Jennifer Glasse

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Jennifer Glasse
Afghanistan Correspondent | Afghanistan
Biography

Latest posts by Jennifer Glasse

By Jennifer Glasse in Asia on May 9th, 2012
Farhad Saffi, manager of Milli Boot company which faces closure [Jennifer Glasse]

I first met the Saffi family in 2010  I was in Afghanistan doing a series on building the Afghan military and NATO’s training mission was keen to show off the Milli boot factory.

Colonel John Ferrari, then the deputy commander for programmes of the training mission, said supporting the Milli boot factory was part of their Afghan First programme. 

"One of our goals is to make the Afghan security forces sustainable over time, and that means that the Afghan economy and the Afghan people can support their security forces," Ferrari said. 

Family patriarch Ihsan Saffi agreed. 

He first started making boots in Afghanistan in 1979. 

He and his family fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took over and they returned in 2002. His equipment and factories were destroyed. 

But, he decided to rebuild, and in 2010, he told me the reason was simple. 

By Jennifer Glasse in Asia on October 7th, 2011
Distrust is to be expected a country where a number of high-level officials have been murdered in their own homes [AFP]

Tahmina's enduring memory of living under the Taliban was crying all night just before Eid, one of the biggest celebrations in the Muslim calendar, because she couldn't go to the market in Kandahar with her mother to get treats.

The Taliban didn't allow women or girls out like that. She was then 11 years old and said she asked her mother that night why Afghanistan was the way it was.

Now 21, Tahmina is studying to be a midwife, taking a business-development course and has also learned English.

"We have good luck now,” she says. “Today we can come out of our homes, we can work, but we will always have security problems."

Tahmina covered her face, all except for her eyes, to speak to us on camera, reflecting the still-conservative attitudes here.

Despite threats against her school, and taunts by men in the street, she remains undaunted.