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On the side of a busy street in Kabul, Afghanistan, there is a restaurant that feels like an oasis away from the traffic jams, constant smog, and terrorist threats. Soothing piano music plays in the background as groups of young women enjoy traditional Afghan dishes. Bost, a restaurant for women and entirely run by women opened its doors in the capital of Afghanistan in September last year. Here, women can feel sheltered from the prying eyes of men for a while.

I wanted to have a place where I could feel safe, where I could enjoy my time sitting in a corner, reading, writing, or even listening to music without getting disturbed or being stared at, says Homira Kohzad, one of the restaurants founders. If you go to different restaurants in different parts of Kabul, you dont feel safe. Harassment is common in the city, and its one of the main reasons why women are hesitant about going out, whether its to restaurants or for a walk down a street.

During the Taliban rule in the late 90s, women could not go outside without a mahram, a male relative, and a burqa that covered their entire faces and bodies. But after the fall of the regime in 2001, women came out of their houses, and many replaced the burqa with a simple headscarf. According to Kohzad, men have had a hard time getting used to seeing women around, which often results in unwelcome attention. Its also why male relatives can be reluctant to let women go to restaurants alone, even if there is a designated family section. (Women, for their part, might feel equally uncomfortable in a restaurant full of single men.)

But at Bost, women can be seen sitting alone and sampling the restaurants mouth-watering specialties such as shola, a rich lentil dish with their female friends or sometimes with their mothers. In this setting, male chaperones are not needed. The women who come here are often educated and liberal, and many are dressed in modern clothes. Because they do not have to worry about getting stared at, they can wear what they want. In the beginning, I saw some women coming with their husbands, but after a while the women started coming alone because the men had noticed this place is only for women and families, Kohzad says. According to her, it was a matter of building trust.

Opening a restaurant as a woman is, of course, already something special in Afghanistan. The restaurant is undoubtedly Kohzads baby: She trained the staff and designed everything from the menu to the interior, which is an interesting blend of traditional Afghan and modern Western style.

But what makes Bost even more unique than its clientele is the fact that it employs women who live in Kabuls womens shelters. The restaurant was originally a project of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center, or AWSDC. The organization, where Kohzad worked as a project manager, provides training and education to women and maintains a number of shelters in the country for victims of gender-based violence. AWSDC was already running a catering business as a source of income generation for the shelters residents. Kohzad thought the idea could be expanded into the restaurant space.

Afghans love to eat, she says. And most of the women are expert chefs. Some of these women, oh my God, they make food thats melting in your mouth; its like heaven. So why not use their skills? Currently, the restaurant employs 17 women 10 in the kitchen, and seven in the front of the house all of whom live in AWSDC shelters. According to Kohzad, they come from various backgrounds; most are quite young, around 20 years old. Some of them faced family violence, domestic abuse, and they have been living with us for several years, she says. Some had to escape from home because their parents were addicted to drugs.

Soraya, 20, has worked as Bosts co-chef since the beginning for four months now. She also prepares delicious fresh-squeezed juices and special coffees in restaurants juice bar. About two years ago, her life changed drastically. I was living in Lahore, Pakistan, with my family, Soraya says. One day, there was a suicide attack and both my parents were killed. I lost everybody; I didnt have anyone. One of her neighbors took her to Kabul, but abandoned her in an area near the citys largest prison. I was completely unfamiliar with Kabul, Soraya says. But luckily a lady took me to her home and sheltered me for the night. The next morning Soraya went to a police station, where she told authorities she didnt have anyone in the city. The police took her to a shelter.

Despite having to go through something so difficult, Soraya has been able to find meaning in her job. Im happy now, she says as she prepares mantoos, lamb-filled dumplings with a splash of yogurt and lentils on top. Now I know that I can do things in my life.

I feel good and powerful. I can have my own money and I can spend it on my children.

Manizha, 27, is also happy to have found a job at Bost. She is originally from the north of the country, from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Manizha was married off to a man who already had a wife. As the second wife, she faced many difficulties with her in-laws. Manizha gave birth to two children, a daughter and a son, but the problems in the family only increased. My husband moved to Saudi Arabia and I was left behind with my children, she says. I needed money to feed them, but he did not send us anything. Finally, my in-laws told me to go back to my fathers home. But her parents had died a long time ago, and for her brothers, she was just an additional burden.

Left with no other choice, Manizha took her children and came to the shelter in Kabul. Her brothers were not happy about this, however, and felt she was bringing shame to the family. The society in Afghanistan considers women who run away from home loose, and theres stigma associated with living in a shelter. Because of this, these women are sometimes sexually abused when they go outside, Kohzad explains, and its difficult for them to find employment beyond the shelter.

