Muttaqi also said the Islamic Emirate is ready for sustained cooperation with regional countries on border security.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate, told the eighth meeting of the Moscow Format on Afghanistan that the country seeks to become a key hub for economic cooperation and connectivity between Central and South Asia and other regions, rather than an arena for regional rivalries.
Muttaqi said Afghanistan’s foreign policy is based on “open doors, balanced engagement, mutual respect and shared interests,” adding that Kabul does not define its relations with one country as being against another.
He called on regional countries to increase investment in Afghanistan’s energy, mining, agriculture, industry, transit, logistics and infrastructure sectors. According to him, Afghanistan views regional projects such as TAPI, TAP, CASA-1000 and the Trans-Afghan Railway as important for economic growth and regional connectivity.
The foreign minister also addressed relations with Pakistan, saying security, political and economic issues between the two countries should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. He said Pakistan is using military pressure against Afghanistan and violating the country’s sovereignty.
Muttaqi also said the Islamic Emirate is ready for sustained cooperation with regional countries on border security and efforts to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.
On Afghanistan’s economy, he said the country’s real gross domestic product grew by 1.5% during the 1404 fiscal year, while private-sector investment reached 200.9 billion afghanis.
The foreign minister described Russia’s recognition of the Islamic Emirate as an important development and expressed hope that other countries would follow a similar approach.
Muttaqi stressed that direct engagement with Afghanistan is a practical way to address issues and urged countries outside the region to base their policies toward Afghanistan on “ground realities, direct relations and mutual interests” rather than pressure and isolation.
Muttaqi: Afghanistan Should Be a Hub for Regional Cooperation
U.S. Army soldiers with the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 5th Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division and Afghan National Army soldiers conduct a combined patrol in the village of Shabila Kalan, Zabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 30, 2009. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez, U.S. Air Force. (Released)
Human Rights Watch has called on the United States and other countries involved in the Afghanistan war to investigate alleged war crimes and serious abuses by their forces and provide compensation to victims and their families, saying Afghans still have no clear path to justice 25 years after the conflict began.
In a statement marking 25 years since the U.S.-led war began on October 7, 2001, HRW said successive governments have failed to provide adequate accountability or redress for Afghans subjected to abuses by foreign forces. The organization said many people detained by U.S. forces were held for months or years without being charged with crimes and that victims have largely been left without an effective mechanism to seek compensation.
Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at HRW, said Afghans tortured in U.S. custody and families of people who were wrongfully killed still lack a clear avenue to file claims or obtain redress from the U.S. government. HRW documented abuses including beatings, humiliation, waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation and mock executions.
HRW also highlighted alleged abuses by other coalition forces. It said investigations into alleged summary killings and mistreatment by Australian and British forces have made limited progress. In Australia, the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes by special forces resulted in only two arrests, while trials had not begun and victims or their families were not known to have received compensation, according to HRW.
The organization cited several cases involving U.S. forces, including the 2012 conviction of Robert Bales for killing 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar. HRW also pointed to the “Kill Team” case, in which several U.S. soldiers were convicted over the killing of Afghan civilians, while saying other serious allegations, including the deaths of civilians in Wardak province, did not result in prosecutions.
HRW said accountability should extend to all parties to the conflict, including Taliban forces, Afghan government forces and other armed groups. It accused Taliban fighters of attacks on civilians, aid workers, government officials and election-related targets, while also pointing to alleged torture, sexual violence and enforced disappearances involving powerful figures linked to the former Afghan government.
The organization said the International Criminal Court initially investigated alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by various parties in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, Islamic State, Afghan government forces, U.S. forces and the CIA. However, HRW said the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation has not publicly advanced against several of those actors.
A potential avenue for broader accountability emerged in October 2025, when the UN Human Rights Council established an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan. The body is mandated to collect, preserve and analyze evidence of international crimes and serious violations of international law by all sides and prepare files to facilitate future criminal proceedings.
HRW said governments should ensure that the new UN mechanism receives sufficient resources and begins its work without delay. It argued that the passage of time and government inaction should not prevent Afghan victims and survivors from obtaining justice, recognition and reparations.
HRW Urges US, Allies to Investigate Alleged War Crimes in Afghanistan and Compensate Victims
In June 2026, HAMRAH Network published Taliban Madrasas: Ideological Consolidation, Gender Persecution and Afghanistan’s Future Stability, which documented the scale of the Taliban’s madrasa expansion. Drawing on ground-level fieldwork conducted in Kandahar and Bamyan provinces between March and May 2026 and interviews with more than 34 individuals with direct knowledge of the education sector, the report reveals an educational transformation of a speed and scale without precedent in Afghanistan’s modern history. In this Expert Voice, the report’s author, Timor Sharan,* presents its key findings and analyses their significance for Afghan society, regional stability and international engagement.
The full report, including sourcing, methodology and the HAMRAH Network’s recommendations, is available here.
An unprecedented transformation
Before August 2021, there were approximately 5,000 madrasas that formally registered across Afghanistan, while many more functioned informally without state regulation. In September 2025, the Taliban’s de facto Ministry of Education reported over 23,000 registered religious education institutions, with more than 3.65 million students – talib al-ilm(seekers of knowledge) – enrolled. This near-fivefold increase in four years represents not merely an expansion, but a wholesale restructuring of Afghanistan’s religious education system, with a knock-on effect on state-run schools.
