The Afghan Taliban government is notably absent from a global summit on girls’ education in the Muslim world, being hosted by Pakistan. The event, which aims to address the challenges and promote the empowerment of girls in Muslim countries, is being held in Islamabad.
Speaking to AFP, Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui confirmed that an invitation had been extended to Afghanistan’s Taliban government. However, no representatives from the Taliban administration attended the summit.
The absence of Afghan officials comes at a time when the world is urging the Taliban to uphold women’s rights, particularly in the areas of education and employment. The exclusion of girls from secondary and higher education in Afghanistan has drawn widespread criticism from the international community.
The summit, attended by representatives from 44 countries and key international organizations, aims to foster collaborative efforts to advance girls’ education in the Muslim world. Pakistan’s leadership highlighted the importance of inclusivity in addressing this pressing issue.
Despite the Afghan Taliban’s absence, the conference proceeds with discussions on policies and initiatives to overcome barriers to education for girls. The event underscores the global commitment to ensuring education as a fundamental right for all.
Afghan Taliban refuses to attend girls’ education summit in Pakistan
Following the depreciation of the Afghani currency against foreign currencies, the Taliban-controlled central bank has announced the auction of $16 million USD.
The bank issued a statement on X, stating that the amount will be sold on Sunday, January 12.
Private banks and exchange service providers have been invited to participate in the auction, according to the statement.
The Taliban central bank is auctioning $16 million to stabilize the value of the Afghan currency against foreign currencies.
A few days earlier, the bank had sold $15 million for the same purpose.
The recent decline in the Afghan currency’s value follows rumors about the potential suspension of U.S. cash aid to the Taliban. This has triggered significant market volatility in the past few days.
Currently, one U.S. dollar is being traded at 72.40 Afghanis in the country’s currency markets.
Efforts by the Taliban-controlled central bank to stabilize the Afghan currency highlight the challenges of managing a fragile economy under global sanctions and limited financial inflows.
The continued depreciation of the Afghan currency underscores the need for long-term financial solutions to ensure economic stability and support the livelihoods of Afghan citizens.
Taliban Central Bank to auction $16 million amid Afghani currency drop
The deputy spokesperson said that the caretaker government is striving to secure the release of several Afghan citizens detained in the United States.
Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, has stated that negotiations on a prisoner exchange with the US are ongoing but have not yet yielded any results.
The deputy spokesperson said that the caretaker government is striving to secure the release of several Afghan citizens detained in the United States.
Fitrat said: “Occasionally, discussions have been held with the US about a prisoner exchange, but no resolution has been reached so far. It has been several years since the US imprisoned some of our Afghan citizens without cause, and the Islamic Emirate is actively working for their release.”
Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is in talks with the caretaker government to exchange detained Americans in Afghanistan for at least one Guantanamo prisoner named Mohammad Rahim al-Afghani.
The Wall Street Journal added: “The Biden administration is negotiating with the Taliban to exchange Americans detained in Afghanistan for at least one high-profile prisoner alleged to be an Osama bin Laden associate held in Guantanamo Bay.”
Meanwhile, The Telegraph also reported that the caretaker government has halted the prisoner exchange agreement with the US until a new administration takes office in Washington.
The Telegraph wrote: “The deal is almost done but there are some top officials in Kandahar who are against it at this moment.”
Wise Naseri, a political analyst, told TOLOnews: “Serious discussions are ongoing between the Taliban and the Biden administration regarding prisoner exchanges. This process has been underway since the Doha negotiations and has resulted in several exchanges so far.”
George Glezmann, Ryan Corbett, and Mahmood Habibi are US citizens detained in Afghanistan, for whose release senior American officials have repeatedly called.
Islamic Emirate: Prisoner Exchange Talks with US Remain Unsuccessful
The ban on girls’ and women’s education in Afghanistan has faced various global criticisms over the past three years.
The first day of the Islamic countries’ conference titled “The International Conference on Girls’ Education in Muslim Communities: Challenges and Opportunities,” concluded today (Saturday) in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
Shahbaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, stated during the conference that restrictions imposed on women and girls deprive them of achieving a bright future.
The Pakistani Prime Minister further added that Pakistan and the Muslim world face significant challenges in ensuring equal education rights for girls. Sharif remarked: “Despite our rich heritage, the Muslim world, including Pakistan, faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls. Denying education to girls amounts to denying their rights and voice and denying them their right to a bright future.”
