# data[].attributes.headline
Afghanistan, War against the Talibans, 2001

# data[].attributes.subject
Afghanistan, War against the Talibans, 2001

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Flashback: The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan | ABC News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Tuesday 11 September 2001 suicide attackers seized US passenger jets and crashed them into two New York skyscrapers, killing thousands of people.

The attack remains one of the most traumatic events of the century, not only for Americans but also for the world.

What were the targets?

Four planes flying over the eastern US were seized simultaneously by small teams of hijackers.

They were then used as giant, guided missiles to crash into landmark buildings in New York and Washington.

Two planes struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

The first hit the North Tower at 08:46 Eastern Time (12:46 GMT). The second crashed into the South Tower at 09:03.

The buildings were set on fire, trapping people on the upper floors, and wreathing the city in smoke. In less than two hours, both 110-storey towers collapsed in massive clouds of dust.

At 09:37 the third plane destroyed the western face of the Pentagon - the giant headquarters of the US military just outside the nation's capital, Washington DC.

The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 after passengers fought back. It is thought the hijackers had meant to attack the Capitol Building in Washington DC.

How many people died?

In all, 2,977 people (not counting the 19 hijackers) lost their lives, most of them in New York.

All 246 passengers and crew aboard the four planes were killed

At the Twin Towers, 2,606 people died - then or later of injuries

At the Pentagon, 125 people were killed

The youngest victim was two-year-old Christine Lee Hanson, who died on one of the planes with her parents Peter and Sue.

The oldest was 82-year-old Robert Norton, who was on another plane with his wife Jacqueline, en route to a wedding.

When the first plane struck, an estimated 17,400 people were in the towers. Nobody survived above the impact zone in the North Tower, but 18 managed to escape from the floors above the impact zone in the South Tower.

Citizens of 77 different countries were among the casualties. New York City lost 441 first responders.

Thousands of people were injured or later developed illnesses connected to the attacks, including firefighters who had worked in toxic debris.

Who were the attackers?

An Islamist extremist network called al-Qaeda planned the attacks from Afghanistan.

Led by Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda blamed the US and its allies for conflicts in the Muslim world.

Nineteen people carried out the hijackings, working in three teams of five and one of four (on the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania).

Each group included someone who had received pilot training. This was carried out at flying schools in the US itself.

Fifteen hijackers were Saudis like Bin Laden himself. Two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt and one was from Lebanon.

How did the US respond?

Less than a month after the attacks, President George W Bush led an invasion of Afghanistan - supported by an international coalition - to eradicate al-Qaeda and hunt down Bin Laden.

However, it was not until 2011 that US troops finally located and killed Bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan.

The alleged planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. He has been held in US custody at Guantanamo Bay since then, and is still awaiting trial.

Al-Qaeda still exists. It is strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa but even now has members inside Afghanistan.

US troops left Afghanistan this year after nearly 20 years, stoking fears from many that the Islamist network could make a comeback.

The legacy of 9/11

Flight safety was tightened around the world in the years following 9/11.

In the US, the Transportation Security Administration was created to beef up security at airports and on planes.

It took more than eight months to clean up "Ground Zero" - the site of the fallen Twin Towers.

A memorial and a museum now stands on the site, and buildings have risen up again, to a different design.

The completed centrepiece - One World Trade Center, or "Freedom Tower" - stands even higher (1,776ft (541m) than the original North Tower, which was 1,368ft.

Reconstruction at the Pentagon took just under a year, with staff back in their offices by August 2002.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
September 11 attacks: What happened on 9/11?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How the devastating 2001 plane attacks on America unfolded and how they shaped our age.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Falling Man | Behind The Photo | 100 Photos | TIME

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Iraq War: George W. Bush's Speech 10 Years Later

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Iraq war protests around the world, ten years ago on Febr...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Iraq war protests around the world, ten years ago on February 15, 2003.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Word - Truthiness - The Colbert Report | Comedy Central US

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stephen promises to always feel the news at his viewers.

# data[].attributes.headline
Study the documents and write an article for a teenagers magazine on what happened on 9/11.

# data[].attributes.subject
Study the documents and write an article for a teenagers magazine on what happened on 9/11.

# data[].attributes.headline
Flight 93 National Memorial - Shanksville, Pennsylvania

# data[].attributes.subject
Flight 93 National Memorial - Shanksville, Pennsylvania

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes)

# data[].attributes.headline
Write a Commentary on this post thanks to what you learn about Afghanistan in the documents above.

# data[].attributes.subject
Write a Commentary on this post thanks to what you learn about Afghanistan in the documents above.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes)

# data[].attributes.headline
Afghanistan Explained: The war that never ends

# data[].attributes.subject
Afghanistan Explained: The war that never ends

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Afghanistan Explained: The war that never ends

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life under Taliban in Afghanistan - BBC News

# data[].attributes.headline
20th Anniversary of American military presence in Afghanistan - The Thinker

# data[].attributes.subject
20th Anniversary of American military presence in Afghanistan - The Thinker

# data[].attributes.headline
War on Terror - Boardgame : Would you play that game ?! Debate.

# data[].attributes.subject
War on Terror - Boardgame : Would you play that game ?! Debate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
War on Terror, The Boardgame is a satirical, strategic board game, produced and published in 2006 by TerrorBull Games. War on Terror was originally conceived in 2003 by Andy Tompkins and Andrew Sheerin, two friends based in Cambridge, England. The initial inspiration for the game came from the imminent Invasion of Iraq but, as a whole, was intended as a reaction and challenge to the counter-productive pursuit of the wider War on Terror. In 2005, Sheerin and Tompkins founded TerrorBull Games and gathered enough financial support from a mixture of friends and acquaintances to put War on Terror into production.