Registered religious education institutions now outnumber Afghanistan’s more than 18,000 public and private schools (see Table 1 below). Against this backdrop, the Taliban established only 276 new public schools since they have retaken power, despite not all children having access to a school – a disparity that underscores the extent to which religious education has been deliberately prioritised while the public school system is reduced to a residual function.
Much of this growth has been achieved not by building new institutions from scratch, but through what might be described as a “franchise model”:[1] bringing pre-existing private, informal and community-based madrasas under Taliban administrative control in exchange for government salaries, formal certification and access to state resources. At the same time, the Taliban have systematically converted public education infrastructure. Documented cases include Abdul Haji Habibi High School in Khost province – one of the most modern secondary schools in southeastern Afghanistan – converted into a madrasa in 2022, displacing approximately 6,000 students and 130 teachers. Across all 34 provinces, teacher training institutes were shuttered and converted into jihadi madrasas, while the Ministry of Education simultaneously abolished its Teacher Training Department entirely.
Metric
2023-2024
Sept 2025
Standard madrasas
19,669 registered institutions
22,972 registered institutions (in which 27,379 students were provided with accommodation and food).
Dar ul-Huffaz
1,277 (with accommodation capacity for 1,650talib al-Ilmapproved in 2023)
Data on the total number of Dar ul-Huffaz centres is unavailable; however, 1,800 talib al-ilm were reported enrolled, of whom 300 are girls.
Dar-ul-Ulooms
115
Data unavailable
Orphanages (with religious teaching)
39
9,000 orphans receiving religious education in madrasas
Madrasas in prison
Data unavailable
92
Total madrasa enrolment
3,687,200
Exact data unavailable. The IEA is reported to have enrolled 29,013 new students (grade 1-14) in 2025-26.
Jihadi madrasa enrolment
21,000
26,000
Table 1: National Scale of Madrasa Expansion (2023-2025). Source: Ministry of Education, Summary Report on the Implementation Progress of the Ministry of Education’s Operational Plan Achievements, September 2025.NB: Figures should be treated as minimum estimates; this report’s provincial findings indicate significant undercounting. Official data do not distinguish between newly constructed madrasas, formerly private institutions brought under Taliban registration and repurposed public facilities.
A layered architecture of ideological control
The Taliban have developed a layered religious education infrastructure comprising several distinct institution types which together form an interlocking system of religious instruction, politicised ideological socialisation, leadership reproduction and societal control – see Table 1.
Standard madrasas – the largest category by number – provide mass religious conditioning through a curriculum rooted in the Dars-e Nizami tradition, with its heavy emphasis on Quranic memorisation, Hadith studies and Hanafi jurisprudence. Dar ul-Huffaz centres specialise in Quranic memorisation and typically enrol children at a very young age – they are the earliest point of entry into the broader madrasa system. Dar ul-Ulooms are seminaries, providing advanced theological training for the future clerics, judges, muftis and religious administrators who will staff Taliban governance structures for the next generation. Female madrasas have become, since the Taliban’s ban on girls’ secondary and further education, the only remaining legal education option for girls above grade six.
The most politically significant category is the jihadi madrasa. Established by decree of Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and administered through a special Kandahar-based directorate that reports directly to him – in other words, outside the normal Ministry of Education chain of command – these institutions function in practice as screening and recruitment mechanisms for the Taliban’s administrative, religious and security structures. The acting Minister of Higher Education, Neda Muhammad Nadim and former Minister of Refugees Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani have both publicly called for madrasas to instil jihadi and military concepts. Officially, the Taliban acknowledge one jihadi madrasa per province. HAMRAH’s fieldwork in Kandahar alone documented 23.
Ultimate doctrinal authority flows from the Supreme Leader’s office through a newly established General Directorate of Religious Affairs in Kandahar. The Supreme Leader directly appoints senior administrators of jihadi madrasas, sets doctrinal parameters and exercises final approval over the curriculum. This governance architecture – the Supreme Leader holding doctrinal authority, ministries of education and higher education managing operations, ulama councils enforcing local conformity and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice monitoring compliance – is designed for durability. The Generate Directorate of the Religious Affairs in Kandahar manages the operation of Jihadi schools.
What the fieldwork found: Kandahar andBamyan
HAMRAH’s provincial fieldwork illuminates both the scale of Taliban madrasa expansion and its unevenness with findings in two provinces telling markedly different stories about the same national project.
In Kandahar – the Taliban’s ideological and administrative heartland – the Provincial Directorate of Education recorded 1,522 madrasas operating across the province in 2026, with an estimated enrolment of approximately 608,800 students. Kandahar City alone accounts for 340 madrasas and approximately 136,000 enrolled students – nearly one quarter of total provincial enrolment. Researchers verified much of this data through field visits to Kandahar City and four surrounding districts and identified at least 23 Dar ul-Ulooms and jihadi madrasas in the city and its immediate surroundings alone, against the Taliban’s official acknowledgement of one jihadi madrasa per province.
In Bamyan – a predominantly Hazara and Shia Muslim province with historically high rates of girls’ enrolment in schools and a history of anti-Taliban resistance – the transformation has been starker in relative terms. Total enrolment in the province’s madrasas (all Sunni) stood at approximately 6,972 students in 2023. By 2025, that figure had roughly doubled to approximately 12,800. More than 2,500 students now graduate annually from these religious institutions, compared with fewer than 1,800 from public schools – down from more than 4,000 before 2021 (see Table 2).
