In The News

Hamstrung by Trump’s Executive Order, a Syrian Family and a U.S. Private Sponsor Group Hope for an Exception

STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS

The day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Rania Walid Alyousef checked her social media feeds often. The wife and mother of three, who has lived in Amman, Jordan, since 2013, was apprehensive.
Last year, she and her husband, Mohammed Basim Alkurdi, known as Basel, had connected with a group of Americans willing to sponsor their family’s resettlement through Welcome Corps, a private sponsorship program. The family’s and their sponsors’ applications were progressing, and the family’s move to the U.S. seemed within reach.
But after Trump’s November reelection, Rania recognized that renewed travel bans and cuts to immigration were possible, given the way Trump halved refugee admissions in 2017. So when news of the president’s executive order halting refugee programs came across her screen, she was upset and saddened but not surprised.

When the Fallout of Political Winds Affects Real Lives: Afghan Edition

BY KAMI L. RICE

It’s been a wearying couple weeks for volunteers working with Afghans pursuing pathways to safety in the United States. In addition to being the editor of this fine publication, I count among those volunteers, assisting Afghans resettling in the U.S. and Europe as part of the NGO Allied Shepherd. This work began “accidentally” three and a half years ago when Kabul fell to the Taliban and journalists needed help to reach safety.

The day after President Trump’s inauguration, I woke up to messages from devastated Afghan friends as word of the president’s executive orders spread across the globe. Two of these orders in particular affect America’s wartime Afghan allies. The new president’s right to review policies and expenditures isn’t disputed, but advocates for Afghans are disheartened by the slash and burn governance method that is endangering people who, in the case of Afghans, literally protected American lives and supported America’s values.

My Normandy Summer: A WWII Diary, 80 Years Later

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI RICE

It had rained all morning. Poured. Despite this, I arrived to a large crowd at the Mémorial de Montormel just as the first plane, trailing black smoke, puttered dramatically overhead. The clouds were low, but the airshow went on. Five post-war planes took turns swooping and banking in the open air, sometimes in formation, sometimes alone, sometimes teasing us into thinking the show was over before reappearing to make another pass in front of hundreds of upturned faces.

Standing in that umbrellaed crowd on the bluff above the pastoral Dives Valley, with the D-Day Ladies playing swing tunes on a stage behind us and cows dotting the fields below us, I felt transported. Located around 35 miles inland from the historic Normandy beaches breached by the Allies on June 6, 1944, this rural farmland around Mont-Ormel was the final pocket of the Normandy region to be liberated from the Germans in late August 1944. The music and planes, the reenactors and exhibits were assembled to commemorate the last violent gasps of WWII in this part of France.

A Beautician’s Journey from Lost Identity to Rebirth

STORY BY BILAL AHMADZAI

In the heart of war-torn Afghanistan, Zakia, a talented beautician, found herself at the mercy of the Taliban’s oppressive regime. Since retaking the country in August 2021, the Taliban has instituted increasingly draconian edicts that have clawed back freedoms. In July 2023, beauty salons were banned.

The closure of beauty salons, once vibrant hubs of empowerment for women, cast a shadow over Zakia’s once bright future. As she shared her story with Anthrow Circus, the depth of despair in her eyes mirrored the struggles of countless Afghan women whose identities have been systematically erased by the regime. The Taliban’s actions have not only affected the physical spaces but also the self-esteem of Afghan women.

To Market, to Market With France’s New, Young Prime Minister

ARTICLE BY KAMI L. RICE

“C’est lui?” exclaimed a dark-haired boy of roughly nine years old from the market stall sidelines as a commotion passed in front of him. Fuzzy microphones on long handheld booms and news cameras poked above the crowd as it tightened to fit the narrowing space between vendors of vegetables and antiques and records and roast chicken.

The man beside him smiled toward the boy as he affirmed that it was indeed the new French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, come to the Sunday market in Caen after President Emmanuel Macron appointed him last Tuesday to replace Elisabeth Borne as head of the French government. In the scant days since his appointment, Attal has been busy selecting ministers to form his government and taking his first trips outside the capital as he begins his new role of determining and implementing the nation’s policies. Scant too is Attal’s age—the 34-year-old is France’s youngest ever prime minister.

Child Malnutrition Crisis Hangs Heavy in Afghanistan

REPORTING BY ABDUL BASIR BINA AND SHIKIB AHMAD NAZARI

The summer and fall harvest seasons offered a fleeting respite for numerous Afghan households grappling with the challenge of securing sustenance. But now winter is arriving, with January and February being the months with the harshest weather. According to the UN World Food Programme, 4 million people in Afghanistan are acutely malnourished, including 3.2 million children under age five.

The living standards in Afghanistan, already tenuous before the Taliban assumed control in August 2021, plummeted further amid their power seizure and the ensuing economic collapse. In particular, reports the International Rescue Committee, “Food insecurity remains the greatest threat to everyday Afghans. Currently, 40% of the country’s population are facing acute food insecurity¬—the fourth highest figure in the world.”

French Cooking School Teaches Those in Need

STORY BY BILL DIEM

Accounts of people “lifting themselves up by their bootstraps” have been around for more than a century, since the phrase took on its current meaning. Critics say that hard work is not enough, but true stories of success from unlikely starts abound.

Thierry Marx, French chef of the year in 2006, is one of those stories. He was a poor student from a bad neighborhood. His grades weren’t good enough to get into hotel school, and he dropped out of a school for building trades. “I was furious…,” he told The Figaro, a French newspaper. “I messed around, got into fights. I ran away, I escaped to Paris … Champigny-sur-Marne, the city where I lived, was a ghost town, a wasteland.”

Young Afghan Dreams: Three Sisters Share Their Artwork—and Future Hopes

DOCUMENTARY & PHOTO BY W.H.
INTRODUCTORY TEXT BY HEATHER M. SURLS

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” This quote from Disney’s animated film “Mulan” aptly describes Maryam, Khadija, and Fatima Kawsary, teenage Afghan sisters living outside of their home country and still cultivating their passion for art.

Exploring Palestinian Identity in Jordan’s Baqa’a Refugee Camp

STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS

ARTWORK BY HAIFA ABU KHDAIR

In Jordan’s Baqa’a camp for Palestinian refugees, I sat with several women and piles of their cross-stitch embroidery. A fan blew the late May heat through a simple but neat room, where we sat on brown couches drinking small goblets of juice, followed by Turkish coffee and tea. Zahieh Ahmad Saeed Abu Rases and her relatives showed me embellished pillowcases, a mirror framed in a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns, clocks stitched on white Aida cloth, and sections of unfinished thobes, traditional Palestinian dresses.

Meeting Azerbaijan’s New Ambassador to France

STORY BY BILL DIEM

A byproduct of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and media focus on the war’s developments is that growing tensions between other former Soviet republics wanting their place in the world are largely obscured. The rumblings that have serious local effects aren’t reaching the world’s eyes and ears while the louder conflict drowns out these smaller ones.
Thirty-one years after claiming its independence, Azerbaijan is trying to move through a slippery world of history and judgments and war with its neighbor Armenia to become recognized as a neutral, non-aligned country, a friend of both NATO and Russia.