For Manizha, her move to the shelter happened four years ago, and to this day, she constantly fears her brothers will come after her or her children. Maybe when my children are in school, my brothers will kidnap them, she says. Her dream is to save some money and leave Afghanistan. Today she is happily preparing dishes, such as bolani, a flatbread with vegetable filling, in the kitchen. I feel good and powerful. I can have my own money and I can spend it on my children, she says.

Customers are kept largely unaware of the staffs backgrounds. According to Kohzad, Most families, if they became aware of the fact that these women are from shelters, wouldnt come here. Therefore, to ensure the safety of the women, we mostly keep it confidential, she says.

But the plan is to eventually become more open about this. Anything you want to do in Afghanistan, it needs time. When people see that they are not different from other women or other families, they would forget it. The restaurants goal is to ultimately become a franchise operation, but Kohzad also wants to prepare the women for jobs elsewhere. We give them the opportunity to learn and to be able to stand up on their own feet, Kohzad says. Maybe they want to become managers of one of these franchises. Or maybe later on they want to open their own restaurants.

The younger generation of working women has claimed Bost as their own.

Most importantly, however, We want them to feel safe, Kohzad says. If they feel safe, it would be easier for them to communicate and show a better picture that, see, we are women who have faced some challenges, abuse, or domestic violence in our houses, but we are working here, we are like you. Employing these women has also had another benefit: The fact that all the waitstaff is female helps convince families to allow their women to come to Bost without a male chaperone.

Tahmina Kargar, 25, has come to Bost to enjoy her lunch hour with her colleagues from the BBC. The thing that sets this restaurant apart from others is the fact that women work here. I feel safer and I like the environment. And also the food, she says while enjoying a steaming plate full of lobia, kidney beans in tomato gravy.

Kargars colleague Fauzia Ameeri, 29, has come to Bost for the second time. She agrees that the female staff makes women feel more comfortable. It also feels safer to come here with our male friends because in other restaurants there are lots of people around and we face different kinds of people. I dont know what they might think, but from their reaction we can understand that they dont like men and women to go for lunch together.

The younger generation of working women has claimed Bost as their own more than any other group in the city. They need a place where they will not be judged, Kohzad explains as she slowly gets back to her work, not minding the fact that her headscarf has long since fallen to her shoulders. Thanks to Bost, there is now a place in Kabul where women can breathe freely for a while.

Maija Liuhto is a freelance journalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan. She writes for Al Jazeera English, the Christian Science Monitor and GOOD Magazine, among others. Ivan Flores is an independent visual journalist based in Kabul covering conflict, political, and cultural issues. Editor: Erin DeJesus

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How One Restaurant in Afghanistan Improves the Lives of Women - Eater

It is now official beyond question. The senior ranks of the U.S. military and foreign-policy leadership have now fully succumbed to the belief that all problems in the Middle East and South Asia must include, at their core, the application of lethal military power. No other alternative is considered. Worse, the military solutions they advocate have literally no chance of accomplishing the national objectives sought. The latest damning evidence: the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan testified before the Senate last week that he believes thousands of additional U.S. troops should be sent back to Afghanistan.

It is difficult to overstate the utter bankruptcy of a strategy designed to bring peace to Afghanistan based on sending large numbers of U.S. service members back into harms way. The Washington Post reported in early February that Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. said he believes the new president may be open to a more robust military effort that is objectives-based. Questioned by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R.-S.C.), the general said he can definitely carry out his mission with less than 50,000 coalition troops, but hesitated a bit when asked if he could do so with less than 30,000.

The results of sixteen years conducting counterinsurgency, foreign military training and counterterrorism operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan should argue persuasively against repeating such a strategy. The results have been utter and complete failures on the strategic level. Supporters of using COIN and CT cite the Iraq surge of 2007 as an example of how a properly run operation can succeed. Such endorsements expose a significant lack of understanding of what actually happened in 2007 and, of greater importance, that those individuals have a marked inability to see beyond tactical outcomes.

The fundamental point that must be understood is that the surge of U.S. troops into Baghdad was not the causal factor in the dramatic reduction of violence. It was a contributing factor and did play a positive role, but without question was not the decisive one. In late 2006 the Sunni insurgency was beginning to buckle under the cumulative weight of attacks by the United States, coalition forces, Shia militias and the Iraqi security forces. The pressure turned into an existential threat, however, when Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)an organization that should have been a natural Sunni allyturned against them.

