Assassination Capital

101 East explores the impact of a lost generation of leaders in Kandahar, an Afghan city known for its lawlessness.


Whenever Rangina Hamidi returns to her hometown of Kandahar, she is filled with a deep dread. After the Taliban surrendered to the US forces in 2001, she convinced her father, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, to leave the comfort of the US to try and rebuild their homeland.

Even as friends and family were executed around them, she pleaded to her father to let them stay, to make a difference. And they did. Appointed mayor, Ghulam and his daughter, who started a local business employing widows, helped build schools, pave roads, and plant trees.

Then on a summer day in 2011, as Ghulam was meeting locals, he was killed by a suicide bomber, who had hid explosives in his turban. That was too much for Rangina. She joined the hundreds of Afghan expatriates that had returned, to only leave again.