Mr. Ahmad is a counterterrorism research scholar and author of the Taliban Leadership Tracker at the Middle East Institute.
President Trump has promised a bold new American approach to the world. Nowhere is that more urgently needed than in Afghanistan. Not only have its Taliban rulers crushed dissent and stripped away the rights of the country’s women and girls; they have also taken Americans hostage and are allowing Afghanistan to serve as a nerve center of violent jihadist networks such as Al Qaeda. We all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, the last time this state of affairs existed.
The Trump administration faces a stark choice: Let Afghanistan spiral further into jihadism or engage pragmatically with the Taliban. Engagement is of course a tough case to make, given the regime’s brutal nature and America’s painful history in Afghanistan. But dealing directly with the Taliban may be the only way to gain enough leverage to minimize serious potential threats to U.S. national security and interests.
The Biden administration’s approach — neither toppling the regime nor normalizing relations — has allowed the Taliban to entrench its rule without hope of the United States exerting any positive influence over it. Afghanistan requires realpolitik — putting results over ideals. The hard-nosed deal-making aspects of Mr. Trump’s “America first” outlook may offer the right framework.
The Trump administration should establish at least a limited diplomatic presence in Afghanistan or even reopen America’s embassy in Kabul to facilitate regular contact with Taliban leaders toward the ultimate goal of deploying specialized intelligence teams in the country to track and respond to potential threats.
The administration’s policy toward the Taliban remains unclear, but there is reason to believe that Mr. Trump would embrace a new approach. He has criticized past U.S. policy in Afghanistan for overreach and unrealistic goals. And he has taken bold action toward Afghanistan before. In 2020, his first administration negotiated the U.S.-Taliban agreement — later executed by President Joe Biden — that ended America’s longest war.
More recently, Mr. Trump has made clear his interest in recovering the military equipment, valued at $7 billion, left behind by the United States. He has also said the huge Bagram Air Base should have been kept under U.S. control as a check on China’s power in the region. These objectives are impossible without direct contact with the Taliban.
Mr. Trump is right to worry about China’s influence in Afghanistan. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, China kept its diplomatic mission open in Kabul and has expanded ties with the Taliban. It welcomed a Taliban ambassador to Beijing, forged relationships with Taliban security forces and Chinese companies have secured commercial contracts in industries like oil and minerals extraction. Beijing sees Afghanistan as important for its plan to increase Chinese influence in the region through economic ties. But the Taliban still see the United States as a preferred partner, and a proactive U.S. policy could help keep China’s influence in check.
Purely from the terrorism standpoint, Afghanistan demands U.S. attention. The country is home to militant groups that, with the Taliban in control, now have freer rein. The Taliban have opened thousands of madrassas, religious schools where young men may be exposed to notions of jihad and potential breeding grounds for future generations of extremists. The taking of foreign hostages has resulted in prisoner swaps with the United States that have freed Taliban terrorists and drug traffickers.
A particularly potent threat exists in the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, the group’s regional affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS-K, which is at odds with the Taliban, has been expanding external operations and recruitment, especially in Pakistan and Central Asia, and has carried out targetedassassinations in Afghanistan. The Department of Homeland Security warned in October of the growing risk of attacks outside Afghanistan from groups like ISIS-K, and various plots and threats already have come to light. Jihadist groups are just a text message away from radicalizing recruits in the West, including in diaspora communities. This means that any counterterrorism efforts directed at Afghanistan must also include more robust intelligence-gathering in the United States itself, as well as outreach to trusted diaspora leaders to help identify and disrupt threats.
The Taliban also retain longstanding ties to Al Qaeda, offering the group sanctuary in exchange for its promise not to plot attacks from Afghan soil. This arrangement is dependent on the Taliban remaining isolated, which helps shield Al Qaeda from foreign pressure. The Taliban thus hold significant potential leverage over the jihadist network, which could be employed to serve U.S. interests.
Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, has said the administration needs to re-examine American intelligence and counterterrorism measures regarding Afghanistan to make sure the United States is not again caught off guard as it was in 2001. Ultimately, effective counterterrorism hinges on establishing communication with Taliban clerics. The United States lacks this, leaving Washington blind to the group’s internal power structure and potential factional rifts that might otherwise present opportunities to achieve its objectives.
The Taliban may appear monolithic, but they are not. Reflecting the group’s ethnic diversity, its hard-line emir, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, leads an uneasy coalition of factions and tribes with different priorities and levels of extremism. As with any governing organization, there are the usual internal tensions over personnel issues and policy, including the emir’s rigid stance on denying women and girls access to education, his tight control over government resources, how forcefully to suppress dissent and the expansion of madrassas at the expense of regular schooling. More pragmatic factions favor rapprochement with the United States to give the regime more global legitimacy and improve Afghanistan’s dire economic situation. The Taliban’s deputy foreign minister last month praised Mr. Trump as “decisive” and “courageous,” called for the reopening of the U.S. embassy and said that if the United States extended the hand of friendship, the Taliban would reciprocate.
The Taliban will be difficult to deal with. But Afghanistan is an important piece in the broader jihadist puzzle. To continue standing by and waiting for the Taliban to collapse is unrealistic and risky. Direct engagement, on the other hand, may open pathways for tracking and disrupting terrorist plots. In the longer term, it may even give the United States enough influence to help improve Afghanistan’s overall direction, including on human rights.
Engaging with the Taliban would be a bitter pill for America to swallow, but as Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently pointed out, U.S. foreign policy is often about choosing the “least bad” option.
Javid Ahmad is a research scholar focused on counterterrorism and author of the Taliban Leadership Tracker at the Middle East Institute. He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and teaches at George Washington University.
The U.S. Can No Longer Ignore the Threat Arising in Afghanistan
For six years, I ran a home school for the girls in my village. I started the school when my family moved back to Afghanistan from Pakistan. My father was concerned about security and money was always tight, so I couldn’t even contemplate going to university. So, when the opportunity presented itself for me to teach classes at home for the girls in the village, I jumped at it. From its humble beginnings, my little class grew and eventually an NGO started supporting the school, which meant that the Ministry of Education would officially recognise us and the NGO would give us resources like schoolbooks and other educational materials as well as pay me a salary. But two months ago, the NGO informed us I’d have to close the school down because the Emirate would no longer allow it to operate.
Today’s Daily Hustle features a young woman who we last heard from in June 2023 when she was running a home school for girls in her village. Now, a year and half later, she has been ordered to close it. Even before the fall of the Islamic Republic, many Afghan girls had no access to education – whether because of conflict or local conservative mores, a lack of female teachers, or because functioning schools did not exist. After the Republic fell, communities in these areas were hopeful that schools might open – or reopen – now the conflict was over. But for older girls across Afghanistan, this was not to be. One of the first things the Taleban did after they took power was to ban older girls from education. Many families in rural Afghanistan have also struggled to get even their younger daughters an education because no schools were ever built in their areas. However, they may be local NGO-supported home-based or community-based schools. In 2023, we spoke to one young Afghan woman who had set up such a school. Hamid Pakteen spoke to her recently and she had bad news.
From humble beginnings
I live in one of the largest and most populated districts in our province in southeastern Afghanistan. During the Republic, there was fighting between the government and the Taleban over control of our province. In those years, most schools were closed, and when they were open, there were either no qualified female teachers or the Taleban wouldn’t allow girls to attend. Still, many families wanted their daughters to go to school. So, the tribal elders asked each village to find an educated woman in their community who could teach girls in their home and asked the parents to pay the teachers whatever they could afford. This is how, six years ago, I started running a home school in one of the rooms in our house.
At first, my father was opposed to the idea of me running a school. He was worried about what the community would think. He said people would gossip about a woman in our household working and supporting the family, which in our area is seen as shameful. But my older brother, who at the time was a teacher himself, convinced him to let me go ahead with it. He could see I was anxious about staying at home with nothing to do and convinced him that teaching would occupy my time and make good use of my education and my energy.