Indicator
2023
2024-25
Public madrasas
84
136 (incl 16 not yet registered)
Female madrasas
1 public
1 public, 1 private
Dar ul-Ulooms
1 public, 1 private
1 public, 1 private
Dar ul-Huffaz
10
Data unavailable
Jihadi madrasas
0
1 (capacity 1,000 students)
Total madrasa students
6,972 (3,401 male; 3,571 female)
~12,800 (est.)
Annual madrasa graduates
Not recorded
>2,500
Annual public school graduates
>4,000 (pre-2021)
~1,800
Table 2: Madrasa Expansion in Bamyan Province; Sources: Bamyan Provincial Directorate of Education (2023 and 2025 data); HAMRAH Network fieldwork.
Bamyan also illustrates a hardening posture toward non-Sunni communities. In early 2026, students at Bamyan University were told that dormitory accommodation would only be available to Sunni Muslim students following the Hanafi school. A December 2025 report by Rawadari documented the Taliban’s use of coercion and financial incentives to convert Ismaili Shia communities in four districts of Badakhshan Province. These are not isolated incidents but early indicators of a hardening posture toward non-Sunni communities as the Taliban’s power consolidates.
The evidence from Kandahar and Bamyan points to a coordinated effort to rapidly expand the madrasa network, which has become a central instrument of the Taliban’s project to reshape and penetrate Afghan society. They have subordinated madrasas in these provinces to their administrative framework, repurposing them and establishing new ones as instruments of movement-building, state consolidation, enforcement of their decrees and the cultivation of popular legitimacy and support. In Kandahar, their heartland, madrasa expansion is vast and has deepened the Taliban’s reach into society. In Bamyan, it is being used to reach into non-Sunni communities and extend Taliban dominance, with plans to bring Shia madrasas under state control too.
FinancingMadrasas
The full cost of the Taliban’s madrasa expansion programme is difficult to establish; no public disclosure of expenditure has been made. The World Bank reported in 2025 that education spending accounted for 18.8 per cent of the total Taliban budget – approximately USD 675 million – the second-largest sector after security. A 2023 AAN report found that 95 per cent of the education budget went on salaries alone. Read alongside the Taliban’s own data – 87,592 religious education posts advertised nationwide, with recruitment of 50,000 personnel underway in 2025 – the implication is clear: a substantial and growing share of the Ministry of Education’s budget is directed to salaries for religious teachers, madrasa instructors and administrative personnel.
Beyond the state budget, the Taliban draw on several additional funding streams. The Supreme Leader maintains a significant discretionary budget, which funds madrasa construction and management outside normal appropriations processes. Coercive fundraising targeting private individuals and businesses has become increasingly common. As one businessman in Kandahar told HAMRAH researchers: “Paying for a madrasa’s salaries, food and building costs is the price of getting things done under the Emirate.” Sustaining and funding a madrasa has become an informal way to secure contracts, licences, or favourable treatment from authorities – conferring religious legitimacy alongside political advantage. Some of the largest madrasas in Kandahar documented in this study were linked to key Taliban figures, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who established al-Jamiah al-Islamiyyah Dar-ul Uloom Kandahar following the Taliban’s return to power, from which approximately 1,000 students graduate annually.
Religious taxation provides another funding stream. The Emirate takes what in most Muslim countries are private charitable donations as state taxes. They are ushr – a tithe of approximately ten per cent levied on the harvest – and zakat – a tax on increases in livestock. In 2023, the Taliban reported collecting approximately one billion dollars through these taxes – funds flowing directly to the Supreme Leader’s office for distribution at his discretion. The scale of investment required to sustain a network of 23,000 madrasas cannot be explained by the Taliban’s domestic revenue base alone and the sources, mechanisms and governance of madrasa financing remain inadequately documented.
The institutionalisation of gender persecution
The madrasa network has become the primary infrastructure through which the Taliban’s gender persecution is being institutionalised and internalised. The system of gender discrimination – characterised by leading human rights organisations and a growing number of governments as gender apartheid – is being encoded in doctrine, enforced through surveillance and deliberately designed to outlast the current political moment.
A survey involving 8,245 women across all 34 provinces found that 56 per cent identified the Taliban’s ban on girls’ secondary education as the primary reason families enrolled daughters in madrasas.[2] Today, between 1.4 and 2.2 million girls are barred from attending school beyond primary level.
Field interviews documented that female madrasa students are consistently taught that men are permitted four wives, that women should accept and not question their husbands’ remarriage and that early marriage – particularly to fighters and those involved in jihad – is to be sought and celebrated. One girl, interviewed in Kandahar, noted that three of her friends had already married at age sixteen.[3] Physical compliance with Taliban gender norms is enforced within madrasa settings with notable rigour: girls are monitored not only for hijab observance, but for the colour of their nail varnish, the shape of their eyebrows and the colour of their clothing. This pervasive surveillance of female bodies normalises a culture of control that extends well beyond madrasa walls.
The social consequences are immediate and visible beyond the classroom. Field interviews documented stories of brothers pressuring sisters to marry early and abandon education, armed with religious authority derived from their madrasa instruction (see the report below). Children are being taught that their loyalty to the Emirate takes precedence over family bonds and that monitoring and reporting the behaviour of parents and relatives is not a betrayal but an obligation. The report also documents parents withdrawing sons from madrasas specifically out of fear that their children had become informants within their own households. As one community elder in Kandahar recounted, after speaking with the head of provincial intelligence: “Be aware that we now have informants in each one of your households.” The madrasa system, the elder observed, was the ideal training ground for this kind of conformity.
