What We Wrote, What You Read in 2024: Reflections on our coverage of an evolving Afghanistan

2024 was another busy year for AAN as we tried to make sense of developments in Afghanistan. Our 51 publications ranged from snapshots of daily life – the Helmand labourer who, with his wife, took in an impoverished widow and her children, or the female student coming home for the holidays for the first time since the fall of the Islamic Republic – to in-depth reports, such as the effect of Pakistan’s fencing of the Durand Line on cross-border communities, or the place of poetry in Islamic Emirate propaganda. We also have exciting plans for 2025. Here, AAN’s Kate Clark looks back at 2024 – what we wrote and what you read – and introduces some of our research agenda for the coming year.

What we wrote in 2024

In 2024, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) pushed onwards with consolidating its rule over Afghanistan, with new rules governing the lives of its citizens, women and girls in particular, and efforts to manage the economy and improve relations with the neighbours. We followed all these trends, often taking a sideways look at developments. So, for example, we fleshed out a major report on the macro-economy with interviews with businessmen and women on how they were navigating what the World Bank called a “stagnant economy.” We used the IEA ministries’ own reporting on their work to delve into how the Emirate wants to be perceived. In a report on the hugely consequential subject of remittances, we ended with a look at the social ramifications of younger men from Loya Paktia earning such good wages in the Gulf that it gave them greater power within the family, helping drive progressive change. We looked at the Emirate’s limiting of employment for female teachers through the lens of one district in Badakhshan, poor and isolated Shughnan. Its decades-long export of male and female teachers and literacy to other districts and to provinces is now severely curtailed, with huge consequences for the district’s economy and the well-being of many of its women.

Part of what we hope to bring to any research on Afghanistan is context, including providing a ‘long view’. In 2024, we marked a hundred years since the Khost Rebellion, when Pashtun tribes and mullahs sought to overthrow Amir Amanullah in what became a bloody contest between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernisers’ that continues to this day. Our first publication of 2025 partly followed the same theme with a look at the PDPA, founded 60 years ago, and how that same contest of ideas spawned a decades-long armed conflict, which was internationalised by the Soviet invasion and Western and other support to the mujahedin.

In 2024, we surveyed the various accountability mechanisms which could give some satisfaction to the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity that all governments and armed opposition groups have perpetrated since the PDPA’s 1978 coup d’état. We also looked at the various international legal instruments women’s rights activists hope to deploy against the Emirate (for example, in this report).

Also notable in 2024, was the publication of an updated edition of the Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography, compiled by Christian Bleuer. This is an invaluable resource for those studying and researching contemporary Afghanistan, particularly the post-1979 period. It now covers some 8,000 titles.

What sort of reports were prominent in 2024?

Individual researchers at AAN generally focus on what interests them in the hope that this keeps our publications lively and fresh. At the same time, we try to cover a broad range of topics, aiming to cover eight thematic categories:

Culture and Context
Economy, Development and the Environment
International Engagement
Migration
Political Landscape
Regional Relations
Rights and Freedoms
War and Peace

As can be seen in the table below, which shows how many reports in 2024 fell into each of our eight categories, War and Peace – which topped the list in 2021, when two out of every five reports fell into this category, as did 14 of our 20 most-read reports that year – has quite fallen away as a topic. We published nothing in this category in 2024. Instead, reports about Rights and Freedoms and those tackling the Economy, Development and the Environment were at the fore.

Publications by Thematic Category
Rights and Freedoms	12
Economy, Development, Environment	10
Context and Culture	8
International Engagement	6
Migration	6
Political Landscape	5
Regional Relations	2
War and Peace	0
Resources (a bibliography of Afghanistan)	1
Dossier (of reports on international relations and aid)	1
Total	51

What you were reading in 2024

As to what you, our readers, were interested in, publications on women’s lives and possible international legal actions against the Emirate featured strongly in the list of AAN’s twenty most-read reports (see below). Also in our top-twenty were reports that delved into IEA thinking: ‘New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul’, by Sabawoon Samim from 2023, was again among the most-read reports. His interviews with five former fighters now living in the capital were a surprisingly positive read. They liked the modern facilities and cleanliness of the capital, its ethnic diversity and people’s devotion to Islam, but found office life dull. They longed for the freedom of the ‘jihad’.