My little school began with only a few girls from the neighbourhood, but by the end of the first year, there were 20 students. As our reputation improved and more people learned about our classes, the number of students continued to grow until I eventually had 50 students aged between 7 and 18.
An official home school for girls, with a new curriculum
One day, the village malek (headman) told my brother there was an NGO that wanted to support classes for girls in our village: “I thought about your family and, if you’re ok with it and your sister’s willing, the NGO will give her a salary and support her class.”
This was exciting news. If we could manage to get support from this NGO, our classes would become official. A team from the NGO came to assess my class. They wanted to see the classroom environment and watch one of my lessons. I also had to take a test to show I had the knowledge and skills to teach. Finally, we got the word that they’d accepted our school for their programme.
They gave us books, notebooks, and other things such as school bags and pens, as well as a new curriculum based on the one introduced by the province’s Directorate of Education and UNICEF – Pashto, life skills, maths, calligraphy, art and religious education, which includes fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] and hadiths [the sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad] and the Holy Quran. The official school hours were from 7 am to noon.
I had to keep an attendance sheet, a lesson plan, results sheets and report cards, and a team from the NGO and the district education office came twice a month to monitor my classes and make sure I was sticking to the curriculum and the quality of teaching was up to par. They also gave me a salary of 9,000 afghanis (USD 105) each month, so I didn’t have to rely on money from the parents in these hard economic times when families are struggling to survive.
They also wanted a photo of each student. This last requirement proved to be a temporary setback because several families objected to having their daughter’s picture taken and took them out of school. After that, my brother and the village malek talked to the fathers and convinced them to allow their girls to be photographed.
There were also other obstacles. My father voiced his opposition once again. This time, he was concerned about me getting a salary from an NGO: “What will people say? They will say that our daughter is working for an NGO and getting paid,” he grumbled. But times were hard, and my salary was our family’s only source of income.
When the Republic fell, my father was too old to work and my brothers lost their jobs. My small salary was supporting 14 people – my parents, my three brothers, their wives and children, my sister and myself. So, faced with the reality of our economic situation, he finally relented.
Making our school official meant the older girls could no longer attend because of the ban on them going to school. I had to reduce the number of students from 50 to 35 and limit them to girls between 7 and 12 years old. So, after lunch, I used to hold free Quran classes for the older girls.
Things were going well. The NGO supported my school for almost three years. Last year, the school took first place at the district level – a well-deserved distinction for my students, who took their studies very seriously.
The order to close my school
A couple of months ago, as my cohort of students was preparing to begin grade six and looking forward to graduating in March 2025, the NGO told us we’d have to close the school because the Ministry of Education had ordered the closure of schools like mine until further notice. As far as I know, the ban only affects schools like mine. In some places, younger girls can still attend the community-based school where they study each class in one year up to grade six.
There’s a lot of speculation in the village about why the school was closed. Some people say it’s because the local government doesn’t want girls walking on the street no matter what their age. But the houses in our village are interconnected – each house has a door leading to the house next to it – and the girls never walked on a public street to get to class. Besides, everyone in the village knows our family and they know that the men leave the house when I hold classes. Other people say the NGO has lost its funding or stopped operating and that another NGO will step in soon to take over the programme. Others say the government’s told NGOs not to operate classes beyond grade three and since my cohort of students was going to be starting grade six, the NGO had no choice but to close the school down. Still others think it was because I held Quran classes in the afternoons for older girls, but these classes had nothing to do with my home-based school. It was a private initiative and the classes were held outside school hours and were free of charge. Anyway, what’s wrong with teaching girls the Quran?
Whatever the reason, the day I told my class that the school was closing was one of the hardest days of my life. Everyone was very upset. We spent the rest of our time together talking about how disappointed we felt and the girls were crying when they left my little classroom for the last time. Among my students were girls with high hopes and dreams for the future. Some of them, believing that the Emirate would reopen girls’ high schools soon, had wanted to become doctors and some said they would become teachers so that they could serve the people, as I do.
The entire community is upset by the sudden shuttering of my school. Home-based schools like mine that operated with help from NGOs and without any support from the government were the only option for many. My brothers have spoken to the local education officials and the NGO to get them to change their minds. But the NGO told my brother not to hold private classes at home under any circumstances, including the free Quran classes for the older girls that I had going in the afternoons. They told him I had to stop all activities. Being told I couldn’t even teach classes privately and for free was a big disappointment. My students’ parents went to the village malek several times and asked him to go to the district centre and convince the education department to let us have classes, but the malek said this matter was beyond his authority and that no one would listen to him on this matter. This was an order from the authorities, he said, and we had to obey.
Sacrifices and hope
When I think about all the obstacles I overcame to get the school going and keep it running, I’m overwhelmed by sadness. It wasn’t easy and I had to make many sacrifices. I had to put off my wedding because I’d have had to have moved to Kabul after I got married. I didn’t want to abandon my students in the middle of their studies, especially since this was the final year for my cohort of students. I talked it over with my fiancé and he agreed. A delay would also give him time to save enough for our wedding.
My students and their parents are disappointed too. Not a day goes by without someone stopping by our house to ask after the school. They say the school was a blessing for the village and ask me to reopen it because their daughters are depressed and want to start studying again. But there’s no word either from the NGO or from the district officials.
Since the school closed, I haven’t been paid and it won’t be long before our savings run out. God only knows what will happen to my family after that.
To be honest, I can’t understand why anyone would keep girls from studying. I taught the Quran and religious lessons and the books that the Ministry of Education gave to the schools. I wouldn’t teach anything else. What could be wrong with helping girls gain literacy and numeracy skills and learn the Holy Word of God?
Still, I hold out hope that one day soon, someone will knock on the door and tell me I can reopen the school.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
The Daily Hustle: A home school for girls is shut down
WASHINGTON — In Kabul, Afghanistan, a major midwifery program — girls’ only higher education option — has closed.
Across Pakistan, dozens of development programs have ground to a halt.
In Bangladesh, a health research center has laid off more than 1,000 employees.
The fallout comes two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration suspended foreign aid amid a widespread review, leaving thousands of development programs in limbo.
“I’m in shock,” said a student at the USAID-funded midwifery school in Kabul, speaking anonymously. “This was the last remaining option for girls to receive an education and get a job.”
“People keep calling and asking, ‘When is the program going to restart?'” said the head of a USAID-backed education nonprofit in Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The freeze follows a Jan. 20 executive order issued by Trump that suspended all foreign aid pending a 30-day review.
The president said the review was necessary because “the United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests, and in many cases, antithetical to American values.” The executive order said the current setup “serves to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries” that undermine “harmonious” international relations.
Now, U.S. government agencies involved in delivering foreign assistance must decide by April 30 to keep, change or end their foreign aid programs.
U.S. foreign assistance to South and Central Asia, by country.
The aid suspension marks a sharp break with decades of U.S. foreign policy. Historically, the U.S. has been the world’s biggest foreign aid donor, with $68 billion in aid in 2023.
The offices of USAID, the lead foreign aid agency, remain closed. Although the State Department has issued a broad exemption to “lifesaving” humanitarian programs such as emergency food distribution in Afghanistan, most programs on the ground remain closed.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has taken over as acting head of USAID, said that while he backs foreign assistance, “every dollar” spent on foreign assistance must advance U.S. national interest.
“We are not walking away from foreign aid,” Rubio told Scott Jennings on Sirius XM Patriot 125 on Monday. “We are walking away from foreign aid that’s dumb, that’s stupid, that wastes American taxpayer money.”
USAID is recognized globally as a premier development agency, but critics at home and abroad have long accused it of throwing American taxpayer money into wasteful projects.
To highlight this, the White House last week issued a list of USAID programs involving “waste and abuse,” including $1.5 million “to advance diversity, equity and inclusion” in Serbia; $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia; and $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt.
Foreign aid defenders acknowledge the waste, but they argue these projects represent a fraction of the $68 billion U.S. aid program.
U.S. foreign assistance to South and Central Asia, by sector.
South Asia
Though U.S. aid to South and Central Asian nations has declined recently, the region still gets billions annually, with Afghanistan the largest regional recipient.