The long-term implications are profound. A generation educated exclusively within this framework will inherit and enforce a social order in which gender persecution is not policy but doctrine – normalised, naturalised and sanctified by religious authority. This is, by design, self-perpetuating.
The ideological threat
In July 2022, following criticism from ulama regarding the ban on girls’ education, Supreme Leader Akhundzada warned that criticism of Taliban authorities was “not permissible” in Islam, framing dissent as fitna – a state of social disorder incompatible with Muslim duty, to be eradicated by all means necessary. The acting Minister of Higher Education stated that those who undermine Taliban order “by speech, pen, or in practice” are considered wajeb ul-qatl – permitted to be killed. Meanwhile, our research found that non-Hanafi religious minorities are increasingly characterised in madrasa teaching as guilty of bid’aa – illegitimate innovation from the correct path of Islam – and legitimate candidates for conversion. Dissenters, women and religious minorities inside Afghanistan are the first targets of a doctrine that treats disagreement as a religious offence.
The primary concern is not that jihadi madrasas are systematically producing battlefield combatants – available evidence does not support that conclusion at this stage. The more consequential threat is ideological: the annual production of tens of thousands of graduates formed within a framework that treats religious authority, political loyalty and militant identity as inseparable.
The full report, including sourcing, methodology and the HAMRAH Network’s recommendations, is available here.
*Timor Sharan is Executive Director of HAMRAH Network and a former Senior Policy Analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group (ICG). He is the author of Inside Afghanistan: Political Networks, Informal Order and State Disruption.
Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS)/BISHNAW, Community Tracking Poll on Women’s Experiences and the Shift toward Madrasa Enrolment in Afghanistan, 2024.
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Statistical modelling released by UN Women projects that the ongoing ban will trigger a 25 per cent increase in the rate of child marriage, putting 37.5 per cent of all Afghan girls at immediate risk of forced underage marriage.
A Parallel Education System: The Taliban’s madrasa expansion and its implications for gender, society and regional security
For many small traders, buying goods on credit is part of doing business. It allows them to trade even if they do not have the money to pay for stock up front. However, that also leaves them vulnerable when deals go wrong, creditors demand repayment or the economy takes a downturn. Borrowing more money to cover a loss or settle an outstanding debt may offer temporary relief, but can also draw a trader into an intractable cycle of debt with far-reaching consequences. In this instalment of the Daily Hustle, AAN’s Hamid Pakteen hears from a car trader whose business initially prospered because dealers were willing to give him cars on credit. But after a series of losses, he found himself borrowing to repay what he already owed. He describes how mounting debts forced him to sell inherited land and cost him the trust of the very people who had helped his business prosper.
Most nights, the light in our living room stays on late. After everyone in my family has gone to sleep, I sit there alone with a sheet of paper, taking stock of my creditors and how much I owe each of them. I add up the figures over and over as if the numbers might somehow change if I count them again. Some evenings, when I hear people coming and going outside, I wonder if one of my creditors has come to my home to ask for his money.
There was a time when I was a self-assured trader in our local market. I bought and sold goods, mostly cars, and believed that, with a little more effort, I could build up my capital and put away a nest egg for the future. When someone trusted me enough to give me goods on credit, I took it as a sign that I had a good reputation. Today, I’m no longer that man. I’ve sold most of my assets and spent years struggling to repay my debts. What is hardest of all is that I’ve lost the trust of people who once believed in me. I think back to the first time I bought goods on credit. If someone had told me then that one day I’d be borrowing money to repay a loan, only to borrow again to pay that one back, I wouldn’t have believed them. But that’s exactly what happened.
How I first fell into debt
My name is Muhammad Wali. I’m 38 years old and was born in Ghazni city into a large household of 14 people, including my parents, two paternal uncles, two paternal aunts, four sisters, three brothers and me. Over the years, our family gradually grew smaller as my aunts, uncles and sisters married or moved away. My father married a second wife and, after living with us for a few years, moved with her to Kabul and later to Turkey. We never heard from him again. We only learned that he’d died when his second wife showed up at our house to settle the inheritance.
I was still at school when he left – my two older brothers worked and supported the family. But after a few years, they married and started their own households. They helped out when they could, but I had to put my plans to go to university on hold and start working to support myself and my mother.
When I was 20 years old, I joined some of my friends from Ghazni in Iran. I found work in a mechanic’s shop in Tehran and earned enough to support myself and send money home to my mother. Back then you could earn more in Iran and my employer gave me a place to live, so I even managed to put a little bit of money away for a rainy day, but I had to come back to Afghanistan when my mother arranged for me to get married. By then, my brothers and I had gone our separate ways. I spent the little money I had saved in Iran on the wedding and had to take whatever work I could find to make ends meet and support my mother and my wife. Then my mother fell ill and I had to borrow money to pay for her treatment. At first, she recovered, but she needed more treatment that we couldn’t afford, so I kept borrowing to pay for it. By the time my mother died, I was already in debt. By then, I had a family of my own – my wife, two daughters and two sons – and what I earned as a day labourer wasn’t enough to cover our household expenses and repay my debts.
