Afghans studying in Pakistan had hoped they might avoid the collective expulsions that, since 2023, have upended life for over two million Afghans living there. However, as the scope of deportations has widened, students have found themselves unable to get study visas. Some have already been detained by Pakistani police and deported. Others have managed, for the time being, to evade the authorities or bribe their way out of danger, but live in fear of arrest and deportation. For female students, shut out of universities in their homeland, Pakistan has been an educational lifeline, and the threat of expulsion is catastrophic. To better understand the situation, Rama Mirzada heard from six students who have been deported or are living in fear of deportation.

On 5 May 2026, Afghan students in Pakistan shared an alert calling for the release of three students who were enrolled at the University of Lahore and had been arrested in Islamabad. The call went unheeded: later that month, the three were deported to Afghanistan. They are not alone. Many Afghan students in Pakistan have faced the same fate – or fear it. Although the exact number of Afghan students in Pakistan is unknown, every year, a thousand Afghans are awarded scholarships by the Pakistan government and thousands more go to Pakistan as self-funders, while others are already living in Pakistan. Students on scholarships eventually got their visas, after several months of anxious waiting. It is those who fund themselves who have not been granted visas. They include Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, many of whom were born in the country and have lived nowhere else.

Pakistan has hosted Afghan refugees for decades, and there have also been mass expulsions before, most notably in 2016, when over half a million people were expelled amid an earlier security impasse between the two countries (AAN). However, the current campaign has been far more intense. Relations deteriorated between the neighbouring countries after the Taliban regained power in 2021, as Islamabad accused the group it had supported during the insurgency of supporting Pakistani anti-government armed groups, notably Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP has escalated attacks in Pakistan since 2021 and Islamabad accuses the Emirate of providing it with a safe haven. The Emirate denies these accusations and has, in turn, accused Pakistan of violating Afghan sovereignty, particularly, since autumn 2025, when Pakistan launched airstrikes across the border (AAN).

The mass returns of Afghans began after September 2023, when Pakistan launched its Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan. More than two million Afghans returned or have been deported from Pakistan since then, according to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, since then (data from October 2023 to 4 April 2026). The returns have continued despite warnings from UN officials and human rights organisations that collective expulsions are unlawful when, they say, Afghanistan cannot cope with an existing humanitarian crisis, and certain groups are at particular risk, for example girls unable to get an education beyond grade 6.^[1]

In the first phase, the Pakistani authorities targeted undocumented Afghans, followed by those with Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), which are a form of temporary residence permit. In the third phase, Afghans who were officially recognised as refugees and had a Proof of Registration (PoR) card, some 1.4 million people, were told that their cards would not be renewed after 30 June 2025 and that they too would be deported (Dawn).

The problems for Afghan students began in summer 2025 as they tried to secure visas for the new academic year, which begins in September. They included new students, as well as those who were already enrolled (Hasht-e Subh and Displaced International). Without visas, students midway through a course could not return to Pakistan, or if they were already there, have had to live with the risk of arrest and deportation. A representative of the Afghan Students Union in Pakistan, Anayat Ullah Momand, said that although the government of Pakistan “had not shared any official announcement,” for self-funded Afghan students, “they have stopped the visa process.”

This report is based on interviews with six Afghan students studying in different parts of Pakistan – Islamabad, Lahore and Balochistan province – as well as the representative of Afghan Students Union. Two of the interviewees were on partially funded scholarships and four were entirely self-financed. The students were enrolled in bachelor’s or master’s degree courses in a range of academic fields, including medicine, business administration, international relations, economics and cybersecurity. At the time the interviews were conducted (22-26 April 2026), two had already been deported to Afghanistan. The students’ names have been changed for their protection.

Pursuing education in Pakistan after 2021

Pakistan has been an important educational hub for Afghan students for decades. Earlier generations of Afghans who studied in Pakistan have gone on to work in senior positions inside Afghanistan, in government institutions, the health sector, NGOs and private companies. In particular, thousands of Afghan students have benefited from the Allama Iqbal scholarship for Afghan Students programme, which has run since 2009 (Tribune). Its most recent phase was launched in 2024, for 4,500 students over five years, and covers the costs of graduate and post-graduate students, including tuition fees, living expenses and a book allowance (Higher Education Commission of Pakistan). These students have been able to study at all levels at a wide range of universities in various fields, including medicine, engineering, agriculture, management, political science and computer science. Self-financed Afghan students, on the other hand, bear every expense themselves, including visa costs. Although pursuing higher education in Pakistan has not been without its challenges, it remained a valuable opportunity until tensions between the two countries escalated and Pakistan’s policy toward Afghans began to change. Until 2025, there were few restrictions imposed on Afghans getting study visas.

The hassle of getting a visa 

At the time of the interviews, none of the six had got a study visa and two of the six had already been deported to Afghanistan – one was in the last year of his master’s degree, the other in the third semester of her bachelor’s degree.

The experience of Somaya, who had been studying international relations in Pakistan since 2024, is typical. She had applied for a visa extension in January. It wasn’t given and four days after her visa ran out, on 8 March (ironically, International Women’s Day), she was deported. “As a result,” she told AAN, “I missed my exams. There might have been an option to request the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help facilitate a visa, but the university staff refused to help.”

With so many Afghans desperate to get visas, middlemen have sprung up offering to help, often for hefty fees. Back in Afghanistan, Somaya has lost money twice in an attempt to get a visa so that she could return to Pakistan and sit her exams.

I contacted several individuals to help obtain a visa for me, but most told me it was impossible. Some promised to arrange a visa in exchange for money. In March 2026, one individual took 30,000 PKR [USD 107] from me and disappeared. Then another took 55,000 PKR [USD 197] and provided me with a visa that was fake. Both individuals took my money and vanished, but I couldn’t do anything because I was in Afghanistan and they were in Pakistan. 

Another student, Burhan, had completed a bachelor’s degree in Pakistan after four years of study, in 2025, and was hoping to do a masters, but ran into visa problems:

The study visas were for one year only and mostly ran out during the autumn so we had to re-apply for an extension one or two months before the expiry date. Normally, it took two months or less to get our visas. In June 2025, right after my graduation, my visa expired. I’d applied to extend it two months before it expired and prepared all the documentation. Since I was hopeful I’d get my visa extension, as I had in previous years, I came back to Afghanistan for the summer holidays. I waited for around four months, but didn’t get a visa.

Burhan realised he had to abandon his plans for post-graduate study and cancelled his application for a student visa. In the end, he only got a ‘visit visa’ just to return to get his graduation certificate. For that, the system worked efficiently. “I paid USD 1,000,” he said, “and got the visit visa within 72 hours.”

Abdullah was a postgraduate student, who has been studying in Pakistan since 2019. Every year, he’d applied for a study visa before it expired. 2025 was no different. “I applied one-and-a-half months before the expiry date, but never got the visa. I stayed on in Pakistan without a visa for six months, until March this year.” This is when Abdullah was deported to Afghanistan, more on which below.

Nasrin had been looking forward to starting her studies in Pakistan in October 2025 but her application for a visa was rejected. Fearing she’d miss her classes, she applied for a medical visa, a common workaround for thwarted students. It cost her USD 290. She came to Pakistan in November 2025, began her studies and restarted an application for a study visa:

I got a bona fide letter from my university, which meant I could apply for the study visa, but the letter also needed a stamp from the Ministry of Interior. … The Afghan students’ representative told me the ministry charges each student 10,000 PKR (USD 36) to stamp the letter, though if the number of requests for students’ letters is high, then the middleman (kamishan kar) at the ministry charges less. [But it could be more.] Some students have had to pay 25,000 to 30,000 PKR [USD 89-107] to get the stamp.

As Nasrin explained, being in Pakistan does not make it easier to complete the process, particularly for those with expired visas, given the fear of deportation that looms over Afghans there:

We can’t travel to stamp the letters ourselves because we don’t have a visa and the police might arrest and deport us. There were some students who went to the ministry in person and were deported to Afghanistan. So, there’s a person at the university who collects [the letters] from the students and [gives them to] a person at the ministry, who is also given the money from us [for the stamp].

