is an Afghan-American journalist with a postgraduate degree in politics from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work focuses on war, historical memory, and post-conflict transitions, with a particular emphasis on the implications of U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan as well as in the wider South and Central Asia region.
“During the civil war in Kabul, a stray bullet struck my father’s library and set a large part of our home on fire. There was no water to put it out, and people were too afraid of the gunfire to help. The books burned for hours. This doll was caught in the flames too. This photo was taken in our Kabul home when I was eight months old.”
As Afghanistan plunged into chaos in August 2021, with the collapse of its government and its leaders feeling, former President Hamid Karzai made an unprecedented and unexpected decision: He stayed.
Her work has been published in The Diplomat, New Lines Magazine, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and translated into Russian, Uzbek, and Bosnian. It has also been widely republished across South Asian media. Her reporting on war and displacement has been cited in studies by universities and international organizations, including the Asia Foundation and Cambridge University Press, and has participated in key debates on U.S. policy, including discussions on the U.S. war in Afghanistan at the Wilson Center and European platforms such as Forum 2000, Open Society, and One World.
