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Deborah Rodriguez | |
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| Born | Deborah Rodriguez |
| Occupation | Novelist, hairdresser |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 2007–present |
| Genre | Non-fiction, biography/autobiography, memoir, realistic fiction |
| Notable works | Kabul Beauty School |
| Website | |
| deborahrodriguez | |
Deborah "Debbie" Rodriguez is an American writer, hairdresser, and humanitarian. She is noted for creating safe spaces that provide women with a way out of domestic violence and chaotic circumstances.
In 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering aid after the fall of the Taliban. There, she helped found a beauty school that trained 200 women in the art of hairdressing, many of whom went on to run their own salons, giving them the opportunity to start their own business and provide for their families. She later opened a coffee shop in Kabul. [1] [2]
Rodriguez wrote two bestselling books based on her experiences in Afghanistan, The Kabul Beauty School and The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, as well as Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. [3] [4] [5] [6] At one point, Kabul Beauty School was slated to become a movie, with Sandra Bullock playing the lead. [6]
As of 2014, Rodriguez lives in Mazatlán, Mexico, where she is the owner of Tippy Toes Salon and Marrakesh Spa, and where she established Project Mariposa, providing funding for young women to attend beauty school, with the goal of helping them become independent and self-supporting. Margarita Wednesdays (The House on Carnaval Street), a book detailing her journey to remake her life after being forced to leave Afghanistan, was released in June 2014. [7] Her other books include the novels The Zanzibar Wife, [8] [9] and The Moroccan Daughter [10]
As of 2021, Rodriguez has been working to help 130 Afghans, including former staff and beauty school students, leave Afghanistan. [11] As the president of the non-profit Oasis Rescue, she is raising money to support efforts for Afghans who are seeking to leave the country, as well as those who have left and find themselves in need. [12] [13]
Some controversy followed the publishing of Kabul Beauty School. Other women who were also involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies, that events did not unfold the way Rodriguez depicts them. Though it was acknowledged that some personal, place and organization names were changed in the book, and some chronological details adjusted. [14] Some of the women who worked at the beauty school said that, because of the publication of the book and the details it revealed about them, their lives had been put in danger. Some also claimed that Rodriguez had not made good on promises for financial support and other help. [6] However, Rodriguez claims that she was careful to protect the identities of the women mentioned in the book, and that they were all enthusiastic about telling their stories knowing that was the case. [15]
In 2002, Rodriguez married an Afghan, Samer (Sam) Mohammad Abdul Khan, who worked for Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. At the time he had a wife in Saudi Arabia, who became pregnant with his eighth child while he was married to Rodriguez. The marriage with Rodriguez was reported as a happy one as late as April 2007, [16] but soon after, she had to flee Afghanistan. [6]
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
Abdul Rashid Dostum is an Afghan exiled politician, former Marshal in the Afghan National Army, founder and leader of the political party Junbish-e Milli. Dostum was a major army commander in the communist government during the Soviet–Afghan War, and in 2001 was the key indigenous ally to U.S. Special Forces and the CIA during the campaign to topple the Taliban government. He is one of the most powerful warlords since the beginning of the Afghan wars, known for siding with winners during different wars. Dostum has also referred to as a Kingmaker due to his significant role in Afghan politics.
The history of Afghanistan, preceding the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 is shared with that of neighbouring Iran, central Asia and Indian subcontinent. The Sadozai monarchy ruled the Afghan Durrani Empire, considered the founding state of modern Afghanistan.
Mazar-i-Sharīf, also known as Mazar-e Sharīf or simply Mazar, is the fourth-largest city in Afghanistan by population, with an estimated 500,207 residents in 2021. It is the capital of Balkh province and is linked by highways with Kunduz in the east, Kabul in the southeast, Herat in the southwest and Termez, Uzbekistan in the north. It is about 55 km (34 mi) from the Uzbek border. The city is also a tourist attraction because of its famous shrines as well as the Islamic and Hellenistic archeological sites. The ancient city of Balkh is also nearby.
The following lists events that happened during 1996 in Afghanistan.
Atta Muhammad Nur is an Afghan exiled politician and former militant who served as the Governor of Balkh Province in Afghanistan from 2004 to January 25, 2018. An ethnic Tajik, he worked to educate the Mujahideen after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, gaining the nickname "The Teacher". He then became a mujahideen resistance commander for the Jamiat-e Islami against the Soviets.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between late 1996 to 2001 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was originally assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially, it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Karim Khalili, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Abdullah Abdullah, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Asif Mohseni, Amrullah Saleh and others.
The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Soviet–Afghan War on 15 February 1989 until 27 April 1992, ending the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
The 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War took place between 28 April 1992—the date a new interim Afghan government was supposed to replace the Republic of Afghanistan of President Mohammad Najibullah—and the Taliban's conquest of Kabul establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War or the Fifth Afghan Civil War took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
The Battle of Kabul was a series of intermittent battles and sieges over the city of Kabul during the period of 1992–1996.
The Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif were a part of the Afghan Civil War and took place in 1997 and 1998 between the forces of Abdul Malik Pahlawan and his Hazara allies, Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan, and the Taliban.
The Afghan conflict, also called the Afghan crisis or the instability in Afghanistan, is a series of events and wars that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. The country's instability began after the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the 1973 coup d'état; with the overthrow of Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah, who had reigned for almost forty years, Afghanistan’s relatively peaceful period in modern history came to an end. The triggering event for the first major war in Afghanistan during this period was the Saur Revolution of 1978, which overthrew the Republic of Afghanistan and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Rampant post-revolution fighting across the country ultimately led to a pro-government military intervention by the Soviet Union, sparking the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s.
Muhammad Sarwar Danish is an Afghan academic and politician in exile who was the second vice president of Afghanistan, from 2014 to 2021. He was previously the acting minister of justice from 2004 to 2010 and acting minister of higher education from 2010 to 2014. When Daykundi province was carved out of Urozgan province in 2004, Danish became its first governor.
2003 in Afghanistan. A list of notable incidents in Afghanistan during 2003
Mullah Noorullah Noori is the Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan since 7 September 2021. He was also the Taliban's Governor of Balkh Province during their first administration (1996–2001). Noorullah Noori spent more than 12 years in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Noori was released from the detention camp on May 31, 2014, in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban Five, and flown to Qatar.
The Islamabad Accord was a peace and power-sharing agreement signed on 7 March 1993 between the warring parties in the War in Afghanistan (1992–1996), one party being the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the other an alliance of militias led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The Defense Minister of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, resigned his position in exchange for peace, as requested by Hekmatyar who saw Massoud as a personal rival. Hekmatyar took the long-offered position of prime minister. The agreement proved short-lived, however, as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his allies soon resumed the bombardment of Kabul.
Shafiqa Habibi is a journalist, television anchor, activist and politician from Afghanistan. She is known for her work to support women journalists, and for her 2004 candidacy for Vice President of Afghanistan as the running mate of Abdul Rashid Dostum.
The following is an outline of the series of events that led up the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).
Events in the year 2023 in Afghanistan.
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