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If her life hadnt been in danger in Afghanistan, Sina Baha wouldnt be in Kansas City.

Under normal circumstances, no one wants to leave their homes, their jobs, their family and move to an unknown land, she says.

Bahas father was an officer in the army under the nations republican government, participating in a plot to overthrow the new Communist government. In 1979, he was captured and imprisoned. Baha and her family never saw him again.

Baha and her family left their homeland in 1993, when she was eighteen years old, and moved to Australia. Two years later, Baha got married and moved to the United States. She and her husband eventually settled in Kansas, where she is a stay-at-home mother of four children.

As a new wave of refugees flees Afghanistan following the Talibans takeover after the American withdrawal, twelve hundred have come to Missouri and about five hundred to Kansas. We spoke to Baha about her experience and how people can help.

When you first came to the U.S., what surprised you? My experience when I first came to the U.S. is different from the majority of refugees who are arriving now in the sense that I was going to join my husband and had an idea of what to expect from previously living in Australia. Regardless, I missed my mom and my siblings terribly. I still do. I arrived in the U.S. in the month of October, and those cold snowy winter days, oh my. Afghanistan has four seasons and it snows but not as much as it does here.

How have your experiences formed you into the person you are today? I was born in a war-torn country. I was eighteen years old when we moved to Australia and left Afghanistan. I lost my father during the war. That was at the beginning of the war in the late seventies when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Communist government joined forces with the Soviet Union, and they were trying to withdraw the old government. My dad was in the army after the previous government and, of course, he didnt like what was happening in the country, so he was trying to organize an attack against the communist regime. Unfortunately, they had a snitch in their group and he was caught. So he was taken to prison and we did not see him again. I was five years old when this happened, so my mother, a single mom, raised me and my siblings on her own. My childhood experiences made me into a strong, resilient and compassionate person.

Are you currently working with any families or agencies to help other Afghan refugees? I volunteer for Jewish Vocational Services. They are one of the three resettlement agencies that help refugees of any origin. Trying to find them new homes, resettlement and provide their basic needs. I also volunteer for Catholic Charities, I try to do translation for them. Most Afghan refugees cant speak English, so I try to be the connecting point for them. I have recently met an Afghan family, trying to help with their translation. The lady was going through some medical issues, and I went to see her last night in the hospital. Im just trying to do this and that, Im trying to organize a drive in my car to collect some winter clothes for themtrying to do whatever I can.

What are some things that Kansas Citians can do to help? First of all, I would like my Kansas Citians to realize that the Afghan refugees or any refugees have been forced to leave their homes. They have been driven by war to leave. They leave their homes, relatives, careers and family to pursue safety, to have a safe life. I would like my Kansas Citians to be compassionate and kind to these refugees. There are three resettlement agenciesKansas Citians can make donations, they can find very detailed lists of needed items. If anyone has extra time, they can teach English, how to drive or take them to doctor appointments and help them stimulate society.

What are some ways we can make it more known that help is needed? I think to talk about the refugees and their needs, kind of understand how they ended up here in Kansas. We need to understand that these people only come with a pair of clothes and their backpacks. They have nothing else. Theyre escaping from a war-torn country where there has been a war for forty years. They would not have come to Kansas or anywhere in the U.S. if their lives were not in danger, so to try to understand and be compassionate and kind toward people.

Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas

Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas is providing resettlement services to Afghan refugees. They have already received twenty-seven evacuees, with about a hundred to come. The ministry is accepting volunteers and monetary donations, as well as certain items to help furnish homes and provide transportation for refugees. On average, we are receiving a two- to three-day notice of arrivals, which makes finding housing a challenge, says Kasey Featherston, who runs the program. We have limited free temporary housing available, but some evacuees are staying in hotels at their own expense, which comes from their $1,225 per-person one-time stipend from the federal government. We are seeking additional financial support to help offset this expense for these families.

Della Lamb Community Center

Della Lamb Community Center is a nonprofit organization also working to resettle Afghan refugees. The organization is currently accepting around four hundred and fifty refugees, with the number expected to rise. Our needs vary by the family, but wed encourage anyone who would like to connect with our volunteer or in-kind giving program to visit our website and add your name to our email list, says staffer Cori Wallace. There are many assumptions about what refugees need, and its our pleasure to operate transparently and share with Kansas Citians who want to help how they might effectively do that.

Jewish Vocational Services

Jewish Vocational Services is a nonprofit organization in the greater Kansas City metro area working to resettle all refugees, including those from Afghanistan. The organization accepts monetary donations. Kansas Citians can also get involved by joining one of JVSs many volunteer opportunities.

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She fled Afghanistan in the '90shere's what she thinks about the current situation - Kansas City Magazine

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, our parent company, has opened this years GZERO Summit with a provocative speech on the near future of international politics. Here are the highlights.

Are the United States and China now locked in a new form of Cold War? Their governments behave as if they are.

But Bremmer isnt buying it. Hes not predicting that Washington and Beijing will become more cooperative with one another, but that both will be too preoccupied with historic challenges at home in coming years to wage a full-time international struggle.