Many Afghans caught up in the recent wave of deportations were born in Pakistan and have never lived in Afghanistan. Although Pakistan’s Citizenship Act of 1951 generally grants citizenship through birth or descent, Afghans are routinely denied this right. Hadya is one such Afghan. She was born, went to school and started university in Pakistan. She has a Proof of Registration (PoR) card, proof that she is a refugee – although the cards were not renewed after 30 June 2025: “I never even had a visa,” she explained. “I didn’t apply for one because the high court in this province announced that Afghan students could study on their PoR cards, so I can keep studying, even though my family’s PoR cards are expired.” Her status is tenuous. Even if she is able to finish her studies, her right to remain will then evaporate, as it already has for her parents. Until she can graduate, she worries for her family: “It’s a tough time for my family members in Pakistan. When they go out of the house, it’s with the fear of arrest or deportation.”

Managing everyday life without a visa

Some Afghan students stay in Pakistan to continue their studies while they keep trying to renew their visa or try to keep studying without documentation. This makes daily life difficult. They live in fear of being stopped and questioned by the police. The Pakistan authorities can deactivate students’ SIM cards, and restrict access to bank accounts and hospitals by insisting that a person’s ID and visa status are checked. The combined impact of these practical restrictions, combined with the risk of arrest, makes it difficult for students to step out of university grounds.

Khaled was due to start his last year of university in 2025 when, in Afghanistan for the holidays, he ran into problems renewing his visa. So, he and his friends returned to Pakistan illegally. “We waited for our visas for an extra month,” he said, “but since we still hadn’t got them, we decided we had no choice but to travel to Pakistan, via Spin Boldak, without a visa. For each of us, we paid 65,000 PKR [USD 233] to cross the border.” They did manage to get into Pakistan, but continuing their studies has not been easy, said Khaled, and they have had to deploy various ‘workarounds’ in the hope of avoiding arrest.

I’ve got bank accounts and SIM cards from Pakistani friends. Sometimes, we manage to go out by using a road where there is no checkpoint. But even if we get round the checkpoints, we’re on edge because of the fear of arrest. Some hospitals also ask for a visa, so we try to get basic treatments from the clinic inside the university. Every weekend, me and my friends plan to go out, but we never do because of the fear of deportation. Most of the time, we order food and clothes online.

Nasrin said she had, sometimes, to go without food during Ramadan because she didn’t want to take the risk of going shopping.

There were times when I had nothing to eat in my room and couldn’t go out because the police had a checkpoint in front of my dormitory. When I was on my period, I couldn’t go out to purchase my needs. I faced so many challenges getting to Pakistan for my education, I didn’t want to waste this opportunity and so I’m very cautious. … My primary need is food. Although the food inside the dormitory is quite expensive and not good quality compared to outside, I choose to buy it here to avoid being arrested. 

Still, she said, she lives in fear of the police.

Some people say: The police won’t disturb Afghan women, but I can’t trust them. Even if they don’t deport me, they’d ask me to give them money. Often the police release Afghan students after getting money from them. 

Nasrin says that many Pakistanis seem to blame Afghans for Pakistan’s weak economy and insecurity. Because of this, she began to conceal her identity: “I try to hide that I’m Afghan, I tell people that we’re Iranian. Other than my university classmates, nobody knows that I’m from Afghanistan because I fear being detained and deported.”

Hadya also said she’s struggling on many fronts, including accessing good healthcare:

It’s difficult to manage everyday life here. … It’s impossible for us to visit the public hospital because they ask for documents, although the private hospitals don’t require it. We can’t travel from one city to another because the police will deport us. Since mid-2025, our lives have become so difficult in Pakistan.

Burhan said that he and his friends stopped going out when he was in Pakistan in order to avoid the police. “We’re like prisoners.” He relied on friends who had visas to get him things like a SIM card. He said he and his friends had to pay bribes to the police many times to avoid being arrested, including the last time he arrived in Pakistan, in November 2025.

Right after I came out of the airport, the police stopped me at a checkpoint and asked to see my police registration stamp, which would have been impossible for a passenger to get right at the airport. They made me wait for two hours and threatened me, saying they would take me to Hajji Camp and deport me. Finally, they took 8,000 PKR [USD 28] and let me g. 

He and his friends now move around using side roads, or, he said, “go out with Pakistani friends to prevent being arrested or stopped by the police.” However, a week after his brush with the police at the airport, he and his Afghan friends were picked up by the police as they got out of a taxi on their way to get food. Although he had a visit visa and a police registration stamp and his friends had student visas, the police detained them:

The police put us into their vehicle and started abusing the Afghans among us, saying we’re all terrorists. They took us at nine at night and put us in the truck bed of their vehicle, then carried on patrolling the area. We remained in their car until three in the morning. The police were deliberately driving in a way that would hurt us in the truck bed, and forced us to pay them. Finally, one of them opened the conversation and asked each of us to pay them 50,000 PKR [USD 179] and they’d release us. But the head of our union found our location, intervened and got us freed us after we paid them 15,000 PKR [USD 53]. 

Abdullah was initially able to stay under the radar for a while in Pakistan because he was good at languages and had some connections in the police and Pakistani friends.

My visa expired in September 2025, but I stayed on in Pakistan without a visa for six months, until March 2026. Since my Urdu and English are good, whenever the police were speaking to me at checkpoints, they didn’t realise I was an Afghan. Some of the Pakistani police were also our friends because they’d graduated from the university where I’m studying. Also, because Afghan students can’t set up a bank account at Pakistani banks, I was getting SIM cards and a bank account from my Pakistani friends.

However, as will be seen, his luck eventually ran out.

Students deported

For many students, there is a limit to how long they can avoid (or bribe) the police. For Abdullah, the blow came when his friends were preparing for a graduation ceremony.

In March, nine of us students went out to have dinner. Afterwards, we went to a barbers because the next day there was a graduation ceremony at the Embassy of Afghanistan for Afghan students. The police arrested five of us. After bringing us to the police station, they initially agreed to release us in exchange for 70,000 PKR [USD 251] from each person, but then one of the police officials said: No. They transferred us to Hajji Camp [in Islamabad] and we spent a day there. The next day they transferred us to the border and deported us to Afghanistan via Torkham. All my belongings are still in Pakistan. My friends even brought my belongings to the camp, but the police didn’t allow me to take them. 

Somaya told AAN she was arrested just four days after her visa expired, in March 2026. Her parents were visiting Pakistan so that her mother could get surgery and she had gone to meet them.

After I was arrested, they took me to Hajji Camp. I tried to contact my parents so they wouldn’t worry, but the police seized my phone. I remained there for two days during Ramadan. We didn’t have the right to call our families nor leave the room. 

She described harsh conditions at the camp.

There were almost 60 people in one room. The windows were completely closed and the rest rooms were really dirty. It was Ramadan and they didn’t feed the children. For iftari [the evening meal when the Ramadan fast is broken], they were giving us only a few spoons of white rice in a plastic bag. They were throwing the food to us as if they were feeding animals. It was cruel. 

Because Somaya was alone and could not contact her family, they feared the worst.^[2] Her mother tried to find her:

My mother followed the deportation route and came to Chaman after me. She stayed in Chaman for three days and waited for my deportation. After we returned to Afghanistan, my mother was hospitalised as she was already sick and spending the time in Chaman was not good for her health. 

Female students in Pakistan

Because of the Emirate’s ban on women going to university, those who had the financial means and family support began seeking alternative ways to continue their education, ranging from enrolling in online universities to traveling abroad to study. Despite an initial wave of support from many countries, refugee and migrant policy has hardened in Europe and North America. That includes putting restrictions on study visas or even, in the UK, stopping them completely for Afghans (AAN). Until 2025, Pakistan had been one of the few places where Afghan women could pursue higher education. For Somaya, being deported was the final blow in her efforts to complete her studies.

Before the ban on education by the Taliban, I was in the third semester of midwifery training. I then travelled to Pakistan to continue my education despite family and economic problems. Again and again, I’ve been blocked in the middle of my educational journey. The effect on me has been terrible.

Studying in Pakistan had set her family back hundreds of dollars for visas and university fees, but had felt worth the effort:

I was just about surviving with the living expenses, for example, the dorm fee was only 25,000 PKR [USD 89] for the Pakistani students, but for us, it was 95,000 PKR [USD 341]. It was really difficult for me to manage because the economic situation in Afghanistan is bad and it was hard for my family to support me. But I was happy to get the opportunity to study in Pakistan because I was denied this right in my own country.

When she was deported, she even lost the valuables that she had kept in her room. Being deported, she said, has left her feeling hopeless: “All my efforts to get an education have been wiped out. I’ve lost my education. I don’t know whether I will ever be able to continue it.”