As was documented in great detail in Gian Gentiles Wrong Turn, Sunni sheikhs recognized that their only chance for survival was to join with U.S. forces against their common AQI enemy. Beginning even before the surge was authorized by President Bush, Sunni sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha from Anbar Province approached U.S. soldiers and offered to join with them in ridding Ramadi of AQI. The resulting Awakening began a process that was well under way when Gen. David Petraeus arrived the next year.

To his credit, when Petraeus saw how effective the program was, he successfully expanded it to other areas of Iraq. But it cannot be overstated that Petraeuss efforts were successful primarily because other Sunni leaders saw the effectiveness of Sheikh Sattars efforts and wanted to replicate them. This point cannot be missed: the Sunnis never cooperated with U.S. forces because they believed their future lay with the Coalition, as one general famously said in 2008. They rationally saw that without a tactical union with America, they would be annihilated.

Dr. Sterling Jensen, one of the worlds leading experts on the Iraq surge, and Iraqi Gen. Najim al-Jabouri (currently commanding Iraqi forces assaulting Mosul) wrote of this period that in fact, U.S. troops in general were not seen as useful even before the surge. When announcing the Anbar Awakening, Sheikh Sattar told the Americans that as long as the U.S. brigade helped locals become card-carrying security forces and be permitted to work in their areas, the U.S. forces could stay on their bases while the Anbaris fought. No such conditions exist in Afghanistan today, nor did they in 2010 when the United States surged thirty thousand troopsand that explains why the Afghan surge did not knock out the insurgency.

Second, there remains a troubling lack of understanding at the most senior levels of U.S. government of the interaction between tactical operations and strategic outcomes. At the time of the Iraq surge, the most oft-cited justification for the operation was that the reduced level of violence provided breathing space to the Iraqi authorities to affect political reconciliation that would ultimately bring stability. But once cleared of the existential threat the insurgency posed to the Shia government, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took advantage of the breathing space to eliminate most of his Sunni opponents. These oppressive tactics, in fact, helped facilitate the rise of ISIS three years after U.S. withdrawal from the area. Much the same scenario played out during the Afghan surge of 2010.

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How to Lose the War in Afghanistan - The National Interest Online (blog)

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February 15, 2017Updated 02/15/2017 1:34 PM

The Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Despite this, Russia is still active in the region today. In fact, Sen. John McCain said last week that Russia is propping up the Taliban to undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Andrew Weiss (@andrewsweiss), vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

On the motivation behind Russia's presence in Afghanistan

"Well, I don't think we're talking so much about presence, so much as we're talking about harassment and efforts by the Russians to undermine the United States- and NATO-led military effort there. What we've seen in recent days, including this week, are the Russians trying to build a diplomatic profile on Afghanistan that basically circumvents what the U.S.-led effort is about and circumvents the government of Afghanistan itself."

"So, what they're doing is they're basically building bridges to the Taliban, the radical group which ruled Afghanistan before the U.S. military intervention in 2001. And they're trying to basically legitimize the Taliban. They seem to be doing that on the back of a false narrative, which is what Gen. Nicholson was just talking about, which claims that the Taliban are the only serious group operating against Islamic State in Afghanistan. There are other indications of Russian intelligence sharing with the Taliban, which began at least starting in 2015. There's indications of Russian cross-border military activity, and possibly some weapons being transferred from the Russian government to the Taliban. When Gen.Nicholson was testifying the other day, he said he wouldn't talk about any of those issues in open session. So, we're operating on the basis of press reports. The other thing which we're aware of is a Russian diplomatic offensive. This week there's a big conference in Moscow. They've invited various regional stakeholders, they've excluded the United States and NATO from participating in that diplomatic exchange in Moscow."

On Russian concerns about the drug trade in Afghanistan

"Well, there's no doubt that the drug trade, the flow of narcotics that are grown in Afghanistan across this very porous border into central Asia and then onward into drug markets in Russia that's clearly a problem. But I think the root of it is the United States and Russia are now acting like competing great powers, and times, adversarial great powers. So, when you see Russian planes buzzing U.S. military vessels in the Black Sea in recent days, you see the interference in our election, you see the attempts to undermine the U.S. image around the world as a bastion of democracy this I would put in the same basket. It's ankle biting, it's trying to undermine the U.S. military effort. For many years, the Russians were quite upset about the U.S. military presence on the territory of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, post-Soviet successor countries. They worked very hard to basically get us kicked out of those countries. And now that the United States is backing away from its long-term military commitment to Afghanistan, I think they're saying there's an opening here for Russian influence."