From taxi driver to car trader
Then one day a friend gave me a car on credit. He told me I could work as a taxi driver and had a year to pay him back. The car changed our lives. I could finally earn a living and, little by little, things began to improve. Then I met a car dealer in Ghazni, who bought cars in Herat and needed someone to bring them to Ghazni and sell them and he asked me to work with him. I sold the taxi and paid back what I owed my friend. I worked with the car dealer for two years and learned the ropes before I started trading cars on my own. At first, I’d take one car at a time on credit, sell it for a profit in another province, mainly in Khost, Paktia or Kabul, and repay the dealer. Over time, as my business grew, so did people’s trust in me. Dealers started giving me one car, two cars, even ten cars on credit because they knew I would sell them and pay back what I owed. I didn’t worry about being in debt. The loans let me do business and I was sure I’d be able to repay what I owed. But things didn’t turn out as I’d expected.
Things took a turn for the worse when one of my creditors unexpectedly asked for his money back earlier than we’d agreed because he needed it for a family emergency. To pay him back, I had to sell a car for less than what I’d paid for it. I used the money from the sale to repay him, but the loss left me without the capital I needed to keep trading. I told myself that this was a temporary setback and that I would make up the loss on the next deal.
To keep my business going, I took another car on credit. This time, I had six months to pay for it. Six months seemed like a long time. I thought I could make enough money from a few good deals to cover my losses and pay back what I owed. But once again, I needed cash urgently and sold another car at a loss. I used the money to repay the six-month loan, but the loss left me with even less capital. I took another car on credit and borrowed more than before, hoping that a bigger deal would help me make up for my losses and turn a profit. Instead, I kept losing money and taking out larger loans. I was paying back one creditor after another, but each new debt was bigger than the last. Instead of getting out of debt, I was sinking deeper into it.
Buying more time
Before I knew it, this had become my way of life. Whenever a repayment deadline approached and I didn’t have enough money, I’d borrow again. Each new loan bought me a little more time, but it also left me with more debt. The economic situation became even more difficult after the Taliban returned to power. People had less money and very few were buying cars. My profits kept shrinking, just when I needed to earn more to repay my growing debts. Whatever I earned went towards paying off old debts, leaving me without enough money to keep trading or cover our household expenses.
Eventually, I stopped thinking about how much profit I might make that day. Instead, I worried about which creditor was waiting for his money and where I’d find the money to pay him.
When I finally sat down and added up everything I owed, I could hardly believe the total – five million afghanis (USD 77,600). I sat and stared at the paper for a long time. To me, that number meant far more than money. Behind those figures were deals, promises and sleepless nights spent worrying about who to pay and how. I thought about how I’d ended up in this situation. One small loan followed another, one losing deal followed another and one promise to pay tomorrow became a promise to pay the following week.
The cost of my debts
When I could no longer earn enough to repay my debts, I had to start selling what I owned. The hardest decision of my life was to sell the land I’d inherited from my father – land that had been in our family for generations. But my creditors wouldn’t wait and I had no other way to pay them. I sold the land one plot at a time and used the money to repay my creditors. Each time I sold a piece of land, I hoped the burden of debt would ease. But after paying my creditors, I’d add up what I still owed and realise that I was still heavily in debt.
As my debts grew, I also began to lose the trust of people who had once been willing to lend me money or give me goods on credit. People who had once been willing to do business with me on a handshake and a promise now asked what had happened to the money I already owed them. Some wouldn’t do business with me at all, while others would only deal with me if I paid cash up front. Sometimes, in the market, I’d see someone I’d known for years turn away as soon as he spotted me, trying to avoid me. That was when I realised I’d lost their trust and that their trust was worth more to me than money.
As the economy worsened after the Taliban returned to power, people had less money and my creditors were under more financial pressure. They started pressing me harder to pay them back. I understood their position. They’d lent me money and had every right to expect repayment, but I simply didn’t have enough to pay them. Eventually, some of them lodged complaints against me and the police called me to come to the station. I explained to them that I wasn’t trying to avoid paying my debts. I was doing my best to repay everyone, but I needed more time to earn enough money. The police spoke to my creditors and persuaded them to give me more time to pay back what I owed.
Someone looking at my situation from the outside might ask why I kept borrowing when I knew it was making things worse. But when a creditor was waiting for his money, I could think only about how to get through that day. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen tomorrow.
Still paying the price
Looking back, I wish I’d stopped taking out one loan after another and believing that the next deal would bring in enough money to clear my debts. Maybe then things wouldn’t have got so bad. My debts have cost me more than money. I have sold much of the land I inherited from my father, damaged relationships and lost the trust of people who once did business with me.
I’ve managed to pay back a bit more than half of what I owed, but I still owe two million afghanis (USD 31,150). I’ve started working as a day labourer a few days a week. It’s good, honest work, but I don’t find work every day, so I still trade cars, although now I only buy a car when I know I have a buyer. Sometimes, I still have to borrow money, but I’m much more careful now. Before taking on any new debt, I think about how much I can realistically afford to repay.
I still hope that one day I’ll pay off my last loan and there’ll be no creditors’ names left on my list. I want to live without fearing what tomorrow will bring and regain the trust I’ve lost.
What worries me most is what my mistakes might mean for my children’s future. Who will want to marry my daughters when their father is known as a debtor? How will I afford my sons’ weddings? I’m especially worried that my sons might have to leave school and start working to help me repay my debts. I don’t want that to happen. My children shouldn’t have to give up their education or their futures because their father made bad decisions.
