Brides of the drug lords
Afghanistan's opium trade is worth £14 billion a year. But when its dealers are shot or jailed, their daughters are sold as wives to settle their debts
Brides of the drug lords (un-edited version)
By Fariba Nawa Aziza's pale green eyes flashed. Her 12-year-old body shivered. She took two steps back toward the mud wall in the hallway. It was a dead end. "I'm not going! I'm not going!" she shouted at her mother. Haji Sufi, a 46-year-old opium farmer, waited for her inside the room, sitting cross-legged on
Return of the ‘good warlord’
Ismail Khan seeks power in the new Afghanistan
After Ibn Zuhur
By Fariba Nawa October 2003 POZ Before it was trashed amidst the U.S.-led invasion, this hospital outside Baghdad was both protector and prison for HIVers in Saddam’s Iraq. Have they been liberated — only to be left to die? Sari Zegum holds his mother’s hand loosely, gazing at the straw carpet in his family’s mud
Reconstructing justice
By Fariba Nawa July 17, 2003 Mother Jones Clerical Shiite judges have stepped into the power vacuum in Baghdad. What will the new face of justice be in Iraq? Tucked away in an alley in the shadow of a centuries-old shrine in one of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods, Sheikh Ra'id Saadi is performing an act for
U.S. curtails Iraq’s newfound media freedoms
By Fariba Nawa June 27, 2003 Village Voice BAGHDAD—The print press is booming here as newspapers rose from five government-run papers during Saddam Hussein's regime to around 150 now. But U.S.-led forces are dampening the mood of the free press by censoring it. The U.S.-led administration here last week threatened to fine or close down
Rumors of abduction frighten Baghdad parents
By Fariba Nawa June 11 - 17, 2003 Village Voice BAGHDAD—Israa Sabah is supposed to be in her seventh-grade classroom finishing her annual exams. Instead, she’s sitting home drawing women’s fashion in her notebook and watching television. The active 13-year-old is too scared to go to school. Like many Iraqi girls her age, she fears
My veil, my decision
By Fariba Nawa May 2003 Unpublished Since the all-enveloping burqa began appearing on television during the war in Afghanistan, Americans became curious, even obsessed, with understanding why Muslim women cover their hair and body. Worn in dozens of styles, the veil or hijab in Arabic has had different meanings at various times in its history,
Herat Is Where the Heart Lives
This summer, I went home.
Afghans eager to go home at all costs
Refugees undeterred by crime, ethnic violence, warlords' rivalries