"When you see Russian planes buzzing U.S. military vessels in the Black Sea in recent days, you see the interference in our election, you see the attempts to undermine the U.S. image around the world as a bastion ofdemocracy this I would put in the same basket."

On a potential repeat of the Soviet war in Afghanistan

"I think the Russian government is unlikely, as they say in Russian, step into that river twice. But we are seeing, I think, is a revival of Cold War-style thinking. There was a great interview the other day in TASS, the Russian state news agency, with their main envoy for Afghanistan. And in this interview, Ambassador Kabulov really portrays the entire question of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan in Cold War terms. He talks about how the U.S. used to have these big bases in Iran, we got kicked out of Iran after the revolution. We then seized on Afghanistan as a pivot point to project influence toward the Middle East, toward China, Pakistan and Russia. And he sort of talks about, you know, We lived through the Cold War, we know what this is all about, and there's this really larding it quite darkly in terms of being geopolitical great-gain competition. I think that kind of talk is a reflection of what policys all about, which is if they can do things to squeeze out the United States or to make the U.S. lose, that's gotta be good for Russia. I think that's a misguided way to think about a problem as complex as Afghanistan, but it clearly holds a lot of sway at senior levels in the Russian government."

On how Russian influence complicates U.S. efforts in Afghanistan

"You'd have to talk to somebody whos following Afghanistan more closely than I do to understand exactly how much the political challenge facing the U.S. and the Congress right now, particularly the Trump administration, in lobbying for a greater military role in Afghanistan is affected by the Russian issue. My sense is that's probably a second-order factor, but I'm not an expert on that issue. I think what I would focus more on is that the United States is doing things militarily, diplomatically and politically inside Afghanistan, and having this Russian role is just simply unhelpful. So it's more, I think, a question of it being eroding some of the political processes that we're trying to promote for example, there was a peace initiative that basically involved the government in Kabul making amends and trying to get a group led by one of the warlords, Hekmatyar, taken off the UN sanctions list. Basically, for mischief-making purposes, the Russians intervened and basically said, No, we're not sure that makes sense right now, and it undermined an attempt to promote reconciliation within Afghanistan. So, I'd put most of what we're seeing in the category of harassment and attempts to disrupt what the United States and the government in Kabul are doing, rather than an attempt to actually insert Russia directly back into this conflict."

On whether Russia has been successful in its attempts to harass U.S. efforts

"Yeah, no, I'm sure. As Nicholson said in his testimony last week, the war's at a stalemate. So, I think when you're in a situation like that, any effort by the Russians to basically undermine what the United States is doing is a net-negative, both for us, and I think most tragically for the people of Afghanistan."

This story aired on February 15, 2017.

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What Is Russia Doing In Afghanistan? - Here And Now

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UAE Envoy to Afghanistan Dies From Kandahar Blast Wounds Wall Street Journal (subscription) KABULThe United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Afghanistan has died in an Emirati hospital from wounds sustained in a bombing last month in the eastern Afghan city of Kandahar, Emirati state media reported Wednesday. Juma Mohammed Abdullah Al ... UAE ambassador to Afghanistan laid to restgulfnews.com UAE Mourns Death of Ambassador Injured in Afghanistan AttackAsharq Al-awsat English UAE ambassador wounded in Afghanistan bombing diesFox News The National -Dhaka Tribune -Arab News all 43 news articles »

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UAE Envoy to Afghanistan Dies From Kandahar Blast Wounds - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Written by Praveen Swami , Shaju Philip | New Delhi/kochi | Updated: February 16, 2017 10:26 am These Kerala residents, all members of an Islamic State-inspired cult, disappeared into the mountains of Afghanistans remote Nangarhar province. (Representational Photo/Reuters)

Like every other grandmother, theres just one thing Afsath Rehman wants to talk about: the children that her sons, Ejaz Kettiyapuraiyil and Shihaz Kettiyapuraiyil, have had in past few months. They promised to send me photographs but they havent so far, she sighs, echoing the complaints of a million other parents with children living in the diaspora. They said they have to travel one-and-a-half hours to reach a telephone. Thats a very long way.

Except, Afsath Rehman isnt like every other grandmother.

WATCH VIDEO |Families From Kerala Try To Build Islamic State In Afghanistans Nangarhar Province

Last year, Ejaz Kettiyapuraiyil, his wife Rahaila, then three months pregnant, and their two-year-old child, along with Shihaz Kettiyapuraiyil, and his wife Ajmala, disappeared into the mountains of Afghanistans remote Nangarhar province along with eighteen other Kerala residents, all members of an Islamic State-inspired cult led by preacher Abdul Rashid.

