{"id":40706,"date":"2022-01-16T23:00:52","date_gmt":"2022-01-16T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/jan\/16\/the-taliban-shot-my-wife-in-the-head-ex-uk-government-contractor"},"modified":"2022-01-16T23:00:52","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T14:00:52","slug":"the-taliban-shot-my-wife-in-the-head-ex-uk-government-contractor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=40706","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Taliban shot my wife in the head\u2019: ex-UK government contractor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First in a new series about people left behind in Afghanistan, meet Asif, who worked for the UN and Adam Smith International before fleeing to Pakistan<\/p>\n<p><em>Asif* has lost almost everything since the <\/em><em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/13\/taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan-is-an-earthquake-for-middle-east\">Taliban <\/a><\/em><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/13\/taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan-is-an-earthquake-for-middle-east\"> takeover<\/a> in Afghanistan. His wife was shot dead. He <\/em><em>fled <\/em><em>to Pakistan but has no legal status there<\/em><em> and is living in a mosque while seeking treatment for recurrent cancer<\/em><em>. He worked for the United Nations and other international organisations including the former UK Department for International Development (D<\/em><em>fID). Until 2016 he also worked for <\/em><em>Adam Smith International<\/em><em> on British government-funded projects.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In September, my wife went to the house of one my relatives with another family member to collect some of our belongings \u2013 she was three months pregnant with our first child. They went at midnight, so they wouldn\u2019t be seen or recognised.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/jan\/16\/the-taliban-shot-my-wife-in-the-head-ex-uk-government-contractor\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First in a new series about people left behind in Afghanistan, meet Asif, who worked for the UN and Adam Smith International before fleeing to PakistanAsif* has lost almost everything since the  Taliban  takeover in Afghanistan. His wife was shot dead&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2796,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,319,4,61,44,52,84,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-foreign-policy","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-uk-news","category-united-nations","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2796"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40707,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40706\/revisions\/40707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}