Nasrin said the fear of deportation is affecting her academic performance: “All the problems mean we cannot go out of the university. It’s worst during exams when I should be relaxed and able to focus on my studies instead of facing all these difficulties.”

Hadya, the student who studies on her PoR card, said that if her family is deported, they will not allow her to stay on in Pakistan without them, so she’ll be forced to leave too: “My family is staying in Pakistan for my education. They won’t allow me to stay in a dormitory or continue my education [if they’re not here]. They’re conservative.” Like Nasrin, the insecurity felt by her and her family overshadows everything: “After the deportations increased in my area, I couldn’t focus on my studies. I could hardly think about the future of my education and whether I could finish or not. I was just worried about being sent to Afghanistan because women have no rights to study or work there.

Appeals to the Pakistani authorities go unheard

Complaints about visa problems and the detention or deportation of Afghan students tend not to get very far. Afghan Students Union Representative in Pakistan Anayat Ullah Momand has a visa for his final year of medical studies thanks to a scholarship and so is in a position to try and help others. He said he has received hundreds of requests for help from students who have been denied visas, but the authorities “have not taken any action for Afghan students.”

Khaled reported that despite the student union sharing its concerns with Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC), the Ministry of Interior and the Afghan Embassy, none had accepted responsibility: “The Ministry of Interior said that senior government officials banned them from issuing visas, HEC said the Ministry of Interior isn’t approving visas and the embassy said it was all was out of their hands and they could not do anything.” Burhan also said that he and his student union had tried to help other students:

The union never got a satisfactory response. I and several other students personally met the Pakistani official responsible for Afghan students and other officials at HEC, several times. They promised that our visas would be issued in a few weeks, but we never got our visas. We also visited Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior several times. The behaviour of the officials at the ministry wasn’t good towards us. Sometimes they used bad language against us. Once, they ejected me from the ministry when I’d asked them to resolve our problems. They just kept telling us to wait. 

Burhan said that, before 2025, they had given bribes to speed up the visa process, but that this stopped working:

Previously, we were paying 30,000 to 40,000 PKR [USD 107-143] as a bribe to the Ministry of Interior so that they would approve our visas, but even that failed to work. I paid twice to get a visa before the complete ban on student visas. If we paid the money, normally our visa was approved within 25 days, but if we didn’t pay, our visas were approved after three to four months. We had to pay up or we might miss our classes. … We paid the money to a middleman who had links at the ministry. In the first year, the price to approve our visas wasn’t that expensive, but later, they were demanding up to 70,000 PKR [USD 251] per student.

Somaya said that before she was deported, some friends had tried to get the university to intervene, “but the university staff behaved harshly with them.” She said she doesn’t think that officials want to help, no matter who makes representations to them.

The government of Pakistan is 100 per cent aware of the challenges Afghan students face in Pakistan because we shared our problems with our university and several times, we provided all the documentation for the Pakistani authorities. When they deported me, I told them it was only four days since my visa had expired and that I’d applied for a new visa but that their government hadn’t issued it. They told me it had nothing to do with them, nor did they care about it.

Abdullah and his classmates had petitioned officials from the Ministry of Interior, but this had no impact. He says the problem is deeper than a bureaucratic visa issue: “The situation has changed a lot for Afghan students over the past eight months. The police don’t accept any documents, including university cards or other documents. When I was in the camp, I met Afghans who were arrested even despite having visas.” Abdullah speculated that the troubles faced by Afghan students related more to Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Based on my information, Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior has no authority anymore to issue visas for Afghans. Students, including myself, have received phone calls from an ‘unknown individual’ who told us to meet at a café and there he asked us questions about ourselves. We didn’t know that person, nor did he tell us who he was. The employees at the Ministry of Interior also told us they had no authority over issuing visas, so I think there is a possibility that Pakistan’s ISI [intelligence agency] is controlling visas. 

Hadya’s family is so determined to protect the ability of her and her sisters to finish their education in Pakistan, they have taken legal action.

Since my other sisters are also studying here, my father filed a case at the high court to allow us live here until we all graduate. We’ve not received a response yet, but we’ve a letter that prevents the police from deporting us until the court announces its decision. The lawyer we hired told us it was nearly impossible to get a stay order [temporary court directive to prevent harmful or unlawful acts]. It’s just a hope. 

She also thinks the Pakistani government is indifferent to their suffering.

The government is well aware of the problems that Afghan students face in Pakistan and they know that girls aren’t allowed to pursue their education in Afghanistan. But the Pakistani government doesn’t care about Afghans, whether you are happy or unhappy, they’ll deport you.

Conclusion

For many young Afghans, being denied the opportunity to study in Pakistan has been devastating. For young women in particular, the prospect of being deported to Afghanistan slams the door shut on their prospects to secure higher education. For Somaya, deportation has been a life-changing blow: “I’m so worried about my future now and fear that I’ll remain uneducated.” Khaled placed the blame squarely with politicians on both sides. “The two countries,” he said, “brought education into their political concerns.”

As long as relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan remain poor, Afghan students will lose out. Some may manage to cling on to their studies in Pakistan without a visa, but only by living in the shadows of their university grounds. For now, the scholarship route is the only viable option. Last year, more than 20,000 Afghans applied for the Allama Iqbal scholarship, competing for just 1,500 places (Ariana). Now that these scholarships are, for now at least, a golden ticket to getting a visa, one can only imagine the flood of applications in 2026, assuming, that is, that Pakistan keeps this last door open.

Edited by Rachel Reid and Kate Clark

For generations, the tradition of ashar – voluntary, unpaid communal labour – was one of the strongest expressions of solidarity in rural Afghan society. Whether harvesting a neighbour’s wheat, building a home or cleaning an irrigation canal, ashar bound together families, villages and tribes through reciprocal obligation. This tradition has sharply declined across much of southeastern Afghanistan in recent years, weakened by the monetisation of labour, mechanisation, migration and the slow unravelling of the social bonds that once made collective work both necessary and expected. In this report, AAN’s Sharif Akram examines what ashar used to mean to rural communities, why it is disappearing and what its decline says about broader changes in society in the Afghan countryside.

Afghan rural society has long been characterised by strong social bonds at multiple levels: the extended family, village, qawm (a close-knit group of interrelated families bound by shared patrilineal descent, larger than the extended family but smaller than the tribe) and tribe. People depended on one another not only in times of crisis but also in routine daily tasks. The paternal grandfather, brothers, uncles and male cousins – the tarburna (patrilineal male relatives) – formed the innermost circle of social obligation. Beyond that came the village. While a tribe may be a broad and dispersed category, the qawm functioned as the primary unit of solidarity and mutual obligation, sometimes spanning several villages, with a strong say in individual and family decisions. Members were present at funerals and disputes and equally at weddings, harvests and communal feasts.

While the customs that held these communities together were numerous, this report focuses on one – ashar, the tradition of collective voluntary labour, in which villagers contributed their time and effort, without payment, towards tasks that benefited either a single household or the community as a whole. Ashar was, in many ways, the material expression of qawmi solidarity – the understanding that communities, bound by proximity, kinship or shared resources, had obligations towards one another and that this went beyond their own household. It is associated with Pashtunwali (the customary code of honour and ethics for Pashtuns), but is not exclusive to it. Ashar is also, overwhelmingly, a practice whereby men contribute their time and labour to each other’s households or to the community.

The report examines ashar as it used to exist in rural Pashtun communities until quite recently, traces its decline and analyses what that decline means for the broader social fabric. It is based on in-depth interviews with 18 individuals across Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni and Wardak provinces, conducted during October and November 2025. Respondents were all men, but of all ages from young to old; they included tribal elders and village leaders who had witnessed the transition from collective to individualised modes of work.^[1]

The term for ashar varies by region. In Khost, the word pagra is used, possibly derived from pa gada (together). In other southeastern provinces, ashar is the common term. In some Persian-speaking parts of southeastern Afghanistan, it is sometimes called wandi. Throughout this report, ashar is used, rather than local variations, except in direct quotes. In many of the quotes, interviewees use ‘people’ to refer to ‘men’; we have kept this in the translations.

What is ashar?