Widespread notoriety has meant the game has had a colourful and, at times, troubled history. Its initial release was met with a barrage of criticism, particularly from the tabloid press. Other businesses refused to be associated with the game and it was also banned from a number of industry fairs around the world. The British police even confiscated a single copy. More recently, however, opinion has turned around and War on Terror is now praised by various highly respected institutions and individuals, among them Amnesty International and John Pilger.

The gameplay has been likened to a cross between , , and Settlers of Catan. Like a number of war board games, the basic goal is to dominate the entire world (or "liberate" in the parlance of the game itself). However, the scope of War on Terror stretches to cover all aspects of war-time politics, not just battlefield tactics. The creators of War on Terror have correspondingly claimed it is the most realistic war simulation around.

War on Terror, The Boardgame can be described as a Risk-like war board game inspired by modern-day imperialism and geopolitics. In terms of board game style, it is a mixture of both European and American approaches - utilising elements of chance and chaos as well as strategy and player interactions.

Starting with a tiny presence on the map, each player takes on the role of a budding empire, intent on "liberating" (dominating) countries and continents, controlling oil production and building cities to win the game. An empire controls a region when it has a development there: a village, a town or a city. To expand, an empire can build developments at the border of its current empire if the regions there are unoccupied. Much of the time this will involve some fighting. There are two primary ways to interfere with other empires: fighting wars against them or funding terrorist units in the hope of making them attack your opponent. The game play is essentially card-driven - including the aforementioned warring and terrorist attack. Players obtain two such cards every turn. Additional cards can also be bought using money, which is obtained from oil. Oil is randomly spread out across the map and varies from game to game. An important issue is that when terrorists are no longer dormant and leave the training camp, they act outside the control of the empire which initially funded them, and can turn on that empire if triggered by an opposing empire or the terrorist player. An in-game twist is that defeated players are not out of the game - they become the "terrorist" players, and can still influence the result and perhaps even win. It is also possible to join the terrorist side voluntarily. An important aspect of the game centres around diplomacy and off-board negotiations and dealings. A 'secret message pad' is provided to this end and sees heavy use in a typical game.

An iconic part of the game is the "Axis of Evil": a spinner in the centre of the board which determines which player is "evil" - that player must then wear the Evil balaclava and gets two terrorist cards per turn. Other empires also have a financial incentive to fight wars against the evil empire.

The "Evil Balaclava" itself has developed a life outside of and independent of the game - something the designers encourage with the Gallery of Evil.

On 25 November 2011, despite previously claiming the task was impossible, TerrorBull Games released their first video game, an iOS version of War on Terror on the Apple iTunes Store. There was initial speculation that it might get banned, but as of May 2014 the game was still available. As of June 2020 the game is now unavailable.

Several major game and toy fairs, as well as several retailers, refused to stock this product. The justification in all cases is some variation on the claim that the topic is highly inflammatory and may be offensive to some.

In August 2008, a copy of the game was seized by the British Kent Police because the balaclava included in the box "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act".

War on Terror formed part of Roy and Moss's office set dressing since series 2 of the British sitcom The IT Crowd (on top of the shelves behind Moss's desk). Roy and Moss are seen playing the game briefly in series 2. The show's creator, Graham Linehan, is a keen gamer and an open supporter of War on Terror.

In December 2009, TerrorBull Games were featured on the BBC series Games Britannia, presented by historian Benjamin Woolley. Woolley paid especial attention to War on Terror, noting that while it continued a certain historical tradition - going back to ancient times - of games that attempt to interpret the world around them, War on Terror was different in using satire to examine its chosen themes.

Before the game was even released, it had created enough of a stir to warrant a response from the members of the British Parliament. The Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, Andrew Lansley, commented, "this board game is in very bad taste and it appears as though somebody has gone too far". Jim Paice, Conservative MP for South East Cambridgeshire, meanwhile claimed he "[didn't] like the sound of it".

War on Terror formed part of the 'Embedded Art' exhibition at the Berlin Academy of Arts in January 2009. The exhibition looked at the effects of wartime and security on art. The creators of War on Terror and the illustrator were invited to the gallery to take part in a live, interactive game during the gallery's annual open night.

War on Terror is used by some educators around the world as a tool for broaching and examining the often complex issues contained within. War on Terror has been used in the following disciplines: geography, geopolitics, international relations and politics.

Amnesty International has stocked War on Terror in their catalogue under the banner of 'educational' for two years, while publications like the New Internationalist and The Guardian have emphasised the game's educational potential.

Journalist and documentary maker John Pilger has also shown his support and enthusiasm for the game, labeling it "extraordinary".

During 2010, the publishers of War on Terror started speaking publicly in higher education circles about the game and the role that games have to play in politics and activism; this appears to be an area in which they are gaining increasing recognition.

In February 2011 War on Terror appeared on its first major syllabus. The game formed part of a core module in "Political Simulation and Gaming" run by Richard Barbrook, at the University of Westminster.

