NEWS
November 11, 1996 | JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Its present shattered, its future badly compromised, this nation on the hinge of Central and South Asia has been plundered of a goodly share of its past as well by the continuing civil war. "We Afghan people are very proud of our history. But now we are cut off from it," reflected Amir S. Hassanyar, chancellor of Kabul University, sadly mulling over the cultural cost of 17 years of fighting.
NEWS
November 3, 1996 | JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Their most frequent companions are hunger and cold, and like Oliver Twist, they daydream of being able to eat their fill. Home--if you can call it that--is a drafty building without electricity, heat or running water on a dusty plain littered with abandoned Soviet military equipment. For as long as they can remember, the 850 residents of northwestern Kabul's Daurul Itom orphanage, ages 6 months to 21 years, have known nothing but war.
NEWS
February 15, 1999 | DEXTER FILKINS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
In this storied frontier town, a clutch of musicians works to keep the soul of a nation alive. About 300 Afghan musical performers live and work in exile here, banished from their country by an extremist Islamic government that has made playing and listening to music a criminal offense. Many of the dancers, singers, musicians and composers fled Afghanistan in the 1980s, during a war against the Soviet Union.
NEWS
February 13, 1988 | RONE TEMPEST, Times Staff Writer
His name was Syed Bahauddin Majrooh, but everyone called him "the professor." He had a doctorate from a university in France and was once dean of the literature faculty at Kabul University in his native Afghanistan. Under former Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shah, he had been a provincial governor and a diplomat.
NEWS
May 8, 1998 | DEXTER FILKINS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Each day, news of starvation comes down from the villages, carried on foot across mountain passes still deep in springtime snow. Two children dead from hunger in Naito. Twenty-five people in the villages around Jawqul Lal. Six in Shenia, where the villagers are eating grass. The high, rugged region of central Afghanistan known as the Hazarajat, home to 1.5 million people with a distinct culture dating to the days of Genghis Khan, is teetering on the edge of famine.
NEWS
January 16, 1989 | CHARLES P. WALLACE, Times Staff Writer
In a move to put an end to speculation about Soviet intentions, the Soviet military commander in Afghanistan said Sunday that he expects all of the Kremlin's troops to be withdrawn from that country by mid-February. "It is a delicate question which worries everybody in the world and, of course, it worries us," Lt. Gen. Boris V. Gromov said. "But the plan and the scheme of the withdrawal have been drawn up."
NEWS
October 18, 2001 | JOHN DANISZEWSKI and RICHARD C. PADDOCK ESTHER SCHRADER, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
As U.S. warplanes roamed above the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, flying low and striking at targets as they came into view, the Taliban rushed troops to a key northern city Wednesday, halting the advance of the opposition Northern Alliance, anti-Taliban officials said. The setback for the lightly armed Northern Alliance troops in Mazar-i-Sharif--strategically important because it would provide the opposition with a key supply route and the U.S.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 28, 1993 | JOCELYN Y. STEWART, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Crouched in the bushes on the side of a road in southern Mogadishu, Dr. Broderick Franklin prepared to face death. * Months before, Franklin had left the comfort of his home in Washington, D.C., and headed for Somalia, where he treated the victims of war and famine, sometimes seeing up to 60 patients a day at Mogadishu's Digfer Hospital.
NEWS
November 14, 1988
Afghan rebels launched two rocket attacks on Kabul, the capital, hitting a key Soviet helicopter installation, the area around the city's airport and other targets, the Soviet news agency Tass reported. Diplomats said the report was probably aimed at underscoring rebel plans to continue their attacks, which is what led to Moscow's decision earlier this month to suspend its troop withdrawal.
NEWS
October 27, 1989 | From Times Staff and Wire Reports
The mayor of Kabul condemned the nine-year Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as unnecessary in what diplomats called the first such direct criticism by an official of the Soviet-backed government. Abdul Karim Misaq told reporters in Kabul that "it is an Afghan tradition to fight against foreign intruders" and it was "natural that . . . the Afghan people resisted" Soviet troops. Misaq was jailed for two years after the 1979 Soviet invasion, and spent most of the 1980s as a short-story writer.