Above all, I want my children to have a different life from mine. I want them to finish their education and build their own futures without worrying about the debts I’ve left behind. I hope they’ll learn from my mistakes, especially the importance of keeping their word and not making promises they can’t keep. These are lessons I’ve learned the hard way and I hope I can show them that it’s possible to make a living without falling into debt as I did.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Jelena Bjelica
Borrowing from the Future: How an Afghan trader sank deeper into debt
The United Nations says 64 incidents involving explosive remnants of war and unexploded ordnance have been recorded in eastern Afghanistan since the beginning of 2026, resulting in 64 civilian casualties.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said the figures were recorded by the UN Department of Safety and Security. He warned that Afghanistan remains among the countries with the highest civilian casualty rates from unexploded ordnance worldwide.
Dujarric said explosive remnants of war continue to pose a serious threat to civilians, particularly children. The danger persists from abandoned and unexploded weapons left behind by years of conflict and continues to affect communities even after fighting in many parts of the country has declined.
The warning came after an abandoned mortar round reportedly exploded in Nangarhar while four children were handling it. The incident killed three children and injured another, according to UN humanitarian officials cited in the briefing.
The UN and its partners are continuing mine-risk education, clearance operations and assistance for communities and survivors affected by explosive hazards. However, Dujarric said severe funding shortages are limiting mine-action activities.
The wider humanitarian response in Afghanistan is also facing a major funding gap. The UN said its $1.7 billion Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2026 was only 30 percent funded at the time of the briefing, with $537 million received. The shortfall has already forced some aid partners to suspend assistance in certain areas.
The continued presence of explosive remnants highlights the long-term humanitarian consequences of Afghanistan’s decades of conflict. UN and international mine-action programmes have for years focused on clearing contaminated land, educating communities about explosive hazards and supporting survivors.
UN: 64 Civilians Killed or Injured by Explosive Remnants in Eastern Afghanistan This Year
On 1 October 2026, Pakistan again carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan, this time targeting areas in Kunar and Helmand provinces. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed, most of them children, and nine others were injured. Afghan authorities said three civilian homes were struck. Pakistan, however, said the attacks were based on credible intelligence and targeted hideouts belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), claiming that 22 militants were killed.
The latest attacks came only a week after Pakistan’s air force struck ten locations in Kandahar, Paktia and Khost on 24 September, killing four civilians according to Afghan authorities, and just days after earlier strikes in Kunar and Paktika in which the UN confirmed three civilian deaths.
Islamabad has repeatedly described its attacks as deliberate, precise and proportionate, presenting them as necessary responses to militant attacks and threats allegedly originating from Afghan territory. Yet the growing civilian toll and continuing deterioration of Pakistan’s own security situation raise serious questions about that justification. These strikes appear to serve two additional political goals for Islamabad that go beyond its stated counterterrorism strategy against the TTP: avoiding the difficult commitments Pakistan faces under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement and diverting attention from Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir’s failure to contain the worsening security situation inside Pakistan.
The record of the past year provides enough evidence to judge Pakistan’s air campaign by its results rather than its stated intentions. Between October 2025 and September 2026, Pakistan carried out repeated air and drone strikes inside Afghanistan, targeting Kabul and the provinces of Kandahar, Kunar, Khost, Nangarhar, Paktia and Paktika. The October strikes have now extended that campaign into Helmand as well.
The civilian cost has been severe. Between 26 January and 31 March alone, the United Nations recorded 764 civilian casualties from hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan: 372 people killed and 392 injured. By late September, UNAMA said cross-border armed violence had caused more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan during 2026. The October 1 strikes provided another grim reminder of that toll, with the UN once again confirming civilian deaths, most of them children.
The deadliest incident occurred on 16 March, when Pakistani airstrikes hit the Omid Drug Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre in Kabul. UNAMA later verified that at least 269 civilians were killed and 122 injured, most of them patients. Amnesty International found no evidence supporting Pakistan’s assertion that the centre was being used to store weapons, ammunition or for other military purposes and called for the strike to be investigated as a possible war crime. That finding seriously undermined Islamabad’s justification for one of the deadliest attacks of the conflict.
Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy also appears to be failing by its own stated objective: reducing militant violence at home.
On 18 September, a suicide vehicle bombing and subsequent armed assault struck the Old Police Lines complex in Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, during Friday prayers. The reported death toll later rose to at least 31, while more than 100 people were injured. It was the deadliest attack on a police facility in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since the 2023 Peshawar Police Lines bombing. Just before the Kohat attack, an improvised explosive device struck a security forces convoy in Hangu, killing six Pakistani soldiers.
The broader statistics are equally troubling for Islamabad. The Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies recorded 774 violence-linked deaths across Pakistan during the second quarter of 2026. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone accounted for 475 deaths—a 53 percent increase from the previous quarter—while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan together accounted for almost 96 percent of all violence-linked fatalities in the country.
These figures show little evidence that repeated strikes inside Afghanistan have deterred militant violence in Pakistan’s border provinces. The October 1 attacks reinforce that contradiction: Pakistan said it had once again destroyed militant hideouts, yet its previous rounds of cross-border military action have not prevented increasingly deadly attacks inside Pakistan.
What the air campaign has produced instead is a growing civilian toll and deeper hostility among Afghans. Civilian homes, religious institutions and a major medical facility have been among the sites reported hit during the conflict, while Kabul has repeatedly disputed Pakistan’s claims about the targets it says it is attacking.
The air campaign has also unfolded alongside other punitive measures. Pakistan has repeatedly shut border crossings and disrupted trade with Afghanistan, severely restricting the movement of essential goods. It has continued large-scale deportations of Afghan refugees and migrants, while the Durand Line remains a source of deep political disagreement. To many Afghans, these policies are increasingly viewed not as attempts to solve bilateral disputes but as instruments of coercion.