The country, which received $1.3 billion in 2023, now faces a wave of program shutdowns. While emergency humanitarian aid continues after a brief interruption, development programs from child and maternal health to education have stopped.
The impact has been wide-ranging. The United Nations Population Fund has frozen all U.S.-backed programs in Afghanistan, potentially leaving more than 9 million people cut off from health services, according to regional director, Pio Smith.
The UNFPA, which Republicans have long accused of promoting coercive family planning practices, relies on U.S. assistance for almost a third of its humanitarian operations. The agency, which denies the charge, is likely to lose all that support, impacting its work across the region.
Education is another casualty of the aid suspension in Afghanistan. The American University of Afghanistan, established in 2006 with a USAID grant and now operating out of Qatar, has reportedly suspended classes. A university spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the Asian University for Women is scrambling to keep hundreds of Afghan students after U.S. funding dried up. To cover the funding shortfall, the university has launched a $7 million appeal.
“We cannot and will not send these students back to an uncertain and oppressive future,” the university said in a statement.
Bangladesh, despite its $437 billion economy, is also feeling the pinch. The country is a U.S. ally and South Asia’s largest recipient of U.S. aid after Afghanistan, with more than $500 million supporting a wide range of programs from emergency food assistance to fighting tuberculosis and pandemic influenza.
In Pakistan, more than three dozen USAID-funded projects have reportedly shut down in recent days. A burns and plastic surgery center in the northwestern city of Peshawar, built with a $15 million USAID grant, faces an uncertain future.
“At the moment, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the whole program, but I’m hopeful that the program will move forward,” Dr. Tahmeedullah, the center’s director, said in an interview.
Central Asia
In Central Asia, where five former Soviet republics received about $235 million in 2023, nearly every USAID-funded program and initiative has been stopped, according to local news reports.
“From what I’ve gathered, all types of programs and initiatives have been suspended as of now,” said Alisher Khamidov, a Kyrgyzstan-based consultant who follows USAID projects in the region.
The suspensions include critical health initiatives such as USAID’s $18 million-$20 million “TB-Free” programs in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, both launched in 2023.
“This five-year project has special significance for Uzbekistan as it was one of the few projects tackling TB in the country,” Khamidov said in an interview last week with VOA.
In a statement, a State Department spokesperson said, “We are reviewing all foreign assistance programs to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
USAID has poured billions of dollars into many regional development programs since the early 1990s, including initiatives to promote democratization and civil society. Those efforts, however, represent a fraction of the total aid. Today, the agency is largely focused on agriculture and health projects, according to Khamidov.
Across the region, USAID programs have long faced allegations of waste and abuse, with numerous examples uncovered by the agency’s own inspector general.
Nowhere has the alleged abuse been starker than in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have been accused of siphoning of millions of dollars in U.S. aid funneled through U.N. agencies.
Some Taliban opponents have welcomed the aid freeze, arguing that it could force the group to accede to international demands. Others, such as former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, say it could level the political playing field in the country.
“The dismantling of USAID clears the path for the rise of genuine leaders in Afghanistan,” Saleh wrote on X.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says a multibillion-dollar program can inevitably lead to waste and abuse. He told VOA that foreign aid can showcase U.S. goodwill but also cause diplomatic friction over policy and cultural issues.
Clark said that though the aid pause should have been less abrupt, a thorough review of the program is necessary.
“It makes sense to stop as a new administration comes in and reassess where the money is going, where it’s being allocated,” he said.
VOA’s Afghan, Deewa and Urdu services and correspondent Vero Balderas contributed to this report.
How pause in US foreign aid is impacting South, Central Asia
The United States’ Afghan war – more than two decades of conflict, trillions of dollars spent, tens of thousands of civilian and military lives lost and the Taliban ultimately reclaiming power. What was this US intervention all about, was it worth it and could it ever realistically succeed? This documentary investigates how, despite spending more than $2.3 trillion and two decades in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, the US failed to achieve its objectives of building a stable Afghan state and military capable of resisting the Taliban. We hear from Taliban officials, American military personnel, Afghan civilians, key political figures and experts, with different perspectives on the war goals, strategies and ultimate failure. The film, Afghanistan: The Price of Peace, examines the human toll of the occupation, cultural and political missteps and the enduring challenges facing Afghanistan after the return of the Taliban. It also reflects on the broader themes of imperialism, nation-building and the enduring struggle for sovereignty.
Why Western intervention failed in Afghanistan | Featured Documentary
United States President Donald Trump’s executive order halting all US aid is reverberating through Afghanistan. Dozens of NGOs that depend on US funding are reported to have already closed. United Nations agencies are scrutinising their funding to see what it means for programmes and partners and whether they can apply for a waiver for lifesaving humanitarian assistance. The sheer amount and variety of US funding to Afghanistan means the sudden order to ‘stop work’, implemented without warning, will hurt many sectors – from health to the media to rights groups to support for the poorest and most vulnerable. The move will also exacerbate the many problems facing Afghanistan’s sluggish economy. AAN’s Kate Clark, with input from Rama Mirzad, considers the extent, gravity and potential consequences for Afghanistanof the White House’s new aid policy.
On 20 January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order, ‘Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid’.All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order.
The Department of State then issued ‘stop-work orders’ on existing funding and suspended the review of any new proposal that was or would have been funded through it or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), pending a review by the Office of Management and Budget, an agency within the president’s executive office. Trump’s rationale for the order is that:
The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
A separate statement, issued by the White House on 3 February said:
For decades, [USAID] has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.
One of the examples it gave was “[h]undreds of millions of to fund ‘irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,’ benefiting the Taliban.” (The source used by the White House was a 2018 article published by Breitbart quoting a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report.) One source familiar with the policy told the author this was ironic, given that funding the irrigation canals had come “about entirely because of State and Pentagon pressure.”
The barest clarification on the criteria that might allow projects to get funding or get funding resumed came six days after Trump’s order in a 26 January statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
On 27 January, according to Politico, Pete Marocco, Director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department and Deputy Administrator-designate at USAID and the man now “effectively running the agency from the State Department,” discovered that USAID had paid out USD 153 million since the order. Politico reported that officials pointed out that this “covered numerous payments, including a key set of employee salaries and money owed to organizations for work already done … and did not violate the Trump foreign aid freeze.” However, Marocco was reported to have been furious. Representatives of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose director is the tech billionaire Elon Musk, “approached the agency’s acting leadership and handed them a list of 58 people, almost all senior career officials, to put on administrative leave. They said these people were suspected of interfering with the implementation of the funding freeze.” That was to have a chilling effect on all other employees.
On 28 January, Rubio issued a waiver to the executive order, exempting “existing lifesaving humanitarian assistance programs,” so long as the resumption was temporary and no new contracts were signed. It specified as exempt: “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.” It excluded family planning and “non-lifesaving assistance.” However, as will be seen below, what qualifies as permitted, and the mechanisms for getting funding resumed is so confused and under-supported that it is hard to see much getting authorised, at least in the short term.
On 3 February, agents from DOGE raided USAID. Its director, Elon Musk, had said that he wants to cut around a third of annual federal government spending, slash federal regulations, oversee mass layoffs and shut down some agencies entirely (see BBC reporting). DOGE has targeted multiple federal agencies, including those dealing with health (Guardian reporting here), science, weather forecasting and NASA (see this 5 February rundown in Science). USAID is among those subject to particular savagery. On 2 February, Trump said it was “run by a bunch of radical lunatics” (NBC reporting here), while Musk tweeted that it was a “criminal organization.” Then, during the 3 February raid, according to former and current officials speaking to the Associated Press, agents demanded and, in the end, despite having inadequate security clearance, succeeded in getting access to classified information, including intelligence reports, held by the agency (there has been push-back on this allegation – see the already cited Politico article). The same day, Rubio announced he was the acting director of USAID (clip and transcript on NPR here).