In Washington, the main worry will be for Americas broken political system. US politics is becoming even more tribalized as TV and online media target politically like-minded consumers with hyperpartisan news coverage. Widening wealth inequality fuels the fire by separating white and non-white, urban and rural, and the more educated from the less educated. Deepening public mistrust of political institutions will fuel future fights over the legitimacy of US elections.

Beijings burden centers on how to extend decades of economic gains while moving away from a growth model that no longer works, as higher wages in China and more automation in factories elsewhere cut deeply into Chinas manufacturing advantages. China is still a middle-income country. To reach the prosperity level of wealthy nations, it needs 6-7 percent growth for another 20 years.

But China must spend less in coming years to keep giant, deeply indebted companies afloat and more to care for the largest population of elderly people in history. And its leaders must accomplish this at a time when Chinas people expect ever-rising levels of prosperity from their government.

The domestic distraction of US and Chinese leaders will create new opportunities for European, Japanese, Canadian, Indian and other political and business leaders to contribute toward international problem-solving. But other governments arent the only new players stepping into this power vacuum.

Technology companies are fast becoming important geopolitical actors. Were entering a world in which economic winners and losers, election outcomes, and national security will depend on choices made by both governments and by the worlds big tech firms.

Bremmer calls this a techno-polar moment.

The idea is simple but transformative: Just as governments make the laws that determine what can happen in the physical world, tech companies have final authority in a digital world thats becoming both more expansive and more immersive.

The biggest tech companies will establish sovereignty by defining the digital space and its boundaries, the algorithms that determine what happens within that space, and the terms and conditions that decide who gets to operate in this world.

For skeptics, Bremmer poses this question: Who will do more to influence the outcome of next years US midterm congressional elections: The President of the United States or the CEO of Meta? According to Bremmer, since the vote will be influenced by both real-world rules changes and the online flow of information, the answer isnt obvious.

How will tech companies try to expand their power? Some will behave as globalists by trying to reach consumers and influence politics everywhere.

Others will act as national champions by aligning with individual governments and their goals.

Still, others will behave as techno-utopians, companies that expect historical forces and tech innovations to help them replace governments in important ways.

The relative success of these models over the next decade will decide how government and tech companies share power over the longer-term and whether democracy or autocracy will have the upper hand.

Whats to be done? Think adaptation, not surrender, says Bremmer. Steps can be taken to limit the sometimes negative influence of tech companies in the political lives of democracies. But just as climate change can be limited but not avoided, so we must understand and adapt to a world in which governments and tech companies compete for influence over our lives.

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Taliban 2.0: Afghanistan on the Brink (US AWOL) - GZERO Media

At just short of 20 years, the now-ending U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan was Americas longest war. Ordinary Americans tended to forget about it, and it received measurably less oversight from Congress than the Vietnam War did. But its death toll is in the many tens of thousands. And because the U.S. borrowed most of the money to pay for it, generations of Americans will be burdened by the cost of paying it off.

Heres a look at the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, by the numbers, as the Taliban in a lightning offensive take over much of the country before the United States Aug. 31 deadline for ending its combat role and as the U.S. speeds up American and Afghan evacuations.

Much of the data below is from Linda Bilmes of Harvard Universitys Kennedy School and from the Brown University Costs of War project. Because the United States between 2003 and 2011 fought the Afghanistan and Iraq wars simultaneously, and many American troops served tours in both wars, some figures as noted cover both post-9/11 U.S. wars.

THE LONGEST WAR:

Percentage of U.S. population born since the 2001 attacks plotted by al-Qaida leaders who were sheltering in Afghanistan: Roughly one out of every four.

THE HUMAN COST:

American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.

U.S. contractors: 3,846.

Afghan national military and police: 66,000.

Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.

Afghan civilians: 47,245.

Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.

Aid workers: 444.

Journalists: 72.

AFGHANISTAN AFTER NEARLY 20 YEARS OF U.S. OCCUPATION:

Percentage drop in infant mortality rate since U.S., Afghan and other allied forces overthrew the Taliban government, which had sought to restrict women and girls to the home: About 50.

Percentage of Afghan teenage girls able to read today: 37.

OVERSIGHT BY CONGRESS:

Date Congress authorized U.S. forces to go after culprits in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Sept. 18, 2001.

Number of times U.S. lawmakers have voted to declare war in Afghanistan: 0.

Number of times lawmakers on Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee addressed costs of Vietnam War, during that conflict: 42

Number of times lawmakers in same subcommittee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars, through mid-summer 2021: 5.

Number of times lawmakers on Senate Finance Committee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars since Sept. 11, 2001, through mid-summer 2021: 1.

PAYING FOR A WAR ON CREDIT, NOT IN CASH:

Amount President Harry Truman temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Korean War: 92%.

Amount President Lyndon Johnson temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Vietnam War: 77%.

Amount President George W. Bush cut tax rates for the wealthiest, rather than raise them, at outset of Afghanistan and Iraq wars: At least 8%.

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.

Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

THE WARS END. THE COSTS DONT:

Amount Bilmes estimates the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Period those costs will peak: after 2048.