The conference, initiated by the “Muslim World League,” brought together representatives from Islamic countries, human rights activists, and the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Participants discussed the role and significance of girls’ education in Islam.
In a statement by the Muslim World League, it was mentioned: “This initiative, led by the Muslim World League (MWL), aims to promote Islamic awareness and implement programs that align with its foundational goals.”
Rahela Pouya, a student, commented on the effectiveness of the discussions at the conference, saying: “Our request from this conference is for the discussions to result in practical outcomes.”
Another student, Lubna, said: “By next year, the Islamic Emirate must reopen schools and universities for girls in Afghanistan.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Peace, referred to the Islamic countries’ conference on girls’ education in Pakistan as a propaganda effort against the caretaker government. He stated that resolving this issue is solely the responsibility of Afghans themselves.
On the sidelines of the conference, the Pakistani Prime Minister met with the Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Secretary-General of Muslim World League to discuss issues related to Afghanistan.
Although the caretaker government was invited to the conference, no representative from it participated.
Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Pakistan’s Minister of Education, said: “We invited Afghanistan, but no one from the Afghan government attended the conference. Nevertheless, representatives from various organizations working in the field of girls’ education in Afghanistan participated in the event.”
Janat Faheem Chakari, a political analyst, said: “Any conference about Afghanistan held in neighboring, regional, or global countries should ideally include a representative from the Islamic Emirate to defend its position and provide proper responses.”
The ban on girls’ and women’s education in Afghanistan has faced various global criticisms over the past three years.
Shahbaz Sharif Criticizes Muslim World for Failing on Women’s Education
Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan, which Islamabad blames for harboring extremists who have been waging an insurgency in Pakistan.
When Kabul fell to the Afghan Taliban in 2021, the head of Pakistan’s intelligence service was one of the first foreign guests to visit the new regime, telling reporters that “everything will be okay.” But less than 3½ years later, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have dramatically deteriorated.
In the most severe confrontation between the countries so far, Pakistani airstrikes killed 46 people in eastern Afghanistan in late December, according to the Afghan government. Pakistani officials said the strikes targeted militants of the Pakistani Taliban. The Afghan government said women and children were among the victims of the strikes.
The cross-border escalation reflects growing frustration in Islamabad over the rise in deadly attacks carried out inside Pakistan and attributed to the Pakistani Taliban. Islamabad claims that the group is being sheltered by the Afghan Taliban regime.
Tensions remained high over the past few days, with a cross-border attack from Afghanistan late last month and reports of renewed fighting along the border Friday.
“This is the time to act together for the future of Pakistan,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was quoted as telling Pakistani officials Friday.
Pakistan’s leadership was frequently accused of harboring or tolerating Afghan Taliban leaders and fighters during the 20-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Now Pakistan finds itself on the other end of a very similar situation.
The victory of the Afghan Taliban in August 2021 energized its Pakistani counterparts and encouraged them to embrace much of the same playbook. At the same time, the fall of Kabul flooded Pakistani weapons markets with modern firearms and night-vision goggles, giving militants an edge over local forces, according to Pakistani officials.
The Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said in a report released last week that both “the frequency and intensity of terrorist attacks” have surged since the Taliban takeover of Kabul, reaching levels last year that had not been seen in a decade.
Between 2007 and 2015, Pakistani Taliban militants shocked the world with their assassination attempt on women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai, their brutal rule over tribal areas, and a string of devastating plots, including a school attack in 2014 that left 132 children dead.
At the time, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban were believed to frequently collaborate. In a report last year, the United Nations’ Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concluded that such links still exist, writing that “Taliban rank and file” and al-Qaeda militants “assisted” the Pakistani Taliban in recent cross-border attacks and supplied weapons and equipment.
In the border region, locals are convinced of such links, too. Maulana Altaf Hussain, a village elder, recalled spotting holes in the border fences after recent suspected incursions of militants from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
But in an interview last year, Qari Shoaib Bajauri, a senior Pakistani Taliban member, said the group’s intentions have evolved. Rather than targeting civilians, he said, the group has focused on its combat with Pakistani forces, which he called “a cancer for this whole region.”
Bajauri denied that the group relies on Afghan fighters but acknowledged that its ranks include “Pakistani mujahideen who fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and are now back in Pakistan.”
