Afghan refugees play the waiting game in Tajikistan

VAKHDAT, Tajikistan: For Bibikhawa Zaki, whose orange football boots match her headscarf, training on the pitch is the highlight of her complicated life.
Like many fellow Afghan refugees in Tajikistan, the 25-year-old dreams of moving on from the poor Central Asian country to a new life in Canada.
A few months before the Taliban took Kabul in summer 2021, she and her family followed thousands of other Afghans across the mountainous border into neighboring Tajikistan.