Ashar, derived from the Arabic word hashr, meaning gathering or assembling, is a form of collective, voluntary labour that members of an extended family, village, tribe or even a district carry out for each other or for a common cause. It operates on the simple principle of reciprocal obligation: when a family or community needs labour for a task too large for one household to manage, villagers are called upon to help. A household who helps others today can also expect the same support when their turn comes. This creates a cycle of mutual dependency that reinforces social bonds across households and villages.

Interviewees consistently distinguished between two forms of ashar. The first was household-level ashar, for the benefit of a single family. The most common occasions were agricultural: harvesting wheat, threshing grain, ploughing fields or transplanting rice. Families that lacked sufficient labour – widows, the elderly or households whose men had migrated – were typical beneficiaries, but the practice was not limited to the needy. In Khost, a 70-year-old respondent recalled that “pagra was also done for the village khans and maliks (the big landowners). Usually, the khan or malik had a lot of land. Villagers would bring out several pairs of oxen and turn the khan’s land and the khan would only provide them with food.” But when poorer families ran out of grain, the khan would reciprocate. Life, as the respondent put it, “went on well in this way, with mutual cooperation.”

Beyond agriculture, household ashar extended to building and repairing mud houses, gathering firewood from the mountains and preparing for weddings and funerals. In Khost, ‘wedding firewood ashar’ was common: young men would gather wood. As one interviewee from the province described it, “‘[Someone would] say: So-and-so is getting married, let’s do a firewood pagra for him. And we’d bring more than enough firewood.’” Women also participated in certain forms of ashar. Interviewees in Khost recalled calling village women to spread mud on the roofs of houses that were being built. In mountainous areas, women from neighbouring households helped one another carry firewood, with the favour returned the next day.

Calling men to household ashar was informal. The person in need would tell friends and neighbours the evening before or announce in the mosque or village hujra (a community guesthouse where male villagers gathered) that he needed help with a particular task. Participants arrived early, already dressed and ready for work. The only obligation on the host was to provide food – typically the most valued food such as shirwa (homemade ghee) and dandakai, a popular meal made of rice, dried yoghurt and meat in Loya Paktia.

The second form was collective or village-level ashar. The cleaning and repair of jui (irrigation canals) before the planting season and the construction of mosques, village meeting places, roads, small bridges and ponds were all done through collective ashar. Each household was expected to contribute one or two men; participants brought their own tools and food and the work was organised by village elders, the malik or the mirab (water master). When tasks extended beyond one village – maintaining a shared kariz (underground irrigation channel), for instance – the labour was distributed proportionally, usually by the number of households or the degree of benefit enjoyed by each village. Ashar is, moreover, an overwhelmingly male activity: the labour mobilised through ashar is almost entirely male and the social institutions that organise it are led by men. Women have their own parallel forms of ashar, helping other women with tasks such as gathering firewood or household labour, but these operate in separate networks. Due to cultural constraints, this research was conducted with men only, so insights into women’s ashar are almost existent.

This distinction matters because the two forms have declined at different rates. Collective ashar has proved more resilient for a straightforward reason: communal infrastructure, such as canals and dams, affects everyone’s livelihood directly. If the canal is not cleaned, nobody can irrigate. The incentive to opt out is therefore weaker. Individual ashar benefits only one household at a time, making it easier for others to decline.

The spirit of ashar

Ashar was not merely a labour arrangement. It carried a strong social dimension and was, in many forms, as much a social occasion as a working day. Interviewees across all provinces recalled that participants worked with genuine enthusiasm and sincerity, treating the task as their own. One elder from Khost put it this way: “It’s not like nowadays, where workers don’t do their best and only pass time in order to get paid. In ashar, everyone was working sincerely and with all his abilities, like working on his own task.” A village elder from Paktia said he had worked “for another villager in the harvest season even for three consecutive days,” which meant leaving his own fields unattended. This was not unusual; it was expected.

In Khost, agricultural ashar – rice transplanting and harvesting in particular – was accompanied by dhol (drums) and later by music played through tape players. A respondent in his forties recalled the range of occasions that once existed:

Before, there was hardly any need to look for an excuse [to carry out] pagra (ashar). There was pagra at harvest time, pagra when turning the soil, pagra when planting rice, pagra when making mud bricks for rooms, pagra when bringing firewood, pagra when storing wheat grain, chaff and fodder. The young men would gather; there was work, but there was also enjoyment.

Ashar in this sense was not just a way of getting work done. It structured the social year, giving young men regular occasions to gather, work together and eat together. A village elder from Khost said: “When work is done collectively, it is full of blessings and far more effective than paid labour. We have tested it many times: both the quality and the speed of collective work are far better.” An elder from Paktika linked it directly to social cohesion: “When the young men go to each other’s houses, eat with each other and work with each other, it strengthens the bonds and keeps them together and united.”

Participation in ashar was not legally enforced, but it carried strong social expectations, backed by one of the most potent sanctions in Pashtun society – the desire, even necessity, of avoiding payghor, or shame. To be subject to payghor, a concept deeply embedded in Pashtunwali, is to be publicly shamed for failing to meet a social obligation – an intensely painful experience in a society where honour and reputation are paramount. In the context of ashar, refusing to participate without valid reason brought not only payghor, but also risked exclusion from future communal support. According to one respondent from Khost, “in the past, if someone did not participate in pagra, it would be considered payghor and they’d feel ashamed.” Those who could not attend due to a genuine obligation would seek permission from the person calling the ashar; only then was their absence tolerated.

For village-level work, the consequences were sharp. One interviewee from Paktika explained it:

If you didn’t share in others’ work, you’d remain alone in your own tasks, with no one coming to help you. If you didn’t participate in someone’s funeral ceremony, then no one would come to the funeral of your relatives. And no one can handle something like that alone.

A respondent from Wardak described a more formal punishment: “If someone failed to attend community ashars, he’d be made to pay nagha [compensation] – providing food to all the ashar participants or something else that the village had decided upon.”

Ashar was, in this sense, also a governance mechanism. It provided one of the bases through which communities enforced conformity with local customs and nerkh (customary law). A Paktika elder put it plainly:

In the past, families and individuals [acting] alone were very weak and no one could survive on their own. Therefore, everyone was bound to abide by the norms and by nerkh. No one could move away from the customs and traditions in a village because, if they did, no one would help them in their ceremonies and agricultural work. This was something no one could afford.

A tribal elder from Paktia summed it up: “It was like an obligation – not in the sense that it was absolute, but the way society was woven made it obligatory for everyone to be part of it, or face isolation – and no one could afford that.”

The decline of ashar

Ashar has not disappeared entirely, but across much of southeastern Afghanistan it has sharply declined. Collective ashar – canal cleaning, mosque repair, road maintenance – survives in a diminished form, particularly in remote areas. But household-level ashar has, in many places, been replaced almost entirely by paid labour. A Khost respondent described the shift, including in forestry work:^[2]

Speaking of individual pagra, most occasions for it no longer exist. No one does pagra for bringing firewood, because the mountains and forests are not like they used to be. Ploughing with oxen and harvesting with sickles is no longer done. Tractors do all this work now.

Even where collective ashar persists, it has weakened. The same respondent noted the paradox:

Previously, even though there weren’t so many tools and resources, the village roads, canals and dams were maintained very well. But now, despite so many resources, there are shortcomings. The canals and dams are not as clean as before. Even village roads are in a bad condition and nobody cares much.

A young man from Ghazni made a similar observation:

In our village, there used to be only five cars and two tractors. In the neighbouring village, there were three cars and three tractors. And in the winter season, we’d go out and repair the tracks right up to the asphalted road. However, in the last five years, people don’t gather despite the fact that now the number of cars has risen to fifteen and tractors to seven in our village and a similar number in the neighbouring village. And we use the damaged, muddy tracks. It’s like people have lost their ability to work together and solve a common problem.

Interviewees identified several interrelated factors behind this decline. These are best understood not as isolated causes but as mutually reinforcing changes. Among them, the most frequently cited factor was the shift from a subsistence to a monetised economy. In the past, rural households operated largely outside the cash economy. Labour was exchanged for labour and ashar was the only way to mobilise the hands needed for large tasks. As cash became more widely available and daily wage labour emerged, this changed. An elder from Paktia explained:

In the past, there was very little money and very few things were bought with cash. People were content with the life they had and didn’t desire too many things, which meant they were not money minded. But now, everyone is trying to earn as much money as possible. So, when one can find a paid labourer for 300 afghani a day, why would he work voluntarily?