In 2020 War on Terror was put on display at IWM North as a part of the contemporary conflict collection.[citation needed ]

2007

"Top Ten Historical Board Games of 2007" in the annual Origins Awards.

2012

The iOS app of War on Terror placed 3rd in the best board game category of the "2011 Best Apps Ever Awards".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
War on Terror, The Boardgame is a satirical, strategic board game, produced and published in 2006 by TerrorBull Games. War on Terror was originally conceived in 2003 by Andy Tompkins and Andrew Sheerin, two friends based in Cambridge, England.

# data[].attributes.headline
Female Journalists in Kabul (article August 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Female Journalists in Kabul (article August 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Just 39 Female Journalists Are Still Working in Kabul After the Taliban's Takeover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Just 39 women journalists are still formally working in privately-owned radio and TV stations in the Afghan capital.

# data[].attributes.headline
Afghan women journalists (article Sept. 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Afghan women journalists (article Sept. 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Female journalists who fled the country tell Al Jazeera they were left with no choice amid fears of Taliban persecution.

Afghan women protest to demand preservation of their achievements and education, in front of the presidential palace in Kabul [File: Reuters]

Kabul, Afghanistan - In the days leading up to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, Sama (not her real name), a 27-year-old female journalist, says she tried to stay positive, hoping things will be different this time and that the Taliban might have changed its ways since the 1990s.

"I have interviewed them. I have interacted with them," she said of her travels across the nation's provinces, during which she interviewed many Taliban members.

Comforted by the group's fighters treating her "well" during those reporting trips, Sama decided to make a film on life in Taliban-controlled Kabul.

At first, she says, there was "no problem", that armed Taliban fighters greeted her by calling her "Mor Jana" (mother dear in Pashto). Within days, however, the tide turned. She started receiving "strange" emails and phone calls, telling her to stay inside.

'Go home, why are you even out?'

But Sama decided to continue filming and was soon faced with a harsh reality. In a span of days, she says the demeanour of Taliban fighters changed.

"Go home, why are you even out?" she was told.

Worse, her driver, who would wait for her and her crew in a parked car, was beaten by the Taliban. She says he likely came under suspicion for three reasons.

"He was in a car full of camera equipment, he was wearing jeans and he was a Hazara," she said.

During its five-year rule in the 1990s, the Taliban banned all recordings, forced men to dress in traditional clothes, and was accused of massacring the Hazara minority.

Sama was grief-stricken that her work put her driver, a longtime friend, in such a position. It was on that day that she decided it was time to leave.

"If I can't do my job, then I am nothing," she said.

153 media groups cease operations

In the month since the Taliban came to power, the group made repeated statements about its commitment to a free press in Afghanistan.

At a news conference held only two days after former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, "The media should be impartial. Impartiality of the media is very important. They can critique our work, so that we can improve."

But local media watchdogs estimate at least 153 media organisations have ceased operations across 20 of the nation's provinces since mid-August, when the Taliban took control of the country.

The group has also come under frequent criticism for its treatment of journalists and the media in general. There have been reports of the group confiscating the equipment of media workers, detaining journalists, and even physical abuse and torture of reporters, mostly in the capital, Kabul.

The attacks on media workers have caught the attention of international organisations.

Last week, after journalists were arrested and abused for covering a series of demonstrations in Kabul, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement, calling on the Taliban "to immediately cease the use of force toward, and the arbitrary detention of, those exercising their right to peaceful assembly and the journalists covering the protests".

Human Rights Watch also slammed the attacks on journalists in a statement.

"Taliban commanders and fighters have long engaged in a pattern of threats, intimidation, and violence against members of the media, and have been responsible for targeted killings of journalists," it said.

'Fear very real' for female journalists

Sama's experiences are similar to other female Afghan journalists Al Jazeera spoke to over the last three weeks.

Marjana Sadat, who has worked with Voice of America and other media outlets, said she was out shooting at Kabul University on August 15, the day the Taliban took over.

"I started to receive panicked messages to go home. 'The Taliban are coming,' they all said."

Sadat recalled how the roads were packed with crowds of people rushing to get home. She said she had to walk for several kilometres to reach her home near the Kabul airport.

Along the way, the 24-year-old noticed hundreds of men running with bags in their hands. She assumed they were internally displaced people (IDPs) from provinces that had fallen to the Taliban over the previous 10 days, but when she asked them, she received a startling response.

"We just got out of prison," they told her.

"I was terrified. Imagine, I am a journalist and I was in a situation where I didn't know what my country could look like in a few hours," she told Al Jazeera over the telephone.

Sadat said her youth made the prospect of a Taliban return to power all the more frightening, "All I know about them is what my mother told me as a child."

That fear forced her to stay inside for a week. As much as she wanted to return to work, Sadat said the stories of intimidation and violence against journalists, including those that were not reported in the media, kept her from stepping outside.

"They have not come right out and said anything is illegal, but the fear is very real," Sadat told Al Jazeera.

'Fear will kill you before death can'

For Sama, the disconnect between the Taliban's rhetoric and actions are clear. "There is no system in place. If you are afraid or harassed, who would you report to?" she asked.

Like Sama, Sadat has also been fortunate. Her passport, with visas from the United States, the European Union and Turkey, meant she had a much higher chance of leaving the country.

In fact, it was at the airport that she first came face-to-face with the Taliban.

The first Taliban fighter she saw near the military entrance of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport was kind to her, she says.

