The 'Night of Hand Grenades' is remembered in silence, then & now
A new wave of repression threatens to erase the memory & future of Afghanistan's Ismailis while the world colludes in Taliban impunity
May 5, 2025 — One winter morning about 35 years ago, when he was five or six years old and living in the tiny village of Kalu, in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan’s highlands, Gulabuddin Sukhanwar’s uncle was having trouble opening the front gate of the family compound. He thought it had iced shut overnight and started pulling hard. “When he forced the gate open, it blew up,” Sukhanwar said. The gate had been booby-trapped with a hand grenade. Pulling on the gate pulled the pin and armed the grenade. After a short delay, it exploded. “He was very badly hurt,” he said.
