Elliot Ackerman, a Marine veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is the author, most recently, of the novel “Sheepdogs.”
New York Times
A new book by the veteran correspondent Jon Lee Anderson captures a long war’s noble goals and crippling missteps.
TO LOSE A WAR: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban, by Jon Lee Anderson
In one of the final scenes of Mike Nichols’s 2007 movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Representative Charlie Wilson of Texas, played by Tom Hanks, pleads with his colleagues to approve reconstruction money for Afghanistan. The country’s mujahedeen, backed by the C.I.A., had by this point defeated the Soviets after a long and bloody war over the course of the 1980s.
American policymakers were ready to move on and Wilson, begging for one one-thousandth of the sum the U.S. government had recently appropriated to fight its secret war, says: “This is what we always do. We always go in with our ideals and we change the world and then we leave. We always leave. But that ball though, it keeps on bouncing.”
Jon Lee Anderson’s “To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban” follows the bouncing ball. One of this country’s pre-eminent war correspondents, Anderson covered Afghanistan for more than two decades as a reporter for The New Yorker; this collection of his dispatches, all but one published in the magazine, spans that time, beginning in 2001, shortly after the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the U.S.-affiliated Northern Alliance, and ending in late 2021, with a grim portrait of Afghanistan’s myriad challenges — from crippling drought and economic collapse to political feuds — in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.
In his preface, Anderson characterizes Afghanistan as “more of a battleground of history” than “a nation.” The early chapters deal with the rise of American power in Afghanistan in the aughts, as well as the Taliban’s precipitate fall in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Weeks after those attacks, Anderson traveled to Kabul at an inflection point. The Taliban were on the run. Osama bin Laden was on the loose. And the country stood on the cusp of a promising future unimaginable only weeks before.
In those heady days, Anderson interviewed Ghulam Sarwar Akbari, a former Afghan communist who, like Wilson in Nichols’s movie, blames U.S. disengagement after the Soviet defeat for Afghanistan becoming a terrorist haven: “After the Soviets left, and the mujahedeen were victorious, America, instead of helping them to create a good government, forgot about Afghanistan. America shouldn’t have done this.”
Reading Anderson’s early dispatches is like stepping into a time capsule. His Afghan and American subjects give voice to the conventional wisdom of a period nearly 25 years behind us. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, he meets with Jack Idema, a private security contractor, who cites the urgent need for a large American military presence, without which “we’re gonna be right back to where we were five years from now.” That interview took place in 2001. One of the remarkable aspects of Anderson’s reporting is its scope of perspective as well as time. In his telling, the war — and, with it, Afghanistan’s promising future — deteriorates before our eyes, page by page.
In a 2010 dispatch from Maiwand, in the country’s south, Anderson writes: “The situation that the U.S. military finds itself in in Afghanistan is an odd one. Formally speaking, it has been deployed in Afghanistan since the autumn of 2001, and yet, in areas like Maiwand, it is essentially a newcomer.” In the same chapter, he embeds with the U.S. Army’s Third “Wolfpack” Squadron of the Second Cavalry as its soldiers struggle to contain the Taliban insurgency. Already, American military deaths are beginning to mount. This chapter begins with the death of Joseph T. Prentler, a young U.S. soldier killed in an I.E.D. strike. Slowly, the dream of a quick American victory fades as the casualties — both American and Afghan — add up.
One of those casualties is the clarity of purpose with which the United States entered the war after 9/11. Afghanistan was supposed to be the “good” war, fought for a righteous cause: the destruction of Al Qaeda and the dismantling of the Taliban regime that offered the group a haven. This was a government that inflicted human rights abuses on its own people, enforced a barbaric form of Shariah law and refused to allow girls to attend school, making Afghanistan the worst place in the world to be a woman.
In one of his later chapters, Anderson follows Lt. Col. Stephen Lutsky as he wages a failing counterinsurgency campaign in the restive Khost Province. Lutsky describes how many Afghans were willing to cut deals that often undermined American efforts, saying: “For Americans, it’s black or white — it’s either good guys or bad guys. For Afghans, it’s not. There are good Taliban and bad Taliban, and some of them are willing to do deals with each other. It’s just beyond us.”
Ultimately, the tragic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021 proved Lutsky’s point: The war was “just beyond us.” Today, the conventional wisdom from the end of the 1980s, when Tom Hanks’s Charlie Wilson was pleading for reconstruction funds, has been turned on its head. Ideas like “nation-building” and “regime change” have become politically toxic on both sides of the aisle.
Maybe that’s sound policy. Or maybe those policymakers should read Anderson’s reporting. If they do, they will find a book that is as deeply humane and profoundly rendered as any I’ve read about Afghanistan, or any other war. “To Lose a War” is a monument to both good intentions and folly, a humbling reminder that the ball keeps on bouncing.
TO LOSE A WAR: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban | By Jon Lee Anderson | Penguin Press | 371 pp. | $30
Dispatches From Afghanistan Show How the U.S. Lost Its Way — and the War
The British public discovered only very belatedly that an enormous accidental data breach by an official three years ago put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk of torture and death. Some of them had worked with British forces in Afghanistan. The result was that thousands were secretly relocated to the UK. A superinjunction covered up the story for almost two years.
But the shocking security lapse is far from the only example of Afghans being failed since Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021. Many more are now at risk because the countries to which they fled are pushing them out. The mirage of a more moderate Taliban was soon shattered by their imposition of gender apartheid and the brutality faced by minorities. Three-quarters of the population struggle to meet their daily needs. Women are particularly vulnerable. Humanitarian support is being slashed. A drought and now the loss of overseas remittances are deepening the crisis.
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Yet almost 2 million Afghan refugees and migrants in neighbouring countries have returned or been forced to return home this year alone – thousands of them unaccompanied children, according to UN experts. More than 1.5 million Afghans have returned from Iran in 2025, with Iran accelerating expulsions after the war with Israel, which fed suspicion towards migrants.
Pakistan began deporting unregistered Afghans in late 2023, after attacks by militants in border areas, but has widened its campaign to those who hold documents. More than two-thirds have never lived in Afghanistan, according to the International Crisis Group; their families fled conflict decades ago. In some cases, security forces are forcibly repatriating Afghans. In others, threats, harassment or intimidation have chased them out.
The Trump administration has announced the removal of temporary protected status from almost 12,000 Afghans in the US, though an appeals court has for now blocked it from doing so. The US said that conditions in Afghanistan no longer merited the status. Tajikistan has also ordered Afghans to leave.
UN experts have warned that former officials, including judges and lawyers, human rights defenders and journalists and other critics of the Taliban, along with religious and ethnic minorities, are at particular risk if they are returned. Women and girls are being deported to a country where they can no longer attend secondary school or university and are prohibited from letting their voices be heard outside the house, and where the EU has estimated that basic health services are available to just 10% of women. By driving women out of jobs and severely restricting their movements, the Taliban have ensured that female-headed households face destitution. The prospect of return is particularly frightening for women’s rights activists who face imprisonment or death for their work.
Pakistan and Iran should not force Afghans home – endangering lives and ending education for girls. But other governments too bear responsibility for this crisis. Poorer nations have been left to shoulder the strain of a high number of refugees, some of whom are in limbo due to Germany’s closure of a humanitarian admission programme, and the bureaucracy surrounding a similiar programme in Australia. This has been a triple failure: a failure to welcome Afghans with a strong case for resettlement; to support them in countries which have accepted them; and to help those who are returning to Afghanistan. Western countries must live up to their promises to the Afghan people.
The Guardian view on the other Afghan scandal: countries are forcing refugees back to Taliban rule
The future of the Wakhan Corridor will shape far more than trade routes; it will determine whether Afghanistan becomes a bridge for cooperation or a battleground for rivalry.
China’s push to extend CPEC through Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor promises economic gain but ignites tensions, with India, Western powers, and regional rivals alarmed over shifting geopolitical balances.
Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip in northeastern Afghanistan, stretches about 350 km and connects Afghanistan to China, making it a vital yet historically overlooked geopolitical passage. Once part of the ancient Silk Road, Wakhan linked China, Central Asia, and South Asia, carrying trade caravans and cultural exchanges across harsh mountains and valleys.
In the 19th century, Wakhan was deliberately carved out as a buffer during the “Great Game,” preventing direct contact between British India and Tsarist Russia. Today, Wakhan remains Afghanistan’s only direct link to China, giving it strategic significance for Beijing, Islamabad, and Kabul — and anxiety for Delhi and Washington.
China sees Wakhan as a potential extension of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project linking Xinjiang to Gwadar Port.
Through Wakhan, Beijing could connect Xinjiang directly to Afghanistan, expand influence in Central Asia, and advance its “Digital Silk Road” plans with fiber optics and communications infrastructure. Security drives China’s interest too. Beijing fears Uyghur militants from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement could use Afghanistan’s borders to infiltrate Xinjiang if the corridor remains unmonitored.
China has already signaled readiness to invest in Afghanistan mining, including lithium and copper, tying Wakhan’s infrastructure to broader resource extraction ambitions crucial for green technologies.
Pakistan also sees opportunity. Wakhan could connect neglected areas like Chitral to Central Asia, easing reliance on fragile trade routes and boosting Islamabad’s regional economic footprint.
Afghanistan’s Taliban, isolated under sanctions and economic collapse, view Wakhan as leverage. They hope China’s investments might rebuild infrastructure and legitimize their rule regionally.
In September 2024, China’s ambassador and Taliban ministers inspected Wakhan’s border site, signaling Beijing’s cautious but growing interest in funding corridor infrastructure — if security is guaranteed. India has fiercely opposed Afghanistan’s inclusion in CPEC, citing sovereignty issues over Kashmir, where parts of CPEC traverse territory New Delhi calls “illegally occupied” by Pakistan.
New Delhi fears Wakhan’s integration into CPEC would deepen China-Pakistan dominance, undermine India’s investments in projects like Iran’s Chabahar Port, and shrink its influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Western powers quietly share India’s concern, wary of BRI giving Beijing a stronger presence in the Indian Ocean and West Asia, shifting regional balance of power. U.S. policymakers caution against CPEC’s expansion into Afghanistan, emphasizing risks of debt dependence, lack of transparency, and deeper Chinese geopolitical leverage.
The Wakhan extension of CPEC now embodies a tangled contest, not just over trade, but over security, sovereignty, and the future shape of regional geopolitics. The future of the Wakhan Corridor will define more than trade routes; it will test whether Afghanistan becomes a bridge for cooperation or another fault line of rivalry.
DISCLAIMER – The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Khaama Press News Agency.
China Eyes Afghanistan’s Wakhan for CPEC Link, Sparking Opposition From Delhi to Washington
Afghanistan is bracing itself for its fourth drought in five years. For many farmers and herders, the drought is catastrophic: spring rains failed and with them, rainfed wheat and pasture in the rangeland. Even so, agroclimate experts are forecasting a surprisingly positive picture for Afghanistan’s staple crop, wheat. Winter wheat has done well this year, despite below-average rain and snowfall, thanks to the mass distribution of drought-tolerant seed varieties, which has boosted the national harvest. Even so, the famine watchdog, the IPC, has projected that more than a fifth of the population will face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in the coming months largely because of non-agricultural factors – the fragile economy, cuts to aid and endemic poverty. AAN’s Kate Clark has been hearing from farmers and finding that those hit hard by the drought are acutely anxious not only about harvests and herds, but also the many other shocks assailing their communities – the forced return of compatriots from Pakistan and Iran, cuts to public sector jobs and the cessation of United States’ aid.