When they saw she had a passport and several visas, they told her to step aside while they let people with foreign passports and green cards through - as instructed by the US forces - and that they would make sure she gets through the gate.

However, at one point, the Taliban commander who had been kind to her disappeared. The one who replaced him, she said, was violent and aggressive.

"He had these massive prayer beads and he just struck me across the face with them," Sadat said.

It was at that moment that Sadat said she would never again be in a position to come face-to-face with a Taliban member. "I realised that these men have a hatred, a grudge against women, and that we will never be able to return to normal."

Sama and Sadat said the Taliban's arrival completely changed the situation for journalists, especially women, in Afghanistan.

"We started to see these brave, strong women, who would report on suicide bombings, breaking down in tears," Sama told Al Jazeera.

One female photojournalist, currently in Europe who asked not to be named, said she witnessed the exodus of media professionals first-hand.

"So many famous men and women you would see on TV and hear on the radio every day were waiting at the airport to get out," she said.

All three journalists repeated a haunting statistic about the fate of the media in the country.

"We went from 700 female journalists nationwide to 100 now, almost all in Kabul," Sama and Sadat told Al Jazeera.

A recent TIME magazine story puts that number at less than 40.

Both the women also said the female journalists who stayed behind call them and speak of their fears.

Sama, who says she still struggles with her decision to leave, spoke bluntly of the dread many journalists in Afghanistan currently face.

"The fear will kill you before death can."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Why are you out?': Afghan women journalists recall Taliban sweep

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Female journalists who fled the country tell Al Jazeera they were left with no choice amid fears of Taliban persecution. Kabul, Afghanistan - In the days leading up to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, Sama (not her real name), a 27-year-old female journalist, says she tried to stay positive, hoping things will be different this time and that the Taliban might have changed its ways since the 1990s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The network's chief international correspondent, one of the most visible reporters during the withdrawal of U.S. troops, decided to become a reporter after an epiphany on 9/11.

After reporting from Afghanistan for much of August on the Taliban's return to power, Clarissa Ward moved on to Pakistan to cover the last days of the U.S. withdrawal. Credit... William Bonnett

Clarissa Ward had four days to catch up on sleep and see her two sons, ages 1 and 3, at her parents' home in France. Then she was off again, back to work, making her way through Qatar to Pakistan, where she reported from the Afghanistan border.

Ms. Ward, CNN's chief international correspondent, was a center-stage broadcast reporter as she delivered her accounts, often with gunfire ringing in the background, on what it was like in Kabul in the often chaotic final days of America's longest war. Along with her crew, she subsisted on eggs, cookies and Clif Bars while covering the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban's sudden return to power. At times, she couldn't help showing emotion on the air.

"I can't go and sit with an Afghan woman crying her heart out that her daughters are going to have to grow up in Taliban-led Afghanistan and be just unmoved by it," Ms. Ward, 41, said in a video interview from France last week. "And I don't think it makes me a lesser reporter that I am moved by it."

Her job has included assignments in other conflict zones, including in Baghdad and Aleppo, Syria, often putting her in danger - and at a great distance from her privileged youth.

As she recounts in her 2020 memoir, "On All Fronts," she was born in London to an American mother, an interior designer, and a British father, an investment banker. She had 11 different nannies by age 8. Home, for a time, was a series of townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side, which her mother renovated and flipped. Then it was onto the elite British boarding schools Godstowe and Wycombe Abbey.

The idea of pursuing a career in journalism occurred to her on Sept. 11, 2001, when she was in her senior year at Yale, where her major was comparative literature. The attacks made her realize there was a world radically different from everything she knew, a world that seemed poorly understood in the United States and Europe.

"It sounds presumptuous, but I knew I had to go to the front lines, to hear the stories of people who lived there and tell them to the people back home," she wrote in her book.

After an internship at CNN, she studied Arabic and got on-camera experience in Beirut, Lebanon and Baghdad as a reporter for Fox News. She left for ABC, where she worked out of Moscow and Beijing, and was hired away in 2011 by David Rhodes, then the president of CBS News. She posed as a tourist to slip into war-torn Syria, shooting video herself and sneaking the footage out of the country on memory cards stitched into her underwear. Her coverage earned a Peabody Award.

"It's an art and a skill, and it requires a lot of experience to make the judgments that you need to make to do this coverage safely, frankly, because you just need to be able to read a difficult situation," said Mr. Rhodes, who is now a group director of the British media company Sky.

"There are single-digit numbers of people globally that are really good at this," he added. "She is one of those people."

Ms. Ward joined CNN in 2015 and returned to Syria, again undercover, making her one of the few Western journalists behind rebel lines. In 2018, she was promoted to chief international correspondent, replacing Christiane Amanpour, who had moved on to an anchor role at CNN and PBS. Ms. Ward was soon reporting from Afghanistan's Taliban-controlled Balkh province. For her latest reporting tour, Ms. Ward arrived in the country on Aug. 2, with a plan to stay two weeks.

"I never would have guessed that those two weeks would have turned into three weeks, and we would be there for the fall of Kabul, and the fall of Kabul would take place in a matter of hours, with hardly a shot fired on a sort of quiet Sunday afternoon," she said in the interview.

At the start of the month, she was at the front lines with U.S.-allied Afghan troops in Kandahar. Three days later, the Taliban took the city.

