Following years of civil unrest, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) was opened in 2010 to offer kids of all social backgrounds an opportunity to learn music. Today, the Zohra Orchestra at the ANIM is the first all-female group of its kind to launch in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a mountainous landlocked country and all imports and exports depend on neighbouring countries. Even before relations between Kabul and Islamabad became strained over accusations of harbouring militants, Pakistan has stymied Afghanistan’s efforts to trade with India.

During the Taliban rule, like all other working women in Afghanistan, Suraya Raisada had to quit her job. “I began giving tuitions to schoolchildren at home,” said Ms. Raisada in broken Urdu, a reporter with a leading daily in Afghanistan who began working in the early 1990s during the mujahideen period. 

The massive truck bomb attack in Kabul on Wednesday that killed at least 90 people and injured 365, has also damaged several embassies in the city’s highly-fortified diplomatic quarter. Indian Embassy staffs are safe after the massive Kabul blast, tweets Sushma Swaraj, India’ External Affairs Minister.

Kabul has threatened to shut the Afghan transit route for Pakistani exports to Central Asia if Islamabad does not allow Afghan traders to use Lahore’s Wagah border for trade with India. “If Pakistan does not allow Afghan traders to use the Wagah border for imports and exports of their goods, Afghanistan will also not allow Pakistan to use Afghan transit routes to reach Central Asia and other countries for exports,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a meeting with UK’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Owen Jenkins in Kabul. 

 Kidnapped aid worker back home safe from AfghanistanKidnapped aid worker back home safe from AfghanistanSushma Swaraj tweets end of 43-day ordeal of Judith D’Souza. Judith D’Souza, the Indian aid worker who was kidnapped in Kabul last month, was rescued from her captors on Friday. She reached New Delhi on Saturday evening.

Punjab Khabar Bureau
KABUL: A group of armed men late Sunday attacked the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, the provincial governor spokesperson told media.

With a hint of swagger, Afghanistan's first female pilot since the fall of the Taliban is defying death threats and archaic gender norms to infiltrate what is almost entirely a male preserve. Dressed in khaki overalls, aviator shades and a black headscarf, 23-year-old Niloofar Rahmani cuts a striking presence as she struts across the tarmac at the Kabul Air Force base, which is otherwise devoid of women as reported the Dawn.

n Afghan woman who was beaten to death and set on fire by a mob for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran was innocent, the interior minister said Monday. The woman named Farkhunda was lynched on Thursday by an angry crowd in central Kabul for allegedly burning a copy of the Islamic holy boo

NATO formally ended its war in Afghanistan on Sunday, holding a low-key ceremony in Kabul after 13 years of conflict that have left the country in the grip of worsening insurgent violence.