Watched by Afghanistan’s first female Olympian, more than 150 girls from high schools in the capital, Kabul, competed today in a track and field event held to select female athletes for the country’s female Athletics Team.

“From this running competition, only the 12 best runners will be selected,” said Jan Alam Hassani, the Secretary-General of Afghanistan’s National Olympics Committee (ANOC), which organized the selection event along with the Directorate of Physical Education at the Ministry of Education.

Kabul, May 23, 2013- Obstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury which leads to both physical and social harm for the women suffering of the injury. Sadly, obstetric fistula is a uniquely eradicable maternal morbidity that has until recently not received sufficient attention in Afghanistan. Obstetric fistula arises most often as a complication of prolonged and/or obstructed labor and results in an opening (fistula) between the bladder and the vagina (vesico-vaginal fistula) or between the rectum and the vagina (recto-vaginal fistula).

The Future of Mobile Money in Afghanistan

Steve Rynecki serves as Mobile Money Adviser at USAID. Below is a follow-up to his June 2012 blog.

Faryab is currently the most conflict-affected province in the Northern region. While needs are on the rise, funding has declined and the presence of international humanitarian staff is lower than in previous years.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN | MAY 22 – Some 80 percent of Afghan women have regular or occasional access to mobile phones, according to a survey conducted in late 2012. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and based on the research methodology of GSM Association’s Mobile Women Program, the survey shows a remarkable speed of mobile phone adoption among Afghan women since the first mobile phone license was issued in the country in 2002. In addition, 82 percent of those surveyed believe mobile phones improve Afghan women's lives.

Plans to turn the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif into a regional transportation hub have taken a jump forward with the opening of a new airport terminal.

While the airport has yet to be officially opened to international travel, domestic flights have already begun at the airport, which compliments other transportation initiatives, including a rail link with Uzbekistan and three ports along the Amu Darya River.

(Kabul) – The Afghan government should take urgent steps to halt an alarming increase in women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said today. Commitments by senior government officials to end such abuses have had little practical impact.

Armed men in hospitals, harassing patients; health facilities used to identify and apprehend enemies; clinics abandoned and hospitals destroyed. Overwhelmed emergency services, where medical staff are in terror of reprisals for having provided care for a patient; ambulances blocked from accessing the wounded, or held up for hours at checkpoints; entrenched animosities and divisions denying certain groups of people the medical assistance they need.

By Pamela Constable,

KABUL — Amid the scattered but steadily mounting carnage of the Taliban’s annual spring offensive, including a suicide bombing Monday that killed a provincial council head, hopes of stirring life into peace talks with the Islamist insurgents seem to be dying here with each new suicide attack, kidnapping and roadside bombing.