"I reached out to one of the soldiers on WhatsApp, saying, 'What happened to you?'" she said. "He just wrote: 'We left.' I think that was the beginning of me really understanding that the reason this was unraveling so quickly, in no small part, was because Afghan security forces were just not interested any longer in fighting this fight."

By Aug. 14, Ms. Ward and her crew had moved on to a fortified compound in Kabul. They were hoping for a break in the action when Taliban troops arrived.

"By breakfast time, we knew they were at the gates," she said. "In the afternoon, they started to make their way into the city."

On Aug. 16, dressed in a full-length black abaya, she reported from a street filled with Taliban revelers outside the U.S. Embassy. "They're just chanting 'Death to America,'" she said, facing the CNN camera, "but they seem friendly at the same time. It's utterly bizarre."

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, quickly pounced, posting a video of Ms. Ward's report on Twitter with the comment, "Is there an enemy of America for whom CNN won't cheerlead?" (The CNN corporate communications department quickly responded from its own Twitter account with a reference to Mr. Cruz's decision this year to leave his Houston home during a winter storm when much of the state lost electricity: "Rather than running off to Cancun in tough times, @clarissaward is risking her life to tell the world what's happening.") The shading of her work by the senator and other conservatives highlighted how journalists may find their work or statements turned into political talking points while reporting from conflict zones in a time of deep polarization.

"As a person who is emphatically not involved in political coverage in any way, shape or form, I'm always a little uncomfortable when you get kind of shoehorned into the narrative somehow," Ms. Ward said.

Another report, broadcast live as she stood among Taliban members in Kabul, underlined a particular challenge she had dealt with before in Afghanistan: "They just told me to stand to the side because I'm a woman," she told viewers.

As the days wore on, she interviewed women too fearful to leave their houses and others frantically trying to find a way out of the country. From outside Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 18, Ms. Ward reported that Taliban fighters had beat people trying to escape with truncheons and fired on crowds.

Ms. Ward covering the fall of Afghanistan, from Kabul, last month. Credit... CNN

Her recent reports from Afghanistan brought her new attention: Her Instagram follower count shot up to 250,000, from 60,000, in a week. With the increased visibility came the scrutiny of critics on social media and elsewhere, who found fault with her Aug. 20 report expressing skepticism that the United States could pull off the planned mass evacuation.

"I'm sitting here for 12 hours in the airport, eight hours on the airfield and I haven't seen a single U.S. plane take off," she said on the air that day. "How on earth are you going to evacuate 50,000 people in the next two weeks? It just, it can't happen."

Days later, President Biden said the United States had helped evacuate more than 70,000 people from Aug. 14 to Aug. 24. The New York Times reported last week that more than 123,000 people had been airlifted out of the country since July.

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

Card 1 of 6

Ms. Ward defended the Aug. 20 dispatch, saying it should be interpreted in the context of "live, in-the-moment reporting."

"We had been at the airport since 7 a.m. local," she said. "From 7 to 10 a.m., we saw three U.S. planes take off with evacuees, but then they abruptly stopped for approximately 10 hours." At the time, she added, she didn't see how the United States could complete the evacuation in the time it had set for itself.

CNN's president, Jeff Zucker, praised her reporting, citing not only her Afghanistan coverage, but her dispatches this year on the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a military coup in Myanmar and the impact of the pandemic on India.

"I'd be hard pressed to say Clarissa wasn't the most important hire I've made," he said. "She's willing to go where most others won't go."

Ms. Ward left Kabul on Aug. 20, along with her crew and Afghans who had worked for CNN, on a flight to Qatar. Prevented from going straight to her London home because of pandemic restrictions, she was reunited in France with her children and husband, Philipp von Bernstorff, a German count and businessman whom she met at a Moscow dinner party in 2007.

She said she views herself as a reporter who tries to provide viewers with an understanding of what is happening in conflict zones, while also capturing the experiences and reactions of those directly affected.

"It's not my job to say whether it has been handled well or not," she said of the troop withdrawal. "It's my job to give a voice to those people and say this is how they feel."

She said she would continue covering Afghanistan. The Taliban, for now, are "talking the talk" in terms of not violating women's rights, she said.

"Our jobs as journalists is to stick around for long enough to find out if they are walking the walk," she said. "If we do start to see retaliation, reprisal killings, walking back of women's rights or women's education, we need to be telling that story. And I feel very, very strongly about that."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Clarissa Ward of CNN Looks Back on the Afghanistan War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The network's chief international correspondent, one of the most visible reporters during the withdrawal of U.S. troops, decided to become a reporter after an epiphany on 9/11. Clarissa Ward had four days to catch up on sleep and see her two sons, ages 1 and 3, at her parents' home in France.

# data[].attributes.headline
Shamsia HASSANI - Afghan Street Artist (article August 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
Shamsia HASSANI - Afghan Street Artist (article August 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Shamsia Hassani had already reached a certain level of international success over the past years. As Afghanistan's first female graffiti and street artist, known for her bold promotion of women's voices, she had traveled to do on-site murals and participate in residencies and gallery exhibitions in numerous North American, European and Asian countries.

She landed on Foreign Policy's 2014 top 100 global thinkers list and was included in the second volume of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, a best-selling collection of portraits of game-changing women from around the world.

This past week, as the Taliban took power in one Afghan province after another, eventually capturing Kabul, Hassani's presence on social media found even greater resonance.

