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Researchers and pundits alike regularly describe terrorism as being a theatrical performance that depends on publicity to build recognition, garner attention and command legitimation. Clearly, the mechanical contours of the information environment matter when it comes to determining the opportunities and challenges for both terrorist and counterterrorist success. This article addresses arguably the most singularly significant intermediary for information access in modern society: web search engines. These information gatekeepers play a crucial role in guiding both government and non-state approaches to terror. That said, these tools are associated with bias and malperformance on a number of fronts. This study examines the degree to which different search engine usage might present a differential view of terrorism to different users. I turn to agent-based digital infrastructure as a basis for studying divergent information experiences with a major terrorist incident, specifically the suicide bombing and subsequent small arms attacks on the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 26, 2021. The results are striking, confirming that there is substantial and clear variation in the outputs based around a host of factors—variable queries and query styles, information orientations and subsequent personalization, geographic location and, of course, search engine choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article will trace the interrelations between Kabul's constructed spatiality and the implications of women's walks through the landscape in two primary texts – Taran Khan's Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul and Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five in the Afternoon – to trace the unique discourse and modalities of women's resistance that they generate against oppressive state-sponsored narratives of history. The first part of this article will attempt to delineate the changes in the spatio-geographical landscape of post-2001 Kabul, which I argue was a twofold project of both architectural and epistemic violence. The subsequent sections will interrogate how the walks of the female protagonist in the texts become an agential assertion of resistance against this project of cultural effacement, as they attempt to reinscribe the history of Kabul in manifold different ways which radically challenge state-sponsored authoritarian narratives. Finally, I will argue how both these women, through their urban presence and walks, inhabit as well as set into motion a 'third space', after Bhabha's theorisation of the same, which repurposes existing spatio-ideological markers and multiplies them with new meaning and radical potentialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last US drone strike during its occupation of Afghanistan took place in Kabul on 29 August 2021. The target was identified as an Islamic State-Khorosan (ISIS-K) cell preparing to attack Hamid Karzai International Airport while the United States and its allies conducted a large-scale non-combatant evacuation and the Taliban advanced into the capital. Although the strike was the culmination of intensive aerial surveillance, it killed only innocent civilians. In comparing the official account of events provided by the Pentagon to explain the catastrophic mistake with an alternative narrative established by investigative reporters, it becomes clear that the strike was prompted by a performative series of assumptions and inferences that fastened on every observed action as suspicious and ultimately hostile. A further comparison with a US airstrike in Uruzgan on 21 February 2010 shows that this chain of misinterpretation and miscalculation has been a constant in civilian casualty incidents for many years. This prompts a series of reflections on the architecture of aerial violence and its implications for civilians caught up in the battlespaces of later modern war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-medication with antibiotics (SMA) is a common cause of antibiotic resistance, a major public health problem. This research aimed to identify the prevalence of SMA and explore reasons for practicing SMA among people living in Kabul, Afghanistan. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from May to November 2017 in 12 community pharmacies operating across Kabul, Afghanistan. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to identify the factors associated with the use of SMA. Out of 385 participants, 282 (73.2%) practiced SMA during the last year. Overall, 241 (62.6%) were 'very concerned' about the use of SMA, and 156 (40.5%) highlighted it is bad to practice SMA. The top three antibiotics used for self-medication were penicillin (ATC class: J01C), metronidazole (ATC: P01AB01), and ceftriaxone (ATC: J01DD04). Economic problems, lack of time to visit doctors, and ease of use were cited as the main reasons for practicing SMA. Furthermore, female participants were less likely to practice SMA compared to male counterparts. While efforts should be directed to enforce strict drug regulations system and awareness programs, priority should be given to provide accessible, affordable, and quality health care services to increase citizen's compliance to appropriate drug prescriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the role of centralized national, decentralized supranational, and multiplied Foucauldian powers in a century of urbanization and urban planning in Afghanistan's capital city. Centralized domestic and decentralized foreign powers are framed as vertical planning and technical rationality, whereas the multiplied Foucauldian power is framed as participatory planning and discursive rationality. Within this theoretical framework, the available urban planning literature concerning Afghanistan's urbanization process from 1919 to 2020 is surveyed. The period starting from 1919 to 1921 marks the country's independence and first major undertaking of urban development, whereas the period of 2018–2020 denotes the urban design framework preparation and tendency of its application for Kabul City. Three distinct paradigms; namely, biopower, complementary, and sporadic urban planning and development can be demonstrated by tracing the role of power and the political system in scope, method, vision, and authorization of urban plans for the country. In complementary and sporadic planning paradigms, the decentralized supranational powers guide urban development and planning, whereas the centralized domestic power guides urban development in the biopower paradigm. Within these paradigms, despite the claims and leaps of democratic political regime exercises, a few traces of participatory planning in upgrading projects of unplanned settlements occurred only recently. However, the urban planning regime has lacked discursive rationality and has not accepted meaningful citizen participation in the planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 ended the Taliban rule and brought to power a coalition government whose members had spent most of the previous decade fighting each other. After 2001, the rivalry between these groups was mainly pursued in the cultural sphere where each was fighting to shape the narrative of the war. Place names have been one of the main domains in which this ideological conflict has been fought. The contestation over place names in Kabul city has turned these mundane geographical signs into coveted commodities of great symbolic significance. This article examines the practice of place naming in post-Taliban Kabul to explore the cultural challenges of state-building in a postwar city. Based on official data and field observations, this article is informed by recent theoretical developments in the field of critical toponymy and specifically draws on the emerging debates on commodification of place names. In the post-Taliban era, the article shows, place names have turned into resources for accumulation of symbolic capital and political recognition. As a result, the state offers toponyms to buy political loyalty and nonstate groups often appropriate them illegally. The article contributes to existing scholarship on commodification of place names by linking it to questions of postwar state-building and spatialization of ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender identities and politics have always been entangled with geopolitics in Afghanistan. Since 2001, when North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces ousted the Taliban government, a great deal of research on gender issues and the status of women has been done in Afghanistan. There is, however, a lack of research on how Afghan men themselves view these efforts to promote gender equality and women’s rights. Based on my primary research in Kabul around Afghan masculinity, I found that the efforts of the international community to promote gender equality and improve the conditions of women in Afghanistan have not worked. On the contrary, they have provoked even educated Afghan men into taking up more defensive and conservative positions, instead of convincing them that women deserve equal rights. I demonstrate that gender training since October 2001 has been geopolitical, economic, and social, employing Western notions of gender equality to Afghanistan with scant regard for their relevance in an economy of scarce jobs. This cultural insensitivity exhibited by the international community has contributed to the general disdain for gender equality and women’s rights among most Afghan men in Kabul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article consists of selected translations from captured interviews and dairies of Al Qaida members. The time period covered is from mid-2001 to early 2002 and concerns their operations in Afghanistan. The material clearly conveys a range of emotion, from confident to despondent, as well as efforts to contest the US actions. The first several pages give the reader context and some possible “lessons learned,” but the story(ies) are best told by the Al Qaida members themselves. All names are pseudonyms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]