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Climate scientists have long predicted that droughts would hit Afghanistan more severely and more frequently as the planet heated up, so it is no surprise that the country is suffering its fourth drought in five years. What is surprising is that the national wheat harvest, grown on 70 to 80 per cent of agricultural land and supplying more than 65 per cent of Afghans’ dietary energy, has done so well this year. Until recently, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told AAN, an average wheat harvest would have been 4.5 million metric tonnes and a good harvest 5 million tonnes. The estimate for the 2025 harvest is 5.36 million tonnes, a ‘good year’ by historical standards, and this, despite the below-average rain and snowfall. It is a result of the mass distribution of wheat seeds bred to be tolerant of drought and pests.
This report starts with the weather and a scrutiny of the agroclimate data, before hearing from farmers and then looking at the wider panoply of economic shocks hitting Afghans. Rain and snowfall were below-average in the winter and spring of 2024/25 and temperatures above-average. The snowpack was also smaller than previously. This is the densely compacted snow that lies on Afghanistan’s mountains and which, when it melts in spring, should provide irrigation water for farmers downstream. This year, there was less meltwater than usual and it came early because of the high temperatures. Despite all these far-from-ideal growing conditions, there was enough precipitation for farmers growing winter wheat, especially when sowing the improved seed varieties. We hear about their generally positive experiences with the wheat seeds.
The report also hears from farmers for whom the drought is a catastrophe, particularly those with rainfed land or who have livestock or orchards in places like Daikundi. One orchard grower in that province described his almond trees losing their blossom and the springs drying up because of a dry cold spell and lack of rain in the spring. A farmer with livestock in the same region told AAN, “There is no grass for the livestock in the mountains,” and “the little water that was available is now contaminated and making the animals sick.” Unlike last year, another interviewee said, when the sale of sheep and goats brought in money, enabling people to “solve many of life’s problems,” this year, no one was buying livestock because there was nothing to feed them on: “People are just watching the wrath of nature,” he said, “and can do nothing.” The rangeland pasture failed across much of the north, west and centre of the country, leaving livestock weakened by hunger and vulnerable to disease. Also, across those regions, with the exception of Takhar province in the northeast, rainfed wheat either failed to blossom and fill out, or farmers, seeing the failure of the spring rains, decided not to sow at all.
Many of our interviewees always live on a knife-edge, but this year, economic shocks are assailing them from all sides. One man, a teacher, who also has livestock, said that usually, families have several income streams, all limited, but taken together, they can manage: one or two men would be working in Iran and sending money home and there would be “some produce from agriculture and donations from international charitable institutions.” This year, he said, “the situation was utterly different” and it was not just “this severe drought.”
The report ends by looking at how so many of those other, non-farming income streams have also dried up. It surveys the repercussions of Washington entirely cutting USAID funding to Afghanistan, which include severe cuts to food aid. It has lost 40 per cent of its funding. The IPC said that, on average, only 625,000 people out of the almost 1.6 million expected to experience large food gaps resulting in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality will receive food assistance in the period up to October. The World Food Programme told AAN how they have had to scale back their famine prevention response, both in terms of geographic coverage and a delay in starting it. That is partly because of funding shortages and partly so that it could give some help to the hundreds of thousands of Afghans forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan.
Those returnees, arriving back in chaos and misery, also represent an additional cost to communities and the state. For some households, who had single working men sending money home, there is also a loss of remittances. Some families are also facing the loss of a salary as the Islamic Emirate cuts public sector jobs, both military and civilian, by a fifth. Such cuts are no surprise to anyone following its relentless expansion of the workforce, especially the armed forces, since coming to power. However, the timing is grim. Additionally, the Emirate’s focus on the security sector, at the expense of public services, has left those services – health, agricultural support and food security – vulnerable to the current cuts in foreign aid.
Agriculture remains the backbone of Afghanistan’s economy. Approximately one-third of the population has access to agricultural land. Farming supports not only those who grow crops and keep livestock to eat or sell, but also those who work others’ land – it is the largest employer in the country. The good national wheat harvest this year is welcome news, but it can only ever mitigate the multiple pressures facing so many Afghan families.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Rachel Reid
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Over the past four decades much has been written about Afghan mullahs and madrasas. Most commentary has focused on the role they have played in the diffusion of militancy and jihadism in Afghanistan. This report takes a very different look. It is the second instalment of a two-part mini-series assessing the changing role of rural mullahs, focusing on those from Khost, Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni provinces in Afghanistan’s southeast. Part 1 looked at their rising economic status which means they are no longer dependent on their communities, but also no longer independent of the state. This second instalment traces the consequences for rural mullahs of changes in Islamic education over recent decades. AAN’s Sharif Akram finds they are increasingly well-educated in Islamic matters and that this, combined with the Islamic Emirate’s privileging of religious status, is allowing them to take more prominent roles in their communities and in the state. The first part of this series is available here: Living a Mullah’s Life (1): The changing role and socio-economic status of Afghanistan’s village clerics
In the Arab world, the term alem, plural ulema (Islamic scholar) implies an advanced degree of Islamic learning, rather than just someone who performs religious functions. However, in Afghanistan, it is used interchangeably with two other terms, mullah and mawlawi, the latter being an Islamic cleric with more advanced education.
This report refers to different types of Islamic schooling. At the apex is the dar ul-uloom or seminary, which is aimed at generating professional Muslim clerics. There are also madrasas, or Islamic schools, which teach all ages from basic Islam to primary-school aged children to advanced classes for young men (or women). There are also hujras, where informal Islamic education is given by a teacher, usually a village mullah, to children or youths. The author uses ‘school’ for non-madrasas.
Religious education has traditionally been the primary source of learning in Afghanistan, with the majority of Afghans – boys and girls – getting some religious education in mosques and madrasas. By contrast, the first schools were only established in 1903 by Amir Habibullah Khan. Until the early twentieth century, most religious education was also conducted outside the purview of the state. In urban areas, this was done through private madrasas endowed by wealthy citizens. In the countryside, as will be looked at in more detail below, there was a more informal system, where in each village, a teacher – usually a mullah – would instruct children and young men in specific religious texts, typically in a mosque, a hujra (a small room adjacent to a mosque, also used to host guests) or someone’s home. Modern Afghan rulers, recognising the importance of religious education to any state-building project, have tried to incorporate it into the state and bring it more closely under state control.
Abdul Rahman Khan (r1880-1901) was the first of Afghanistan’s rulers to establish a state-endowed madrasa, Kabul’s Madrasa-ye Shahi, where around 200 students enrolled at the expense of the state.[1] Abdul Rahman had strained relations with many religious leaders outside Kabul due to his attempts to centralise control of the country, but, under his successors, Habibullah Khan (r1901-1919) and Amanullah Khan (r1919-1929), this state-endowed madrasa produced many high-ranking and typically pro-government ulemaand civil servants. In the interests of controlling the Islamic education received by those who would go on to be government functionaries, Amanullah Khan established two additional state-run madrasas in Kabul that would train all religious judges employed by the government. However, government madrasas remained limited to the country’s major urban centres and did not expand beyond them until the 1930s and 1940s. Even by the time of Daud Khan’s rule in 1970s, there were only 20 formal government-run madrasas in Afghanistan.[2] In addition to these, a few dozen private religious seminaries operated under the guidance of prominent religious leaders.
Given the scarcity of formal religious institutions in the country, many Afghans sought religious education in neighbouring countries. After the establishment of a seminary in the Indian town of Deoband in 1867, it replaced madrasas in Bukhara (in modern-day Uzbekistan), as the most popular destination for Afghan students.[3] The importance of the Dar ul-Uloom Deoband in Afghanistan was enhanced by the connections between its leadership and the so-called Frontier Mullahs, religious leaders guiding the militant struggle of the Pashtun tribes against British incursions in the North-West Frontier Province. Connections between the Afghan court and Deoband were also important during the reign of Amanullah, as Indian ulema who had studied there contributed to the development of the state-monitored madrasa curriculum and served as advisors to the court on religious matters.[4]
Religious education in rural areas before the Saur coup d’tat of 1978
In rural areas, little changed in the way of religious education for most of the twentieth century. There were limited options for those wanting a more formal, structured education who did not wish to travel outside Afghanistan. In the southeast, for example, there were a few government-sponsored madrasas, the first of which, Dar ul-Uloom Ruhani, was established in 1972 in a rural area outside Gardez in Paktia province. Some private madrasas were already active in the region. Two of these were in Ghazni’s Andar district – one founded in the 1880s by a prominent religious leader, Mullah Mushk-e Alam, in Shilgar[5] and a second, Nur al-Madaris, founded in the early 1940s.
One of AAN’s interviewees,[6] a mullah from Muqur district of Ghazni province where no madrasa existed until the early 1990s, described the situation in those days:
There were no madrasas back then [in Muqur in the mid-twentieth-century]. Ulema had to travel to different cities and countries and leave their homes just to acquire knowledge. They were often poor and couldn’t afford to stay away [from their families] for long. Besides, knowledge didn’t hold much value at the time –people simply didn’t care about it.
Therefore, the most common form of religious education for mullahs remained an informal, traditional system in each village. In this setup, pupils, boys and girls, typically between the ages of 7 and 12 would study particular religious texts, often without a structured curriculum and usually from the village mullah. Those aiming to become a mullah would stay on and learn additional subjects. This pattern had persisted for generations, with one mullah having studied with another and then passing on his knowledge to the next. This type of education typically took place in mosques, hujras and village homes where only the very basics of religion, without a specific curriculum, were taught. While this informal system was the most accessible option for most would-be mullahs, it was far from equivalent to the structured religious education available elsewhere. Van Linschoten and Gopal described it as “far more eclectic and irregular than the Deobandi curriculum found in major Afghan and Pakistani madrassas.”[7]
Mullahs told AAN that the hujra system had limited their learning. They explained that formal institutions for religious studies were almost non-existent and resources scarce. One interviewee described how mullahs struggled even to find books and teachers:
I remember ulema would borrow books from ulema in another district. They read them and then after that return them. Even when they found books, they needed someone to teach them, but there was no one nearby. Travelling to other provinces or countries was difficult.
This lack of a formal curriculum and of trained teachers and institutional oversight meant that mullahs often acquired only a basic understanding of religious teachings from individuals who, in many cases, were themselves not qualified. They then relied on this limited knowledge to serve as spiritual leaders and educators. As a result, the overall level of religious knowledge among many rural mullahs remained low for many years. Several interviewees who were not mullahs agreed that becoming a mullah required little in-depth religious knowledge. One put it plainly:
If you have a paj [white turban], long clothes, know some Arabic texts and understand a few basic elements of Islam – Congratulations, you’re a mullah. You can do the imamat of a village. It’s that simple.
