The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a bill aimed at cutting off Taliban access to US financial assistance to Afghanistan, according to a committee statement.
Committee Chairman Jim Risch said the legislation was passed on Thursday and is designed to ensure that not a single dollar of US taxpayer money reaches terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Risch said US forces fought the Taliban for years, noting that more than 2,000 Americans were killed and over 20,000 wounded during the war. He added that any US funds reaching the Taliban would insult veterans and their families.
The bill, titled “No Tax Dollars for Terrorists,” was previously approved by the US House of Representatives and now moves one step closer to becoming law.
Risch said the measure must still pass a full Senate vote before being sent to President Donald Trump for signature. The legislation was introduced last year by Republican Congressman Tim Burchett, who has argued that US aid mechanisms lack sufficient safeguards against Taliban misuse.
Under the bill, the US State Department would be required to develop and enforce strict policies governing any foreign assistance that could benefit the Taliban, including oversight of trust funds and Afghanistan’s central bank.
The move follows earlier reports by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which found that the Taliban had benefited from US-funded assistance. Since the Taliban returned to power, the United States has provided about $3.8 billion in aid to Afghanistan, much of it intended for humanitarian purposes.
US Senate Committee Approves Bill to Block Access to American Aid in Afghanistan
Taliban officials deny holding a U.S.-Afghan citizen, who witnesses and U.S. officials say was detained by Afghanistan’s intelligence services in 2022.
On a summer morning in 2022, Afghan men blindfolded a U.S.-Afghan citizen on a street of Kabul, the country’s capital, and drove him away in his own S.U.V. to an unknown location.
The men said they were from the Taliban’s intelligence services, according to three witnesses whose statements were obtained by The New York Times. The officers stormed the apartment that the U.S.-Afghan citizen, Mahmood Shah Habibi, had just left. They seized his laptop, some books and paperwork, and departed.
It was the last time Mr. Habibi was seen in public. His arrest and unknown whereabouts remain at the center of tensions between the Trump administration, which has made the release of U.S. citizens held abroad a priority, and a Taliban government seeking to forge diplomatic and economic ties with the United States.
Afghan officials deny holding Mr. Habibi, or even knowing where he is. They have not responded to questions from the Times about his arrest.
But the details of his detention — recollected in the witness statements shared with the U.S. State Department, the National Security Council and the Afghan authorities — support the claim made by American officials that the Taliban arrested him, at least.
At least five cars carrying Afghan intelligence officers blocked the street leading to the apartment building where Mr. Habibi lived, and which he had just left, according to the statements. The men stopped Mr. Habibi as he was about to drive to his office and later searched the apartment.
Mr. Habibi disappeared about a week after the C.I.A. — in a 2022 strike in Kabul — killed Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s leader and a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Whether he is alive or not remains unclear.
Mr. Habibi worked as a contractor for Asia Consultancy Group, a Kabul-based telecommunications company, according to the F.B.I. He and his driver were detained with 29 other employees of the firm, all of whom, except one, have since been freed.
U.S. officials would not discuss whether Mr. Habibi had a role in the strike, nor on the nature of his or his colleagues’ work. But his father, Ahmadullah, and brother, Ahmad, have denied that he was involved.
“The Taliban saying they never heard of my brother is contradicted by witness statements, technical data and other information that shows without a doubt that they both arrested him and held him with 30 other colleagues at G.D.I. headquarters,” said Ahmad Habibi, referring to the initials for Afghanistan’s intelligence agency.
The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a text message on Wednesday, “The Islamic Emirate doesn’t have Mahmood Shah Habibi,” using the Taliban’s formal name for the Afghan government.
In an interview with the Times this month, Mr. Mujahid said that Afghanistan was ready to release two U.S. prisoners — identified by U.S. officials as Dennis Walter Coyle, a U.S. citizen from Colorado held since last January, and Polynesis Jackson, a former U.S. Army soldier whose reasons for being in the country remain murky.
