The Hill News

It’s my first time in Herat, a 2,500-year-old city in Afghanistan’s “wild west.” Compared to other Afghan cities, it certainly feels wealthier and is better organized with its tree-lined avenues and stoplights, which are actually respected by drivers and motorcyclists. Despite some semblance of order, criminality and the drug trade abounds and insecurity looms just outside the city limits. 

My colleague and I traveled to Guzara, about an hour outside Herat City, where forty displaced families arrived in February. They came from eastern Badghis, which has been the focus of military operations and airstrikes by coalition and Afghan forces against the Taliban over the past year. No humanitarian organizations have access to their area because of the insecurity.  

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