As this interviewee highlighted, mullahs typically studied a limited variety of religious texts. The most common were Khulasa (The Compendium), Shurut al-Salat (Conditions of Prayer), al-Mukhtasar al-Quduri (al-Quduri Abridged), Kanz al-Daqa’iq (The Treasure of Subtleties) and Nur al-Zulam (The Light of Darkness), all of which focused on fundamental aspects of Islamic faith and jurisprudence. For instance, Khulasa outlines the obligatory components of prayer, without which prayers are deemed invalid; Shurut al-Salat details the Sunnahs of the prayer, along with the wajibs and mustahabs (obligatory and preferred components) of prayer; and Quduri, written by Imam al-Quduri in the tenth century, this covers the basic essential elements of Hanafi jurisprudence, including to do with worship, business transactions, marriage, divorce, inheritance and criminal law.
Beyond religious studies, some mullahs in the southeast, who were Pashtun, also learnt Persian language and literature. Panj Kitab (The Five Books), a widely studied collection of spiritual and religious Persian poetry by poets such as Abdul Rahman Jami and Fariduddin Atar, played a crucial role in their education. Persian was then the official and administrative language of Afghanistan and proficiency in it was essential for reading and composing formal texts.
Overall understanding of Islamic theology among mullahs was therefore limited; often, their education only enabled them to lead prayers and perform basic rituals in the community such as nikah (marriage) and janaza (funeral prayers). Mullahs did also play an important role in local dispute resolution, acting not as scholars but as independent and respected members of the community. One interviewee recalled:
Just a few books of fiqh [jurisprudence] covered almost all the issues people faced in their daily lives, addressing matters such as nikah, zakat [alms] and janaza that were essential for the community. For more complex matters, they would seek guidance from senior mawlawis.
Several mullahs told AAN that many of their fellow mullahs struggled even with the basic recitation of the Quran. Instead of following the established tajwid (the elocution rules for Quranic recitation), they would read the Quran as though it were a normal Pashto or Persian text. Few mullahs, according to AAN’s interviewees, understood the meaning of the words they recited. One interviewee recounted multiple occasions in rural areas of Khost where the village mullah was unable to deliver funeral prayers and sermons (which should be in Arabic), so these were delayed until a more competent mullah arrived.
One interviewee, a community elder in Paktia, said he remembered a mullah who was unable to read a qabala (land ownership document) written in Persian. When villagers asked him to explain its contents, he had no answer. “The next day,” the interviewee recalled, “he went to another village to learn [the meaning of the document] from another mullah.”
That said, at the district or provincial level, there were usually some prominent mullahs who had a more advanced understanding of Islam, particularly of fiqh. Interviewees from Zurmat in Paktia province, for example, said there used to be five mullahs in the district who were recognised for their knowledge. When village-level mullahs encountered complex legal or religious issues, they would refer people to these scholars, acknowledging their own inability to answer such questions or provide adequate guidance.
Despite their limited knowledge, mullahs were still able to manage affairs and command respect in their communities due to the structure of Afghan society and the socio-economic context in which they lived. As one interviewee put it, “In the entire village, the only person who could read a text was the mullah.” Many of the social rules and norms that governed village life were not derived from Islam, but guided by long-held local customs and traditions that mullahs were not disposed to challenge. Mullahs could participate in this alternative value system without a deep knowledge of Islamic law and theology and therefore they were able to maintain influence in communities even if they had little formal Islamic education.
Conflicts bring drastic change: 1979-2001
A significant shift in education for mullahs was a consequence of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. It forced millions of Afghans into exile, with over three million seeking refuge in neighbouring Pakistan alone, where they settled in refugee camps and adapted to life in their new environment.
In those camps, alongside schools, set up by the United Nations and NGOs, a new form of religious education began to take root. Muslims from around the world began visiting to join the fight against the Soviets, offering financial support and establishing madrasas and religious seminaries. These efforts were supported by both charities from around the Muslim world and donations from the Gulf states. As a result, hundreds of new madrasas were established and Afghan refugees enrolled in large numbers, as there were few other opportunities for education in the camps.[8] Mullahs who had previously only possessed basic knowledge of Islam now had the opportunity to deepen their understanding of Islamic theology in these newly established institutions, which offered a more advanced and diverse version of Islamic education than the education provided in Afghanistan’s villages. Most followed the Dar ul-Uloom Deoband educational model, which is Hanafi, the school which most Afghan Sunni Muslims follow, while others, particularly those run by Arabs, who also typically had deeper pockets, adopted a Salafi-Wahabi curriculum.[9] What was on offer, education-wise, also evolved as regular schools in the camps improved during the 1990s. The schools were largely primary, with a few high schools where pupils were selected on ability, and even a few scholarships to Pakistani universities. As the quality of the official camp schools improved, many parents preferred to send their children, especially their boys, to a school, rather than, or in addition to, a madrasa. That was also the case for girls in the 1990s: increasing numbers were enrolled and stayed in school, incentivised by families getting WFP tins of edible oil in exchange, something which helped break the taboo common in some communities against getting daughters educated.[10]
The migration to Pakistan also facilitated connections among people from different regions of Afghanistan. The concentration of diverse Afghans in refugee camps helped spread knowledge among previously disconnected communities. “Many people started learning from well-known mullahs who’d also became refugees. I began studying basic texts from Mullah Miraki from Kunduz [in northern Afghanistan],” one mullah from Khost, in the southeast, recalled. The availability of intellectual resources, particularly books, further supported this growth. “Unlike in Afghanistan, you could find many books there and read them. People would learn [from those books] what they couldn’t understand from another mawlawi,” another mullah explained.
Even after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and the Moscow-backed regime collapsed in 1992, the subsequent civil war among mujahedin factions left many Afghans preferring to remain in Pakistan. During this period, madrasas offered significant benefits to the (mainly male) teenage students, such as free schooling and food and board, at a time when ordinary Afghans living in the refugee camps struggled. Therefore, many young men who were not from families who had a tradition of sending their sons to become mullahs took advantage of the opportunity for them to acquire a religious education.
After the withdrawal of the Soviets and the fall of the communist government in Kabul, many mullahs who had studied in Pakistani madrasas returned with the idea of establishing similar religious schools in Afghanistan. This coincided with the rise of the Taliban, a movement founded by former mujahedin, mainly from greater Kandahar, who had been religious students (talibs), mostly in hujras in Afghanistan or (less commonly) Pakistani madrasas. The Taliban took over most of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, establishing their first Islamic Emirate.
The takeover of the state by talibs played a crucial role in promoting the establishment of more madrasas. The first Taliban government began building them in major cities such as Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad and their surroundings, prioritising religious education over schooling, and indeed adding more Islamic education to both school and university curricula, so that for example, medical students had to devote 50 per cent of their time to Islamic studies.[11] For the first time in Afghanistan’s modern history, both formal and informal religious education, were functioning on a massive scale. Hundreds of new private madrasas for boys and young men were established and thousands enrolled in them.[12] This was a time, when, according to an estimate by UNICEF in 2000, only four to five per cent of primary-aged children, girls and boys, in Afghanistan were going to primary school. (The Taliban had also officially banned all schooling for girls.) The numbers attending madrasas is not known.
Islamic education under the Republic: 2001-21
With the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, this trend slowed, as the new government showed less interest in religious education. Formal madrasas registered with the state were still operational, but not on the same scale as under the Taliban; the government attempted to regulate madrasa education but the majority remained unregistered.[13]
As the insurgency against the Islamic Republic and its foreign military backers intensified, and with mullahs often targeted by United States and NATO forces because of their suspected affiliation with the Taliban, many mullahs from rural areas chose to flee to Pakistan once again. There, they established new madrasas to provide religious education to their fellow Afghans.[14] However, as the insurgency began to gain momentum and control more territory, the Taliban could begin to provide political support to mullahs living in areas under their control inside Afghanistan.
Many Taliban-aligned mullahs, having completed their education in Pakistan, chose to return to Afghanistan and live in those Taliban-controlled areas, where they began establishing their own madrasas. In Paktia province’s Zurmat district alone, for instance, the author knows of a Taliban group commander who established two madrasas in 2014 and 2016, assigning local mullahs to lead them and using his position to collect funds from the community. In Paktika’s Mata Khan district, similarly, the author knows another Taliban commander who established a madrasa in the early 2010s where some 200 youths studied. The subsequent increase in madrasas seems to have met rising demand from communities as, according to our interviewees, a single madrasa would host hundreds of students. One interviewee related that in his home district of Deh Yak in Ghazni, more than a dozen large madrasas have been established in the past decade, each hosting over 300 students.
In rural areas, madrasas were an attractive option for many, because as articulated by one mullah: “When you have five sons, you can’t give them proper attention or education. Some [families] can’t even afford to feed them. So, they some send some to the cities, others abroad and the rest to madrasas, where they learn something and are protected from society’s evils.” Demographic factors have contributed to the trend. “In the past, said one interviewee, “families had many children, but half would die due to a lack of healthcare. Now, he said, “families have many children and no one is dying, so they send them to madrasas, where they are both educated and kept safe.”
Islamic education since 2021
Since the Taliban’s return to power, madrasa education sponsored by the state has expanded even more. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has been both registering informal madrasas that are supported by local charities and communities and providing them with resources, and establishing new, state-run madrasas. Since the 2021 takeover, the IEA’s Ministry of Education has announced that it will establish a large government-supported madrasa in every province, with free food and accommodation for the (male) students and high salaries for the teachers (Radio Azadi). The Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs has also announced separate plans to establish two madrasas in every district (TOLO News). Interest in madrasas comes from the very top of the Taliban government, with many high-ranking Taliban also running their own religious schools. For example, acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has a madrasa in Kabul’s city’s Shash Darak, acting Deputy Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Ali Jan Ahmad a madrasa in Musahi district in Kabul province and acting Minister of Water and Power Mullah Abdul Latif Mansur a madrasa in Zurmat in Paktia.
Meanwhile, since the Taliban’s return, many mullahs without formal non-religious education have enrolled in bachelor degree programmes in fields such as computer science, political science, business administration and economics. The author knows more than a dozen such mullahs who are members of the Taliban who are now attending university programmes. The IEA government, to support this, has announced that those who have completed the wara dawra(twelfth grade) in informal madrasas are now officially recognised – after an exam – as high school graduates, which makes them eligible for university enrolment (BBC).[15] Moreover, according to the author’s information, they have also offered those who fought for the Taliban movement and did not have the chance to study in madrasas or schools, the chance to complete high school in a single year without even attending every day.
What do Afghan mullahs learn in madrasas?
As the number of madrasas increased, the nature of religious education also began to evolve. Firstly, hujras are scarcely to be found any more, having been driven out of business by the rise of the madrasa. Secondly, pupils and students in madrasas follow more rigorous curricula and are taught by better-trained teachers. When it comes to the curriculum, the majority of Afghan madrasas (whether formally state-registered or informal) follow the Dars-e Nizami curriculum developed at Dar ul-Uloom Deoband, with some variations, as some madrasas put greater emphasis on non-religious subjects than others[16] This system emphasises traditional Islamic subjects, while also incorporating certain other disciplines such as mathematics, computer science and English. Students study the Quran, focusing on proper tajwid and tafsir (Quranic interpretation). They also study the Hadith – the sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, documented in collections such as Sahih ul-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Fiqh is taught using the foundational texts of the Hanafi school, such as Hidayahand Radd ul-Muhtar.[17]
In addition, students learn Arabic language and literature, including sarf (morphology) and nahw (grammar), classical texts and poetry. Classical Persian poetry, including works by figures like Rumi, are also included. Mantiq and hikmah(logic and philosophy) are taught, incorporating elements of classical Greek and Islamic philosophical traditions, as well as the study of belief. The curriculum also covers rhetoric (balagha), focusing on Arabic literary studies. The curriculum incorporates elements of the teachings of classical Sufi scholars, particularly from the Naqshbandi tradition.[18]Sirat (the life of the Prophet Muhammad) and early Islamic history are also important components of students’ education in madrasas.