Scrutiny of the Emirates’ international relations, including the various meetings and summits aimed at, but typically failing, to strengthen engagement, were widely read (for example here and here), as were some important reports on climate change, including a detailed and practical look at how to mitigate the risk of flooding. Publications from previous years have also proven evergreen: two reports on the cultural history of hashish in Afghanistan, on its production and consumption, both published in 2019, were in our top twenty, as were two reports from 2016 – on the origins of ISKP and the Afghan practice of ‘paying’ for wives.

As for readers of our reports in Dari and Pashto, a rare look at the portrayal of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks again topped that most-read list (English version: ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’), while a scholarly article on Afghanistan’s largest standing Buddhist stupa, at Topdara just north of Kabul, was popular with both Dari and English readers (again, see the list at the end of this report).

The year ahead

Readers wanting to better understand Taleban thinking will (hopefully) be pleased that we will be publishing a full translation of the Emirate’s 45,000-word-long Law to Promulgate Virtue and Prevent Vice (a basic translation was one of the twenty most-read publications in 2024), as well as a commentary by Islamic scholar John Butt. His 2023 report, the IEA’s Chief Justice’s theory of jurisprudence, about the key Emirate text (written in Arabic), Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance), was our seventh most-read publication last year. We also hope to publish a review of Taleban narratives about themselves, writings in Pashto about their fight with the foreign forces and Afghan army, their time in prisons and the impact of the insurgency on fighters’ families.

We will continue to carry out research on the lives of women and girls, including publishing a major report about what Afghan men think of IEA restrictions on women and a new dossier bringing together all our reports on women since July 2021. That 2021 dossier, published three weeks before the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, topped our 2024 list of most-read publications – interest in Afghan women is undoubtedly still strong, and we hope to keep exploring new developments. One current piece of research, for example, is on women’s inheritance rights, which are explicitly laid out in the Quran and promoted by the Emirate, but blocked by cultural norms which consider it shameful for a woman to ask for her rightful inheritance.

In 2025, as in 2024, it seems inevitable that reports falling into the categories of Economy, Development and the Environment, and International Engagement (or non-engagement) will feature in our attempt to make sense of Afghanistan. Global warming is increasingly endangering Afghan lives and livelihoods, while Afghanistan is shut out of much of the help available to mitigate the climate crisis for the poorest countries. At the same time, the level of international aid – so crucial to many families, as well as the macro-economy – is only likely to diminish further and to remain focussed on humanitarian needs. A new American president comes into office this month. Whether Donald Trump turns out to be active or indifferent to Afghanistan, there will be consequences – for good or ill. Analysis of internal dynamics, such as how the Emirate raises and spends revenue, will also remain crucial to understanding the impact of the Afghan government on its citizens’ lives.

However complex the subject, we will continue to try to present topics, at least partially, through the experiences of individuals, whether via the first-person accounts of The Daily Hustle series, or as integral elements of our longer, in-depth research. Watch out for forthcoming reports on blood feuds, mining, the Emirate’s ban on begging and how the lives of village mullahs have changed over recent decades.

Finally, at the start of January, we wish all our readers – and Afghanistan – a very happy 2025.

1 Dossier XXX: Afghan Women’s Rights and the New Phase of the Conflict, AAN team, 29 July 2021

2 What Do Young Afghan Women Do? A glimpse into everyday life after the bans, Jelena Bjelica and AAN team, 17 August 2023

3 “We need to breathe too”: Women across Afghanistan navigate the Taleban’s hijab ruling, Kate Clark and Saeda Rahimi, 1 June 2022

4 The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English, John Butt, 31 August 2024

5 New Lives in the City: How Taleban have experienced life in Kabul, Sabawoon Samim, 2 February 2023

6 The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (1): A cultural history of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in Afghanistan, Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschini, 7 January 2019

7 The Bride Price: The Afghan tradition of paying for wives, Fazal Rahman Muzhary, 25 October 2016

8 The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (2): The cultural history of hashish consumption in Afghanistan, Fabrizio Foschini, Jelena Bjelica and Obaid Ali, 10 January 2019

9 Whose Seat Is It Anyway: The UN’s (non)decision on who represents Afghanistan, Thomas Ruttig, 7 December 2023

10 The State of Research on Afghanistan: Too many poor quality publications and some real gems, Christian Bleuer, 28 April 2024

11 The Climate Change Crisis in Afghanistan: The catastrophe worsens – what hope for action?, Muhammad Assem Mayar, 6 June 2022