In exchange, Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban wanted the release of the last Afghan held at Guantánamo Bay, Muhammad Rahim, who is accused by the C.I.A. of having been a courier and translator to Osama Bin Laden within Al Qaeda. Mr. Rahim, 60, has never been charged.
Discussing Mr. Habibi’s fate or whereabouts is off the table as long as Mr. Rahim is not freed, said an Afghan official with direct knowledge of the negotiations who insisted on anonymity to discuss ongoing release efforts.
According to a direct witness of the arrest, the Taliban blindfolded Mr. Habibi in the back of his own white S.U.V. before driving him away. “I asked one of the guys who they were, and he said they are G.D.I. Mujahideen,” one witness said in a statement, referring to the term for fighters used by the Taliban.
Another group of intelligence officers from G.D.I. later stormed Mr. Habibi’s apartment, took Mr. Habibi’s laptop, some books and paperwork, according to the witnesses’ statement.
One of the men who stormed the apartment and introduced himself as the G.D.I. unit’s leader told an eyewitness that Mr. Habibi was a U.S. spy and that G.D.I. had been tracking him for months.
Blindfolded, Mr. Habibi and a co-worker were driven to a facility where they were interrogated about the C.I.A. strike on Mr. al-Zawahri, according to the co-worker’s statement.
At least five U.S. prisoners have been freed from Afghanistan over the past year, but negotiations for the release of remaining detainees have stalled in recent months. The Trump administration says Mr. Rahim’s release is off the table and has accused the Taliban of hostage diplomacy.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Afghan foreign minister, denied the accusations in an interview with The Times. He instead called on the Trump administration to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and develop trade with Afghanistan — including through the country’s vast reserves of copper, aluminum and rare earth minerals.
A participant in the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss release efforts, said the Trump administration would not consider any further public engagement with the Taliban until all remaining U.S. citizens, including Mr. Habibi, are freed.
Elian Peltier is an international correspondent for The Times, covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Adam Goldman is a London-based reporter for The Times who writes about global security.
Missing in Kabul: The U.S. Citizen Witnesses Say Was Held by the Taliban
The report added that both sides agreed to establish structured and ongoing defense cooperation.
Mohammad Qasim Farid, Deputy Minister for Strategy and Policy at the Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, held official talks in Russia with his Russian counterpart, discussing regional security, bilateral cooperation, and ways to prevent security threats.
According to the Deputy Spokesman of the Ministry of Defense, both sides highlighted the importance of maintaining ties, expanding formal interactions, and ensuring long-term cooperation.
Sediqullah Nusrat stated: “During this meeting, both parties held comprehensive discussions on key topics, including regional security, mutual cooperation, and ways to prevent security challenges. Both sides also emphasized the importance of strengthening relations, enhancing formal engagement, and continuing durable cooperation.”
Russian media, quoting their country’s Ministry of Defense, reported that Vasily Osmakov, Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia, met with officials from the Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to assess the current situation and explore future cooperation in mutual areas of interest.
The report added that both sides agreed to establish structured and ongoing defense cooperation.
Russian Ministry of Defense stated: “The two parties discussed the current situation and the prospects for expanding military cooperation in areas of mutual interest. Following the meeting, both sides agreed on further joint measures to establish systematic collaboration.”
Yousuf Amin Zazai, a military analyst, noted: “Our policy is one of neutrality, and we seek to build relations with other countries based on this principle. However, many countries do not observe this approach, which compels us to consider military cooperation and the strengthening of our defense forces.”
Russia is the only country to have officially recognized the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after four years.
Just days earlier, the Russian President had emphasized Afghanistan’s regional importance, stating that cooperation between Moscow and Kabul has significantly grown in recent years.
Russia and Islamic Emirate Deepen Defense Cooperation Talks
The Islamic Emirate stated that SIGAR was created during the U.S. presence to monitor American spending and had nothing to do with Afghans.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has announced that it will formally end operations on January 31, 2026.
With the conclusion of SIGAR’s mission, one of the most critical U.S. oversight bodies monitoring aid and expenditures in Afghanistan will be officially shut down.