This curriculum differs significantly from the one followed in the hujras and the traditional student-teacher method. For instance, it introduces a modern grading system where students study within a structured framework, complete with defined schedules, specific timeframes and exam systems, much like those found in schools and universities. Upon completion of their studies, students are awarded certificates, which allow them to officially claim certain titles that reflect the level of knowledge they have attained. For example, those who acquire only a basic knowledge of Islam are given the title of mullah, while those who pass the fourteenth grade of the Dars-e Nizami curriculum are referred to as mawlawi. After this, students who choose to specialise in jurisprudence are called mufti – they are considered qualified to give fatwas, religious rulings – while those who opt for the advanced study of Hadith are given the title sheikh ul-hadith, or of the Quran, sheikh ul-Quran.
In addition to this more rigorous curriculum, exposure to different discourses on Islamic sciences and the availability of a more diverse literature has, according to interviewees, broadened mullahs’ understanding of the various Islamic schools of thought in recent years. Our interviewees discussed this evolution, many attributing it partially to time spent as refugees in Pakistan, whether studying there or now. One interviewee, a mullah from Nangrahar province, explained:
Madrasas in Pakistan played a key role in spreading [religious] knowledge in Afghanistan. In the past, there were many issues in Hanafi jurisprudence that our ulema had either never heard of or didn’t have the capacity to understand. Now, praise be to Allah, thanks to these madrasas, our ulema have a comprehensive understanding of every aspect of the sharia of the Prophet Muhammad. They are experts in sirah, tafsir, tajwid, mantiq, ilm al-kalam [study of Islamic doctrine], balaghah, and ifta [delivering fatwas].
Another interviewee, a mullah from Gurbaz district in Khost, said:
Our scholars are now as knowledgeable as the great Deobandi scholars. They can even write sharha [explanation of a classical Islamic text] … They’re skilled in Arabic and understand all the issues that are currently important. They know Islamic history, specialise in hadith, and are experts in Quran recitation and its proper recitation. All of this is a blessing from these madrasas, where knowledge has blossomed.
Mullahs and their position in society since the return of the IEA
The increasing understanding of Islamic subjects on the part of mullahs has had complicated consequences for their social status within communities. In part, it has led to increased respect for them and their work among rural conservative communities and the older generation. Among younger educated men, however, their authority and their claim to represent or champion religion and now also the state has been viewed with some scepticism; they may be criticised for being too conservative or for using religion to serve their own personal interests. This is reinforced by the preferential treatment they are given by the current government in hiring those with Islamic credentials. One consequence of this is that many families feel that a religious education for their boys is a more attractive option than in the past. Underlining this point, a university student from Kabul, told AAN:
These days, what gets you a job is not a university diploma but a turban, a beard and a madrasa certificate. If you have them, you can get a job wherever you want; if not, you won’t, no matter how qualified you are.
Mullahs also now feel more able to challenge society. “Ulema have now returned to their original role in society, one IEA official told AAN. “They are now able to abolish many norms that contradict Islam.” Other interviewees agreed and it seems that since the return of the IEA, many mullahs in the southeast have tried to leverage their position in society to challenge older customary norms that they feel are contrary to sharia. Some of the examples they gave are – perhaps surprisingly – progressive. For instance, several mullahs interviewed for this report said that they have been manoeuvring to extend religious education to women – a practice that remains unusual in Afghanistan’s rural areas and in particular those of the southeast, where traditional norms typically restrict female education beyond early childhood. One of the mullahs interviewed told AAN about efforts to provide religious education for women:
The ulema have done a lot of work in this regard. They’re trying to convince people that women, like men, have the right to get an education and that it’s obligatory. They’ve been talking about female scholars from [earlier Islamic] history and how they contributed to jihad in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). [Mullahs] are amongst the first people who demanded that wealthy folk build madrasas for women and made a safe environment for them to study in.
Mullahs also reported efforts to promote a woman’s right to receive inheritance in line with sharia, a practice rarely followed in Afghanistan. (For more on women’s inheritance rights, see this March 2025 AAN piece.) “Ulema are preaching about this issue,” said one mullah from Ghazni. “They’re trying to convince people to follow the principle.” Another interviewee from Nangrahar reported that several mullahs he knew of had given their own sisters their inheritance, as mandated by the Quran, in order to set an example for the community.
Similarly, some of the mullahs that AAN spoke to reported that they insist a woman must give her consent to marriage or else the marriage is considered invalid. In Afghanistan this has never been common, although the Quran mandates it. A mullah from Paktia province underlined that: “Getting the consent of the girl in marriage is the most essential element of a valid nikah. The consent must not be imposed on her but should be of her own will. If not, then the nikah is naqis[flawed].”
One other custom that both the IEA government and some mullahs have been trying to reform is the payment of bride price, the sum paid by the groom or his family to the bride’s family.[19] (This is distinct from mahr, the gift given – or promised – by the groom to the bride, as mandated by Islam.) For families with many daughters, high bride prices are valued, and the brides themselves may feel they are a mark of their worth. However, a mullah, who is also an IEA official, from Logar province explained that they also make getting married difficult and, he said, cause social problems:
If someone wants to marry, they need to earn large sums of money, and that created significant challenges. In our district, ulema gathered and explained, from a sharia perspective, how wrong this was and its negative repercussions. They convinced the people to reach a consensus, and the bride prices were lowered. This change has been widely implemented, and now people are very happy with it.
Other interviewees mentioned that mullahs are now better able to influence dispute resolution along the lines of Islamic principles. They described jirgas (tribal assemblies) in the past that would resolve matters not according to sharia but in line with Pashtun tribal norms for compensation known as nerkh (literally, price or exchange rate). As a mullah from Paktia said, things are now changing:
In the past, when someone would seize somebody else’s land, they would either fight each other or ask for help from the qawmi mashran [tribal elders], who would then resolve the matter through a jirga. But now, they refer to the ulema and ask for the resolution of the matter based on sharia.
However, another interviewee from Khost highlighted that mullahs’ efforts to enforce more Islamic practices in their communities often receive a less than positive response:
My friend who studied in Akora [Dar ul-Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan] got the imamat of Zangi Kala [a village in Khost]. When he went there, he summoned all the village elders and asked them to show how they perform the prayer and what they recite. Most of the elders didn’t know the correct way. My friend then told them that they should come every day after the night prayer and he would teach them the correct way. Many elders were upset with this and told him that they wouldn’t change what they’d learned from their ancestors, as it was completely correct.
Mullahs and the future of Afghan society
Mullahs have gained influence and power in recent years, beginning with the jihad against the Soviets and peaking with the return of the Taliban in 2021 – but their growing power has also created controversy over their role in society. Afghan rural society is not always opposed to the idea of religious figures as the key political force in society, but the degree to which communities accept their growing power varies greatly. Some Afghans feel that Islamic government by mullahs is the sole legitimate form of rule; others agree with this concept, but think that the interpretation of Islamic law by the Taliban government or by a particular mullah is incorrect. As the author concluded in the first part of this research, rural mullahs used to be economically dependent on their community and independent of the state. Their rising socioeconomic status has made them economically independent of their congregations, but they now often have greater connections with the state, or indeed have become part of the state, as ministers, governors, police, soldiers, teachers or officials. By chance, this has also gone along with greater Islamic learning.
The implications of being part of a political entity, making policies and running a government are complex for mullahs. On the one hand, they now possess greater political power, which may enable them to shape Afghan society according to their ideas. On the other hand, their new position makes them susceptible to criticism and has created a contradictory image of them in public opinion. Once aiming to be admired for their piety and neglect of worldly matters, mullahs now enjoy state privileges and – for some – a more lavish lifestyle. That attracts criticism, that they are manipulating state authority for personal gain, and also creates competition among the clerics themselves over privileges and influence. Furthermore, any shortcomings in governance are often attributed to the fact that this is a government of mullahs, which may erode the status of all as religious leaders.
Meanwhile, there are also new challenges to mullahs from within Afghan society, given the decades of comparative openness and connection with the broader world. As Afghans become increasingly more literate and gain access to religious education, mullahs are no longer the sole source of religious authority. Awareness of other interpretations of Islam, particularly amongst the younger generation, is growing. As one mullah explained:
In the past, no one would question a mullah on a religious issue because there were no other sources of information. But now, with access to the internet, religious books and scholars with different perspectives, things have changed. I remember once asking someone not to shave his beard, and he immediately showed me a video of an Arab mullah arguing that shaving your beard isn’t a problem.
Finally, some mullahs struggle to provide the younger generation with the guidance necessary for navigating the complexities of today’s world. Traditional madrasa education has not equipped them for addressing current issues. Many mullahs have also started to enrol in universities, pursuing studies in fields such as science, technology, international politics and diplomacy. It seems they now realise that traditional religious training is no longer sufficient to meet the challenges of contemporary life, but it is as yet unclear how and to what extent the Islamic Emirate government itself will adapt to the realities of the modern world.
Edited by Fabrizio Foschini, Letty Philips and Kate Clark
References
References
↑1
See Mohammad Kakar, Government and Society in Afghanistan: The reign of Amir Abdul Rahman, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1979, pp161-163.
↑2
Misbahullah Abdulbaqi, Madrassah in Afghanistan: Evolution and its future, Policy Perspectives 5, 2, 2008, pp130-159.
Sana Haroon, ‘Religious Revivalism across the Durand Line’, in Shahzad Bashir and Robert D Crews (eds) Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2012.
↑5
Senzil K Nawid, Religious Response to Social Change in Afghanistan 1919-29: King Amanallah and the Afghan Ulema, California, Mazda Publishing, 1999, p10.
↑6
The findings in this research are based on 19 in-depth interviews carried out in August, September and December 2024 with mullahs from the provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni, as well as insights gained from conversations with community leaders and mullahs from these and other provinces between June and December 2024.
For more details on Salafi education and case studies on the type of education provided in Pakistani madrasas, see Borchgrevink, Beyond Borders, footnote 4.
↑10
Information about the refugee schools came from a former director of an NGO in charge of provincial education for Afghan refugees in one of Pakistan’s provinces.
Similar demands were made in the early years of the Republic by Jamiat-e Islami and other mujahedin factions whose members had been fighting in the ‘resistance’ against the first Emirate and therefore, they said, lost their chance for an education. Their members were then discriminated against when it came to proving their suitability to enter university and if in government employment, to get the bonus that went along with a university education.
Al-Hidayah fi Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadi, commonly referred to as al-Hidayah, is a 12th-century legal manual by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani and is among the most influential books of Hanafi jurisprudence. Radd al-Muhtar ila al-Durr al-Mukhtar (Diverting the Baffled to ‘The Chosen Pearl’) by the 18th century Syrian scholar, Ibn Abidin, is an annotative commentary on an earlier, voluminous work of Hanafi jurisprudence, Al-Durr al-Mukhtar (The Chosen Pearl) by Ala al-Din al-Haskafi. Radd al-Mukhtar is considered the central reference for fatwas by Hanafi scholars.