While some Afghan officials want to maintain cordial relations with Islamabad, the Taliban leadership now appears compelled to publicly rebuke Pakistan over its cross-border strikes in late December. Many in the ranks of the Afghan Taliban view the Pakistani Taliban as brothers in arms, and there is pressure on the regime in Kabul to publicly support the group, analysts said.
“Our people’s will is to provide protection to the people — locals and guests alike,” Khairullah Khairkhwa, the Afghan Taliban’s acting information minister, said in late December. His remarks were widely interpreted as a veiled confirmation that the Afghan government harbors Pakistani Taliban militants as “guests,” echoing the Taliban’s rationale for hosting Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda militants in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“The Taliban wants to remove the stigma that it is being used by Pakistan,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a Pakistani Pashtun nationalist leader.
But options for the Afghan Taliban to confront Pakistan, a nuclear power with one of the world’s largest militaries, are limited.
The presence of the Pakistani Taliban “is increasingly becoming embarrassing for the Taliban authorities, who must have realized by now that the TTP cadres are misusing the ‘guest status,’” said Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former special representative for Afghanistan, using an abbreviation for the Pakistani Taliban.
The same week that Pakistani airstrikes hit targets in eastern Afghanistan, Durrani’s successor was in Kabul for talks with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister.
“It shows that the Taliban also realizes the importance of dialogue,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, a Pakistani security analyst.
The question in Islamabad, however, is increasingly whether that view is shared across the Taliban regime. While Pakistan is believed to have had historically strong ties with Haqqani, the leader of a key faction within the regime, it is less clear how Pakistan’s messages are received among the reclusive leadership in Kandahar.
“The Haqqanis are important, no doubt,” said Rana, but they “don’t have the ability to control the dialogue or to prevail.”
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalate amid border clashes
England should be allowed to play next month’s cricket match against Afghanistan, the culture and sport secretary has said, despite calls for a boycott over the Taliban government’s treatment of women.
Lisa Nandy backed a decision by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to allow the game to go ahead, saying on Friday that cancelling it would “deny sports fans the opportunity that they love”.
There is growing pressure from MPs for the game to be called off after the Taliban disbanded the Afghanistan women’s cricket team and banned women from public spaces including gyms, parks and hairdressing salons.
South Africa’s sports minister joins growing calls for boycott of Afghanistan
Nandy told BBC Breakfast: “I do think it should go ahead. I’m instinctively very cautious about boycotts in sports, partly because I think they’re counterproductive.
“I think they deny sports fans the opportunity that they love, and they can also very much penalise the athletes and the sports people who work very, very hard to reach the top of their game and then they’re denied the opportunities to compete. They are not the people that we want to penalise for the appalling actions of the Taliban against women and girls.”
She added that the UK would not be “rolling out the red carpet” at the event, saying: “When China hosted the Winter Olympics, I was very vocal, many of us were very vocal about making sure that we didn’t send dignitaries to that event, that we didn’t give them the PR coup that they were looking for when they were forcibly incarcerating the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.”
England are due to play Afghanistan next month in Pakistan as part of the Champions Trophy. The ECB has said it will not schedule a bilateral series against Afghanistan, but that participation in an international competition such as the Champions Trophy is a matter for the International Cricket Council (ICC).
ICC rules require member nations to have a women’s team, but ICC members are reported to believe that allowing the men’s team to compete will help them influence the Taliban for good.
Despite this, MPs have called on the government to put pressure on the ECB to pull out of next month’s match. The Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi asked the prime minister in the Commons this week: “Will he please agree to meet his counterparts in South Africa and Australia, and ask them to boycott the games as well?”
Keir Starmer refused to commit to such action, saying: “The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is in touch with our international counterparts on this issue. I welcome the England and Wales Cricket Board making strong representations to the International Cricket Council on Afghanistan’s women’s cricket team.”
Lisa Nandy rejects calls for England to boycott Afghanistan cricket match
The Ministry of Refugees and Returnees reported that 108 Afghan families returned to Afghanistan after being expelled from Iran and Pakistan.
According to the Bakhtar News Agency, on Friday, January 10, officials from the Ministry of Refugees and Returnees stated that these 108 families returned to Afghanistan on Thursday, January 9, after being expelled from neighboring countries.
Out of these families, 16 returned via the Torkham border, 19 via Spin Boldak, 31 via the Silk Bridge, and 42 via Islam Qala.