Paid labour did not merely provide an alternative to ashar; it actively undermined it. The same neighbours who would previously have worked for one another now offer their services for a daily wage. One Paktia interviewee described this: “Ten years ago, I was helped by villagers through ashar, but now when I ask them, they say they need to do this or that, but when I offer them a daily wage, they leave their work and work for me – in return for payment.”

In Ghazni, one man in his 50s recalled a time when being paid by a fellow villager would have been considered shameful: “It was like a shame to work for a villager and then get paid. There were some year-round labourers who’d work in exchange not for money but for wheat. But for occasional work, it was a shame to be paid.” That this is no longer the case marks a significant change in the moral economy of rural life.

A Khost respondent described the shift from both sides: “Now perhaps neither side wants it – instead of calling people to pagra, a family considers it better to pay money and get the work done. On the other hand, people also think that instead of participating in pagra, it’s better to do some work and earn a living.” When both the person who needs labour and the one who might provide it prefer to use cash, ashar becomes redundant. An interviewee from Ghazni illustrated the problem: on one occasion, he had arranged with two villagers to help him with his harvest, but two days later, both told him they had been selected for a musisa (NGO) project where they would get 500 afghanis [USD 9] per day, “so,” he said, “they couldn’t come and work with me.”

Mechanisation and changing livelihoods

A second factor is mechanisation, which has eliminated many of the tasks which had once made ashar essential. Harvesting used to require dozens of hands. Now, it can be done by one or two men using a machine. Ploughing, once performed with shared teams of oxen, is done by tractor. Firewood is bought from urban markets. “In the past,” one interviewee from Ghazni said, “harvest would be done by hand. Now it’s done by tractor, which consumes fuel [which is not free, and has to be paid for], and many people bought [tractors] in order to make a profit from them.”

The scarcity of tools and equipment also created bonds of interdependence. A Khost respondent described this: “Previously, many families couldn’t afford two oxen. So, one family would buy one ox, another would buy another, and at ploughing time, their partnership was formed by bringing both oxen together.” When each family can afford their own tractor, a respondent from Paktia said, that bond dissolves:

The work that once took a hundred people to do is now done by a single machine. And a machine is purchased and has maintenance costs and people buy it to make a profit. So, it’s not logical to gather a hundred people to work for free for days on end instead of a machine that does the same work by itself, all in one day – and makes a return of a few thousand afghanis.

A third factor leading to a decline in ashar is the diversification of livelihoods, which has left men with less time for communal work and, in some cases, has dissolved the reciprocal logic that used to sustain it. Government and private-sector jobs and commitments (such as university and school) leave little room for all-day voluntary labour. As one Khost respondent said: “In the past, our people had no other occupation; there was only farming. Almost everyone was engaged in agriculture, so they were compelled to help one another. Now, alongside farming, there are government and private jobs and people are also increasingly busy with small businesses.” A young man from Wardak, a university student in Kabul, explained the problem in practical terms:

Now everyone is busy. There’s no time for ashar. I only go to the village once every two weeks and that too on a Friday. This is the story of most of our young [men]. And on Friday, there’s a lot more to do than participate in someone’s ashar.

The shift away from ashar also reflects a deeper structural change – the declining centrality of agriculture itself. As market goods have replaced household production, even in small villages, most essentials are now purchased rather than grown. Many young men have left for the cities or abroad in search of paid employment and the proportion of households sustaining themselves solely by farming has dropped sharply. That has eroded the economic foundation of reciprocal labour. When most families were farming, exchanging labour made practical sense; each household needed something from the others. Such logic no longer works in a diversified cash-based economy. Another young respondent made a broader point about the breakdown of reciprocity:

In the past, people were all doing the same things and there was very little to do outside the village. And they all lived in the village. Now, people aren’t doing the same as one another and they’re not able to help other people. I’m a shopkeeper. No one can help me with ashar because that’s not their profession. I’m not a farmer and I can’t help others with farming. The reciprocal nature of things is no longer there.

Migration, war and the erosion of authority

Decades of conflict have driven massive displacement and migration, both to Pakistan and within Afghanistan, especially to the cities. Culturally, it has exposed rural Afghans to different ways of life, where collective labour plays no role. A Khost respondent said:

In the past, people mostly depended on farming, but over time, and especially when they moved to other areas, they saw different types of business. This changed their old way of thinking and many launched different businesses as well as farming. And what’s more important, they found out that the same things they were doing for free could be transformed into a form of business.”

The wars that began in 1979 also damaged the structures of authority on which collective ashar depended. At the village level, ashar was coordinated by the elders, maliks and mirabs, whose authority rested on customary legitimacy within the qawm system. After the Soviet invasion, as Roussel and Caley documented, “[T]he leaders of the uprising, more often than not of religious background, rapidly, and sometimes abruptly, replaced the leaders of their qawm, the traditional notables who had survived the government purges, thereby creating a new social category: the militia chiefs.”^[3] Commanders were focussed on military mobilisation, not on ashar, and the elders who had once called for ashar found their standing diminished. One interviewee described this transition: “The khan of a village was a person who held great authority. He’d call for ashar and everyone would be present. Later, the khans lost their influence and each person became wealthy, each a ‘heavyweight’^[4] unto themselves.”

During the Republic era, even though the maliks lost influence and commanders and insurgents gained it, the Taliban in areas under their control did use their authority to impose a form of collective work, though not, according to interviewees, in the spirit of maintaining social solidarity, but to solve practical problems. A respondent from Wardak described this:

When the Taliban were in our area [before 2021], in the winter, they’d announce in the mosque that the tracks had to be cleared of snow or repaired. All the villagers would participate out of fear. The Taliban did this because their mobility would be limited on muddy or snowy paths and they’d use the villagers to clear them. But since the Taliban are gone [as insurgents and become a government], the villagers have cleaned and repaired the routes just once in four years.

Population growth has compounded these pressures, as a resident of Khost explained:

The land that a few decades ago was farmed by one or two members of a family is now shared among ten or twenty, while the land remains the same size! There’s now more than enough men and wasael [technological tools] to make households self-sufficient.

Smaller plots require less labour, reducing the need to call upon neighbours. At the same time, fragmented holdings have reduced the agricultural surplus that once allowed wealthier families to reciprocate ashar by distributing grain in lean times.

The role of international aid

One striking argument that emerged during the interviews was that international aid has played a role in weakening collective ashar. Aid organisations periodically provided financial support for maintaining infrastructure – dams, canals, headworks – something that had previously needed communal labour. A younger Khost respondent was direct about this:

In my opinion, international aid organisations weakened the spirit of collective ashar among the people. This aid caused harm rather than benefit, because [by paying locals for refurbishment work] it took away the spirit of voluntary labour from the people, but the assistance didn’t continue. So now, people wait in hope that someone will appear again and provide assistance in exchange for work.

A shift in mentality

Underlying all of these factors is a broader shift in attitudes, described by a Khost man in his 40s:

At one time, people’s mentality was such that they led highly social lives and participated with others in grief, in joy and in voluntary cooperation. Now, the mentality is that, instead of being highly social, one should become self-sufficient and meet one’s own needs without others’ help. At one time it was considered manly to cooperate with others or ask for their cooperation. But now it’s considered manly to meet one’s needs without others’ assistance.

This inversion is significant. In the past, a man who refused ashar would face payghor. Today, as the same respondent noted, “People take pride in saying, ‘I don’t participate and I meet my own needs myself.’” The sanction that once enforced collective behaviour has not merely weakened; what was shameful is now a source of pride.

A resident of Paktia in his fifties also described another aspect of this change in attitude:

When you tell people to come and help as ashar, they say they have this or that work to do. This doesn’t mean that in the past people didn’t have work. The issue is that in the past, they valued [ashar] to the extent that they’d leave their own work and help, because they knew they’d need that villager’s help in the future. But now, no one sacrifices their work for others.

A Khost respondent was lyrical about his sense of loss:

It’s true that in the past, resources were scarce and life was full of hardships, but the love and pleasure that was in that life doesn’t exist today, with all its abundance of resources. Because now, everyone is trying to rely on themselves only.