↑18
The Naqshbandiyya has, for centuries, been the most popular Sufi order in Afghanistan, although others, namely the Qadiriyya and the Chishtiyya, have also been present.
Even after Tony Blair’s bungled war, UK leaders still yearned to dominate the world stage. With the lifting of the superinjunction, we can all see where that has led
What odds on a public inquiry into the Afghan superinjunction? Gold-plated, judge-led, three years of fun and games, that is how British politics normally kicks an embarrassment into the long grass. And what odds on who will get off scot free – Tony Blair?
The more we pick away at the stages of this fiasco, the more from the start one blunder seemed to follow inevitably from another. There was no reason for the British invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. If the US wanted revenge on the Kabul regime for harbouring al-Qaida after 9/11, it could have done what Donald Trump did last month to Iran. A savage retaliatory blow against the country’s rulers would have made the point.
The invocationof article 5 of the Nato treaty to justify an invasion of Afghanistan was ridiculous. America’s security was not remotely threatened by terrorism directed from Kabul, any more than was Britain’s. Other Nato powers, bullied into showing sympathy, limited themselves to minimal non-fighting roles. Once Kabul had been attacked and the Taliban had fled, caution and common sense indicated swift withdrawal. The US military command wanted no invasion.
Blair was insistent in pressing Bush for “nation-building”, against considerable US scepticism. He was desperate for Britain to punch above its weight. In his Chicago speech in 1999, he had advocated the new Blair “doctrine of international community”, that of altruistic intervention. It was basically a call for more wars. Clinton’s office described Blair’s intervention in Kosovo as the prime minister “sprinkling too much adrenaline on his cornflakes”. When war duly arrived, Blair was insistent that British submarines fire the first barrage of missiles on Kabul. He told the 2001 Labour conference: “We will not walk away from Afghanistan, as the outside world has done so many times before … There is only one outcome: our victory not theirs.”
There followed a full-scale British occupation that culminated, in 2006, in a reckless, failed attempt to suppress the Taliban in Helmand. One result was that for 20 years, a sizeable chunk of Afghanistan’s modest administrative class found themselves employed by western occupying powers, including Britain. As the Taliban filtered back, these people assumed, perhaps foolishly, that the good old British empire would not desert them.
When the list of 19,000 collaborators in the British occupation was leaked, the danger was obvious. The Ministry of Defence was alerted that an anonymous member of a Facebook group had said he had the database and was threatening to post it in full. Not knowing if the list had been shared with the Taliban, the government acted to protect those named.
The defence secretary at the time, Ben Wallace, understandably wanted to keep the fact a secret just in case. A judge understandably agreed, for a while. But neither decision would stand the test of time – or the mounting embarrassment. The Treasury cost of honouring the list was not millions but billions.
The bulk of the blame must lie with the fact of the invasion and subsequent departure. The effort of the House of Commons this week to make the leak issue partisan was pitiful. Neither the cabinet nor parliament tried to stop Blair’s original occupation. In 2010, after nine years, it still voted overwhelmingly in favour of Britain’s presence continuing. Parliament was equally in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When in 2021 Boris Johnson finally joined the US in cutting and running, parliament washed its hands of the whole affair.
In Afghanistan, 457 British soldiers died. The cost of the war to the UK taxpayer was £30bn. Some 200,000 Afghans also died and 29,700 were accepted for resettlement between 2021 and 2024. These figures are the bill for the outrage over 9/11 and were utterly unnecessary. No other European country joined the US on anything like the same scale as Britain. There has not been a word of inquiry into who should carry any degree of personal responsibility.
Britain attempted to withdraw from its empire with dignity over the course of the 20th century. It did not always succeed. Yet, ever since, its rulers have seemed in a state of lingering regret. Like Blair, they have harboured a tarnished yearning for a Britain still playing a role on the world stage, a violent one if need be.
Though Britain was never remotely threatened, Blair was almost always at war, in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. David Cameron was bitten with the same bug, intervening in Libya and trying to do so in Syria. He built two giant aircraft carriers, one of which Boris Johnson could not resist sending to the South China Sea. Why was never explained.
If Trump has any virtue it has been in telling Europe that the old global interventionism is over. The US is fed up with being Europe’s policeman. The continent should be realistic and look after its own business. But even he could not resist the machismo of bombing Iran.
The lesson of the leak is not that emails are never safe. That surely is known. The real lesson is that Britain should never have spent a quarter of a century trying to impose its rule on Afghanistan in the first place. Will it now learn?
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
This fiasco didn’t start when Britain leaked Afghans’ names, but when we invaded their country
The Taliban desperately wanted to fracture the world’s coalition of the willing, which refused to recognize them as a legitimate national authority. Since 2021, no nation—rich or poor, large or small, progressive or conservative—found them worthy of governing Afghanistan. The global rationale behind this assessment was the Taliban’s draconian restrictions banning girls and women from getting an education and employment. In their zest to enforce this ban, the Taliban literally locked up Afghan women behind the walls of their homes. For more than half of its inhabitants, Afghanistan has become a prison like Alcatraz, where women cannot step outside their homes unchaperoned by male guardians. The Taliban have even enforced a law to ban women’s voices from being heard in public, because they believe that feminine speech is too erotic for young Muslim men.
The Taliban defend this misogyny in the name of Islamic Shariat and Afghan (Pashtun) culture. In projecting what the United Nations calls gender apartheid onto Islam and thousands of years of Afghan heritage, the Taliban darkly stain both. That’s why none of the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has indulged them with the long-sought national recognition. Russia is not a Muslim-majority country, but 20 percent of its population is Muslim, while its Muslim-majority republics now number seven, including Chechnya. Moscow has become “Europe’s largest Muslim city.”
President Putin often presents himself as an outspoken defender of Islamic icons. When the burning of Qurans was on the rise in Europe, Putin criminalized desecration of the Quran in all of Russia through a legislative measure. He rebuilt Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, which was razed to the ground in a war with Moscow, and topped its skyline with what was billed Europe’s biggest mosque. In a meeting with the visiting Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain in 2016, Putin told him: “We are all Muslims” (not in the confessional sense, but as the victims of oppression). Since their seizure of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have been playing to Putin’s Muslim-friendly inclinations to soften his view of their purging of the female gender from Afghan public spaces.
In this endeavor, they were greatly helped by former Taliban commanders and soldiers who defected from the Taliban movement to join a more virulent version that has become the Taliban’s sworn enemy, namely Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K). IS-K’s terrorist violence has shaken a region that spans south, central and west Asia, and extends to Eurasia. IS-K’s massacre at a concert in Moscow in 2024, in which 133 people were killed, forced Putin to reassess Afghanistan through the prism of terror. As IS-K has its bases in Afghanistan, it was ostensibly only natural for Putin to upgrade Russia’s relations with Afghanistan to blunt the gathering threat of IS-K’s violence.
The strength of the Taliban’s rivals, especially IS-K and Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP), can be gauged from the Taliban’s aversion to ever naming or condemning them for their atrocities. These militant outfits commit trans-border violence not just in Russia, but in Iran, Pakistan and the neighboring Central Asian Republics. Yet the Taliban are helpless to rein them in. As the wide swath of IS-K and TTP’s ranks are filled with former members of the Taliban movement, the leaders of the latter are kept up late at night because these defectors are former insiders who know their way around the Taliban.
Russia was already treating Taliban authorities as de facto rulers. While the rest of the world had abandoned Kabul since 2021, Moscow kept its embassy open and fully staffed at the highest level. In April this year, Russia even dropped the terrorist group designation for the Taliban, which it had enforced for two decades. By denying the Taliban regime the legitimacy of formal recognition, Moscow was in alignment with the rest of the world, and yet it was still benefiting from full diplomatic relations with Kabul.
Splits in the Taliban’s ranks are now coming into the open. Dissidents like Abbas Stanikzai, who was initially presented as the Taliban’s favorite choice for prime minister and is still deputy minister for foreign affairs, earlier this year exiled himself to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He feared for his life because of his public advocacy for girls and women’s education and employment. The UAE is also home to Afghanistan’s former President Ashraf Ghani who immediately preceded the Taliban.
An even more lethal divide has opened up between the supreme leader of the Taliban and his potent rivals in the Haqqani Network. The Network’s leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, like Stanikzai, took a public stance in favor of girls and women’s education, and reprimanded the Taliban’s orthodox leadership for misinterpreting the faith. Early this year, Haqqani who is minister for the interior has absented himself from Kabul for months on an overseas trip to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where he has been reportedly lobbying for a planned parting of the ways with the misogynist Taliban leadership. He made similar but even stronger overtures to the United States, which recently lifted a $10 million bounty on his head. The New York Times described him as Afghanistan’s best hope for change.
Russia’s formal recognition of the Taliban regime may not go far enough to save the Taliban from collapsing under the weight of an ugly power struggle or their inhumane policies. Some nations may find it tempting follow Russia’s lead—for instance, Pakistan or India—but they will likely find their move stalled by progressive opposition within their own societies. Even if they remain an exception, Russia is nevertheless contributing to the orphaning of human rights and the undermining of the international order.
Trying to get important documents from the state can be a maddening and expensive ordeal in Afghanistan. Many complain about the time-consuming and frustrating process of applying for a tazkira (ID card), passport, driving license, or a nikahkhat (marriage certificate). From government offices to courts to legal affairs departments, Afghans can get trapped in paperwork and corruption. If a clumsy official has made a mistake on a document – not an uncommon occurrence – it is the citizen who will pay the price, entering into a whole other layer of bureaucracy. AAN’s Rohullah Sorush has been hearing from people trying to get tazkiras, passports and marriage certificates to see how much time and money it takes to get these essential documents.
Getting a marriage certificate
Traditionally, when people get married in Afghanistan, they do not get an official government document to certify the marriage. They either get a booklet from the mullah who performed the nikah (marriage), which is similar to an official nikahkhat, with photos of the spouses, their fingerprints and other details, or a more basic document, also from the mullah, that mentions the names of the spouses, the mullah and the amount of mahr, the gift given by the groom to the bride as stipulated in Islamic law.
For decades, successive Afghan governments from the communist era onwards have tried to make the use of marriage certificates mandatory.[1] Under the Islamic Republic, human rights and women’s rights groups hoped that an official nikahkhat could reduce child and forced marriages (see this 2007 report from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission) and there were also public awareness campaigns – but to limited effect (see this IWPR report from 2016). This has been echoed anecdotally to AAN, which asked more than a dozen people if they had registered their marriage at the time, and all simply said they did not.
However, since 2021, getting an official certificate – a nikahkhat – seems to have become more common. AAN interviews suggest the change has partly been driven by the surge in out-migration since 2021, with Afghan couples travelling to Europe or regional countries, where they need official documents, including a nikahkhat, or one spouse trying to bring the other to their new home country. A report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in 2023 found that after the collapse of the Republic, for Afghans seeking to leave the country for various reasons, such as unemployment, poverty and instability, getting documentation – including a nikahkhat and a passport – became a priority. A defence lawyer in Balkh province, Amir Rasuli, gave another reason for the increased demand:
In the past, spouses were content to have [documents from the mullah who conducted the marriage], but recently, the demand for official marriage certificates has increased. Having an official marriage certificate guarantees women’s rights such as nafaqa [financial support, including food, clothes and housing], inheritance and mahr; it specifies the husband’s responsibilities towards his wife.