From interviews with family members, and messages they have sent their friends, The Indian Express has pieced together a portrait of the bizarre life the group has built for itself in the eight months since they disappeared. The members of the group have set up stores, teach religion, have married, and had children. None appears to be engaged in military activity.

The intent seems to be to set up a community that will nurture future jihadists who will arrive from Kerala and other parts of India for training, says an Indian intelligence official. This is the incubator, the nursery.

Hamsa Sagar, the Rehman familys comfortable home near Kasaragod, isnt anyones conception of a jihad incubator. Ejaz practised medicine; his younger brother was an engineer; their father, Abdul Rehman, worked hard overseas to lay solid middle-class foundations for his family, and by all accounts, had little to do with religious chauvinism. Three years ago, though, the sons discovered neo-fundamentalist religion, and began rebelling against their father, saying they wanted to live life as the Prophet had.

They rejected all this, Abdul Rehman says, this life I had made.

In Nangarhar, the life they have is hard. The region they inhabit, Indian intelligence officials believe, is remote and mountainous, unconnected by regular road links. The rest of the migrants from Kerala are also thought to be living in village homes dotted around the same area.

Ejaz said both families are living together in a small house, his mother says. There is no air conditioner or fridge or any luxury. But, they say they are living in heaven and would not come back.

In their last call home, made a month and a half ago, Ejaz told his family about the birth of the two sons, and said he was running a medical clinic contributing his skills as a doctor to the war-torn community. Shihaz, he said, was working as a teacher, also volunteering his knowledge of the sciences.

A third child has been born to the fledgling Islamic State community from Kerala. Bexin Vincent, who named himself Issa after converting to Islam, called his father K F Vincent to inform him of the news. Bexin called his mother-in-law, too, to say his wife and he were living some distance away, and that phone calls were expensive.

Though Afsath Rehman craves phone calls from her children, her husband disagrees. I dont like attending to their calls, he says bluntly. When we tell them to come back, they ask us to join them in what they tell us is the true Islamic life. They imagine they are living as every true Muslim should. Its a lecture, not a conversation.

Abdul Rehman says he believes others in Kasaragod are also in touch with his sons. When one of our family members met with an accident a few months ago, Ejaz came to know about it much before I did, he says.

Local police and intelligence officials agree. Theres a whole subterranean Islamist network thats still active in Kerala, sympathetic to the Islamic State project, says an officer familiar with the investigation into the disappearance. The next stage will likely be the recruitment of volunteers for actual military training.

That assessment may not be alarmist: al-Qaeda channels on the encrypted chat client Telegram, for example, have been producing prodigious amounts of translated propaganda material in Tamil and Malayalam for the past six months, translating the primary texts of jihadist patriarchs Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri for audiences so far unfamiliar with them.

It isnt hard to detect the communal strains that underly this development. Ashfaque Masjid, who travelled to Nangarhar with his wife, Shamsiya, and one-year-old daughter Ayesha, called his sister, Shajira Majid, some months ago. This is a land of Muslims, Shajira Majeed recalls her brother saying, and we need not see any Hindu here. He wanted all of us join him in that place. He told us he would not return.

No one is quite certain what shaped Ashfaque Majids world view. Until 2012 a commerce student at Mumbais Mithibhai College, he looked after his fathers hotel business in the city alongside.

But then, according to charges filed by the National Investigation Agency, Majid made contact with Arshi Qureshi, a manager with controversial neo-fundamentalist preacher Zakir Naik Islamic Research Foundation, who in turn put him touch with the cult in Kasaragod. Majid broke with his family business, and moved back to Kerala.

The idea that emigrating is necessary for a full practice of Islam has old roots in South Asias political history: in 1920, tens of thousands responded to calls to make hijrat, or migration, to Afghanistan, rather than live in British-ruled India. Large numbers of migrants were killed by hunger or looters; the Khyber pass, contemporary accounts record, was littered with corpses.

For the families of many of those who have gone to Afghanistan, the politics underlying their migration is incomprehensible. Mohammad Mehmood, whose son Mohammad Salil was among the migrants, has got two calls from his son, once a well-off worker in Sharjah.

When I asked him why left home, he had no answers, Mehmood says. He is living according Koran and has no plan to return. I pick up his calls, and he starts delivering religious sermons.

The shortest conversations have been between Hafeezuddin and his mother, Khadeeja. The words get stuck in my throat, she says, speaking from behind a half-closed door. I cried when he last called. He told me that we would meet in heaven.

Hes sent Telegram messages since. Sleep doesnt help when its your soul thats tired, one reads.

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In Afghanistan, families from Kerala try to build Islamic State - The Indian Express