Christiane looks at the disqualification of candidates from next month's presidential election in Iran.
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Frederick, Maryland (CNN) – In front of a mirror, Aesha Mohammadzai sees what is possible.
There, in the center of her face, is a nearly complete piece of herself - a piece she's been missing since the day she was mutilated nearly four years ago.
Since August 2010, when her image appeared on the cover of Time magazine, she's been known for what she didn't have. Her Taliban husband and in-laws hacked off her nose and ears as punishment for running away.
Her disfigured face became a symbol for oppressed women in Afghanistan, a reminder of what might come in spades if the Taliban regains control. (FULL STORY)
By Samuel Burke & Juliet Fuisz
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, there was no music – certainly not in the open.
The Taliban rounded up and destroyed instruments and cassette tapes, string their entrails on branches as a warning to others who dare thinking of listening to or playing music. Only religious chants were permitted; public performances were unthinkable.
That tune has been changing since the Taliban’s fall more than 11 years ago.
Now the Afghan Youth Orchestra is reviving music in the country. This week they made it all the way from Kabul to New York’s esteemed Carnegie Hall.
Thanks to the leadership of their maestro, Afghan musician Ahmad Sarmast, the Afghan Ministry of Education, and money from the United States and its international partners, the student musicians were able to make the adage that “practice, practice, practice” gets you to Carnegie Hall come true.
Sarmast, their teacher and conductor, had fled Afghanistan, and returned only in 2006. He founded the Afghan Youth Orchestra and an institute that now trains 141 students between the ages of 10 and 21. Half of these students are street children and orphans; 41 of them are girls.
In the video above you can see them perform and discuss their passion for music with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
READ MORE: In Afghanistan, 11-year-old girl married to 40-year-old man
By Mick Krever, CNN
“We’ve made tremendous gains,” Afghan media mogul Saad Mohseni told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “The country doesn’t want to change. The people have grown accustomed to media, to television, to mobile phones.”
Under Taliban rule, there was no television at all – just a radio station playing an endless loop of Islamic prayers and government propaganda.
Now, Tolo TV, which Mohseni launched in 2004, is a staple of Afghan life. It has a 24-hour news channel, but also “Afghan Star,” a singing competition complete with sarcastic judges and text-message voting.
Mhoseni is unapologetic about the impact the media has on Afghan life.
“It facilitates social change,” he said. “It allows society to let off steam.”
READ MORE: Selling little girls to pay back debt in Afghanistan
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The mother of a little Afghan girl cannot even turn to face her daughter. She looks down in shame as she explains why she must hand the girl over to drug lords.
The father of the girl has done what many Afghan farmers must do to finance their opium farms: borrow money from drug traffickers. But the Afghan government and international forces’ attempt to halt the opium trade has quashed the father’s poppy business, and with it, his ability to pay back the lenders.
The drug lords have taken him hostage to extract a payment.
“I have to give my daughter to release my husband,” the mother explains with the girl at her side. She looks no older than six.
Christiane Amanpour's exclusive interview with President Hamid Karzai. Part 1: U.S. troop immunity.
Christiane Amanpour's exclusive interview with President Hamid Karzai. Part 2: The American presence in Afghanistan.
By Samuel Burke, CNN
In the only interview that President Hamid Karzai granted while he was in the United States, he expressed confidence to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the Afghan people will accept the United States’ demand for immunity for American troops left in place there after the 2014 withdrawal.
In a joint press conference with President Obama on Friday, Karzai had stated that he would take the issue to his people, but now he has said that immunity is likely to become a reality.
“I can tell you with relatively good confidence that they will say ‘alright, let’s do it,” Karzai told Amanpour about selling the issue to Afghans. “And I’m sure that they will understand.”
At the press conference, President Obama said that he had stressed to Karzai that “the United States already has arrangements like this with countries all around the world, and nowhere does the U.S. have any kind of security agreement with a country without immunity for our troops.”