However, getting a marriage certificate is not a straightforward process, as Khadija’s story illustrates.
Khadija’s story: the ultimate bureaucratic obstacle – state collapse
Khadija, who is 35 and lives in Kabul with her husband and two daughters, has experience of trying to get a nikahkhat under both the Republic and the current Islamic Emirate government. She began the process under the Republic:
We had a traditional nikahkhat, but then my husband said we should have an official one. He was very busy, so he asked me to take all our ID cards [mine, his and our daughters’] and go to apply for an official nikahkhat.
Khadija did not know where or how to begin:
I knew nothing about the procedure for obtaining a nikahkhat and didn’t even know the address of the court. So, I asked a relative and he told me to go to the court in Jangalak area in PD [police district] 6 … He said, first, I needed to go to a petition writer [ariza nawis] near the court to write an application for me, which I did.
When Khadija took the application to the court, she discovered there were two more steps, involving the religious and local authorities:
[The court] then gave me a form to take to the mullah imam of our mosque and the wakil-e guzar [neighbourhood representative] to confirm that I was living in Charqala-ye Chardi. My family knew the wakil-e guzar and the mullah imam, so it didn’t take much time for them to sign and stamp my form.
After that, Khadija’s relative told her there was yet another step:
I then had to take the form to the relevant municipality district so they could confirm that the wakil-e guzar was active. I didn’t know the address of the municipality office in District Six, so I asked my father-in-law to take it there.
He took her form to the municipality office in Kart-e se, but found out that another piece of documentation was needed:
They asked him to bring the safai [municipal tax] booklet of our house, but my father-in-law told them we lived in a rented house. They said if he could show them an electricity bill, it’d be alright. So he came home, got the last electricity bill and took it back. They accepted that and signed and stamped the form.
Khadija had now completed all the steps and was given a day to come to the court to finalise the document. However, events intervened:
I went to the court and submitted the form. It was so crowded I thought all the residents of Kabul had come to obtain their nikahkhats. A court employee took my application form and dated it and said, “Now your application is dated. You should come in the month of Sunbula [21 August to 20 September].” But then the Taliban came to power in August 2021, almost a month after I got the date for my application. As a result, I couldn’t get my nikahkhat at that time.
Khadija could do nothing but wait for things to settle. It took a while for the courts to function again and then she tried again to get her nikahkhat:
After a few months, I was informed that the court had reopened and was processing the petitions and applications from the Republic era… The following day, I went to the court, but my name was among those marked ‘absent’ because they hadn’t appeared on the specified date. I talked to someone in the court who advised me to return another day, when they could provide a new date for my application.
When Khadija returned, she faced more problems, including how soldiers behaved towards clients in the court:
It was 9 o’clock when I arrived at the court. It was very crowded. There were men and women, young and old. Some Taliban soldiers were trying to bring order there, but when they lost their patience, they beat people. I waited in a long line, but when it was my turn to submit my application, they said they wouldn’t collect it now. They told me they collected applications and petitions early in the morning. Around 300 to 400 people were in a line every morning, every day.
Khadija then asked her husband to take a day off work to go in her place:
He went to the court and they dated the application. Then we went to the court on the date to get our nikahkhat. We also brought two witnesses. We paid one thousand afghanis [USD14] and finally got our nikahkhat. It’d taken us nine months in total.
Steps for obtaining a marriage certificate
Drawing on our interviewees’ accounts, we have gleaned that these steps appear to be needed to obtain a nikahkhat:
Step one: Submit a formal petition to your local primary court’s registration department, with photos and IDs of the spouses.
Step two: Fill out a request form, which includes questions about the spouses’ first and last names, their residence and ahleyat (in this context, whether they are adults, of sound mind and in good health) and if there are any obstacles to the marriage. The form requires authorisation from the mosque’s imam, two neighbours, the wakil-e guzar and the district office. It is then returned to the relevant directorate or primary court for further processing.
Step three: Pay the marriage certificate fee using a payment slip provided by the court.
Step four: Return to the court to present two witnesses who can testify to the marriage and provide original IDdocuments, completed registration documents and photos. A return date is set.
Step five: One or both spouses go to the relevant court with their IDs and receive their marriage certificate.
For Afghans needing a nikakhat in Europe, there is an additional step: they must get a translated version, which has to be verified by the qazaya-ye dawlat (Government Affairs Office) in Kabul, or the provincial Department of Justice, and be approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Getting this additional layer of approval only makes the whole process even longer and more complicated, as Mansur Ahmadi found out.
Mansur Ahmadi’s story: the problem of being born in one province and moving to another
Mansour Ahmadi, who currently lives in Europe, travelled to Afghanistan in 2022, where he tried to get a nikahkhat. He also had to get an official translation so that the certificate could be used outside Afghanistan. This required visits to two ministerial departments in Balkh province: the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs to verify the translation. That was before one of the bureaucrats noticed a tiny error on his nikahkhat over the amount of mahrhe had paid to his wife:
I took my nikahkhat and its translated version to the Department of Justice for their confirmation. They saw that in the upper section, the amount of the mahr was written as 100,000 afghanis [around USD1,400], while in the lower section it was written as 90,000 afghanis. They objected to this and didn’t approve it. No matter how much I tried to explain that it was a mistake and that it should’ve said that the mahr was 100,000 afghanis, with 10,000 paid in cash and 90,000 remaining, they wouldn’t accept it.
The judiciary gave Mansur a letter which he had to take to its district office in Sholgara, where he was last officially registered before he moved to Europe, so that they could correct the error and approve it.
But even after that, the process was still not over. As he needed an official nikahkhat in Europe, Mansur also had to take the translated version of the nikahkhat to the provincial Directorate of Foreign Affairs, to be signed and confirmed. Here, he faced another problem over a discrepancy between the address on his nikahkhat and the address on his ID:
The Directorate of Foreign Affairs was confused that my ID states my primary residence as Baghlan, and they asked why [ie, why it wasn’t Balkh]. I told them my ID had been issued several years ago in Baghlan, when I was still living there. Two years earlier, I’d moved to Sholgara, which was confirmed by the wakil-e guzar and the judge. But they didn’t accept this and said they’d give me another letter to take to Sholgara district so they could confirm I was living there.
Mansur said that getting a marriage certificate in Mazar-e Sharif meant not only bureaucracy but also corruption:
Everyone has problems with getting marriage certificates. They don’t issue them to anyone unless there’s an urgent need, such as being very ill, or if there’s an extraordinary matter brought by a [government] authority requiring them to issue it. For example, if someone has a serious illness that necessitates travel, they may issue a marriage certificate. In the city of Mazar, this is how it works. However, in the districts, if you pay a bribe, they’ll provide a guarantee and issue a marriage certificate. There, a local representative must confirm it, and you need to know someone who can confirm your residence, in exchange for money.
Luckily for Mansur, his lawyer in Europe offered him advice:
I was very frustrated and disappointed. I’d have to go through the whole process again, which would be time-consuming. So, I didn’t do it. Instead, I contacted my lawyer in Europe and told him about the problems I was having. My lawyer said what I’d obtained was good enough and I shouldn’t worry about it, as they’d accept it without the approval of the Directorate of Foreign Affairs.
The defence lawyer in Balkh province, Amir Rasuli, was very critical of the amount of paperwork involved in getting a marriage certificate. Most steps, he said, were unnecessary and could be eliminated:
The whole process of obtaining a nikahkhat takes a lot of time. There are steps such as confirmation by two neighbours, going to the imam [mullah] of the mosque and the wakil-e guzar to confirm that a husband and wife live in a specific area of a province and then going to the municipality [office in the] district to confirm that the wakil-e guzar is still active – all of this is unnecessary. I believe that, when you have an ID card showing you are Afghan and a resident of Afghanistan, the relevant courts and other administrations should cut all the other paperwork and easily issue a nikahkhat for you.
It should be very simple. It should be that you apply, have your witnesses and your documents. Then the court should issue a nikahkhat for you based on your documents and the testimony of witnesses. This way, it won’t be time-consuming, and applicants won’t be tearing their hair out with frustration.
It is not just the number of steps needed to get a document but also that it is not clear at the outset what is actually needed to obtain it. One of the threads running through our interviews is how information is given out ‘drip-by-drip’: interviewees think they have completed all the steps necessary, only to be told there is yet another step, which may require going back home to get other documents or getting signatures from relatives – who may not even be in the country. As well, people describe being told to go to one office, only to find that they had been sent to the wrong office and must go to another office instead, which may not even be in the same city or province and will certainly require more queuing and navigating the crowds. The lack of transparency and clear information about what steps are needed at the outset, is maddening. Interviewees end up exhausted, out of pocket and at their wits’ end.
Getting a passport or tazkira
Tazkiras and passports are even more essential than marriage certificates and just as difficult to obtain. They are necessary to work abroad, receive disability benefits, even getting a SIM card for your phone. Many Afghans have never had either a passport or an ID. According to a 2023 report by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, 86 per cent of the more than 70,000 households assessed reported a lack of such documents among their family members, especially women and girls. The following stories show how painful it can be to try to acquire these crucial documents, particularly when mistakes made by officials need fixing.
Leyaqat Ali’s story: the missing ‘Sayed’
Having failed to find a job in Afghanistan, Leyaqat Ali, an unemployed university graduate from Ghazni province, decided to travel abroad for work. For this, he needed a passport and a visa:
I needed to support my family, along with my brothers, as my father passed away during the Covid-19 pandemic. I just couldn’t find a job, so I decided to go to either Pakistan or Iran for work. I needed a passport and a visa though. I applied for a passport online at the beginning of 2024. Then, in August 2024, I got a message that I should go to Kabul for all the procedures, such as giving my biometrics and payment.
Leyaqat went to Kabul, where he stayed with a relative, and left at six in the morning for the passport office. When he arrived, it was already crowded:
I wanted to go in, but a guard stopped me. I told him I had come from a remote area, but he got angry and shouted at me. He said they couldn’t take on any more clients that day. He told me to come back the next day, but very early.
Leyaqat had no option but to go back to his relative’s home and try again the next day:
The following day, I left at four in the morning and went to the passport office. I was surprised to see many people had come much earlier than me. I stood in a line where there were already 15 to 20 people ahead of me.
This time, his papers were collected and he was told to go to either Pashtani Bank or the Afghanistan National Bank to pay the fee, which he did. Next, he had to get his biometrics taken. At this point, however, an error with his name was discovered:
An officer asked for my tazkira. When he checked my name, it didn’t match what was in the database. In my tazkira, my name is Sayed Leyaqat Ali, but in the database, it didn’t have the word ‘Sayed’. So my biometrics weren’t taken and the officer told me, “Go and correct your name and then come for the biometrics.” He told me that, at the entrance gate of the passport office, there was an office that deals with such issues.