Two powerful images showing girls in radiant blue carrying images of hope as dark, menacing gun-toting fighters loom over them - expressions of the extreme fear, despair and violent repression Afghan women now face - earned tens of thousands of likes on Instagram and were shared thousands of times on Facebook.

Hundreds of followers commented in response, concerned and praying for the women of Afghanistan and for the Kabul-based Hassani's safety.

Over the past week, women have largely avoided the capital's public spaces, and many artists have deleted chat messages and social media accounts, fearful of violent, potentially fatal repercussions by the Taliban.

After Kabul's takeover by the Taliban, Hassani's social media accounts went silent for a few days, leaving fans wondering about her safety.

A new image in her recent series was finally published late on Tuesday, entitled Death to Darkness - confirmation that she was continuing to work and give voice to the experience of Afghan women.

Hassani's manager told DW that the artist was not available for an interview but was in a safe, undisclosed location.
Female artists under double threat
Publishing the images is a bold move. Most analysts and human rights activists believe the Taliban will institute draconian restrictions and deadly punishments for women, as they did during their rule in the 90s.

Female artists face a doubly dangerous position as women and as creatives doing work that the Taliban has considered in the past to violate its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

"Some people think that art is not allowed in Islam and then they feel that they should stop me ... If a lot of closed minds come together, they will be very powerful and they can do anything," Hassani said in a 2016 video interview for ' The Creators Project'.
Also read: Afghan Filmmakers Fear for Their Lives - And for the Safety of the Archives Making women visible and changing perceptions
Born in 1988 in Iran to refugee Afghan parents, Hassani returned to Afghanistan in 2005 to study painting and visual arts at Kabul University. She had already completed her degrees when she took up graffiti and street art in 2010.

The precarious situation of women and girls in the male-dominated Afghan society has been at the forefront of her work since she started spraying.

In fact, graffiti's ability to publicly highlight the challenges that Afghan women face - but also their strength and resolution - was a major reason Hassani chose to work with the medium, she told Street Art Bio.

She wanted to change how people perceive Afghan women, including those who wear the burqa, a full-body covering, she said: "I try to show them bigger than what they are in reality, and in modern forms, in shaped in happiness, movement, maybe stronger. I try to make people look at them differently."

Hassani has also used her art to respond directly to attacks by the Taliban and other extremist groups, creating searing images of pain and loss. A composite paint-on-photograph work from November 2020 expressed grief in the aftermath of an attack on Kabul University, where Hassani is a professor of fine arts.

A grey-toned image from May of that same year was made in response to a deadly attack on a maternity ward.
She cannot see her future
The depictions of women across Hassani's body of work express a broad spectrum of emotions: longing and defiance, hope and heartbreak, freedom and fear. They tend to be boldly outlined geometric figures with lustrous colors whose many shades meld together seamlessly. Long, thick eyelashes fall over closed eyes as hair flows from under headscarves or freely like film rolls or medusa tentacles. They have no mouths, but often have elements of nature or instruments incorporated into their figures.

"I use them [music instruments] as a symbol for women to play her voice with it. She can use musical instruments to talk with people, to speak louder and [get] more attention, as she has no mouth. But this musical instrument gives her power to speak in society," Hassani told DW in 2018.

"Her eyes are closed, because usually she has nothing good around herself to see ... and sometimes she cannot see her future. And that's why her eyes are closed, but it doesn't mean she cannot see," the artist added.
Defying her own fear to work in public
The public nature of graffiti also attracted Hassani, who thought it was a good way to introduce art to people who have little chance to visit a gallery or museum. Yet working creatively in public as a woman in Kabul - even when the city was under Afghan government control - had its risks.

"I am really scared of public spaces. I am really scared of explosions happening all the time. And specifically, it's difficult for women to do graffiti and street art because usually people are not happy with women's activities ... all the time I am careful," she told DW in 2018.

On the streets of Kabul, she would do graffiti that was not too large, so she could move quickly. To circumvent these challenges, she started taking photographs of buildings and painting her graffiti directly onto the snapshots, calling it her "Dreaming Graffiti" series.

Hassani works rapidly in her studio, too, which has led to a prolific output that includes everything from largescale canvases to miniature series on dollar bills - a commentary on US foreign policy.

And I am here with my first tweet (visual tweet)
The 3rd World / جهان سوم pic.twitter.com/tFVBeRI9Lr

- Shamsia Hassani (@ShamsiaHassani) October 31, 2020

Despite her success in the artistic world, Hassani admitted in 2018 to DW to sometimes feeling hopeless, unable to make a difference.

Nevertheless, she said she is dedicated to giving power and strength to people through her art: "I think that I change people's minds with my artwork and sharing my ideas with people."

With her recent images, she is publicising the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan and helping to ensure they are not forgotten.
This article was originally published on DW.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shamsia Hassani: The Afghan Female Graffiti Artist Capturing Women's Voices

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Shamsia Hassani had already reached a certain level of international success over the past years. As Afghanistan's first female graffiti and street artist, known for her bold promotion of women's voices, she had traveled to do on-site murals and participate in residencies and gallery exhibitions in numerous North American, European and Asian countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A woman in a purple hijab sits playing the piano, a tear rolling down her cheek. She plays her solitary tune amongst a sea of blue skyscrapers, soaring above the cars that zoom beneath her unnoticed. This subject already wears her contradictions proudly -- she is strong, she is vulnerable, she is graceful, creative, separate, sad. And yet, at least it seems, she calls out to no one, content to sit with her feelings and express herself creatively, freely, in peace.