Pakistan’s approach to outside mediation raises further questions about its intentions.
Qatar and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire between Afghanistan and Pakistan in Doha in October 2025. Subsequent talks in Istanbul produced agreement on a monitoring and verification mechanism, but the process failed to produce a durable political settlement. By February 2026, fighting had resumed on a scale that rendered the ceasefire largely meaningless. China has also attempted to reduce tensions between Kabul and Islamabad without producing a lasting breakthrough.
More recently, Türkiye’s intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın and a senior Qatari security official travelled to Afghanistan and met senior Taliban officials, including the acting defence and interior ministers and intelligence chief. Their discussions included tensions between Kabul and Islamabad. Within days of those diplomatic efforts, Pakistan launched further rounds of airstrikes inside Afghanistan.
That sequence matters. If mediation succeeds, Pakistan and Afghanistan would both have to accept clearer and more reciprocal commitments. Continued military escalation, by contrast, allows Islamabad to act unilaterally while placing responsibility for failed diplomacy on Kabul. This makes the timing of Pakistan’s latest escalation particularly significant.
The wider regional context provides another possible explanation.
In August, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, establishing a collective-defence arrangement under which an attack against one member is to be treated as an attack against all three. The agreement quickly faced its first serious test.
On 8 September, Houthi forces launched a major series of missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia, targeting energy facilities and military sites. The following day, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that aggression against Saudi Arabia could make the Mecca agreement operational and stressed that Pakistan was bound by its terms.
Pakistan’s rhetoric became even stronger in the following days. Senior Pakistani military officials pledged to stand with Saudi Arabia against aggression, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September that any threat to Mecca or Medina represented a “red line.” The three countries also moved toward consultations among their military chiefs on how to respond to the growing Houthi threat.
Yet strong rhetoric is not the same as committing troops or entering another Middle Eastern war.
That distinction matters because Pakistan has been here before. In 2015, despite intense pressure from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s parliament voted to remain neutral in the Yemen war. A decade later, Islamabad again faces the difficult task of balancing its strategic dependence on Saudi Arabia against the enormous political and military risks of becoming directly involved in Yemen.
Afghan officials have drawn their own conclusion from this timing. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has accused Pakistan of attacking Afghanistan partly to evade responsibilities under the Mecca pact and to divert attention from its domestic political, economic and security failures. Kabul obviously has its own interests in advancing this argument, and the allegation cannot by itself establish Islamabad’s motives. But it cannot simply be dismissed either.
The sequence is striking. As pressure increased on members of the Mecca pact to translate collective-defence promises into action, Pakistan simultaneously intensified military operations on its western frontier. By presenting itself as already engaged in a serious conflict with Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military leadership gains a politically convenient argument against deeper involvement elsewhere while preserving its strategic relationship with Riyadh.
The second motive is domestic and centres on Field Marshal Munir’s repeated inability to reverse Pakistan’s deteriorating security situation.
Military action across the Afghan border offers something that a difficult domestic political settlement does not: immediate images of retaliation, strength and national resolve. Airstrikes can dominate headlines after militant attacks and allow the military to demonstrate that it is “responding.” But retaliation is not the same as strategy.
Pakistan’s security crisis has deep political, social and historical roots, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former tribal areas. Bombing targets across an international border cannot substitute for addressing those grievances, strengthening civilian institutions or pursuing the political compromises required for long-term stability.
Nor can repeated airstrikes conceal the basic contradiction in Islamabad’s approach. If nearly a year of military pressure inside Afghanistan has failed to reduce militant attacks in Pakistan—and violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is instead increasing—then more of the same cannot credibly be presented as a successful counterterrorism policy.
The events of October 1 show that the cycle described here is no longer merely a prediction. Less than a week after the previous round of Pakistani strikes, Afghan civilians were again killed in cross-border air attacks, even as Islamabad once more declared that militant targets had been successfully eliminated.
The likely pattern is therefore grim but increasingly familiar: militant attacks inside Pakistan, followed by Pakistani strikes inside Afghanistan, followed by civilian casualties, public anger and another round of escalation.
That cycle may provide short-term political cover for Pakistan’s military leadership. It does not provide security for Pakistan, peace for Afghanistan or a path toward resolving the disputes between the two countries.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Khaama Press.
Pakistani Airstrikes in Afghanistan: Civilian Casualties and the Mecca Pact Distraction
Russia has expressed deep concern over renewed military clashes between the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, warning that the fighting is affecting civilians, particularly children.
The Russian Embassy in Kabul said Saturday that it was concerned about the continuation of the military confrontation between the two neighboring countries. The statement came after Pakistani airstrikes on Afghanistan’s Kunar and Helmand provinces earlier this week.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed in the strikes, most of them children, while nine others were injured. UNAMA called for de-escalation and dialogue and urged the parties to respect international law and prevent further civilian harm.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban authorities, said the Pakistani strikes hit residential areas and killed nine civilians, including women and children, while injuring 11 others. Reuters reported that the strikes hit three houses in Kunar and Helmand.
Pakistan, however, gave a different account of the operation. Its Ministry of Information said the strikes were based on “credible intelligence” and targeted militant hideouts, claiming that 22 militants were killed and large quantities of weapons and ammunition were destroyed. The claims by the two sides have not been independently reconciled.