The USAID website was offline for several days, but came back with a link to the Office of the USAID Inspector General and a brief message that, from 7 February, worldwide, all directly hired personnel were to be placed on administrative leave, “with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.” The State Department, it said, was working on a plan to fly employees working overseas home, although flights would have to be made in the next 30 days to be paid for.
On 7 February, in response to a lawsuit from unions, a federal judge ordered a temporary halt, until 14 February, to both the administrative leave and recall of overseas workers. The grounds for his decision was that the president had taken “unconstitutional and illegal” actions in trying to shut down the agency, which had been created by Congress in 1961. He did not order a halt to the funding freeze, saying the unions had not demonstrated that it would cause irreparable harm to USAID staff (see NPR reporting here).
The repercussions of Trump’s order for Afghanistan
For many decades, USAID has been the biggest source of civilian aid in the world, funding projects in more than 120 countries. That includes Afghanistan. The latest SIGAR quarterly report, published in January 2025, outlined the scale of that funding:
The US has spent nearly $3.71 billion in Afghanistan since withdrawing from the country in 2021. Most of that money (64.2%) went to UN agencies, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and the World Bank administered Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund. Another $1.2 billion remains available in the funding pipeline for possible disbursement.
According to the UN’s Financial Tracking Service, in 2024, US funding accounted for 43.9 per cent of the total aid to Afghanistan. For 2025, so far (more aid from different countries and organisations is likely to be coming in, although also, less now from the US), the amount pledged by the US was dwarfing contributions from other countries. As of the start of February, it amounted to 65 per cent of the total for 2025: USD 223.7 million, with the next highest far lower: Switzerland (USD 27.6 m), European Commission (26.9 m), Germany 19.8 m), Denmark (14 m) and the UK (7.1 m). The significance of America’s contribution is evident from Table 1 (below), published by SIGAR in its latest quarterly report.[1]
Table 1: Contributions to Afghanistan by the 10 largest donors and others to multilateral institutions (UNOCHA reported programmes, UNAMA and ARTF) since 2022 (USD millions). Source: SIGAR Quarterly Report, 30 January 2025, page 115
Since the fall of the Islamic Republic, major donors have been reluctant to give aid that might help the Islamic Emirate, so give no bilateral aid, but rather funnel all money via the UN, World Bank, other international organisations and NGOs. Almost all of the aid is humanitarian or ‘humanitarian plus’ (ie funding basic services). This means the UN has enjoyed an outsized role since August 2021 and most agencies that operate in Afghanistan have received some US funding, as Table 2 (below), published by SIGAR, shows. It needs to be stressed that this is an unwieldy and expensive way to fund aid and it is not clear what percentage of the funding actually makes it to frontline services. In other words, the losses to Afghanistan will be less than on paper, but we do not know how much less.
Table 2: US contributions to UN agencies, UNAMA and ARTF, 1 October 2021 to 31 December 2024 (USD millions)
Source: SIGAR Quarterly Report, 30 January 2025, page 118
A UN source in Kabul told AAN that agencies are now scrambling to see if at least some of their programmes might be protected by the existing lifesaving humanitarian assistance programmes waiver. The official said USAID had sent out stop-work notices and exemption forms at the same time with the apparent message: “Justify if [your work] is lifesaving or not and how it fits in with US aims.” However, guidance on whether a programme might be exempt is now nearly impossible to get, given the shutdown – albeit lifted for a week – of USAID. There is also the question of who will process the forms. One line in the Politico article says each waiver will have to be signed off by Pete Marocco. Given the stop-work order was global, it is difficult to see many waivers being authorised.
The lack of an obvious procedure means lifesaving programmes could still be halted because of lack of funds. AAN has seen one list of the initial impact of the freeze on some UN agencies and larger NGOs working in Afghanistan and the hit looks to be massive. It mentions the mass closure of healthcare facilities, cuts or closures to programmes helping IDPs, children and women-led organisations and de-mining, with layoffs of staff, including by implementing partners, which are often international or national NGOs.
AAN also saw one bulk email that the director of a large Afghan NGO had sent to his staff:
We have received immediate stop-work orders from several of our major partners, which will significantly impact our operations. Unfortunately, we are forced to make some very tough decisions, as our work depends entirely on donor funding. All [NGO name redacted] team members are notified that January 31, 2025, will be their last working day unless I personally reach out to you and request your continued work. If you don’t receive a call or message from me, it means your position is eliminated.
There are also kind words in the email, heartfelt thanks, an acknowledgement of colleagues’ past dedication and recognition of the hardship they are now facing, but the message is, of necessity, brutal: Most of you no longer have a job, nor a salary. Other managers at NGOs have described their distress at having to send out similar messages, to staff or implementing partners, as well as worries about their own jobs and families.
The timing of the order is particularly difficult. It is the start of the year, the start of project cycles, and teams are in place. How badly UN agencies and NGOs are hit depends on their funding. Those with non-US funding are counting themselves lucky. Others, highly dependent on American money, are closing down programmes – or closing down altogether. Some NGOs will be able to keep some staff on, waiting for the end of the 90-day review. Others will not survive. Many smaller NGOs normally keep going from project funding to project funding and the Trump order will be the final nail in the coffin.
Acting deputy Minister of Economy Abdul Latif Nazari told ToloNews on 28 January that 50 NGOs had stopped work because of the suspension in funding, and called on countries not to ‘politicise’ aid. Over a week later, however, he gave Shamshad a mix of reasons for the closures – the halt in funding for some and violating the laws of the Islamic Emirate for others. Nazari’s second comment revealed how under pressure the aid sector is from all directions, not only because of funding but also the Emirate ban (with some exemptions) on employing women, and officials’ attempts to influence the nature of programmes, who gets hired and who receives aid.[2]
The scale of US funding and the range and variety of US-funded programmes means that any pause or permanent end will inevitably affect key sectors. The US funds “health, education, agriculture, and food security,” according to SIGAR, as well as “civil society and media, focusing on women, girls, and broad human rights protections.” USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), says SIGAR, supports 18 humanitarian activities in Afghanistan through partnerships with UN agencies providing emergency food and nutrition assistance, water, sanitation, and hygiene services, primary health care services, disease response, protection services, and shelter. Table 3 below shows some of those activities, although SIGAR notes: “Due to ongoing security risks, USAID has asked that some information about its programs, especially those related to democracy, gender, and media, be withheld to protect staff and beneficiaries in Afghanistan.
Table 3: Activities supported by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance(BHA)
Source: SIGAR Quarterly Report, 30 January 2025, page 58
The impact on the ground
AAN has spoken to some of those working in different sectors. The director of one national NGO, which supports human rights defenders, women’s rights activists and other civil society organisations, said they were counting themselves lucky as they had a variety of funders – the hit had not been too bad – but others in the sector were laying people off. Much of the sector’s work, he said, was below the radar, small grants to small, unregistered organisations, or financial help, for example, to human rights defenders in acute need. If coming from USAID, that could well disappear.
A man working for a large national NGO described how they had been providing educational services to children up to grade 6 (about 12 years old) in villages far from existing schools and also teacher training. All that has stopped. The NGO’s offices in the various provinces had closed, he said, and 200 to 250 people had lost their jobs. Those still working – and he was one of them – had seen their salaries reduced:
We had people who’d worked for us for 15 years, now having to stay at home. They have no other source of income. There are no other jobs out there. They might be able to live on savings for one or two months, but what should they do after that?
Another man working in one of Afghanistan’s poorest and most isolated provinces said all three of his NGO’s mother and child health centres had closed, along with their mental health centre, because of the stop to USAID funding. “There is no other institution providing the services we were providing, not in the areas we covered, he said. “All those services have been destroyed.” He was one of 30 employees who had lost their jobs, with salaries paid only until the end of February, albeit with the hope that, if the NGO can find alternative funders, their work can resume. If not, he said: “Our life will go from 100 to zero because we relied on our salaries. There is no other option for me or my colleagues.”