Leyaqat did as he was instructed, but after waiting in another crowd, he was turned away:
The employee checked my tazkira and told me, “Your name can’t be corrected here. You have to go to the General Directorate of Civil Registration Services at the National Statistics and Information Authority [NSIA] in Sara-ye Shamali.” I was very upset and hopeless, but I had to go. However, unfortunately, in Sara-ye Shamali, I was again told that it was impossible to correct my name there and that I had to go to my home province, Ghazni, to correct my name in my tazkira.
So Leyaqat went back to Ghazni, where he found yet another convoluted process:
I travelled to Ghazni and visited the statistics department. They kept sending me from one office to another and there was a lot of paperwork involved. It took me two days to complete the necessary forms. After that, I had to wait for a whole month to be notified that my name’d been corrected. Next, I needed to apply for an electronic ID, which took two months to get printed in Kabul and sent to Ghazni.
In total, he said, correcting his name on the tazkira and obtaining the electronic tazkira took three months. “Now that my tazkira is correct,” Leyaqat said, “and I have the electronic version, I need to go back to the passport office in Kabul for them to take my biometrics before I can obtain my passport.”
Having to correct a name in a tazkira is a common problem, which people complain is both time-consuming and costly to amend. Applicants accuse Taliban-appointed officials of sloppiness, of making mistakes in writing their names (in this Zawia News article, for example, officials wrote ‘Saqi’ instead of ‘Safi’). Sometimes, they even get the gender wrong. However, it is a problem familiar from the Republic and, indeed, earlier eras. There are also even bigger errors: it took Sayed Ali from Charolak district of Balkh almost a year to resolve the mistake that was preventing him getting an electronic ID.
Sayed Ali’s story: disabled, and made to wait for treatment for a year
Sayed Ali has a disability in one leg, which he wanted to get treated. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) informed him that he needed an electronic ID card to get treatment at their clinic. However, when he applied for it, he encountered inefficiency, delays, technical problems and blunders, all made worse by the fact of his disability: “First, I needed to correct an error in my tazkira,” he said, “because they’d swapped my father and grandfather’s names around. I had to pay money as a bribe to get that done so that I wouldn’t have to travel all the way to Kabul to correct it.” Then, once he’d registered, Sayed Ali had to wait for his tazkira to be issued at the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) in Kabul and sent to Mazar-e Sharif:
I waited for four months. I was waiting for a message from the statistics department [in Mazar], but nothing happened. I had to go there, in person, as I really needed the tazkira for my treatment. They told me, “Your tazkira hasn’t been published in Kabul, so come again in a month’s time.”
Because of his disability, Sayed Ali asked his nephew to go to NSIA on his behalf:
[My nephew] went there, not once, not twice, but three times, each time after a month. Then, they said my electronic tazkira had come… But when they entered the serial number and searched their database, they said the tazkira wasn’t there. Over the next seven months, my nephew went back [to NISA] seven times and my tazkira still hadn’t come from Kabul. Then, I went with him and I told the people in NSIA that: “You see, I am disabled and I need to be treated for the injuries in my leg.”
But, he said, they sent him away again:
After ten days, I visited that centre again with my nephew. His friend [at NISA] said that the tazkira had arrived. He showed us a tazkira and said, “Look! It is your tazkira. Your father’s name is Sayed Hussain.” However, it wasn’t mine. The photo in the tazkira looked like me and it had the same father’s name as mine, but it was not my tazkira.
On the twelfth or thirteenth visit, the bureaucrats decided to start from scratch:
It was finally decided that we should pay 1,500 afghanis for a duplicate [al-musanna]. We paid again, and I was told the duplicate would be ready in three months. I went back four or five times to get the duplicate, and finally, it arrived.
By the time Sayed Ali’s duplicate tazkira came from Kabul, the mystery of the original missing tazkira was finally resolved:
NSIA employees had mistakenly given my tazkira to someone else, who had poor eyesight and couldn’t see that it wasn’t his tazkira. He took it home, but when he went to withdraw the money that his son in Europe had sent, the bank told him that the tazkira he’d brought as proof of his identity wasn’t his.
Sayed Ali eventually got his ID card and was able to get medical treatment, but only after the best part of a year of stress and wasted time.
For Afghans in rural areas, getting documents means travelling and incurring additional expenses. The cost, both in lost work and money spent, may be something they can ill afford, but they deem it necessary because of all the services that now require documentation.
Screenshot of video showing families waiting at the Directorate of Population Registration Services’ outdoor reception centre to apply for identity documents and birth certificates. Photo: National Institute of National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA), undated
Farid Agha’s story: countless days, nights and afghanis wasted
“You can end up waiting for hours, or even days and nights, yet still can’t get an ID because there are too many crowds and too little organisation,” said Farid Agha, from Zurmat district of Paktia province. He needed an electronic ID because the government had made everything dependent on it. “Without it,” he said, “your SIM card would be blocked and you wouldn’t be able to get anything done in government offices.” What was even worse, Farid Agha needed documentation for his whole family. Since his daughter was going abroad, he needed to get a passport for her. Additionally, his son had passed the university entrance exam and needed to enrol, where an electronic ID was also required. There were no electronic ID services in his home district, so he had to travel to the provincial capital:
We made the trip to Gardez city to obtain the electronic ID. We registered at one of the photography shops there. I took my entire family with me – it’s more than two hours away – because I’d heard that all family members needed to be present for the ID process to proceed and the registration to be completed.
Farid Agha and his family had to wait in Gardez, where they knew no one, and the expenses built up:
I took the forms to the civil registration office. When we arrived, the office was extremely crowded and disorganised, making the wait for our forms to be checked very frustrating. We stood in line for two consecutive days, but our turn never came. Eventually, I had to send my family members back to the village because we didn’t have anyone to stay with in Gardez. We’d spent two nights in a hotel, but I could no longer afford to stay there. Travelling back and forth every day wasn’t feasible either, as the fare from our area to the centre is 500 afghanis per person [USD 7].
Farid Agha also had to return to his village and come back again to the civil registration office, but this time, he did not take his family with him. “They checked my paper documents, but only me and my two sons, who are at school, had the documents. The others [another son, two daughters and his wife] didn’t have any,” he said:
The officer told me that I needed to obtain confirmation from the head of the village and the relevant district office to verify that these are indeed my children. I also needed to bring my wife’s father’s ID to get a document for her as well. My wife’s family lives in Pakistan.
He said the situation was very frustrating because, having waited for two weeks, he still could not obtain the ID. It was, he said, “a big headache.”
Farid Agha eventually managed to secure all the documentation, which took over a month, as they had to wait for some of the documents to come from Pakistan. When it was all in order, his family paid for the electronic IDs and had their biometrics taken. But there was one more problem:
I received my ID without any issue. However, there was a mistake in my son’s ID: his grandfather’s name was incorrectly written. The names of all my other children were correct, but my eldest son’s grandfather’s name was wrong. I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but when we got home, my son pointed it out, saying, “Dad, my ID has an error.”
Farid Agha went back to Gardez to get the error in his son’s tazkira corrected, but officials told him he had to go to Kabul to fix it. He said that he had explained to them that it was their mistake, not his or his family’s, and questioned why he should have to go to Kabul. In response, they said that they did not have the authority to correct the name in the province:
I had no choice but to go to Kabul because all my son’s documents were at risk of becoming invalid. The information on his paper tazkira was different from what was on the electronic tazkira, which meant that all his educational documents could become invalid due to a single incorrect name.
Farid Agha spent a lot of time in Kabul trying to correct his son’s name. It took a week of waiting at the civil registration office in Sara-ye Shamali before he got to speak to someone:
When it was my turn, the electronic tazkira department referred me to the Ministry of Interior. Upon arrival, I found it chaotic and overcrowded, making it impossible to secure a turn there. Only the general director of civil registration has the authority to issue orders. I ended up waiting for two days.
Finally, he was told he would need to bring his father’s or brother’s ID to correct the mistake. So he had to travel back to Paktia to retrieve both his father’s and brother’s tazkiras. After returning to the tazkira office, they had taken the documents and told him to come back in two days. When he went to collect his son’s tazkira, the manager at the electronic tazkera department surprised him with another problem:
He challenged me on the reported age of my son, claiming that he appeared older than what I’d indicated in the ID. This added to my frustration. I explained that I’d been trying to obtain the ID for three months and that the only issue was the name, which was an error made by one of his employees. I insisted that I know my son’s age since I am his father. Unfortunately, he refused to accept my explanation and ended up kicking me out of his office, instructing me to correct the age.
Through the help of a family friend, he eventually persuaded the manager to make the correction. But overall, obtaining electronic ID cards for his family cost Farid Agha a lot of money and trouble. He also complained that the price of tazkiras had increased under the Emirate:
During my travels, I ended up spending over 50,000 afghanis [USD 700] on hotel stays and car rentals, both to and from my destination. … The cost is prohibitively high, particularly for ordinary people like farmers. The price for the electronic ID is 500 afghanis [USD 7], and if any corrections are needed, the cost increases to 1,200 afghanis [USD 17].
During the Republic, an electronic ID card only cost 100 afghanis [USD 1.40], and corrections cost 500 afghanis. Now, however, the prices have changed drastically, making it a significant financial burden, especially in a country struggling with poverty.
Despite these challenges and the difficult circumstances of everyday life, hundreds of people still attempt to secure an electronic ID card. Unfortunately, when faced with these obstacles, many ultimately abandon their efforts.
These problems can be even worse for those forced to return to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran, especially those who have spent most or all of their lives outside the country. One aid worker told Human Rights Watch in a March 2025 report on deportations from Pakistan that the Emirate should open mobile tazkira-issuing centres at the border. If returning Afghans cannot obtain tazkiras, they cannot register their children for school or buy mobile phones or SIM cards.
Conclusion
When Afghan citizens try to get electronic IDs, passports or marriage certificates, they face inefficiency, endless paperwork, exhausting waits in queues and in crowds and, for many, the need to travel. The convoluted bureaucracyadds to the expense of getting documentation, not only the money spent on fees, but also travel and hotel bills, and the opportunity cost of days wasted in government offices, when they could be working.
These are not new problems, but comparing the situation with the Republic, our interviews suggest there is now greater demand for documents, but not enough staff to deal with that demand. Indeed, there is some evidence that matters may have become even worse since the 20 per cent cut in public sector jobs (Amu), that were announced (Tolonews) in April 2025. In general, since before the fall of the Republic, access to documentation services has become better for men living in previously conflict-ridden areas, but worse for women because public offices are now so much more male-dominated spaces.
As to costs, prices for the documents themselves have gone up under the Emirate. Demands for bribes appear to be less prevalent than under the Republic, although several of our interviews mentioned that a bribe had ‘oiled the wheel’ of getting through one of the many steps in obtaining a document. The potential for unscrupulous officials to make money is clear and indeed, the many steps and different signatures needed create multiple ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities. An environment that is open to corruption is also encouraged by the lack of transparency, the fact that information about procedures is hard to obtain and there is uncertainty over regulations. As our interviewees’ stories show, mistakes by officials only compound the chaos and difficulty, with the burden of fixing administrative errors falling on citizens.
Given that the state not only demands various documents to access certain services but also makes money from issuing them, it could at least ensure that it keeps bureaucratic and procedural hurdles to a minimum. Yet the government shows little sign of recognising this problem, let alone addressing it, despite the acute hardships that most Afghans are facing.