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Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars | AP News

Sharbat Gula, who became an international symbol of war-torn Afghanistan after her portrait at a refugee camp was published on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, was evacuated to Rome after her country fell to the Taliban, the Italian government said Thursday.

Ever since the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in August, nonprofit organizations had appealed for help in evacuating Ms. Gula, the Italian government said in a statement.

The prime ministers office has brought about and organized her transfer to Italy, the statement said. It did not say when she arrived, and the foreign ministry later said it did not know whether she would remain in Italy or go elsewhere.

Ms. Gula, now in her late 40s and the mother of several children, was believed to be 12 when Steve McCurry photographed her, with a piercing, green-eyed stare, in 1984 in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He did not learn her name until 2002, when he found her in the mountains of Afghanistan and was able to verify her identity.

A 2002 National Geographic article about Mr. McCurrys search for her described the adult Ms. Gula: Time and hardship had erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened.

In 2016, Ms. Gula was deported from Pakistan after being arrested on charges of obtaining false identity documents, a common practice among Afghans in Pakistan. Human rights groups condemned the Pakistani government for sending her back to Afghanistan. On her arrival, the Afghan president at the time, Ashraf Ghani, gave her a warm welcome and provided her with a government-funded apartment.

In August, Taliban leaders moved into the presidential palace that had been occupied by Mr. Ghani. Their takeover once again displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Pakistan braced for as many as 700,000 refugees. Italy has evacuated more than 5,000 people from Kabul, the government said.

In the United States, more than 22,500 Afghan refugees have been resettled as of Nov. 19, including 3,500 in one week in October. About 42,500 more remain in temporary housing on eight military bases around the country while they wait for housing.

Until the Taliban takeover, the rights of Afghan women had been expanding. Afghan girls were going to school and getting college degrees, and more were participating in civic life. But under the first few months of the Talibans conservative rule, women have already faced new restrictions, like not being allowed to play sports. The Taliban have severely restricted education for women, and Taliban gunmen have gone door-to-door in some neighborhoods looking for anyone who supported the American efforts in the country.

Heather Barr, the associate director for womens rights at Human Rights Watch, said that it was a particularly dangerous time to be a high-profile woman in Afghanistan. She said there had been cases of prominent women being threatened or intimidated, or feeling like they had no choice but to stay in hiding or change locations constantly to avoid attention.

The Taliban dont want women to be visible, and shes an extremely visible Afghan woman, Ms. Barr said of Ms. Gula.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

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Afghan Girl From 1985 National Geographic Cover Takes Refuge in Italy - The New York Times

When the Taliban captured the city of Herat on August 12, Yasin and his colleagues speculated that it wouldnt be long before the Talibans invading forces took over their own city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Things were more tense in Mazar, too, so me and other computer kars of Mazar who work together held a secret meeting to decide what to do to protect all our content, he says. Among them, the informal union of computer kars had several hundred terabytes of data collected over several years, and much of it would be considered controversialeven criminalby the Taliban.

We all agreed to not delete, but rather hide the more nefarious content, he says. We reasoned that in Afghanistan, these regimes come and go frequently, but our business should not be disrupted.

He isnt too worried about being discovered.

People are hiding guns, money, jewelry, and whatnot, so I am not scared of hiding my hard drives. They will never be able to find [them], he says. I am a 21st-century boy, and most Taliban are living in the past.

Less than 20 years after former president Hamid Karzai made Afghanistans first mobile phone call, there are nearly 23 million mobile phone users in a country of fewer than 39 million people. But internet access is a different matter: by early 2021, there were fewer than 9 million internet users, a lag that has been largely attributed to widespread physical security problems, high costs, and a lack of infrastructural development across the countrys mountainous terrain.

Thats why computer kars like Yasin can now be found all across Afghanistan. Although they sometimes download their information from the internet when theyre able to get a connection, they physically transport much of it on hard drives from neighboring countrieswhat is known as the sneakernet.

I use the Wi-Fi at home to download some of the music and applications; I also have five SIM cards for internet, says Mohibullah, another kar who asked not to be identified by his real name. But the connection here is not reliable, so every month I send a 4 terabyte hard drive to Jalalabad, and they fill it with content and return it in a weeks time with the latest Indian movies or Turkish TV dramas, music, and applications, for which he says he pays between 800 and 1,000 afghanis ($8.75 to $11).

"People are hiding guns, money, jewelry, and whatnot, so I am not scared of hiding my hard drives. I am a 21st-century boy, and most Taliban are living in the past."

Mohibullah says he can install more than 5 gigabytes of data on a phoneincluding movies, songs, music videos, and even course lessonsfor just 100 afghanis, or $1.09. I have the latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies dubbed in Dari and Pashto [Afghan national languages], music from across the globe, games, applications, he told me in early August, days before the Taliban took over.

For just a little more, Mohibullah helps customers create social media accounts, sets up their phones and laptops, and even writes emails for them. I sell everythingA to Z of contents. Everything except 100% films, he said, referring to pornography. (Later he admitted that he did have some free videos, another nickname for porn, but that he only sells them to trusted customers.)

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Can Afghanistans underground sneakernet survive the Taliban? - MIT Technology Review