More hopeful was a woman working for an international NGO that also provides health services, in seven provinces: USAID had been funding women’s health projects and had supported three health centres in her province. In two of the provinces where her NGO works, she said, other donors had stepped in to keep services going. In the others, employees had been sent home, but not yet laid off, as there was still hope of finding alternative donors. The interviewee was among those currently at home and said beneficiaries had been coming and asking them to continue their work, or they would lose heart.
The director of one media organisation said many local radio stations were supported by USAID, receiving small grants that were, for many of them, significant. A grant of USD 50,000, he said, might make up 80 per cent of their running costs. USAID also supports other parts of the media landscape, both inside and outside Afghanistan, with some outlets in print or broadcasting highly dependent on US funding, while others have (some) commercial or European funding or private donors. The media is struggling to survive everywhere in the world, and Afghanistan is no exception. However, given the general weakness of the economy, making enough money commercially through advertising is difficult. “US funding to Afghanistan’s civil society, including the media, has been instrumental for decades,” the media director said. “It is part of their legacy.” He was thankful that “so far, no outlet has shut down.”
The director of another media outlet was sanguine. They did not receive USAID money but relied largely on advertising, which had shrunk since 2021, but even so, he said: “During the occupation, we became too dependent on US money and since then, we’ve been learning to cope. As a country, we need to grow, defend our rights and stand with what makes sense for [us].”
These are snapshots, accounts of what has happened to individuals and their organisations in the last two weeks or so, but give little sense of the scale of what is happening. ACAPS, a non-governmental project that provides independent humanitarian analysis, offers a more comprehensive overview of how the order could affect multiple sectors in Afghanistan. Its detailed breakdown includes extensive data and also poses many questions.
Will, for example, the ‘lifesaving’ waiver allow USAID-funded WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) programmes to continue providing “safe drinking water, essential hygiene items, water and sanitation system rehabilitation, and hygiene promotion activities”? Would it cover the distribution of soap and sanitary products, as well as maintenance, bearing in mind that “delays in repairs or unplanned stops in services” increase the risk of diseases being transmitted. ACAPS notes that Afghanistan has some of the highest caseloads of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea in the world.
IDPs and returnees living in crowded and makeshift conditions are especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of inadequate WASH services, as are people with heightened susceptibility to diseases (such as babies and young children, older people, people with disabilities, and people with chronic illnesses).
Similarly, with healthcare, ACAPS describes confusion, uncertainty and fear. In 2025, ACAPS said, the US had “planned to offer financial support to at least 11 organisations delivering emergency and primary healthcare services, providing essential medicine, implementing vaccination campaigns, and training and coordinating health services across the country.” Again, does the ‘lifesaving’ waiver apply only to emergency medicine or would it include “basic healthcare services, chronic and maternal healthcare, mobile healthcare services, and vaccine rollout in emergency settings.” ACAPS foresees a reduction in the availability of maternal care, including prenatal and postnatal care, safe deliveries and awareness-raising about women’s health and childbirth. It also points to the explicit suspension of USAID for sexual and reproductive healthcare and family planning.
90 days without access to family planning can have huge impacts on women, e.g. by causing unintended pregnancies, further impeding women’s and girls’ abilities to control their own bodies, which already face restrictions from [the interim Taleban administration’s] policies. Access to family planning is critical to young Afghan women and girls: 16.3% of women ages 20-24 had a live birth by age 18 in 2024, and 64% of deaths among 15-19-year-old girls and women and 70% among 20-24-year-old women were the result of pregnancy complications or unsafe abortions. This is particularly concerning because Afghanistan has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
The ACAPS report is worth reading in full. Concise, packed with detail and transparently sourced, it goes through the likely impact of the suspension of US aid on many other sectors, including nutrition, food security and agriculture, protection, education, emergency shelter and the provision of non-food items, and the disruption to data collection and analysis. Among the latter is the suspension and taking offline of USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), “whose data and analyses,” ACAPS says, “are crucial in allowing humanitarian responders to prepare for major food insecurity crises and famines.” See, for example, our references to the critically important work of FEWS NET in this AAN report from November 2021, ‘Global Warming and Afghanistan: Drought, hunger and thirst expected to worsen’, and interviews with two FEWS NET scientists in March 2024, who ably translated technical information into readily understandable English to help the author try to answer the question: ‘Finally, Rain and Snow in Afghanistan: Will it be enough to avert another year of drought?’
At the very least, Trump’s order is massively disrupting aid to a very poor country. There may be reprieves for some programmes, given the waiver on lifesaving humanitarian assistance, although that waiver is vague and deliberately temporary. Beyond that, what will the 90-day review of aid mean for Afghanistan? How and where will it fit into Rubio’s measures for aid worthiness: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” The bulk of funding seems unlikely to resume. Musk, reported the Associated Press among others, has called USAID “a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you’ve just got to basically get rid of the whole thing.” With the president’s support, he said: “We’re shutting it down.”
The macroeconomic effects of the Trump order
The amount of aid coming into Afghanistan was already falling. The World Bank, in its December 2024 Afghanistan Development Update, said that grants from all donors in 2023 were down by about 25 per cent compared to 2022 (to approximately 243 billion afghanis). The UN’s Financial Tracking Service also shows a steady decline: from USD 3.8 billion in 2022 to 1.9b in 2023, 1.7b in 2024 and so far in 2025, USD 0.3b (see Table 4 [3] below).
Table 4: Trends in reported funding for Afghanistan, as of 9 February 2025
Source: UNOCHA Financial Tracking System (FTS)
The impact of the abrupt cut in aid goes beyond what it means for individual beneficiaries, or even the families of employees who have lost their jobs. The amount of US aid is so large that the reduction, done suddenly and without warning, has macroeconomic repercussions.
Part of Afghanistan’s vulnerability lies in the way that, over the twenty years of the Islamic Republic, its economy came to be heavily reliant on unearned foreign income in the form not only of civilian aid but also military support and the spending of foreign armies. It had one of the most extreme versions of what political economists call a ‘rentier economy’ in the world. So great were the sums arriving that they carried their own problems, economically and politically: they drove corruption and a bubble economy, made some Afghans (and foreign contractors) fabulously wealthy and powerful, while most remained poor. The unearned income – known as ‘rent’ – discouraged democracy and accountability.[4]
While the very scale of the rent made it detrimental, it should have been reduced gradually, replaced by greater taxation (this was already happening to some extent in the Ghani administrations) and a transition to a more normal economy. However, in 2021 when the Taleban took power, the income was suddenly cut off. It was calamitous, deepening poverty to alarming levels, and only remedied to a certain extent by an influx of large amounts of humanitarian aid during that first winter (see AAN reporting from September 2021 here and our 2023 dossier of reports on the economy since the Taleban takeover here). The Emirate has increased the tax intake and other revenues since its re-establishment. Still, the cut to US aid in 2025, while less than in 2021, when all unearned foreign income fell off a cliff, is still large enough to be significantly.
Foreign aid supports the afghani and helps cover the trade deficit (Afghanistan imports more than it exports). After Trump’s order, in that last week of January, the value of the afghani against the dollar fell by 7.6 per cent, with knock-on implications for the price of imported goods, including food, fuel and medicine. Aid coming into the country funds wages, taxes, government revenues and spending, and ultimately, GDP. In 2023, according to the World Bank’s already cited December 2024 Development Update, total aid amounted to 17.9 per cent of GDP. That the aid is largely in the form of cash dollars, necessarily flown in because of sanctions-related problems with making international banking transactions, helps with liquidity.[5]
The exact scale of the reduction in money coming into Afghanistan as a result of the Trump order is still not clear. Some funds might resume if the waiver on lifesaving assistance is acted upon, but all indications are that the amount will, ultimately, be significantly lower. Moreover, the reduction in aid is hitting an economy that is already struggling. Almost half of the population – some 22.9 million people – will require humanitarian assistance this year, according to the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. The Bank’s most recent Economic Monitor, published in December 2024, before the change in the US presidency, also already made for bleak reading. There was economic growth in 2023-4, it said, but it:
[R]emains insufficient to improve social indicators meaningfully. High poverty, unemployment, limited resources, and weak purchasing power continue to leave millions vulnerable, while subdued aggregate demand keeps the economy in a deflationary phase, constraining growth. The outlook remains fragile due to policy uncertainty, financial isolation, and inadequate human and physical capital. Restrictions on women’s education and socio-economic participation further undermine sustainable development and long-term progress.
