AFGAN GIRL SHOT DEAD BY THE TALIBANS

By Chandrayee Roy Choudhury, Canada

A 10-year-old Afghan girl who was preparing to come to Canada with her family was instead shot dead by the Taliban last week, a death critics say is partly to blame on Ottawa's sluggish efforts to relocate Afghans who worked with the Canadian military. 

Nazifa's father had worked for the Canadian Armed Forces in Kandahar.

The family received visa approvals, under the federal government's special immigration program for Afghans who worked alongside Canada, in mid-October.

But they were stuck in Afghanistan with little help from Ottawa, he said, as they struggled to get Afghan passports so they could travel to a third country, in this case Pakistan, and then onward to Canada. 

The family was returning from a wedding on the night of Dec. 10 in Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland, when the shooting happened.