Edited by Kate Clark and Rachel Reid
References
References
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Article two of the 1971 Marriage Law made having a nikahkhat an requirement: see Martin Lau, Islamic Law and the Afghan Legal System, 2003. A 2005 report by Max Planck Institute said that in the communist era, every marriage had to be registered in every district, though this did not happen in practice. In 2007, the Supreme Court issued an order to require marriage certificates, in order to reduce the risk of child marriages, although implementation was low (New Humanitarian).
Months, Years and Thousands of Afghanis Later… Stories of Afghans battling bureaucracy
As the conflict between Israel and Iran escalated, many Afghans who had been living in Iran opted to return to Afghanistan, fearing for their safety. The Iranian government’s current drive to deport Afghans had already accelerated the pace of ‘returns’. However, for Afghans who had lived through years of conflict in their own country, the ominous drums of war served as a powerful catalyst to flee Iran. AAN’s Nur Khan Himmat has heard from one man who left his home in Tehran and returned to Afghanistan with his family. He spoke from a camp for returnees in Herat before they headed back to their home in Balkh province.
I’m from the Kishenda district in Balkh province. Seven years ago, I left for Iran with my family because I couldn’t find work in Afghanistan. I have an 11-year-old daughter and two sons – one is seven and the other is four, both born in Iran. We settled in the Javadiyeh area of Tehran. It has a reputation for being dangerous. But in reality, it’s just a down-on-its-heels neighbourhood where many Afghan families live because housing is affordable and the landlords aren’t picky about who they rent to, as long as they get the rent on time. Luckily, I’m an expert welder. It’s an in-demand profession and it was easy for me to pick up welding jobs on construction sites. I worked hard and made decent money. We were also able to get temporary residence permits called bargeh-ye sarshomari [census registration document]. It wasn’t long before I’d saved enough money for a down payment on a house – about USD 3,600. I got an informal mortgage from the man who owned the property and we bought our own house. This was the home we left behind when the bombs started falling from the sky in Tehran.
When it rains bombs
Life was good. I had steady work and the two children who were old enough were going to school. Everything had already changed, just weeks before the war, when we were given an ikhraji [deportation order] and told to leave Iran and return to Afghanistan. I went to the office and told the government that I owned a house and needed to settle my financial affairs before I could leave. The officer there agreed to give me time to sort things out. But the tensions between Israel and Iran escalated and finally Israel started bombing Iran. I thought it would stop soon – like when there are brief flare-ups between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and after a few airstrikes or missiles, they stop. But this was different; it went on for days, and it was still ongoing when we left.
Israel was targeting Javadiyeh, where we lived, because there’s a military base nearby. Our home shook from the blasts and we were worried that the windows would shatter and injure us or our children. They were afraid all the time and my younger son wouldn’t stop crying. So, we ended up sleeping outside in an open field near the house every night. Ultimately, we made the difficult decision to return to our country. We hoped things would settle down quickly, but after a week, when there was no end in sight and there was even talk of America getting involved, we decided to go back to Afghanistan.
Leaving our home behind
I asked the man who held our mortgage if he’d buy the house back and give us our money. But he said he didn’t have the money. He was shaken, worried about what the war meant for his family – and for Iran’s future. He was sympathetic to my situation, but he looked up at the sky and said: “How can I get the money when missiles are raining down from the sky?” He wished us good luck on our journey and said we could come back if and when the war ended to settle things with him. Luckily, I had my savings at home and we’d invested in some gold that my wife and daughter could wear as jewellery. We left everything else behind – our home, our belongings – and escaped with just our savings, the clothes on our backs and our lives.”
From Tehran to Islam Qala
It took us three days to get to the urdugah [camp for returnees] in Mashhad. People who are going back to Afghanistan go there to register before being sent home. The camp was overrun with families who were either being deported or fleeing the bombs, or both. The Iranians who ran the camp were quick and efficient. We’d heard that people sometimes spend up to a week there, waiting to be sent back to Afghanistan. But we only spent one night, and thank God for that, because there were few facilities, the heat was unbearable and there was no food to be had.
In the morning, the Iranian government arranged for us to go to Islam Qala on the Afghan side of the border. But we had to pay for the bus fare ourselves. I was shocked by how much the bus fare had soared. In the past, children under six travelled for free, but now everyone had to pay and the fare had more than tripled. In situations like these, there are always unscrupulous people who see an opportunity to profit. Still, we had no choice. We had to pay up and get ourselves to Afghanistan.
From Islam Qala, the Taliban brought us here, to this camp for returnees. I don’t know the name, but many Afghans returning from Iran come here first, before continuing their journey to their home provinces. Here, each person gets 2,000 afghani [USD 28] and three meals.
By the time we arrived here, my youngest son was ill from the heat and exhausted from the journey. I told the people in charge of the camp about him and they immediately called an ambulance, which took us to a nearby clinic. Thankfully, he’s fine now. But the children are shaken. They don’t understand what’s going on. They want to go back to Tehran – to their friends, their toys, the little vegetable garden my wife keeps. They want to go home. They want things to be normal again.
We’ve been told that we’ll get a card that will cover the cost of our transport to our place of origin. This is what we’re waiting for now. Once we get that, we’ll go back to Balkh, where we have a house in our own district. I’ve been told that it’s fallen into disrepair since we left for Iran. So, once we get there, I’ll have to get moving on making repairs and making it comfortable for my family. This is my top priority. I need to make things as normal as possible very quickly, so that the sudden move doesn’t leave my children l hard done by. In Tehran, we had a home, I had steady work, there was school for the children and life felt normal. Overnight, we went from owning a house to a dusty camp, waiting for someone to give us a card that would pay for the bus fare to take us to Balkh. My wife and I know how quickly things can fall apart when war comes, but it wasn’t something I’d ever wanted my children to experience.
A future in Afghanistan
We heard that the US dropped a big bomb on an Iranian nuclear facility and now the war is over and there’s peace. But I don’t know if it’s true. One thing is for sure: when the war ends, I have to go back to Iran to get my money. But I won’t take my family with me this time. These days, it’s nearly impossible for Afghans to live in Iran. Most of us can no longer get residence permits and my family and I were getting deported anyway – it was only a matter of time.
I’ll go back alone and try to get my money from the man who sold us the house. He promised we could work something out later. I hope he’s still alive when I get back and that he’ll keep his promise. Even in the best of times, many Afghans get cheated out of their salaries by unscrupulous employers or lose their money when the person who holds their mortgage refuses to honour their agreement. I’m worried that the war might make this situation even worse.
But I won’t stay in Iran. Even if things calm down. We lived there for seven years and we’re grateful for the work and the safe place to live, but in the end we’re still outsiders – always guests, always temporary and always could be told to leave at a moment’s notice.
Between a rock and a hard place
On the road back to Afghanistan, and later in the two camps, I spoke to many Afghans. Their stories were a lot like mine – they’d gone to Iran to make a living. The ones who’d gone with their families wanted a better life for their children – safety, security, education for their daughters. The ones who’d gone alone wanted to send money home to their families and try to put some away – a nest egg for the future.
Some people, mostly men travelling alone, didn’t even bother to go to the camps, they just headed straight home to their families. Others, with families, were either being deported or were fleeing the war. Most said they didn’t want to go back to Iran. I talked to a few people who’d also left behind homes they’d bought on informal mortgages. Like me, they were planning to go back, get their finances in order and get the money for the house from the owners, but they said they wouldn’t take their families along this time. Even the people who said they’d go back to Iran for work once things had settled said they wouldn’t take their families along. They’d go alone, just to earn money and send it home to their families.
People who are poor always live between a rock and a hard place. [We’re back] in a country where there are no jobs, but there’s still the need to put food on the table.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
The Daily Hustle: Afghans flee the Iran-Israel war
Douglas Lute is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. Thomas Warrick is a former Department of Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy and a senior fellow for the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council.
The Washington Post
June 30, 2025
Those who fought alongside U.S. soldiers face deportation or years of punishing fees.
As the Senate takes up the House-initiated One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it can uphold America’s honor and national interest by protecting the Afghans who served alongside our military and civilians in the two decades following al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
Thousands of these brave Afghans were relocated to the United States when Afghanistan fell in August 2021 to protect them from death, torture or imprisonment by the Taliban. Today, more than 9,600 Afghans in the U.S. face deportation due to termination of the temporary protected status that allows them to live and work here. Even Afghans who can legally stay in the U.S. until their asylum cases or Special Immigrant Visas are processed will be required to pay the government thousands of dollars a year in fees if the Senate accepts the bill as passed by the House.
The United States has always needed local partners in wartime. Deporting our Afghan partners back to the Taliban and subjecting those who stay to crippling fees and charges goes against America’s character and its national security interests. How we treat those who fought and worked alongside us reflects directly on who we are as a people. Many American veterans and civilians who served after 9/11 believe strongly in protecting these men and women not only as a matter of conscience, but also because doing so represents a clear-eyed, hard-power national security imperative.
Many Afghans were paroled hastily into the United States after August 2021 because the U.S. government failed to properly resource the back-office work necessary to process Special Immigrant Visas and also failed to find these Afghans permanent homes here or elsewhere in the two decades since 2001. Bureaucracy and politics, not security concerns, are why thousands remain in limbo in temporary status.
On May 12, the Department of Homeland Security said protected status for Afghans could end because Afghanistan’s economy was “stabilizing” and its security had “improved.” The World Bank, however, reports that Afghanistan’s economy remains a basket case where “poverty and food insecurity remain pressing challenges, exacerbated by high unemployment and restrictions on women’s economic participation.”
Security in Afghanistan might appear improved because the Taliban has cemented its brutal hold over Afghan society. This grip includes imprisoning and torturing political opponents, killing those who fought against it, and coercing Afghan women to stay home while denying them basic rights. We would be naive to believe returnees whose families supported the United States and its allies would be safe under the Taliban. In August 2021, when the last U.S. planes left Kabul, the Taliban began revenge killings, imprisonment and persecution, despite pledging amnesty for former Afghan military personnel. Deportations to Afghanistan would deliver the Taliban’s past adversaries for retribution.
Notably, Iran is now forcing thousands of Afghan refugees to leave or face arrest, fines and deportation. Such an act is in the Iranian regime’s character, not America’s. The suicide in May of Mohammad Amir Tawasoli, a former Afghan pilot, when he received an order from Iranian authorities to leave vividly illustrates the grim reality of what lies in store for others under the Taliban.
For those Afghans not subject to deportation by the end of TPS, language in the House bill imposes a severe burden. Subtitle VII.A would force everyone seeking asylum, protected status, or work permits to pay $2,000 to $4,000 a year in fees until their claims are finally adjudicated — which could take years. Many of our Afghan partners work hard in low-paying jobs, the same honorable way many of our forebears did when they came to America. If our Afghan partners are permittedto stay, the overwhelming majority will contribute just as our families did.
Sending thousands of Afghan partners back to a murderous regime, or impoverishing them here, dishonors our reputation and strengthens our critics and adversaries. Moreover, such a breach of faith will undoubtedly undercut our ability to engage future partners as new challenges emerge around the world.
Before this bill reaches the president’s desk, the Senate can set this issue right by granting lawful status to Afghans who pass security vetting (as those here already have) and dropping the crippling fees on those who are qualified to become American citizens. To do otherwise would stain our nation’s character, dishonor our own veterans and compromise our future national security interests.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