New forms of collective action: from labour to fundraising

While traditional ashar has declined, it has not vanished without trace. In some areas, a new form of collective action has emerged, particularly among younger Afghans who run businesses and are living in cities or abroad. Rather than contributing their labour, they contribute money. In some cases, a young man from the area posts on social media calling on friends and fellow villagers – often those working in the Gulf countries or Afghan cities – to donate funds for a shared problem. One respondent from Paktika described one example of how this worked:

The road that connected five villages to the district centre was very damaged. No one was there to repair it, including the government. One day, a very active young man from Zangikhel posted on Facebook and asked his friends who were from the same district and also had businesses in Saudi and Dubai to donate money so that the route could be repaired. 300,000 afghanis [roughly USD 5,000] was donated. Then one person took responsibility for speaking to a construction firm and the road was rebuilt.

A respondent from Wardak described a similar initiative: “In our area, the district school building was very old and wasn’t big enough to host the number of pupils enrolled. So, the young men decided to collect donations from the wealthy people of the area. They collected a good sum and repaired the school.”

These initiatives represent a significant type of community self-help, but the form is fundamentally different. In traditional ashar, men gave their time and physical labour and this was itself the social bond: they worked side by side, ate together and reinforced their relationships through the act of working. In the new form, the contribution is financial. It can be made from thousands of kilometres away, by someone who has not set foot in the village for months or even years. The work itself is contracted out to a construction firm or to paid labourers. The communal meal, the drums, the shared effort do not exist at all.

This means that, while the new form may solve practical problems, it does not replicate the social function that traditional ashar performed. It does not keep communities physically together; it does not create regular occasions for bonding, dispute resolution and norm enforcement that made ashar a mechanism of self-governance, as well as a labour practice. On the contrary, monetary contributions vary enormously with economic status, easily becoming a competition in generosity displayed, that feeds into family prestige and local prominence, drawing yet another dividing line between the wealthy, who can donate conspicuously, and the poor, who cannot. Several interviewees also raised concerns about the misappropriation of donated funds for personal gain, a problem that could not arise when the contribution was labour, rather than money.

The consequences of the decline of ashar

The losses described in this report go beyond the disappearance of a labour arrangement. Because the practice was embedded in a wider system of social obligations, its erosion has weakened the mechanisms through which rural communities maintained their internal cohesion, enforced norms and protected their most vulnerable members.

The most visible consequence is the loosening of the social bonds that held villages together. Ashar was one of the main ways by which people maintained good social relations, resolved tensions informally and enforced conformity with nerkh. When participation in communal life was the price of communal support, individuals had strong incentives to stay within accepted norms. With paid alternatives now available, that leverage has weakened. “These days,” said one interviewee from Paktia, “if someone doesn’t participate in ashar, he’s not concerned that tomorrow, his fellow villagers won’t help him because he can hire people for money. He doesn’t need his fellow villagers.” A respondent from Wardak, in his fifties, drew a sharp contrast with the past:

In the past, occasions like ashar kept people together. While some injustices existed, it was never to the extent of nowadays. In the past, when someone in a village was dealing with a problem or couldn’t do a task alone, the entire village was with him and would consider his problem as their own. Now, when someone is dying because of a problem, no one knows and no one helps because people have become scattered and don’t care about each other. This is why God’s blessings [barakat] have gone from our lives.

Many interviewees described this erosion in very concrete terms. One elder from Paktia said:

Life was very good at that time. In the entire village, if even one man was present and the rest were out of the village, that one man would take care of all the families and their needs. Nowadays, people can’t leave their own home for a day because nobody else cares what might happen to it.

Another interviewee, also from Paktia, described how a single tractor could serve an entire village:

In the entire village, if someone had one tractor, that would mean the whole village could benefit from it. Now, everyone has their own and when a few people don’t have one and want a fellow villager to lend them his, he says they need to pay for it or even refuses them altogether. That kind of behaviour was never expected in the past.

A third interviewee recalled a night when a villager knocked on his door because his wife was sick and four neighbours with cars had refused to drive them to the clinic. “I took her, along with him,” he said. A tribal elder from Paktia’s Ahmad Abad district described a broader change:

Rural areas and villages have become like the cities. People who once were living like one family now take pride in not interfering with one another. In the past, if a child did something wrong, every elder in the village had the right to correct him, or even beat him and the parents of that child would be happy that the villagers had corrected their son. But now, when you tell someone not to do this or that they did something wrong, his family protests and says this is not your business.

An elder from Ghazni described the cultural consequences:

In our village, young men are imitating the fashions of infidels and no one dares tell them not to. In our time, no one dared to come to the mosque not wearing a khwalai and patkai [cap and turban], but now very few people wear it. When you ask them why, they say: Are you feeding me [ie do I owe you anything]? Everyone is their own boss these days.

The elders interviewed typically couched this change mostly in cultural terms. They resented their loss of authority to discipline others’ children or enforce how others dress and behave. However, the trend they describe bears a broader connection to the decline of practices of mutual help such as ashar, which arguably originally came into existence because of communities’ interdependence and not because of patriarchal and gerontocratic control over society.

The erosion of collective life is also visible in the changing role of the hujra, which was once the centre of village social organisation – the space where decisions were made, disputes mediated, guests hosted and ashar organised. An elder from Khost said: “In the past, there might have been one or a few hujras in the village, but everyone treated them as their own. Now, every family has its own hujra and has acquired the means to host guests.” The shared hujra both depended on and reinforced collective life. Its replacement by individually owned guest rooms mirrors the replacement of ashar by paid labour: both represent the privatisation and fragmentation of what was once communal. But the shift is not only in practice, but  also in aspiration. In today’s economy, every household wants to achieve the status symbols that only the wealthy could once attain – their own guest room and their own hired labour. Communal arrangements that once softened inequality now feel like signs of poverty rather than sources of solidarity. And it is the less affluent who lose most: they cannot fully achieve the new expectations. Yet the old safety nets that once supported them are gone.

Even participation in social events has changed. In Khost, a respondent described how grave-digging, once a task young men competed to perform, had declined to the point where “villagers have become worried that if this continues, there might come a time when no one would go to dig the graves.” The solution was to impose a rule: one person per household must attend. That a task once performed enthusiastically now requires compulsion illustrates the scale of the change. The same respondent described participation in communal life as having become “somewhat contractual,” for example, “People attend weddings only to avoid causing offence, not out of genuine solidarity.”

The consequences of neglecting collective maintenance can be severe. An elder described how floods had destroyed crops in two villages because a canal had not been cleaned for a decade, something another interviewee from Wardak described:

The main reason was that the canal [rod] was full of mud and dirt and no one had cleaned it in the last ten years. Such things were done, in our time, twice a year and therefore, when it rained, there’d be no problem. But in the past ten years, despite a lot of advanced technology, such as excavators and money, no one bothered to clean them out and the result was that the crops of the two villages were destroyed.

The decline has not affected all households equally. Wealthier families can hire labourers and buy machinery; for them, the loss of collective labour is manageable. For poorer households, the consequences are severe. In the past, ashar functioned as an informal safety net regardless of a family’s wealth; the village contributed labour for their harvest, construction or ceremonies. One interviewee described the new reality:

When you ask someone for ashar, he says, “I’m doing it on a daily wage basis, not as ashar.” And even in daily wage work, people don’t work properly and just want to stretch the task out so they can charge for two days. For a poor farmer, it’s difficult to pay such an amount of money.

An elder from Paktia explained that in the past, “men had no money and there were few men. And even if a household had more [men], they’d migrate for work, so no family could do their work alone.” A farmer from Khost described the costs of not being able to rely on ashar: “I grow beans on my land and from sowing until the harvest is done, I hire three men on a daily wage to help me for seven days. They take a good amount of money from me. Now, the costs are very high. I remember in the past, no one hired anyone and that money was saved as profit.” The disappearance of this safety net has made the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Tribal structures and village principles have weakened accordingly. One Khost elder observed, “Some young men even take pride in not being bound by these things.” A younger respondent similarly said that, “Now, anyone can build a house on their own, plant an orchard on their own and carry out farming and animal husbandry on their own.” This self-sufficiency might, in material terms, be thought of as ‘progress’, but interviewees consistently described it as a loss. The same young man added, “Today’s young men prefer to do everything by themselves. But they don’t understand that the pleasure that was in the old traditions and in cooperating with one another – it no longer exists.” Self-sufficiency, as one Khost elder noted, comes at a cost: “This situation has filled life with stress and confusion.”

Conclusion

The decline of ashar is not a simple story of modernisation replacing tradition. It is the result of several interacting pressures that reinforce one another, progressively dismantling the conditions that once made collective labour both necessary and natural.