The vulnerability of Afghan public services
One problem is that civilian aid fills a gap in public services. The Emirate inherited a state where bilateral funding supported many basic services. It has successfully increased domestic revenue, but has chosen to focus spending on the security forces, which take up about half of the budget, and on education, especially religious education. Indeed, according to the Bank, it expanded the public sector tashkil (workforce) across the board in financial year 2023-4,[6] but with a particular emphasis on the security services and teachers. The tashkil was 9.2 per cent bigger in 2023-4 than in the previous year, and the overall wage bill larger by 5.6 per cent.
The Emirate’s massive expansion of the security forces since it took power, despite the country being at peace, has been at the expense of other, much-needed sectors. The Bank found that in 2022-3, for example, the Emirate allocated just one per cent of total operational spending to health. In 2023-4, according to the Bank, the health sector contracted by 3.1 per cent, but “managed to stay afloat due to international support.” Much of that support will probably now go. (For figures and more analysis of Emirate public finance choices, see the author’s November 2023 report, ‘Survival and Stagnation: The state of the Afghan economy’).
The Emirate’s focus on operational spending is also at the expense of development, which gets only about 7.7 per cent of the budget. Moreover, up till now, says the Bank, the Emirate had been funding development projects from reserves accumulated under the Islamic Republic (about 33 billion afghanis or roughly USD 445 million at today’s exchange rate). These are now almost drawn down. The prioritisation of operating expenses over development, and the limited nature of development funding, it said, “could hinder long-term growth” and the Emirate:
[M]ay have to impose stricter austerity measures, cut back on development expenditures even further, or explore alternative revenue-generation strategies. The constraints on development funding could slow down essential projects in areas such as infrastructure, education, healthcare, and agriculture, all of which are key to driving long-term economic growth and reducing poverty.
Afghanistan’s economy is beset by many problems. They include UN and US sanctions, which mean that, despite far-ranging waivers, international banking transactions are often blocked, the freezing of the country’s assets and the continuing hangover of the Republic’s extreme rentier economy. The economy is fragile, making it highly vulnerable to the impact of the USAID stop-work order, with repercussions to basic services and any taxation which the Emirate could better deploy to fund them itself. One paragraph from the Bank’s December report seems particularly pertinent, given that the decline in US aid has come not gradually, but suddenly:
Looking forward, the reduction in donor grants is expected to continue, with a gradual decline likely to become more evident over time. This potential decrease in external assistance may pose significant challenges for Afghanistan’s already fragile economy, especially as the country remains heavily reliant on these funds to support humanitarian efforts and basic services. As international priorities shift, the need for sustainable domestic revenue generation and alternative funding mechanisms will become increasingly urgent for the [interim Taleban administration].
International repercussions
Donors which could step in to fill the gap left by USAID are not evident, given how vast its funding has been. It was already a difficult environment to find money for Afghanistan, with so many other pressing crises in the world – Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Somalia – and many donor governments cutting back on aid. The difficulty of working in Afghanistan, in particular the repugnance felt by many donors about Emirate policies on women and girls, has made reducing aid to Afghans a politically easy option. At the same time, there may now be worries among the neighbours, some of whom will themselves also be feeling the impact of the halt to USAID funding, as well as Europe about Afghanistan suddenly becoming poorer and Afghans becoming more desperate. If so, will the threat (as they see it) of more migrants motivate them to try to fill the gap caused by USAID leaving the field?
One country is being widely named as a beneficiary of Trump’s policy, including by former British prime minister Gordon Brown: the shutdown, he said, is “good news for China, whose own global development initiative will be strengthened as it positions itself to replace America.” He also contended that: “Desperate people will turn to extremists who will say that the US can never again be trusted. And by causing misery and by alienating actual and possible allies, far from making America great again, the cancellation of aid will only make America weaker.”
Rubio’s three questions could be asked in a different way: Does stopping aid, triggering skyrocketing poverty and desperation in an already unstable part of the world, make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
The Emirate’s response
So far, there has been little official response from Kabul or Kandahar to the Trump order. For the Islamic Emirate, there are likely positives and negatives. The order will hit the economy at a time when it is already struggling and public finances are under pressure. There will be layoffs, downward pressure on GDP, less income to tax and a likely drop in government revenues, all coming as needs increase. Poverty will deepen. All of this is problematic. Some sectors have been left more vulnerable to the cut in foreign assistance than they needed to be. Until now, however, Afghans do not seem to link the taxes they pay to what they get from the government in return. In other words, the Emirate may be able to portray any immiseration and loss of basic services entirely on the foreigners, with no political cost to itself over its spending choices.
Given the rumours in December that the amir, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, was considering closing down international NGOs, he may welcome the shrinking of the aid sector, although it was never clear – if the rumours were correct – if he wanted less aid, or just less control of it by the foreigners. However, the United States’ weakening of particular sectors that are troublesome to the Emirate – the media, women’s and human rights groups – will surely be welcomed by Afghanistan’s supreme leader.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
References
References
↑1
Tables 1 and 2 list the Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund (ARTF) – the renamed and repurposed Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund – which is administered by the World Bank. Since September 2022, when the ARTF resumed operations following the Taleban takeover, the US has donated USD 53.72 million, according to SIGAR.
Note: ‘Trends from 2008 to 2018’ data is currently under review. Reliable annual data can be found on the Country Page by year. Also, the amount per year might change based on daily reports received and processed in the system.
SIGAR, in January 2025, reported the State Department saying the “frequency of shipments may be decreasing.” It says the UN brought in USD 3.6 billion in 2022 and 2023, compared with, according to the State Department, in 2023, shipments every 10-14 days, each averaging USD 80 million; that would give a range of USD 2-2.9 billion (p 43).
↑6
Afghanistan’s financial year (FY) begins on Nawruz. When the Bank refers, for example, to FY2023/24, it means from 21 March 2023 to 20 March 2024.
‘Stop Work!’ Aid and the Afghan economy after the halt to US aid
Thousands of others, like me, have been forced to flee our homeland, living as refugees and exiles across the world, not knowing whether we will ever be able to go home again.
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The UN has repeatedly stated that what the Taliban are doing to Afghan women constitutes “crimes against humanity” under international human rights laws. Now, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) has taken the significant step of requesting arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders to answer to charges of gender persecution.
Yet stories of Afghan women and the oppression they are living under have fallen out of the headlines and, with a few notable exceptions, are rarely covered by the international media. The voices of Afghan women are being silenced at home and ignored by the rest of the world.
On 26 February, Afghanistan will be in the headlines, this time for a different reason, as the Afghan national cricket team walk on to the pitch to play England in the ICC Champions Trophy.
Over the past few months, I and many other Afghan women have been advocating for a boycott of the Afghan cricket team from international events.
We have been told many times – mostly by men – that sport is not political and that such actions will not solve the problems faced by Afghan women.
Our response has been that it is political and that Afghanistan’s cricket team is doing a great job at sportswashing the Taliban’s dark record, especially when you consider that they are representing a country where women are denied access to not just cricket but any kind of sport, at home or internationally.
One of the few remaining sports institutions from the era of the republic, the Afghan cricket team continues to operate within the country and has played in international matches over the past three years, representing the Taliban-controlled state.
The argument that sport is not politics also falls apart when you examine the evidence relating to the Afghan Cricket Board (ACB) and its ties with the regime. Just a few examples: Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, as well as Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, posed for celebratory photographs with the national team. Since coming to power, the Taliban have appointed Mirwais Ashraf as chair of the national team’s cricket board.
As the oppression of Afghan women has become more extreme and medieval, the contrast between the Taliban’s actions at home and the embracing of their national sports team on the international stage is jarring. What we’re seeing here is a slow creep towards normalisation.
