What We Wrote, What You Read in 2025: Reflections on AAN coverage last year and the year to come

Afghanistan Analysts Network

14 Jan 2026 print sharing button

In 2025, AAN followed many major developments in Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate continued to consolidate its rule, implementing its ‘vice and virtue’ law and making efforts to control the narrative about its rise to power in books, films and on TV. We examined the consequences of the United States stopping all aid and the mass return of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan. We also traced the difficulties now for women trying to get a divorce and the slightly easier situation for those trying to inherit, as well as the slowly mounting international legal efforts to hold the Taliban accountable for curbing the rights of women and girls. Among the 50 reports published last year, we also delved into longer-term trends, such as the changing role of rural mullahs in Afghanistan and how climate change is affecting urban water supply and the all-important wheat harvest. Kate Clark has been taking a look back at 2025 – what we wrote and which reports you were most interested in reading – and, as 2026 begins, introduces some of AAN’s research plans for the coming year.

What we wrote in 2025

In 2025, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) celebrated its fourth anniversary of rule. United Nations and United States sanctions remain in place and the Emirate has yet to occupy the country’s UN seat. Although to the north, relations with its Central Asian neighbours look increasingly solid, based on mutual, pragmatic, economic concerns, Pakistan and Iran continued their mass return of Afghans and there were clashes and border closures along the Durand Line. The US also cut all aid. Even so, the IEA appears increasingly confident.

Our coverage looked at many of these issues, drilling down into the IEA promoting its version of recent history in books,films and on TV, and by banning books and closing whole university courses. Allied to the re-establishment of the Emirate, we looked at how members of the Taliban are moving into the private sector in urban areas and at the rise of a once fairly marginal group, rural mullahs, politically and economically and in terms of learning. Part of the consolidation of IEA rule has also been about taking control of resources, including mines and through urban planning, and attempting to control how men and women should dress and behave – see our reports on the IEA’s vice and virtue law, an Islamic scholar’s reading of it, how it is being implemented and a full translation. A dossier of reports on women’s rights brought together all of our publications on women since the re-establishment of the Emirate. We also published two separate reports on women’s struggles to get a divorce (now almost impossible) and secure their inheritance (which the Emirate backs, so now slightly easier, despite continuing opposition from many families and communities).

AAN’s analysis of US President Donald Trump’s decision to cease all aid to Afghanistan included such consequences as it being one factor driving up maternal mortality. Cuts in aid were not the only external development pummelling Afghanistan in 2025. Iran and Pakistan together forced almost 2.8 million Afghans to leave their two countries, an action we covered, both in-depth and as personal accounts, including the Helmandi farmer, impoverished by the Emirate’s ban on cultivating opium, in debt and with a family to feed, who sought work in Iran and was killed at the border and the Kuchi woman, born in Pakistan and struggling to prove her nationality on being forcibly returned.

We also covered some positive stories: drought-resistant wheat seed that saved at least some Afghan farmers from catastrophic crop failure in dry 2025 and a decline in blood feuds in Khost province and areas of life where little seems to have changed since the days of the Republic, such as the maddening struggle that Afghans face trying to negotiate state bureaucracy.

What sort of reports were prominent in 2025?

At AAN, 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

Whether a particular category features more or less strongly in our publications varies from year to year. Before 2021, reports on the theme of War and Peace often topped the list. Last year, we only published one report in that category, on allegations that British special forces had carried out dozens of summary executions in Helmand province in 2010-2013. Instead, reports to do with the Economy, Development and the Environment and Rights and Freedoms dominated our research agenda (see the table below).

Publications by Thematic Category
Economy, Development, Environment	16
Rights and Freedoms	13
Context and Culture	7
Migration	5
Political Landscape	4
International Engagement	1
War and Peace	1
Regional Relations	1
Dossier of reports on women’s rights	1
Resources (a full translation of the vice and virtue law)	1
Total	50

What you read in 2025

We also monitor how many readers each individual report gets. Looking through the list of AAN reports that were most widely read in 2025 (see the list at the end of this report), some clear themes emerge: reports about women occupied the top four slots, with Afghan men’s thoughts about the curbs on women’s rights also coming into the top-twenty most-read publications.

Reports exploring Taliban policy and thinking also featured strongly: for example, on the vice and virtue law and a 2023 report on how former Taliban fighters had experienced living in the capital – a surprisingly positive read. Analysis of the impact of the US decision to abruptly cut all aid to Afghanistan, when it had supplied 40 per cent of aid in 2024, was widely read. There were also reports with a very long shelf life: two reports on cannabis – production and consumption – published in 2019 and another from 2020 on the largest standing Buddhist stupa in Afghanistan, again made the top-twenty most-read reports. Historic insights, such as the continuing impact of the PDPA, with a piece written on its 60^thanniversary, also featured.

As for our readers in Dari and Pashto, a rare look at the portrayal of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks, published in 2015, again topped that most-read list (English version: ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’), along with reports on how people who live along the Durand Line are faring in the wake of Pakistan fencing the border, the 2024 Herat earthquake and reports on opium and the wider economy (see the list of most-read reports in Dari and Pashto at the end of this report).

The year ahead

Several themes are already emerging for our research this year. Migration looms large, both returns from Pakistan and Iran and potentially from Europe (including what that could mean for Emirate relations with European countries), and the continuing push to leave. We will continue to follow Taliban policies and actions on women’s rights, but also look into less-covered social dynamics, for example, the evolution of authority within families and communities. Climate change will again be a major topic, as will other environmental issues, including how pollution affects people and the economy, and the crucial issue of land ownership.

Early reports on our agenda include a scrutiny of Afghanistan’s police force under the Taliban. Much was written about police during the Islamic Republic, but, as far as we know, this will be the first look at the Emirate’s police force – their numbers, training, priorities and what the Emirate believes the police are for. We are also looking into radio education, a growth sector since the Emirate stopped education for girls beyond grade six, but is it useful and engaging? Is it, in any way, an alternative to school?

We began this year with a review of a book written in the last century and recently translated from Bengali to English, Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam. The author had been a teacher in Kabul in the 1920s and his novel draws on his experiences at King Amanullah’s court, including during its overthrow, as well as on Persian epic poetry and mystical traditions. The review of Shabnam will be the first of several reports marking 100 years since the failure of that significant period of reform in Afghan history.

Finally, as 2026 begins, we wish all our readers – and Afghanistan – a Happy New Year.

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

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

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

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

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 AAN’s complete unofficial translation of the Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, 13 April 2025

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

9 Between Reform and Repression: The 60th anniversary of the PDPA, Thomas Ruttig 2 January 2025

10 The End of US Aid to Afghanistan: What will it mean for families, services and the economy?, Kate Clark and the AAN Team 9 May 2025

11 ‘Stop Work!’ Aid and the Afghan economy after the halt to US aid, Kate Clark, 10 February 2025