Over 17 years of activity, SIGAR released dozens of investigative and audit reports, many of which exposed corruption, mismanagement, financial waste, and the failures of major reconstruction projects.
In its final years, SIGAR focused on the consequences of foreign troop withdrawal, the collapse of the former Afghan government, and the fate of U.S. military equipment and assets left behind.
Mirshakar Yaqubi, an Afghan economic analyst, said: “Although SIGAR wasn’t a donor agency, its work significantly influenced the decisions of donors. It played an important role in transparency, oversight, documenting corruption, and evaluating project efficiency.”
According to SIGAR’s reports, the United States spent over $145 billion on Afghan reconstruction a large portion of which, due to weak oversight, systemic corruption, and poor decision-making, failed to yield lasting results.
While the mission’s end marks the closure of an era of oversight, major questions regarding accountability, transparency, and the fate of billions of dollars in expenditures remain unanswered.
Another economist, Sayed Masoud, commented: “Since U.S. aid for Afghanistan’s reconstruction has stopped, SIGAR’s role came to an end. There is no longer a significant amount of money left that would require independent review, and specific reports have already been published.”
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stated that SIGAR was created during the U.S. presence to monitor American spending and had nothing to do with Afghans.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, emphasized: “If this agency stops its activities, it will have no impact on Afghanistan. It wasn’t for Afghanistan, nor did it bring any benefit. In recent years, its reports were exaggerated and based on distant hearsay without proper investigation.”
SIGAR was established by the U.S. Congress in 2008 to independently oversee how U.S. funds were spent on reconstruction, security, governance, and development in Afghanistan.
In its final statement, SIGAR expressed appreciation to all organizations, media outlets, researchers, and individuals who supported or used its reports and findings throughout its mission.
SIGAR to End Mission in Afghanistan After 17 Years of Oversight
The UN predicts 14.4 million people in Afghanistan will require health services in 2026, highlighting the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has forecast that 14.4 million people in Afghanistan will need health services in 2026.
According to a report released on Thursday, January 29, OCHA said that only 7.2 million of these individuals are expected to be covered by existing programs.
OCHA noted that 54 percent of those needing services are children, 24 percent are women, and 10 percent are persons with disabilities. The office emphasized that addressing these health needs will require more than $190 million in funding.
OCHA also stressed that Afghanistan remains the world’s largest humanitarian crisis this year, with approximately 22 million people dependent on humanitarian aid.
Years of conflict, economic instability, and natural disasters and incompetent government in the country have left Afghanistan’s health system fragile, making it difficult to reach remote and vulnerable populations.
International organizations and NGOs have been scaling up programs to provide vaccinations, maternal care, and emergency medical services, but significant funding gaps remain.
Over 14 Million People in Afghanistan to Need Health Services in 2026: UN Report
Sana Atef, Mahtab Safi and Mahsa Elham for Zan Times
Parwana* no longer recognises her own children. Once known for her beauty in her village in Kandahar province, the 36-year-old sits on the floor of her mother’s home, rocking silently. After nine pregnancies and six miscarriages, many under pressure from her husband and in-laws, Parwana has slipped into a permanent state of confusion.
“She is lost,” says her mother, Sharifa. “They broke her with fear, pregnancies and violence.”
Since the Taliban’s informal birth-control ban began spreading across Afghanistan in 2023, the country’s reproductive health system has gone into freefall. Contraceptives have disappeared, clinics have closed and complications are going untreated.
The ban was never formally announced, but by early 2023, doctors and midwives in multiple provinces reported the same pattern: supplies arriving late, then in smaller quantities and then not at all.
In interviews with the Guardian and Zan Times, women from seven provinces have explained the same traumas: pregnancies they cannot prevent, miscarriages they cannot treat and violence they cannot escape.
Shakiba*, 42, a mother of 12 from the city of Kandahar, says she cannot rise without feeling faint. Her hair falls out in handfuls; her bones hurt constantly.
