Word: afghanistan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Journalists often depend on the goodwill of strangers. On assignment, Stanley and Nachtwey learned that Pakistani police were preventing foreigners from crossing the border into Afghanistan. Nachtwey began to grow a beard and donned guerrilla garb in order to pass through in a truck with a group of mujahedin. Stanley crawled into a burlap bag and hid among sacks filled with wheat. "On the one hand, I was scared," she recalls. "On the other hand, I felt absurd." On the way back, Stanley rode openly with the rebels, but dressed in a burka, a head-to-toe Muslim garment...
Henry, good-humored and alert, is not so very different from Akbar, the smart-alecky mujahedin boy who in the battle zone of Afghanistan grew closer to his comrades than to his father. In Henry's insular world, his homies are his only family. It is his enemies who keep changing. Despite designer sneakers and all the food he needs, Henry is far poorer than Akbar. He has no cause, no purpose to his fighting, no dream of redemption in another life...
Cops, gang members, shopkeepers and social workers in South Central Los Angeles all describe their community as a "war zone." But from afar, their battle wounds seem self-inflicted. In Third World war zones, combatants have no real alternative to war. For the child soldier in Burma or Afghanistan, there are no Big Brothers or child psychologists laboring to keep them out of harm's way. American inner-city kids, like those of Belfast, do have alternatives to gang shootings and street riots. Those opportunities may seem faint, but society does provide American and Northern Irish children with a semblance...
Ehtablay, the Karen rebel, and Ducc, the Los Angeles gang member, have nothing in common except their age, and the intoxication and empowerment that came when they first fired a gun. Young boys, be they in Burma or Afghanistan or Northern Ireland or Los Angeles, are drawn to the violence; even the fear, when it distills into adrenaline, carries illicit pleasure. What sets Los Angeles apart from Afghanistan, Burma and Northern Ireland is that gang warfare, with its spoils of drug money, gratifies greed. Money in South Central is the gang warrior's jihad -- a fitting retribution for a materialistic...
...battle zones around the globe, kids as young as eight are fighting enemies they do not know, for causes they barely understand. A journey to four places -- Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Burma and Los Angeles (yes, Los Angeles) -- reveals how quickly a child learns to kill...