Although nearly four years have passed since the Taliban came to power, and no country has yet formally recognised the group as the de facto government, advocacy efforts on the outside against their overt aggression towards women have shown little strength.
In fact, in recent months, some nations have moved closer to recognising and accepting the regime. For example, a few weeks ago, India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri met Muttaqi in Dubai, a sign that they are seeking engagement.
Afghan women and human rights defenders, including Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel peace prize laureate, have consistently urged the international community to officially recognise the Taliban regime as guilty of operating a system of gender apartheid.
They have pointed to the example of South Africa, where the recognition that the government was committing a crime against humanity by imposing a system of racial apartheid on its population, as the UN did in 1973, was a crucial step in dismantling that system and the regime that was perpetrating it.
Given this precedent, the prospect of the international codification of gender apartheid in Afghanistan could become the achilles heel of the Taliban’s religious despotism.
I, like many other Afghan women, believe that targeting this weakness and investing efforts in its recognition could eventually bring down this oppressive and misogynistic regime.
We feel like we are running out of time. Because what they are doing to women is not normal. Or at least it’s not normal yet. Don’t let sport be used to make us feel like it is. As they say in England, my adopted home, it’s just not cricket.
Zahra Joya is an Afghan journalist, a Guardian contributor and editor of Rukhshana Media, an Afghan news service reporting on women and girls.
We cannot cheer on Afghanistan’s cricket team when Afghan women are being silenced
Mr. Ackerman is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The New York Times
February 2, 2025
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I took my son to the newly opened Afghanistan and Iraq exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Va. As we walked among the weapons, equipment and uniforms, one display stood out. It contained an unusual uniform worn by a Raider, a member of U.S. Marine Corps special operations.
I served in the Raiders and as an adviser to Afghan special operations units between 2008 and 2011. But, like the one on display, the uniform I wore wasn’t American — it was Afghan. I explained to my son that we dressed this way for tactical reasons, but also because implicit in wearing Afghan uniforms was a promise: We and our Afghan allies were one.
The Afghan withdrawal four and a half years ago broke that promise. Today, America has an opportunity to redeem at least a part of it.
The last U.S. military aircraft left Kabul in August 2021. But the withdrawal is not over. More than 1,600 of our Afghan allies are stranded overseas and trying to resettle in the United States. The Trump administration has canceled their entry to the United States as part of a broad suspension of the Refugee Admissions Program. This decision, if not reversed, is yet another betrayal of my former colleagues.
The stranded Afghan refugees are not migrants like those who have come across the southern U.S. border illegally, or even like those who overran the airfield at Kabul International in 2021. They are colleagues of our service members, men and women who have been fully vetted and cleared by the State Department for entry into the United States.
A number of these stranded refugees are former members of the Afghan military who fought in the same types of special operations units that I advised. They are also members of Afghan civil society, including activists who stood up for women’s rights at our country’s urging. Many are family members of U.S. citizens, including children and spouses of active-duty U.S. military personnel.
During the Afghan withdrawal, the Taliban drew up lists of our allies to hunt and kill because they had worked with us. A number of these people are on those lists. Due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political will, the Biden administration failed to bring them to the United States.
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump heavily criticized Mr. Biden’s withdrawal while standing by his first administration’s decision to negotiate its framework with the Taliban. Mr. Trump’s argument was that the United States needed to get out of Afghanistan, but that the Biden administration botched the execution. Now he is making the same mistakes his predecessor made.
One of the denunciations leveled by critics of the Biden administration was that abandoning our Afghan allies after the withdrawal harmed the credibility of the United States. This was a fair criticism then, and it is a fair criticism now. The United States is confronting a world as turbulent as any since the end of the Second World War. In addition to enduring threats from terrorist groups like ISIS, it is a world characterized by the return of great power competition. This country doesn’t fight on its own; it has always fought alongside its allies.
During the withdrawal I was one of thousands of American veterans who worked on what came to be called a “digital Dunkirk.” We used our phones and encrypted apps to save the lives of Afghan friends and colleagues when the U.S. government abandoned them. We made lists of Afghans who required assistance, shepherded them onto convoys and helped them navigate checkpoints.
I was personally involved with several hundred Afghan evacuation cases. We knew that eventually our efforts would have to end — we would have to tell the remaining, deserving Afghans begging for our help that we couldn’t help them any more, that the last flight had left. Since then, the Taliban have taken retribution against some of them; others have fled the country or remain in hiding inside of Afghanistan.
The Trump administration has a powerful opportunity here, not only to honor the lives of our allies but also the sacrifices of a generation of American veterans who served in their country. By bringing this group of vetted Afghans to the United States, Mr. Trump would differentiate himself from Mr. Biden and show that he would have handled the aftermath of the withdrawal differently. He would also send a signal that the United States is reliable, even as we are renegotiating our relationships with international partners.
Surely many around the world are watching — in Ukraine, for example, which itself is in a war of strategic consequence to the United States.
On inauguration day, Mr. Trump vowed that under his new administration he would create “peace through strength.” But peace through strength has never been solely about American might. This is why in the arena of great power competition — from the First and Second World Wars to the Cold War — the United States has won. We have forged strong, enduring alliances.
Breaking faith with former allies projects weakness to current, and future, partners. Weakness will never breed peace. And fighting without allies means that any future losses will primarily be our own.
Elliot Ackerman is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Moral and Strategic Case for Taking in the Afghan Refugees
Request for arrest warrants labels Taliban’s women’s rights abuse a crime against humanity.
The Taliban may retaliate by imposing even harsher restrictions on Afghan women and girls.
Court’s effort provides hopes to victim and incentivizes pragmatic Taliban leaders to push for change at the top.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor announced on January 23 that he had requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, for being “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women.”Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban have banned girls from education beyond sixth grade and barred women from jobs and most public spaces. There is, however, a split emerging within the Taliban over the education ban. Earlier this month, Sher Abbas Stanikzai, a senior Taliban figure, issued a rare public rebuke of Taliban policy by urging the leadership to lift the ban. “We are committing an injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million, depriving them of all their rights. This is not in Islamic law, but our personal choice or nature,” Stanikzai said in a video shared on his X account.USIP’s Belquis Ahmadi, Lauren Baillie and Scott Worden analyze the ICC’s request for arrest warrants and its implications for Afghanistan.
What led the ICC to make this move now, and what could it mean for Afghanistan?
Ahmadi: The ICC’s request for warrants against the Taliban’s emir, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, represents a significant milestone in the pursuit of justice and accountability for the Taliban’s extreme restrictions on women’s rights.
The ICC officially began its investigation shortly after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021 and has spent the last two years gathering exhaustive documentation of human rights violations and compiling evidence gathered by a dedicated coalition of organizations, human rights experts, legal advocates and survivors. Even while under investigation for committing gender persecution, the Taliban have increased their repressive measures. They have issued orders and decrees restricting women’s rights, most notably barring girls from public education above sixth grade, prohibiting women from traveling without a male companion and restricting women’s employment.
For many Afghans, this development carries the hope that the ICC’s warrants will extend beyond the two leaders to include other members of the Taliban’s leadership. These individuals, who operate as part of the Taliban’s machinery, have played pivotal roles in enabling and enforcing systemic crimes, particularly the widespread and institutionalized gender persecution that has stripped Afghan women and girls of their basic rights.
This step by the ICC is a significant validation of years of tireless efforts by Afghan civil society and human rights advocates, who have risked their lives to document the Taliban’s crimes. It highlights the critical importance of their work and serves as a powerful reminder that their advocacy is resonating on the international stage. The ICC’s actions provide a renewed sense of purpose and a tangible sense of progress despite the many challenges that lie ahead.
Afghans, like the broader international community, understand that the individuals named in the arrest warrant request have not traveled abroad since seizing power and are unlikely to do so in a way that would require all parties to the Rome Statute to arrest people against whom there is an arrest warrant. Nevertheless, this action by the ICC carries immense symbolic and practical value. It sends a clear message that the plight of Afghan women and the broader atrocities committed by the Taliban have not been ignored. It also revives hope in the pursuit of justice, demonstrating that the global community acknowledges the suffering and remains committed to holding perpetrators accountable, no matter how long it takes.