Now she is pregnant again. Her local clinic no longer offers contraceptives and her husband forbids her from seeking them elsewhere.
In rural Jawzjan, a province in northern Afghanistan, a doctor who has run a clinic for three decades says the disappearance was rapid. “After the Taliban came, the contraceptives started reducing. Within months, they were gone,” she says.
“Before, at least 30 out of 70 women who came to the clinic needed birth control. Now we tell them: we have nothing.”
In the northern province of Badghis, a doctor at a private clinic says Taliban fighters arrived and ordered staff to destroy all of the contraceptives. “‘If we see you give this to women again, we will close your clinic,’ they said. We stopped immediately.”
Two years ago, after an earthquake left Zarghona*, 29, and her family living in a tent, she went three days without access to a toilet and developed a life-threatening intestinal blockage. Surgeons operated and warned her husband plainly that another pregnancy could kill her.
A year after her surgery, with no contraception available and a husband insisting he “needed a daughter”, Zarghona became pregnant again. She spent nine months in fear, tried to end the pregnancy with herbs and saffron, and managed just one antenatal visit.
When her labour began, doctors in the city of Herat told her that both a caesarean and natural delivery carried a high chance of death. She survived, but weeks later is still bleeding and lives with constant pain.
Doctors say Zarghona must never be pregnant again, yet there are no injections or contraceptives in her area. “I’m still terrified. I have no way to protect myself,” she says.
For women in rural provinces, the closure of clinics means hours of walking or giving birth at home, often alone. In villages isolated by mountains and mud roads, midwives say women can bleed for days before they reach a clinic.
The reproductive crisis has become inseparable from Afghanistan’s economic crisis. A doctor in the northern province of Jawzjan estimates that 80% of the pregnant and breastfeeding women she sees are malnourished.
“They have anaemia, vitamin deficiencies, low blood pressure. Their bodies are too weak to carry pregnancies safely,” she says.
Domestic violence also emerges again and again in women’s testimonies, as a cause of miscarriage and a method of control in households where women cannot escape, cannot seek shelter and cannot access contraception.
In Kandahar, Reyhana* recounts how her sister Sakina*, a young widow, was forced by her in-laws to marry her brother-in-law. When she objected, they beat her repeatedly. “Each time they hit her, she bled. She lost her baby.”
Hamida*, a midwife who works in an overcrowded maternity ward in Kandahar, says violence is one of the leading causes of the miscarriages she sees. “Every 24 hours, we see more than 100 deliveries. About six miscarriages happen each day; many are from beatings, many are from women carrying heavy loads.”
Humaira*, 38, says she took abortion pills when she discovered she was pregnant with a girl. “My husband wanted a son. If I gave birth to another daughter, he would beat me or divorce me. So I bought medicine secretly.”
Her story is echoed by other women in Kandahar and Jawzjan who described miscarriages that were either forced, self-induced or the result of abuse after ultrasounds showed the foetus was female.
In the central province of Ghor, a 15-year-old girl says she miscarried after carrying two full jerrycans of water up a steep hill. “I was ashamed to tell anyone,” she says. “By the time my mother saw me, it was too late.”
In a remote part of Herat province, Shamsia*, 38, says she worked in construction and brickmaking throughout her pregnancies. “My mother-in-law forced me to breastfeed her baby too. I became weaker every day.” When the doctor told her she needed a blood transfusion, she says her family refused, calling it “haram” (meaning that it was forbidden or sinful).
Before the informal ban on contraceptives, rural clinics held regular sessions on spacing out births. Now those programmes have all been stopped. “There is no purpose in giving awareness when there is no medicine. The Taliban have not given written orders, but the fear is real. If we speak openly, they may shut us down,” says one doctor.