In the final stages of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, President Obama was unable to obtain a similar agreement, propelling him to withdraw all U.S. forces from that country in December 2011.
Karzai rejected the notion that has been floated that the U.S. might leave “zero troops” in Afghanistan after the pullout is completed at the end of 2014.
General Stanley McChrystal discusses how President Obama fired him
Part 2: McChrystal on the United States' wars in the Middle East with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Part 3: McChrystal on nation building
By Mick Krever, CNN
When General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was summoned to the White House in June 2010, he knew he was in for something big.
“I suspected in my heart that the president would accept my resignation,” McChrystal told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a wide-ranging interview that aired Friday on CNN International.
President Obama did accept his resignation, days after an embarrassing article was published by Rolling Stone magazine in which the general and his team appeared to be insubordinate to the president.
McChrystal is now retired, and teaches at Yale University. His new memoir, in which he writes about his lifelong military career, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but says almost nothing about his firing three years ago, is called “My Share of the Task.”
The article in Rolling Stone, for which a reporter was embedded with McChrystal, took him by surprise, but he quickly grasped the gravity of its impact.
This is part of a series on foreign policy issues Christiane Amanpour is analyzing in the-lead up to next week’s presidential debate on foreign affairs.
By Christiane Amanpour, CNN & ABC
After 9/11, Afghanistan truly was a “War of Necessity”. There was an unusual consensus, not just among the U.S. and NATO powers, but in many parts of the world, including in Iran and other Muslim countries, that Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban who hosted them had to be defeated.
And after they were sent packing from the Afghan battlefield, an extraordinary thing happened. The Afghan people supported the intervention. The land known as the Graveyard of Empires welcomed the new “invaders.” They knew that they had not come to occupy or do harm, but to help achieve a better future after decades of non-stop war and wholesale devastation – not only of infrastructure and institutions, but also the most basic human rights and freedoms.
As the Taliban were forced out of Kabul in November 2001, Afghan men, as well as women and children, voted with their feet. They marched to demand equal education rights for all, including girls, and thus for a more progressive future than the medieval reality the Taliban and the other Mujaheddin fighters had inflicted on them. FULL POST
By Tom Evans; Sr. Writer, AMANPOUR.
(CNN) - As the top NATO commander in Afghanistan publicly apologized for the latest civilian deaths in the war, one of his former advisers said Tuesday the Afghan people have "crystallized their frustration" on the issue of civilian casualties.
"It's crystallized a disappointment with the international intervention that's been growing since about 2003," said Sarah Chayes, who just completed one year of service as an adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff in Kabul.
"I actually think the issue is broader," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "And so the impact on the Marjah (offensive) is really going to depend on what else happens in that operation."
Chayes was referring to the joint U.S., British, and Afghan offensive in Helmand province in which 15,000 troops are trying to take control of a town and the surrounding area from Taliban fighters.
Despite military efforts to avoid civilian casualties, several dozen have been killed recently by NATO bullets and bombs. In the past two weeks alone, more than 50 Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed in more than half a dozen U.S. and NATO military operations.
To watch the full-length edition on Afghanistan and the Taliban, click here to get our podcast.
By Tom Evans; Sr. Writer, AMANPOUR.
As U.S., British, and Afghan troops move deeper into insurgent-infested areas of southern Afghanistan, one of the world's leading authorities on the Taliban said Thursday the offensive is likely to be the first of many coalition attacks this year and next.
"You will have to repeat this many times in the next year or 18 months all over the country, particularly in the south, but in the east you have to clear these provinces around Kabul, you have to push the Taliban back," Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author of "Descent into Chaos" told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
"The Taliban control most of the south and a lot of the east. They control some of the provinces. They have a very strong presence around Kabul, and I think that's where the next Western offensive will be."
The coalition offensive in and around Marjah in southern Helmand Province - involving 15,000 soldiers and Marines - is all about bringing governance to a critical area of Afghanistan, Rashid told Amanpour.
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