op-ed in an Afghan daily calling Glenists a cult.

Passport confiscation seems to be a common tool in Erdoans crackdown. This month the Turkish NBA player Enes Kanter, a known Glen supporter, said Romanian airport police had seized his passport, which had been cancelled.

In December a former university director, Ismet zelik was arrested in Malaysia after having his passport confiscated. Also in Malaysia, a headmaster of a Glen school was arrested over purported Islamic State links claims supporters said were ludicrous.

Seventeen families of school staff members in Afghanistan whose passports have expired or been seized have applied for asylum status with the UNs refugee agency.

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Turkey presses Afghanistan to hand over control of Glenist schools - The Guardian

Meanwhile, President Trump and the White House continue to complain about the use of anonymous sources in news reports about the ongoing investigation into the Trump administrations ties to Russia. This is White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, speaking Tuesday about recent leaks about the investigation into Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushners attempts to establish a back channel of communication with Russia.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer: "Im not going to get into what the president did or did not discuss, but itwhat your question assumes is a lot of facts that are not substantiated by anything but anonymous sources that are so far being leaked out."

President Trump has also complained about the use of unnamed sources, tweeting over the weekend, "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they dont mention names, it is very possible that those sources dont exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!" But on Tuesday, Trump retweeted a Fox News article based exclusively on a single unnamed source, who said Kushner did not discuss a possible back channel with Russia during a December meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower.

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Afghanistan: Massive Bombing in Kabul Kills 80 People and Wounds 350 - Democracy Now!