This work of street art was made by Shamsia Hassani, widely known as the first prominent woman street artist in Afghanistan. Hassani was born in 1988 in Tehran to Afghan parents, eventually moving to Kabul to pursue her bachelor's and master's degrees in visual art. She currently resides in Kabul, where she turns the city's walls into colorful canvases that spread a message of peace and hope to her community.

Through her work, Hassani hopes to present a different view of Afghanistan -- one not easily equated with war and violence but beauty and art. "I want to cover all bad memories of war from people's minds with colors," she said in an interview with Street Art Bio.

As if Hassani isn't taking on enough of a challenge, she's subtly subverting dominant gender norms in the process.

" I have changed my images to show the strength of women, the joy of women," Hassani explained in an interview with Art Radar Journal. "In my artwork, there is lots of movement. I want to show that women have returned to Afghan society with a new, stronger shape. It's not the woman who stays at home. It's a new woman. A woman who is full of energy, who wants to start again. You can see that in my artwork, I want to change the shape of women. I am painting them larger than life. I want to say that people look at them differently now."

Hassani's subjects sometimes don burqa and hijab, customary Islamic garments that, in Hassani's drawings, become playgrounds for shape, line and color to take on a modernist grace. Most importantly, the images refute some dominant Western assumptions, showing that there can be freedom within tradition.

"There are a lot of people around the world who think that the burqa is the problem," Hassani said. "They think that if women remove the burqa, then they have no problems. But this is not true. I feel that there are lots of problems in Afghanistan for women. For example, when women cannot have access to education; this is more of a problem then wearing a burqa."

Hassani creates a new work of graffiti approximately once every two to three months. While in the U.S. and much of Europe, graffiti is treated as a crime, the technique is embraced in Afghanistan. Hassani also teaches graffiti at the University of Kabul, where most of her students, in their 20s, are around her age.

Art galleries are scarce in the region, but barren walls are in abundance, making graffiti an ideal way to expose art to a wide, if accidental audience. However, Hassani does encounter difficulties creating work as a woman, and is often forced to confront an ugly majority that believe a woman's place is in the home. Because of the struggles arising from sexist beliefs, Hassani developed a practice she calls "dreaming graffiti" -- work made in the studio instead of on the streets. With this technique, Hassani uses digital images as her cityscape, painting over them to create a colorful landscape inside her mind.

Hassani is currently the artist-in-residence at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Read on for the artist's descriptions of three of her graffiti series, "Secret," "Birds of No Nation" and "Once Upon a Time."

"I began this series by outlining the figures of women in burqas with straight lines and sharp edges, conveying a feeling of strength. Still, I wanted to show the secret beneath the burqa, which is that there is a real person inside. I wanted to remove the restrictions on women and the guitar represents her ability to speak up and express herself. It is red because the color is used to draw attention to important things in Afghanistan."

Birds of No Nation

"Birds are constantly migrating to find food and shelter, they have no nationality because they find comfort in any safe place. I see this in the Afghan people as well, they are moving from country to country in search of peace and safety. It seems as if they have no nation like those birds. In this series, the woman is in a new area and she is feeling displaced because nothing is hers and so she does not fit in."

Once Upon a Time

"The title comes from the traditional way of telling a story. My tale is of a woman living in the past and present at once. This woman has tried to free herself from her unhappy situation and so she is sitting above it all, looking in from the outside. The city view is in black-and-white, representing the way that we see the past, while she is in full color and in the present."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Afghanistan's First Female Street Artist Brings Hijabs And Feminism To City Walls

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A woman in a purple hijab sits playing the piano, a tear rolling down her cheek. She plays her solitary tune amongst a sea of blue skyscrapers, soaring above the cars that zoom beneath her unnoticed. This subject already wears her contradictions proudly -- she is strong, she is vulnerable, she is graceful, creative, separate, sad.

# data[].attributes.headline
9 Afghan Challenging Artists (blog 2014)

# data[].attributes.subject
9 Afghan Challenging Artists (blog 2014)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Forget what you think you know about Afghanistan, and take a look at the country through the eyes of these young artists who call it home.

Modern artists, many of whom reside in Kabul, are taking to their mediaof choice to make beautifully present once more an artistic culture that has existed for centuries. Considering recent history, these artists are taking a spotlight that wouldn't have been available to them 15 years ago.

During the later years of Taliban rule, art was prohibited. As the New York Timesexplained, "the anti-art policies were established and many of the most beautiful things in the country, some 2,000 national treasures, were wantonly destroyed. The Taliban's purpose was to wipe out Afghan identity so that the nationalist resistance to them would be weak."

The Taliban may no longer run the country, but the art community remains small, and many artists will tell you they receive little support in their home nation. Nonetheless, there is a widening circle of expressive, insightful and inspired individuals finding freedom in creativity. Street artists channel Banksy, others take their cues from German expressionists, and then there are the all-out experimental modernists using everything includingbandages, clay, paper, lights and performance to tell their unique story. With the help of Kabul-based organizations like the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanisan, both men and women are finding their voice as well as an art education.

These nine artists are only some of the names making waves in Kabul and Europe, while putting Afghanistan back on the map for art connoisseurs. Most importantly, they're using their artwork to tell the world about their country and to criticize and upset the status quo. In their hands, art is a tool for social empowerment.