The Russian statement did not condemn Pakistan’s airstrikes outright but called for an end to the military confrontation. Russia has maintained diplomatic relations with the Taliban authorities, which Moscow formally recognized in July 2025.
The European Union has also expressed concern over the civilian casualties from the strikes and called on Afghanistan and Pakistan to exercise restraint and resolve their differences through dialogue.
The latest strikes mark another escalation in already strained relations between Kabul and Islamabad. Pakistan accuses the Taliban authorities of allowing armed groups, particularly the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to operate from Afghanistan territory and launch attacks into Pakistan. Kabul denies the allegation and says it does not allow Afghanistan territory to be used against other countries.
UNAMA said last week that it had documented more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan from cross-border armed violence since the beginning of 2026, underscoring the growing humanitarian cost of the confrontation.
Russia Voices Concern Over Afghanistan-Pakistan Fighting as UN Confirms Civilian Deaths
The ministry’s head of public relations told TOLOnews that Pakistan is seeking, through such claims, to shape international perceptions of Afghanistan.
Following Pakistan’s airstrikes on Kunar and Helmand, which according to the United Nations killed 10 civilians, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister said at a meeting in Islamabad that his country wants Afghanistan’s progress, prosperity and economic growth and considers itself a “well-wisher” of Afghanistan.
Reiterating Pakistan’s previous claims, he called on Afghanistan not to allow its territory to be used to carry out attacks against other countries, particularly Pakistan.
Mohammad Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, said: “In return, what does Pakistan expect? What have we told them? That they should not allow their territory to be used for terrorism against any country. Particularly when it comes to Pakistan, we will not tolerate this.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate rejected the Pakistani foreign minister’s claims, saying Afghanistan will never allow its territory to be used against others.
The ministry’s head of public relations told TOLOnews that Pakistan is seeking, through such claims, to shape international perceptions of Afghanistan.
Zia Ahmad Takal, head of public relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “The policy of the Islamic Emirate is that no one can use Afghan territory against any country in the world, including Pakistan. Therefore, we reject these claims. This is an attempt to evade responsibility and to create a different perception in the minds of the international community.”
Meanwhile, the Coordination Council of Diplomatic and Consular Missions of Afghanistan’s former government condemned Pakistan’s recent airstrikes in Afghanistan in a statement, describing them as a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and a clear breach of international humanitarian law.
The council called on the United Nations and the international community to take necessary measures to protect civilians, particularly women and children, and prevent further harm.
This comes as the United Nations and the European Union yesterday called for de-escalation and urged the two countries to resolve their differences through dialogue.
Kabul Responds to Ishaq Dar: Afghanistan Won’t Allow Its Soil to Be Used
Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, has called for accountability after airstrikes in Kunar and Helmand provinces killed civilians, most of them children.
Bennett said in a post on X on Thursday, October 1, that Pakistani military forces had carried out the airstrikes the previous night, causing civilian casualties. He questioned whether the incident resulted from “incompetence, negligence, or something worse.”
“Whatever the case, there is no justification for causing such irreparable harm to civilians,” Bennett said, adding that the attacks appeared to violate international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed and nine others injured in the airstrikes in Kunar and Helmand, with most of those killed being children. The UN mission called for de-escalation, dialogue, respect for international law and measures to prevent further civilian harm.
The Taliban government had earlier reported that nine people, including women and children, were killed and 11 others injured. Its spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said three houses were destroyed in the strikes.
Pakistan said its forces had targeted militant hideouts at two locations based on what it described as “credible intelligence,” claiming that 22 militants were killed and weapons and ammunition were destroyed. The conflicting casualty figures could not be independently verified.
UN Rights Rapporteur Calls for Accountability Over Airstrikes in Kunar, Helmand
Analysts described Moscow’s role in supporting and cooperating with Afghanistan at such meetings as important.
A meeting titled “Afghan Predicament and the Trajectory to Peace” was held in Islamabad with the participation of representatives from several neighboring countries.
Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special representative for Afghanistan, attended the meeting online and said Russia wants to see a peaceful Afghanistan living in harmony with all its neighbors. He added that Russia is making efforts to support Afghans in achieving economic self-sufficiency.
Kabulov said: “We want to see Afghanistan as a peaceful country that lives in harmony with all its neighbors, and we are making every effort to support Afghans so that, first and foremost, they can achieve economic self-sufficiency.”
Bakhtiyor Ahmadzoda, deputy speaker of Tajikistan’s lower house of parliament and a member of its committee on agriculture, water and land resources, said: “Afghanistan is an integral part of the regional landscape, and its peace, stability and sustainable development are directly linked to the security and prosperity of neighboring countries and the region as a whole. Distinguished participants, we believe that lasting peace cannot be achieved through security measures alone.”
Analysts described Moscow’s role in supporting and cooperating with Afghanistan at such meetings as important.
Aziz Maarij, a former diplomat, said: “If cooperation has a practical dimension and countries work together, it can contribute to the development of the entire region. Countries in the region understand that they need one another in areas such as transit, good-neighborly relations, security and trade.”
Abdul Hasib Safi, an economic analyst, said: “Russia has certain resources and capabilities that Afghanistan does not have, and Afghanistan can benefit from them. Likewise, Afghanistan has certain resources that Russia needs. We can exchange these resources and promote economic growth.”
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has not recently commented on the meeting, but it has previously said that Kabul seeks good relations with all countries.
Meeting on Afghanistan and Path to Peace Held in Islamabad
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
