Kabul — Dr. Najmussama Shefajo is probably Afghanistan’s best known and most experienced OB-GYN.
She became a household name from her regular appearances on Afghan television, where she talked openly about women’s reproductive health, a subject still considered taboo in Afghanistan.
Over the past decade, CBS News has made several visits to her private clinic in central Kabul, but it has never looked as busy as it does now.
Her clinic was flooded with new patients after the Taliban banned women from nursing and midwife training courses back in December. It’s a move that has started to take its toll on Shefajo, who told CBS News she has been suffering from migraines for quite some time “because of the tension.”
“I see my patients are very poor, they cannot pay, I cannot help them, and all the pressure comes on me and I get a headache,” Shefajo said.
Still, Shefajo has remained a committed teacher. She found a way to get around the Taliban’s education ban for her student nurses and midwives by giving them all jobs at her clinic.
This means they are technically no longer students, but employees, even as she continues to train them.
She says that if the current policies remain in place though, the situation in Afghanistan will worsen.
“The previous doctors, midwives, nurses are getting older and older and they will die,” Shefajo said. “Who will provide services?”
Following the U.S. withdrawal and immediately after taking power in 2021, the Taliban also banned girls over the age of 12 from attending school. But the results of such a health care shortage could be catastrophic, Shefajo believes.
Under Taliban rule, women and girls can only be treated by female doctors. Male doctors can only treat women when a male guardian is present.
“For sure the number of deaths will be increasing, and one day there will not be female in Afghanistan,” Shefajo said.
An Afghanistan without women — the Taliban insists that is not what its policies are aimed at.
In the courtyard outside her clinic, CBS News tried to ask some of the husbands, fathers and guardians what they thought about the Taliban’s ban on maternal health education for women, but no one wanted to talk.
Shefajo said her message to the Taliban is to rescind the policy on women’s health education.
“As a doctor, as a mother, as a woman, as a Muslim, I request them…to give a chance for the female to help you to build the country.”
Imtiaz Tyab is a CBS News senior foreign correspondent based in London and reports for all platforms, including the “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Mornings,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and CBS News 24/7. He has extensive experience reporting from major global flashpoints, including the Middle East and the war on terror.
When the planes hit the twin towers on September 11, 2001, Tyler Vargas-Andrews was just three years old.
He couldn’t have known it then, but the events of that day and the subsequent decades-long war which followed would shape his life in profound and lasting ways — far more than the average American or even most veterans.
Vargas-Andrews, 27, was a 23-year-old U.S. Marine sergeant when he became one of the last U.S. casualties of the nearly 20 year war in Afghanistan. And on Thursday, he was honored by Massachusetts Fallen Heroes with their 2025 Daniel H. Petithory Award, named for the first soldier from the Bay State to die during the war.
The first and the last
Sgt. 1st Class Petithory was killed by friendly fire in early December of 2001, and was among the very first casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom. The bomb that took Petithory and two other U.S. service members also injured the future President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
At the time, Vargas Andrews was a toddler and too young to know his country was at war.
Even though he didn’t come from a military family, Vargas-Andrews said that he knew he wanted to serve his country from a young age. He went to Vanden High School, a Fairfield, California, a district also attended by the children of service members stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, until the 10th grade.
It was there, he told the Herald, that he saw what service meant, with “one if not both” of his friends’ parents deployed repeatedly as the Global War on Terror entered a second decade.
With the conflict building through his entire childhood, the desire to serve eventually became impossible to ignore.
“I chose a path where I could do the most good for others — I felt called to serve — and I’m grateful to say I did it,” he said.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps in August of 2017 and eventually was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, known as “the Professionals.” He was a rifleman, like all Marines, but also a sniper.
According to Congressional records describing his service, he was a “professionally instructed gunmen and radio operator for his sniper team.” According to Vargas-Andrews, he spent his enlistment doing what all Marines try to do in “chasing the legacy of those who came before us.”
It was “almost four years to the day” after his enlistment, he told the Herald, when he was assigned the task of helping to evacuate U.S. personnel, assets, and allies from Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport, named for the now-former President injured nearly 20 years earlier on the day Petithory died.
Records show he and his team “aided in the evacuation and processing of over 200 United States Nationals at Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan and were the primary Ground Reconnaissance and Observation asset throughout Evacuation Operations at Abbey Gate.”
As the evacuation was underway on August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the Abbey Gate. Vargas-Andrews was among the dozens of U.S. troops caught in the blast, which claimed the lives of 13 service members and at least 169 Afghan civilians.
Vargas-Andrews was severely injured. He lost his right arm and left leg, and needed 49 surgeries. He spent months in recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
He wasn’t done there, though.
Vargas-Andrews has spent the time since he was medically retired from military service attempting to help his fellow veterans learn to live with their own wounds, and heal where they can. He’s testified before Congress, become a fitness advocate, and has run in marathons across the country.
Coming full circle
Choosing Vargas-Andrews to receive the Daniel H. Petithory Award this year, according to Dan Magoon, the executive director at Massachusetts Fallen Heroes, was a “no-brainer.”
“Tyler is an amazing, resilient warrior,” Magoon told the Herald. Vargas-Andrews, Magoon said, has dedicated his life post-service to his “brother and sister veterans and gold-star families.”
“And he’s used his experience and the tragedy that he lived through to share that message of resiliency. He has a motto: ‘you are never a victim.’ The way he carries himself and does more for others makes him — not only an exceptional Marine — but an unbelievable human being,” he said.
Vargas-Andrews, in speaking with the Herald ahead of Thursday’s award presentation, was remarkably positive considering his tragic circumstances. It’s not always easy, he explained when asked how he manages to keep his spirits up, but continuing to serve helps a great deal.
“I owe it to my friends who died to try to be happy and live a good life,” he said. “The Marine Corps has shaped me into the man that I am today and it’s given me the people I love most in my life.”
Former US Marine Corps Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews speaks at the Mass. Fallen Heroes Memorial Rededication on Saturday. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)Former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, is greeted by 99-year-old Mildred Cox, a WWII stenographer, during the The 12TH Wounded Vet Run, in 2023. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
The Trump administration is ending a program that offered deportation protections for thousands of people from Afghanistan.
The Department of Homeland Security said Monday it will wind down Temporary Protected Status for Afghans on July 12. The TPS program allows migrants to get work permits and temporary reprieve from deportation if the U.S. government determines it is unsafe for them to return to their home countries due to war, natural disaster or some other issues.
Over 8,000 Afghans were approved for TPS as of last year, according to federal statistics. TPS was last extended for Afghanistan in 2023, and it was set to expire in May unless the Trump administration chose to grant another extension.
When the Biden administration extended the program for the country, officials cited a humanitarian crisis since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover, including the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy, human rights abuses by the Taliban and the threat of terrorist attacks by a local Islamic State offshoot.
“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement on Monday. “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent[s] them from returning to their home country.”
The Afghan TPS program is separate from the more permanent “special immigrant visas” issued to Afghans who worked alongside for the U.S. military during its 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ended abruptly in 2021 with the Taliban sweeping through the country.
The winddown of TPS has drawn stiff criticism from advocates.
“This decision is unconscionable and will have long-lasting ripple effects,” #AfghanEvac, a group that helps relocate Afghans, said in a post on X.
The Trump administration has also sought to roll back TPS for Venezuela, which applies to more than 300,000 people, but a judge halted that move in March and argued it was “predicated on negative stereotypes.” The administration is asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