Officials added that these returning families received assistance from the local administration and were referred to aid organizations for further support.
Meanwhile, a report from the Consortium of Aid Organizations at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has stated that, since September 15, 2024, there has been a significant increase in the return of migrants to Afghanistan via the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings.
It is worth noting that Afghan migrants, even those with legal documents, have recently been detained by Pakistani police and deported back to Afghanistan.
Recently, Amnesty International called on the Pakistani government to immediately release all Afghan refugees detained in Islamabad. In a statement, Amnesty also urged Pakistan to immediately revoke its policy requiring Afghan migrants to obtain a “No Objection Certificate” (NOC) in Islamabad.
The increasing number of returning Afghan families highlights the ongoing challenges faced by refugees in neighboring countries and the need for coordinated international support to ensure their protection and assistance.
108 Afghan families deported from Iran and Pakistan
A representative of the organization told TOLOnews that the forced expulsion of Afghan refugees by Pakistan violates international laws.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan has called for the suspension of Afghan refugee deportations from the country.
Qaiser Khan, Deputy Spokesperson for UNHCR in Pakistan, said: “UNHCR is ready to assist the government of Pakistan both financially and technically. We urge the government not to deport Afghans who have been refugees for many years.”
While the deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan has intensified over the past week, statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicate that over the past five days, more than 26,000 people have entered Afghanistan through shared border crossings between the two countries.
However, over 25,000 people have returned to Pakistan via crossings such as Torkham, Ghulam Khan, Dand-e-Patan, Angoor Adda, and Spin Boldak.
Ehsanullah Ahmadzai, a migrant rights activist, stated: “The international community, especially the United Nations and its affiliated bodies, particularly UNHCR and IOM, must collaborate with the current Afghan government on refugee matters.”
Meanwhile, some Afghan refugees in Pakistan have once again reported mistreatment and forced deportation by Pakistani police.
Qasim, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, said: “All refugees here face problems, including those who are unaccompanied, those with visas, those applying for visa extensions, and even those with illnesses.”
The recent escalation in the deportation of Afghan refugees over the past week has drawn widespread criticism from international organizations, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Amnesty International.
UNHCR Urges Pakistan to Halt Forced Deportations of Afghan Refugees
The Ministry of Economy stressed that humanitarian aid should not be used as a political pressure tool against Afghanistan.
Tim Burchett, Vice Chair of US Congress’ Foreign Affairs Committee, has introduced a bill to ensure that US taxpayers’ money does not fall into the hands of the Islamic Emirate.
The Vice Chair of US Congress’ Foreign Affairs Committee, announced that the bill would require the US State Department to formulate a policy opposing any foreign aid to the Islamic Emirate.
After former US President Donald Trump criticized Joe Biden’s administration for sending billions in aid to Afghanistan, the White House responded, emphasizing that Washington’s humanitarian aid is sent not to the “Taliban” but to the Afghan people.
What does the bill include?
1) Forces the State Dept to develop and implement a policy to oppose any foreign aid from going to the “Taliban.”
2) Requires a report on any cash assistance programs in Afghanistan and how the US keeps the “Taliban” from gaining access.
3) Requires a report on the Afghan Fund and the Afghanistan central bank.
“They aim to implement economic policies through pressure. I don’t believe the Americans will disengage Afghanistan—a highly strategic and prominent point in South Asia—from such matters or their policies,” said Sayed Masood, an economic analyst.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy stressed that humanitarian aid should not be used as a political pressure tool against Afghanistan.
Abdul Latif Nazari, Deputy Minister of Economy, said: “The suspension of humanitarian and economic aid by some individuals and countries is being used as a strategy of pressure. This act contradicts international law. We want the international community’s aid to the Afghan people to continue strongly.”
Some experts see US and global humanitarian aid as a critical necessity for reducing Afghanistan’s current humanitarian crises.
“The US and its regional allies provide around $1.2 billion annually in direct and indirect humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. This assistance, through cooperation with aid organizations in Afghanistan, saves the lives of many Afghan citizens in areas like health, economy, finance, and addressing physical challenges,” said Selab Samandari, an economic analyst.
Calls to cut US aid to Afghanistan come as various UN agencies, including OCHA, warn of a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan this year. They have stated that 32% of the population will require urgent humanitarian assistance in 2025.
US Congress Introduces Bill to Block Aid to Islamic Emirate
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’sKate 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.
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