* Names have been changed to protect identities
Taliban birth control ban: women ‘broken’ by lethal pregnancies and untreated miscarriages
Major powers have renewed diplomatic links while others seek deals to deport migrants. And all the while gender repression is getting worse
Last weekend, on the international day of education, UN agencies sounded the alarm on a situation that is far too neglected. It was just over four years ago that Afghanistan’s Taliban government banned all girls from secondary education. Since then it has extended the ban to include higher education. In a situation that has been rightly condemned as “gender apartheid”, the UN tells us that a staggering 2.2 million girls have been denied their chance at school.
The waves of repression, which should be classified by United Nations legal authorities as a crime against humanity, mark the victory of the extreme Kandahar clerical faction over Kabul-based government ministers. They are also part of the plan of supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to erase girls and women from public life.
The appalling situation exposes, too, the miscalculations and errors being made by foreign governments that, even as the regime has stepped up the suppression of women, have recently sought to rebuild diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime. Four-and-a-half years into the Taliban’s ascent to power, more children than ever are being denied education.
In successive edicts since 2021, women have now been banned from universities and most employment, including with the government and NGOs. They have been required to cover their faces, to be accompanied by male relatives for any long-distance travel, and have been warned they face arrest if seen in public spaces such as parks, gyms and beauty salons.
This appeasement of the Taliban, led by Russia, China and India and followed by some European governments, has led Afghans’ religious rulers to believe they can act with impunity.
December saw the arrest of a female journalist, Nazira Rashidi, in the northern city of Kunduz. Another young woman, Khadija Ahmadzada, was imprisoned in Herat for being in “violation” of rules by running a women’s sports gym and spent 13 days in jail until Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, successfully pressed for her release.
Bennett is warning that conditions for girls and women are deteriorating and that the Taliban’s newly issued criminal procedure code foreshadows even more violations of girls’ and women’s rights.
The latest repression marks the triumph of Akhundzada, the supreme ruler, and has seen key government departments and functions, including the control of weapons, redirected from Kabul to Kandahar. While the Kabul faction acknowledges that the economy requires women’s participation and access to technology, Akhundzada has become increasingly determined to impose a strict Islamic emirate, isolated from the modern world, where religious figures loyal to him control every aspect of society.
His ideology is so rigid that he approved of his son’s choice to become a suicide bomber. He lost out – but only momentarily – when, within days of his 29 September order for a complete internet shutdown that would have severed Afghanistan’s links with the world and prevented girls from enjoying online education, he was defied by the Kabul-based telecommunications ministry, which switched the service back on. But by December, as a UN monitoring team noted, Akhundzada’s consolidation of power had also involved “a continued buildup of security forces under the direct control of Kandahar”.
Central to the latest repression are internal disagreements within the Taliban, not least about the future of education and women’s employment. Indeed, evidence compiled by the BBC includes a tape of Akhundzada from January 2025 warning that “as a result of these divisions, the emirate will collapse and end”. The rifts are significant. After warning publicly of the regime “committing injustice against 20 million people” – the entire female population of the country – and saying the denial of education was “straying from the path of God”, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the then-deputy foreign minister, had to flee the country.
European countries have increased engagement with the Taliban as part of a push to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers, lending credibility to the regime despite its persecution of girls and women. Yet the 59th session of the UN human rights council, held in June–July 2025, debated this matter, and Bennett, the UN special rapporteur, has persistently advocated making girls’ rights a condition for engagement with the Taliban and devising mechanisms to hold the regime accountable, including referring the denial of education to the international criminal court (ICC).
They want to make gender apartheid an international crime, and already the UN’s sixth committee (legal) has advanced a draft global treaty targeting the denial of girls’ and women’s rights as crimes against humanity. In July, the pre-trial chamber of the ICC issued arrest warrants for Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the two most senior Taliban officials charged with gender-based persecution. But because of the Taliban’s refusal even to discuss girls’ rights, and their insistence on excluding women’s organisations from any talks, international negotiations held in Doha, hosted by the UN and Qatar, have secured no concessions on girls’ schooling or women’s rights.
Whereas India, Iran and Russia backed forces that put the Taliban under real pressure in the 1990s, there is no organised armed anti-regime force within Afghanistan this time.