What is lost is more than a labour practice. Ashar was a mechanism of social cohesion, an informal safety net, a tool of local governance, backed by the powerful sanction of payghor, and a source of communal identity. Its decline has weakened bonds between households, undermined the enforcement of nerkh, disproportionately harmed the poorest families and accelerated a rise in individualism that many communities view with ambivalence.

Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. Collective ashar survives in many areas, sustained by the simple logic that if the canal is not cleaned, nobody eats. In Khost, harvest ashar has found an unexpected afterlife among school students, who call on classmates for help and turn the work into a social outing. New forms of collective action have also emerged, with young Afghans abroad or in cities raising funds through social media for village infrastructure. These adaptations suggest that the impulse towards solidarity has not been entirely extinguished, even though the new forms do not replicate the social bonds that traditional ashar created.

It would also be too simple to read this decline purely as a tale of lost virtue. Some scholars have cautioned against romanticising rural Afghan solidarity, noting that “the cooperation and solidarity among rural Afghans assumed to be a community because they happen to live in the same place are at best limited.”^[5] Ashar may have always been more fragile than nostalgia suggests and its decline may partly reflect the removal of the local power dynamics that compelled cooperation, rather than the loss of goodwill. What interviewees describe as a golden age was also, by their own account, a world of scarcity and constrained choices.

The decline of ashar offers a window into the broader transformation of Afghan rural society – the replacement of reciprocal bonds with transactional relationships, the growing stratification of village life and the tension between material progress and social fragmentation.

Edited by Fabrizio Foschini, Rachel Reid and Kate Clark

References

Revisions:

This article was last updated on 7 Jun 2026

The pressures on Afghanistan’s environment are increasingly urgent as the climate crisis bites. Our last dossier of reports on this subject was published in November 2022 when Afghanistan – one of the lightest emitters of greenhouse gases and also one of the hardest hit by climate change – had no representation at the international COP27 gathering (because of the non-recognition of the Islamic Emirate). AAN has continued to pursue environmental reporting, looking not just into questions of climate vulnerability, but also, as featured in this new dossier, reports on drought and flooding, food security and water diplomacy, environmental pressures on cities, pollution, climate governance and conservation and biodiversity. Not all the reports are bleak, but many are, an indication of how grave and multiple the environmental crises facing Afghanistan are. Yet authors often provide suggestions of how to mitigate or adapt to avoid the worst, or even improve life.

A farmer surveys his failed rainfed spring wheat in Khwaja Sabz Posh district of Faryab province, where in 2025 there was nothing to harvest in 90 to 100 per cent of all fields. Photo: Hashim Azizi/FAO, 7 July 2025

Two themes run through almost all the reports in this dossier – the climate crisis and water. Many of the issues we have investigated are also cross-cutting. Nevertheless, for ease of navigation, we have organised this dossier around five broad topics.

The first group of reports concern water scarcity – drought and its repercussions for agriculture and for Afghanistan’s towns and cities, and disputes over transnational water resources.

The second section focuses on floods, looking at both why they are happening with greater frequency and severity and the consequences for the communities hit by them.

A third section gathers together reports which ask broader environmental questions: What is the economic cost of the climate crisis for Afghanistan? Can Afghanistan feed itself? and Can the Islamic Emirate engage in international climate diplomacy when it is not recognised?

The theme of the fourth section is pollution, of all types – air, water, waste and noise.

The fifth and final section takes a look at biodiversity and conservation and the efforts to monitor and protect wildlife in a country where such concerns almost always compete with more immediate political and economic needs.

Together, the reports in this dossier offer a picture of a country living with rapid environmental change and searching for ways to adapt. They show that environmental crisis cannot be viewed as a distinct sectoral issue. Questions of water, climate and natural-resource management are entangled with food security, livelihoods, agriculture, public health, urban development, regional relations and international engagement. While climate change and water, inevitably, remain the central themes running through this dossier, the many reports gathered together highlight that broader environmental concerns will, for many years to come, shape Afghanistan’s prospects.

Water scarcity

The reports in this section look at the interrelated challenges of climate change, water availability, agriculture and livelihoods. They show how drought, changing precipitation patterns and growing demand on the country’s water resources are affecting food production, urban households’ access to water and regional relations.

Afghanistan’s Urban Water Dilemma: Why are Afghan cities running out of water?

Mohammad Assem Mayar, 17 September 2025

Another Drought Year for Afghanistan … But prospects are not as bad as they could be

Kate Clark, 17 July 2025Afghanistan 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.

Finally, Rain and Snow in Afghanistan: Will it be enough to avert another year of drought?

Kate Clark and the AAN team, 26 March 2024

The last few weeks have finally seen rain and snowfall in Afghanistan, raising hopes for farmers and herders that this year could be better than the last three drought years. Afghans typically categorise a drought year as one where the low amount of precipitation causes problems for agriculture – a poor harvest or crop failure or not enough grazing for livestock. At its worst, a drought also affects drinking water. The long-term future for Afghan agriculture is grim: scientists predict the global climate crisis will bring more severe droughts more frequently. But this year, AAN’s Kate Clark found, together with Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Rohullah Sorush and Sayed Asadullah Sadat, farmers hope there might be enough rain and snow to, at least, avert another year of drought.

The Long Winding River: Unravelling the water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran

Mohammad Assem Mayar and Roxanna Shapour, 20 November 2023

Afghanistan and Iran have been at loggerheads for much of this year over the Helmand River and its water. As the region grappled with a punishing drought for the third year running, the two neighbouring countries have been locked in a tense melee over shared transboundary rivers. While Iran seeks to assert its rights over water from the Helmand River based on the 1973 Afghan-Iranian Helmand River Water Treaty, Afghanistan maintains that there is simply not enough water to provide Iran with a greater amount. AAN guest author, Mohammad Assem Mayar, and AAN’s Roxanna Shapour look into what has driven the recent upsurge in the long-running dispute over water between these two countries and provides insights into how their ‘water relations’ might develop.

Floods 

Flooding, like drought, is becoming more frequent and more destructive as the climate crisis deepens. These reports explore both practical measures to reduce flood risk and the experiences of communities affected by this extreme weather.

Before the Deluge: How to mitigate the risk of flooding in Afghanistan

Mohammad Assem Mayar, 15 May 2024

In Afghanistan’s rugged landscape, floods arise from a multiplicity of causes: torrential rainfall, rain on snow, the rapid melting of snow due to warmer weather, glacial lake outbursts, the overflow of natural ponds or even the breach of dams. Regardless of their origins, floods can destroy whole villages, ruin farmland and change the very landscape. Almost a quarter of all casualties caused by natural disasters in Afghanistan are due to floods, with the problem only likely to worsen, given that the climate crisis is predicted to bring heavier spring rains and more severe monsoons. This spring, above-average precipitation brought an end to the multi-year drought that had plagued Afghanistan, says AAN guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar, but the considerable rainfall has also led to devastating flooding. In this report, he delves into what can be done to mitigate the risk of flooding in Afghanistan, both now and in the longer term.

After the Deluge: Personal accounts of rain and floods in Zurmat district

Sayed Asadullah Sadat, 12 May 2024

The rain and snow that has fallen in recent weeks has eased the hearts of Afghan farmers and given them hope that the multi-year drought has finally ended. At the same time, heavy rain falling on dry, parched land has caused flooding in many areas of Afghanistan. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks, homes and businesses have been destroyed and farmland inundated with floodwater and mud. In March, we spoke to farmers in different districts about their hopes for better weather this year. For this report, Sayed Asadullah Sadat has returned to one district, Zurmat in Paktia province, to hear how the longed-for rain has brought devastating flooding.

Broader environmental questions

In this section, authors try to answer some big questions, to do with harvests and food security, the   economic cost of climate change and international climate diplomacy for a government which is not internationally recognised.

Can Afghanistan Feed Itself? Agriculture, trade and food security under pressure

Mohammad Assem Mayar, 24 May 2026

Afghanistan’s food system is under growing strain. Domestic harvests remain insufficient and uneven and trade routes have shifted repeatedly in recent years. This spring’s rainfall has been good enough for a forecast of a bumper wheat crop, but that belies the ruinous longer-term reality of the climate crisis and the more frequent droughts it is causing. Population growth, returnees and declining purchasing power have all deepened vulnerabilities in both rural and urban areas. In this report, guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar brings together spatial data on major crops – production, deficits and risks – to show where food is produced, where shortages are emerging and how external shocks – from regional trade disruptions to climate variability – shape the nation’s food supply. He also examines some practical options for increasing production, with a focus on water and irrigation.