1. Azim Fakhri

Working under the name Kabul Knights, Azim Fakhri is using his art for peace. From painting to stenciling to sculpture, Fakhri's work runs the gamut. But all of it aims to tell the story of his generation. Much of his work has overt political messages and can feel reminiscent of Banksy. "My feeling is accept what you can't change, but change what you can't accept. I've done this thru [sic] many of my arts, changing grenades into pineapples, a sweet taste of victory for someone whose passion is ignited by what I see on the streets and the hope of his people," he wrote on his website. Fakhri has also been a featured speaker for TEDxBerlin where he discussed his project "Street Angels," a photo series devoted to the children of Afghanistan.

2. Jahan Ara Rafi

The use of bold red against black in Jahan Ara Rafi's paintings lends a feeling of frustration and an image of war - realities that many Afghans have been forced to live with for years. Rafi acknowledged this in an interview with Powder Zine earlier this year, saying that while she was a calm person on the outside she had an "inner uproar ... for freedom, prosperity and human dignity for her people and for resistance against any type of discrimination." But that inner uproar is being put to good use, and Rafi is a known face in the Afghan art scene, collaborating with other artists to develop theCenter for Women Artists in Afghanistan.

3. Zainab Haidary

Zainab Haidary's artistic style is hard to classify: Her works range from bold and abstract paintings to minimalist sketches. Nonetheless, it's undeniable that the increasingly high-profile fine-art student is poised to lead the next generation of Afghan artists, and in 2012 she collaborated with Europeans in workshops focusing on the nation's art. She told the BBC that experiences of war influence her work, saying, "Pain is a power for artists, for doing painting, so war is this kind of ... power inside of the artist's soul."

4. Shamsia Hassani

We've featured Shamsia Hassani on before, but the Afghan street artist deserves another nod. Hassani has been studying Fine Art at Kabul University and using graffiti to draw attention to the lives of women in the often shrouded country. More importantly, in a nationwhere 36% of people live below poverty line, Hassani is using street art to reach those who cannot afford to go into a gallery. Art in the hands of people like her is truly a tool of empowerment. "I want to color over the bad memories of war on the walls and if I color over these bad memories, then I erase [war] from people's minds. I want to make Afghanistan famous because of its art, not its war," she told Art Radar.

5. Nabila Horakhsh

Nabila Horakhsh's paintings are stunning. Using bright, bold colors withcontrasting dark imagery, she depicts decaying trees, looming faceless bodies and the elements. Her style is at once daring and reminiscent of classical expressionistic works. She's also involved with the Berang art organization in Afghanistan, a community focusedon supporting and building up contemporary artists in Kabul.

6. Akram Ati

What makes Akram Ati interesting isn't simply his painting, but the process by which he creates his art. While Ati's art itself may be conventional, showing traditional aspects of Afghan, he opts for a n a nontraditional painting source. Rather than usingstore-bought paints, he creates the pigments he uses from clay and stone he grinds and blends into a homemade gluelike substance. The result is a monochromatic and unique glimpse into the markets and farms of a country.

7. Ali Akhlaqi

Ali Akhlaqi is another artist crossing genres and styles. From abstract painting to black and white sketch work to photo manipulation, he does it all. The 26-year-old is very critical of Afghanistan, and his political sentiments come through his work loud and clear. He once told Powder Zine, "In my opinion, Kabul is a cursed city of night, which has no comfort, and its day enjoys no light. There is nothing real here." After completing his studies at Kabul University in 2012, his artwork has been featured in galleries in both Afghanistan and Germany.

8. Malina Suliman

Born and raised in the southern city of Kandahar, street artist Malina Suliman is making a name for herself as a graffiti artist. Despite being trained in realism and holding a degree in fine arts, Suliman braves the streets to speak out for her generation, which is trying to find itsvoice amid violence. She has worked with Berang Art and has established a fine arts group in her home province, which is considered one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan. Last year, Suliman had to flee her home nation after threats from the Taliban and an attack left her father's legs broken. She told the BBC about the hostility she faces as a street artist in Kandahar: "I would paint graffiti on the rocks and walls and they would throw stones at me and condemn me. I would move to another area but they would follow me there and pelt me with stones."

9. Arif Bahaduri

One of the most striking things you may notice about Arif Bahaduri's work is its three-dimensional quality. He's used bandages and warped paper to give his pieces texture, creating abstract images of homes and tombstones. "I work with plasters to represent pain and unhealed wounds," Bahaduri told the Mail & Guardian. Bahaduri is also a skilled sketch artist, and his images of grim reaperlike bodies filing through the streets of Afghanistan are as much a commentary of the current political, cultural and economic moment in the country's history asthey are a testament to his talents.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
9 Artists Challenging Our Perceptions of Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Forget what you think you know about Afghanistan, and take a look at the country through the eyes of these young artists who call it home. Modern artists, many of whom reside in Kabul, are taking to their media of choice to make beautifully present...

# data[].attributes.headline
Find, or Draw, a Cartoon that could complete these articles, in relation to one of 9 themes. Explain.

# data[].attributes.subject
Find, or Draw, a Cartoon that could complete these articles, in relation to one of 9 themes. Explain.

# data[].attributes.headline
Choose an art work, and describe it, taking into account the context, and explain why you chose it.

# data[].attributes.subject
Choose an art work, and describe it, taking into account the context, and explain why you chose it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Taliban fighters accost CNN reporter and crew