There is underground schooling in areas such as the Panjshir valley, where radio broadcasts cover everything from breastfeeding to basic school science lessons for women and girls. Girls also study in what are called “home schools”, or leave for Pakistan or Iran to continue their education abroad, even in the face of those countries’ repatriation of 2.6 million Afghan refugees in 2025. Some young women have recently come to Scotland on scholarships to study to become doctors.
There is a good reason why a failure to educate girls will eventually bring down the regime: Afghanistan’s population has swelled to more than 43 million and is only growing, with a predicted 17.4 million people food-insecure by March and 4.9 million mothers and children suffering from malnutrition. But building an economy that will take millions from poverty to prosperity will be impossible so long as the Taliban deny half their population the chance to be educated and to join the workforce. That is their failure. If we are in any way sanguine about this medieval repression, that will be ours.
Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
As the Taliban continue their war on women and girls, it is clear that appeasement has failed
For women – and often not for men either – marriage is rarely a personal choice. It is usually decided by families, most often by fathers. In Panjshir province, some young women try to escape unwanted marriages by taking refuge in the home of a man they do wish to marry – a practice known as shingari. A Panjshiri girl arriving alone and unannounced at a family’s door is likely not just paying a visit – nor is she just asking for a husband – she is challenging a system. In this instalment of the Daily Hustle, AAN’s Hamid Pakteen hears from a man in Panjshir about how a girl’s refusal to marry her cousin reshaped his family, forcing him to weigh up tradition, financial survival and his hopes for his son’s future against his sense of what was right and to recognise the courage of the woman who would become his daughter-in-law.When a girl comes to your doorThere’s something every Panjshiri family secretly fears – a girl turning up at your door saying she’s come to marry one of your sons.
In Panjshir, we call this shingari. It often happens when she falls in love with a boy and shows up at his house, asking to marry their son. Sometimes, though, a girl runs away not because of love, but because her home has become unbearable. In those cases, she might take refuge in a house where she barely knows anyone.
Once she’s crossed that line, there’s no easy way back. If the boy refuses to marry her, things can turn ugly. In the worst cases, both the girl and the boy could be killed, but this happens very rarely. Most of the time, the marriage goes ahead because, to be honest, the boy doesn’t really have a choice. If there’s no unmarried son, or if the boy refuses, another male relative is expected to step in and marry her.
The day this trouble landed on our doorstep, I was working in Parwan, a neighbouring province. My wife was alone at home when there was a knock at the front door. When she opened it, she found a young girl standing outside. She said she’d come to marry our youngest son. She told my wife that she and my son had been secretly talking on the phone and had fallen in love.
But when a girl takes the drastic step of leaving her father’s house and turning up at a stranger’s home asking to be married to one of their sons, there’s almost always more to the story.
What waited for me at home
After my wife called, I got myself home as quickly as I could. All the way back on that journey to Panjshir, I thought about what this would mean for our lives. We were not well off. I had lost my job when the Islamic Republic fell in 2021 and was working as a day labourer, taking work wherever I could find it. My son was barely 18 years old – too young to start a family. I had hopes he’d go to university and make something of himself. And then there was our reputation. What would people say? How would the community react? And what about the girl’s family?
By the time I got home, the girl was in the kitchen helping my wife prepare dinner. My wife looked at me with pleading eyes, silently asking me to be gentle with this girl and our son.
I sat on the kitchen floor and started talking to the girl. I wanted to understand why she had done this to our family and to talk some sense into her. She told me she’d been engaged to her cousin when she was seven, but she didn’t want to marry him because he was mentally ill. She begged her family not to force her into the marriage, but her father had refused to back down – even if it meant condemning his daughter to a life of misery. When she realised her father would never change his mind, she decided to take control of her own future. She ran away and came to our house, hoping we would take her in as a daughter.
I told her we had no money. I couldn’t afford to pay for a wedding party or pay a toyana (bride price). I said I’d take her home and when my financial situation improved, I’d go with my son to ask her father for her hand. I told her my son was still very young and couldn’t manage his own expenses, let alone support a wife.