The Taliban are unlikely to accept any arrest warrants quietly and may retaliate by imposing even harsher restrictions on Afghan women and girls, who are already suffering under their oppressive rules. In the past, the Taliban have often responded to criticism by tightening their control, using women as targets to show their defiance. This creates a serious risk of worsening the already difficult situation for women in Afghanistan. Because of this, it’s crucial for the international community — especially countries that have some level of contact or trade with the Taliban — to step up and apply stronger pressure.
These countries have a responsibility to push back against further restrictions on women and girls. This pressure should go beyond just words; it could include tying existing diplomatic relations to specific conditions, placing sanctions on Taliban leaders and working with others in the region to collectively push for women’s rights. At the same time, the world must also support Afghan women and the organizations fighting for their rights. This includes giving Afghan women platforms to speak out, making sure their voices are heard in global discussions and including them in decisions about Afghanistan’s future.
Why is the case being pursued by the ICC? Are there no alternative venues to hold the Taliban accountable for crimes committed against Afghan women?
Baillie: At present, there are no other venues available to Afghan women to seek justice for gender persecution. The ICC is a court of last resort. It is intended to consider cases that cannot be heard fully in national courts, typically because the courts lack the capacity to fairly and impartially decide cases related to atrocity crimes.
Since the 2021 Taliban takeover, Afghan courts have lost their independence and impartiality. Judges and prosecutors have been replaced with Taliban allies, including fighters and madrasa graduates who lack formal training in law and justice. Their decisions are frequently consistent with the Taliban’s restrictive interpretation of Shariah law rather than Afghan law, and, along with Taliban leadership, they have taken concerted steps to make the courts inaccessible to women. As a result, Afghan courts are unlikely to deliver credible justice — justice that recognizes and remedies the harms suffered by victims and holds perpetrators accountable — to Afghan women.
With no meaningful recourse to Afghan courts and only limited access to the courts of other states, the ICC is the only viable judicial venue to prosecute Taliban leadership.
National courts of other states have yet to prosecute Taliban crimes committed since 2021 under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which provides that atrocity crimes — war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity — are so detrimental to global stability that they may be considered by national courts even if those crimes took place on the territory of another state and/or against third-party nationals. These cases, however, are typically opportunistic, as they often require the defendant to be present on the prosecuting state’s territory and are unlikely to reach those most responsible for the crime committed due to the principle of head of state immunity. With no meaningful recourse to Afghan courts and only limited access to the courts of other states, the ICC is the only viable judicial venue to prosecute Taliban leadership.
This is the first time gender crimes have been the main focus of an ICC case. Why is this important?
Baillie: The only crime alleged against Akhundzada and Haqqani is gender persecution, marking the first time an ICC prosecution has focused solely on the crime. The prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants now triggers a process of review by the judges to confirm the charges and issue the warrants. If arrest warrants are issued and prosecutions move forward, this will provide an important opportunity for the court not only to consider the situation of Afghan women but also to develop important precedent on the crime of persecution on the basis of gender.
The potential prosecutions of Haibatullah and Haqqani would allow the court to not only consider whether and how gender persecution has been committed against Afghan women as a result of Taliban conduct but may also develop important precedent around the crime of persecution on the basis of gender. This precedent could support potential prosecutions in other contexts where women are systematically repressed, such as Iran.
Many commentatorsandadvocates have argued that persecution is insufficient to describe the systematic repression and violence targeted toward Afghan women by the Taliban, and have labeled this treatment “gender apartheid.” Gender apartheid is not a recognized crime under international law, however, and cannot be prosecuted by the ICC.
How could this impact the Taliban’s international relations?
Worden: The ICC prosecutor’s indictment of the Taliban, even if confirmed, is unlikely to change the status quo in Afghanistan for suffering Afghan women and girls. The Taliban will not cooperate with the court, the indicted leaders do not travel and regional countries are not likely to change their relationship with the Taliban based on gender persecution charges by the ICC.
An arrest warrant can have longer-term impacts by delegitimizing the Taliban’s current leadership and slowing the regime’s path toward international recognition.
An arrest warrant can have longer-term impacts by delegitimizing the Taliban’s current leadership and slowing the regime’s path toward international recognition. The U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 2721 in December 2023, which “affirms that the objective of [a UN] process should be a clear end state of an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors, fully reintegrated into the international community and meeting international obligations, and recognizes the need to ensure the full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of Afghan women in the process throughout.” A confirmed indictment by the ICC for gender persecution should give all Security Council members additional pause to consider whether the Taliban are meeting these minimal conditions for being a member in good standing of the international community or to hold a seat in the U.N.An indictment of Haibatullah and Haqqani can also apply subtle pressure within the Taliban movement over their leadership choices. The Taliban will publicly unite in opposition to a foreign court order against their leadership. But more pragmatic Taliban who favor girls’ education and seek greater engagement with Western countries that care most about human rights can privately use the indictment as an argument that keeping Haibatullah and his inner circle in power will ensure that Afghanistan continues to be isolated from the international financial system, with little private investment and declining humanitarian aid.
Does the ICC’s Request for Warrants Against the Taliban’s Leaders Matter?
Since taking power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has introduced increasingly severe restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, that have reverberated across families and communities. The new rules have bolstered traditional male roles as women’s ‘gatekeepers’, determining what they can and cannot do. At the same time, these laws have also undermined men’s roles as supporters and facilitators of the ambitions of their female family members – in particular their daughters, but also wives and sisters. Overall, they have taken choices away from families, putting more power over Afghans’ personal lives into the hands of the state and its officials. In this report, Martine van Bijlert and the AAN team explore the effects of the restrictions on women as seen through the eyes of men. They explore how the Emirate’s rules have affected family dynamics and the lives of both men and women – not because it is often considered that men are more articulate or because the harm is more pronounced or important when also felt by men, but because the exclusion of women from public life affects everyone. It can disrupt families, fray communities and undermine both men and women.
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The most invasive of the Emirate’s decrees and directives have aimed at pushing women and girls out of the public sphere and confining them to their homes. Girls were banned from secondary, a decision that has been upheld every year since its implementation. Universities were initially reopened to women, under strict conditions, including gender-segregated classrooms and dress codes. This, however, was short-lived and female students were once again barred from universities, in December 2022. The few fields of study still available to women, such as nursing and midwifery, were suddenly suspended in early December 2024, without explanation. Most female government employees were told to stay at home and, in December 2022, NGOs, the United Nations and foreign embassies were told they could no longer employ women (with some exemptions for health and education). Curbs on women’s mobility have also increased, including the closure of beauty salons and prohibitions on women visiting parks, gyms and historic places, participating in sports and travelling without a male relative.
These restrictions, coupled with anxieties over possibly being harassed by enforcers from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice when they leave the home, have taken their toll on Afghan women. They have eroded their independence, diminished their well-being and sense of self and upended their lives. Yet, their struggles do not exist in isolation from the rest of society. The restrictions on their lives have not only harmed or affected women and girls, nor are they the only ones who hold opinions about them. The new rules have implications for men’s lives as well and their views on them are critical to the lives of their female relatives – whether they disagree with the restrictions or support them.
Between June and September 2024, we set out to hear from men across Afghanistan about how the new rules and restrictions had affected their families, their own lives, and their relationships with the people around them. In a series of in-depth and surprisingly candid conversations, seventeen men from diverse backgrounds and locations shared their perspectives on these changes. Some of the men agreed with traditions surrounding women’s mobility and appearance, such as hijab and the need to travel with a mahram. Many, although certainly not all, came from families where women traditionally did not work outside the home. Not all their daughters had gone to school. But all of them, in varying degrees and for their own reasons, were distressed by the most invasive restrictions, in particular the ban on girls’ education. The emotional intensity of their responses, as will be seen from the interviews, was arresting.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
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Afghanistan Peace Campaign