But she wouldn’t budge. “I’m not going anywhere, she said, “I’ve taken refuge in your house. You must marry your son to me. I don’t want a big wedding – just a simple nikah [marriage ceremony]. If I go home, my brothers will kill me.” I tried to reason with her. I said we’d make up an excuse and tell her family she’d come to visit one of my daughters. She shook her head: “Either you marry me to your son,” she said, “or I’ll kill myself.”
Seeking help from the elders
I had no choice but to go to her family. I took four of our neighbours, some elders from the area and the imam of our mosque along with me. It was a delicate matter. I told her father that his daughter was in my house and that we’d come to resolve the matter quietly, before things got any worse. Then I asked for his daughter’s hand for my son, so the issue could be settled honourably.
He was furious. He said she’d been promised to her cousin since childhood. “What am I supposed to tell my brother?” he demanded. “How do we live with this shame?”
The imam told him that promising children in marriage was against Islam and that, in his experience, this was one of the main reasons girls in our area ran away from home.
We asked him why his daughter had run away. He said the problem had started two years earlier when his daughter turned 18 and his brother wanted to make things official by throwing an engagement party. But his daughter refused, saying she wouldn’t marry “a crazy man.” The stand-off continued and the situation became increasingly tense – tempers rose, unkind words were spoken and threats made— but his daughter would not agree and now she had run away.
Breaking the engagement
I asked the village elders and our local imam to help me find a solution. We held several meetings with both families – the girl’s and her cousin’s – to convince them that forcing through this marriage was wrong and that, according to Islamic principles, the engagement should be annulled. We told them that the die was cast and by committing shingari, the girl had left the families little choice. My son had to marry her. This is our custom.
Eventually, her father agreed to cancel the engagement and allow her to marry my son. I suggested that, to save face, we should return the girl to her family home and hold the wedding there, but he refused. He said she was no longer his daughter and he wanted nothing to do with her.
After several days, he softened – but only slightly. He agreed to hold the wedding at his house, but made it clear he would neither help organise it nor would he spend a single afghani on her. Finally, her maternal uncle stepped in and said he’d help organise the wedding so that his niece could go to her husband’s home with honour.
Borrowing money for the wedding
In Panjshir, the mahr[1] and the toyana for a girl who has committed shingari are both much higher than normal, as a way of setting an example for other boys and girls who get ideas. The elders usually set the amount and the groom’s family is obliged to pay it. Normally, the toyana is between 200,000 and 300,000 afghani (about USD 2,880 to 4,320), but in shingari cases it can be as high as 1,000,000 afghani (USD 14,400). In this case, knowing my financial situation, the elders set the bride price at 200,000 afghani. It was far less than usual for shingari cases, but still, a fortune for me.
My earnings were barely enough to cover our household expenses and I had no savings. I tried to borrow money from friends and relatives, but at the time, no one had money to spare. Even if they did, they wouldn’t lend it to me because they knew I had no way of paying them back. A friend suggested I take a loan from the bank. The bank’s conditions were strict, but I had no other choice. Using my house as collateral, I took a loan from the MicroFinance Bank for 250,000 afghanis (USD 3,650). I had to pay off the loan with interest within two years. I paid 11,300 afghani (USD 165) monthly, of which 11,000 (USD 160) was deducted from the principal and 300 afghani (USD 5) was taken by the bank as interest.
I gave 200,000 afghani to the girl’s father and used the rest for the wedding. We had the nikah ceremony at her family home and held a modest celebration at ours. True to his word, her father didn’t contribute to the wedding. He just took the money. He didn’t even buy her a wedding dress. Her uncle and I paid for the wedding and did our best to make it as joyous as possible. It was not right that a girl of 20 should start her married life like a widow.
Three years on
It’s been three years since my son’s wedding and my daughter-in-law still doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. For the first year, no one from her family came to see her. Sometimes, during the holidays, I’d take her to see her family, but they weren’t very welcoming. Later, her mother and sisters started coming over to see her, but only occasionally. There was a thaw after my grandson was born and for the past year, the families have been visiting each other and my daughter-in-law can once again go to her father’s house.
People often talk about shingari as if it is only a scandal or a crime against honour. Few talk about the courage it takes for a young woman to say no when no one is listening. My daughter-in-law risked everything to refuse a marriage she had not chosen and put her trust in strangers to protect her when her own family would not. Those tense and uncertain days are now in the past, but I will always remember them as the moment that a frightened, but brave girl claimed her future.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
References
References
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Mahr is a gift given by the groom to the bride at the wedding, as mandated by sharia.
When a Girl Turns Up at the Door: How an Afghan custom helped one young woman refuse a forced marriage
According to the report, this issue is highlighted in the draft presidential decree of Uzbekistan and aligns with the implementation of the 2030 strategy.
Uzbek media outlets reported that Uzbekistan is seriously considering potential military-technical cooperation with Afghanistan as part of efforts to strengthen military-political dialogue in the region.
According to the report, this issue is highlighted in the draft presidential decree of Uzbekistan and aligns with the implementation of the 2030 strategy.
The report states that Uzbekistan emphasizes building trust among Central Asian countries through regular dialogue with neighboring states and sees Afghanistan as a key area for future defense cooperation.
A section of the Uzbek media report says: “Emphasis has been placed on the need to strengthen trust among Central Asian countries through structured dialogue with neighboring countries. In this context, special attention has been given to the prospects of defense cooperation with Afghanistan.”
Military analyst Asadullah Nadim noted: “Security and military-defense matters are somewhat separate concepts. Security issues and related cooperation mostly involve tracking, uncovering, and preventing terrorist networks.”
The report also states that concrete proposals for cooperation with Afghanistan are to be drafted by June 2026 and, after being approved by the Presidential Security Council, will be sent to Kabul via the Foreign Ministry in September of that year.
If Afghanistan responds positively, the implementation of joint military-technical programs between the two countries is planned for the final months of 2026.
But what is the significance of this cooperation for both countries?
Military expert Zalmay Afghanyar said: “Uzbekistan is one of the countries that has maintained its economic and political cooperation over the past four years, and its military cooperation can contribute to strengthening security for Central Asian countries.”
This comes after the President of Uzbekistan previously wrote in an article that Afghanistan is not on the sidelines and, in his view, is a natural and inseparable part of the region. He added that regional stability will not be achievable without addressing issues related to Afghanistan.
Uzbekistan Eyes Military Cooperation with Afghanistan
Amnesty International says cancellation of independent media support organizations’ licenses is part of an ongoing campaign to suppress and eliminate press freedom in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s Information and Culture Ministry announced Monday it was revoking licenses of all media support organizations except three, claiming these groups were ineffective.
Amnesty International warned Tuesday the shutdown eliminates remaining avenues for professional support and safety for independent journalists and media in Afghanistan’s severely repressive environment.
The organization urged the Taliban to immediately reverse this decision and ensure these vital media support organizations can continue their legitimate work freely.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on media freedom, including banning all female journalists from working. Male journalists face constant intimidation, arbitrary arrests, and detention when covering sensitive topics, creating an atmosphere of fear that has devastated Afghanistan’s once-vibrant independent media landscape.
Many media support organizations providing training, advocacy, and protection for journalists had already faced intimidation, restrictions, and financial difficulties before this shutdown decision was announced.
The Afghanistan Journalists Center reports that most organizations whose licenses were revoked had operated legally since receiving permits from the previous Afghanistan government. These groups provided critical professional support and safety resources for journalists working under extremely dangerous conditions in one of world’s most hostile environments for press freedom.
This crackdown further isolates Afghan journalists who already face unprecedented challenges, including complete exclusion of women from the profession and severe content restrictions.
Amnesty Condemns Shutdown of Media Support Organizations in Afghanistan
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