The Economic Consequences of Climate Change for Afghanistan: Losses, projections and pathways to mitigation

Mohammad Assem Mayar, 22 March 2025

No Climate Change Deniers: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan goes to COP29 as an observer

Thomas Ruttig, 24 November 2024

The 29th UN Climate Change Conference, or COP29, which was hosted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, concluded on 24 November 2024 in Baku, with a delegation from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in attendance. This was the first time the Emirate had participated in a UN-organised conference on climate, but only as an observer. The invitation was extended to the Emirate by the host country and not by the United Nations. The Emirate’s delegation was led by the National Environment Programme of Afghanistan’s new Director-General, Mati ul-Haq Khales. The UN, for its part, invited two Afghan NGOs and a civil society representative to participate in COP29 side events. AAN’s former co-director Thomas Ruttig delves into what prompted this invitation, as well as examining Afghanistan’s climate-related challenges and the Emirate’s words and actions on climate change.

Pollution

Pollution in Afghanistan: Air, water, waste and noise under weak governance

Mohammad Assem Mayar, 10 February 2026

Kabul’s winters bring a suffocating haze, as residents burn coal, wood and even plastic to heat their homes and use outdated vehicles, releasing toxic fumes into the city’s dry air. However,  perhaps surprisingly, the worst air quality in Afghanistan is found not in the capital, but in the southwest and north, where dust storms, made worse by climate change, blow in across the borders. Pollution is also not confined to the air. In urban areas, open sewage channels spread foul odours across city streets, badly kept septic tanks contaminate groundwater and rubbish piles up, uncollected. Noise adds another layer of disturbance, with vendors’ loudspeakers blaring by day and stray dogs barking through the night. These overlapping forms of pollution leave Afghans exposed to multiple hazards and reflect the decades-long failure of state institutions to provide basic services, particularly in urban areas. In his new report for AAN, guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar looks into the where and why of Afghanistan’s pollution crisis and lays out strategies for survival and mitigation.

Biodiversity and conservation

The final section of this dossier explores wildlife, conservation and environmental monitoring. The reports here highlight how environmental changes are affecting both the people of Afghanistan and its plants and animals, its ecosystems and biodiversity.

No Flamingos, but Ducks, Geese and Grebes: Afghanistan joins an international bird census

Kate Clark, 10 May 2026

The first survey of birds to be carried out by an Afghan organisation since the fall of the Islamic Republic has taken place. It was also the first time that Afghanistan has taken part in the annual International Waterbird Census, a global effort involving 189 countries. A volunteer team, including expert ornithologists, visited six wetland sites, all potentially important stopover sites on the Central Asian Flyway, the mass migration of birds that takes place twice a year, between winter feeding grounds in India/Pakistan and summer breeding grounds in Central Asia and Siberia. That migration had yet to start when the survey took place, but volunteers from a new Afghan conservation NGO, Organization Rewild, assessed resident and over-wintering birds and habitats in places that might provide a safe place for birds to stop and rest – or possibly not, writes AAN’s Kate Clark, given the dangers posed to them by hunters and the drying up of wetlands.

Of Hunters and Hunted (2): Falconry, bird smuggling and wildlife conservation

Fabrizio Foschini, 28 December 2023

The cold weather marks the start of the hunting season in many countries across the world. In Afghanistan, despite a hunting ban, this time of year sees the resumption of particular hunting-related activities. One particular group of hunters – raptor birds migrating through the country – become the hunted. Every year, some are caught and sold, often abroad, to be trained to hunt other prey in turn. At this time of year, as well, foreign falconers, notably wealthy sportsmen from the Gulf endowed with special hunting permits, come to western Afghanistan in order to indulge their passion for falconry and hunt their most prized quarry, the houbara bustard – which has also become the objective of a Qatari conservation programme in the country. In this second and concluding instalment of a two-part report on falconry in Afghanistan, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini examines the illegal export of raptors from Afghanistan, and also the hunting of and efforts to conserve the houbara in Farah province. He notes the ambivalent effects of this particular form of foreign intervention.

You can also read the first instalment of Fabrizio’s series, Of Hunters and Hunted (1): Falconry in Afghanistan from classical literature to colonial sources, which explores falconry in Afghan history and in poetry and colonial literature. 

For those interested in Afghan birds, see our earlier dossier: Thematic Dossier IX: Birds in Afghanistan.

For our previous dossier on climate change and the environment, see Not at COP27, but Already in Crisis: A dossier on Afghanistan and the Climate Emergency.

Complied by Roxanna Shapour; Edited by Kate Clark

Afghanistan’s food system is under growing strain. Domestic harvests remain insufficient and uneven and trade routes have shifted repeatedly in recent years. This spring’s rainfall has been good enough for a forecast of a bumper wheat crop, but that belies the ruinous longer-term reality of the climate crisis and the more frequent droughts it is causing. Population growth, returnees and declining purchasing power have all deepened vulnerabilities in both rural and urban areas. In this report, guest author Mohammad Assem Mayar* brings together spatial data on major crops – production, deficits and risks – to show where food is produced, where shortages are emerging and how external shocks – from regional trade disruptions to climate variability – shape the nation’s food supply. He also examines some practical options for increasing production, with a focus on water and irrigation.

Afghanistan has long struggled to produce enough food for its population, a challenge shaped by its mountainous terrain, limited arable land and highly variable precipitation, worsened by climate change. The country came closest to broad food self-reliance between the late 1940s and 1973, following the implementation of ten major irrigation and water management projects that expanded irrigated agriculture and stabilised production in key river basins.^[1] These systems added 332,800 hectares of irrigable land and contributed to a period of relative food security in the 1960s, when the population was under ten million. This brief stability ended with the political upheavals and decades of conflict that followed, leaving the country once again dependent on imports and vulnerable to climatic shocks. Since then, Afghanistan’s population has reached an estimated 43.8 million in 2025 (UNFPA), with no systematic expansion of arable farmland.

Afghanistan’s food economy is defined by a persistent gap between domestic production and the population’s needs. Even in years of good rainfall, harvests fall short of national needs for nearly all staple foods, particularly wheat and rice. The country faces a multifaceted food crisis driven by the convergence of multi-year droughts, the devastating economic collapse following the 2021 political transition (World Bank),^[2] the 2022 poppy ban and the forced return of 5.4 million Afghans from Pakistan and Iran since 2023 (UNHCR). These pressures are compounded by a decline in purchasing power across both rural and urban populations, leaving millions unable to afford basic staples even when markets remain supplied through imports. Meanwhile, a significant reduction in humanitarian aid since 2022 has widened this gap, removing a key safety net for millions of vulnerable households.^[3]

Understanding the depth of this fragility requires looking at the structure of Afghanistan’s food economy. Afghan diets are heavily cereal-centric, with wheat providing most of daily calories for most households. This creates a ‘wheat gap’ – the difference between national demand (around 6.9 million metric tonnes) and average domestic production, which rarely exceeds 4.5 to 5 million tonnes. Agricultural production is uneven across regions. Irrigated northern and northeastern provinces serve as the national breadbasket, while the rainfed belts of the west and the northern highlands are frequently exposed to climate shocks, including recurrent droughts.

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, an estimated 17.4 million Afghans faced food insecurity, including 4.7 million at IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) levels during the most recent ‘lean season’ (November 2025–March 2026). Some seasonal improvement is expected between now and September, as harvests come in (the forecast was for 13.8 million in food insecurity, including 2.9 million at emergency level) and that improvement should now be even greater than predicted (as shown in the IPC projection for April – September 2026). The IPC’s first projection was carried out in October 2025, before good spring rains fell. Combined with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA’s) poppy ban, that is pushing poppy farmers into wheat, the rain may mean Afghanistanrecording one of its largest wheat harvests in decades. Significantly, the rains were unusually well distributed, raising expectations of a strong rainfed wheat harvest for the first time in several years. The rain is also good news for farmers of other crops and livestock farmers.

Climate signals also point to a potentially favourable year ahead. A transition toward a strong El Niño in the Pacific is expected to bring above‑average winter precipitation and colder temperatures for Afghanistan, suggesting another year of good water availability for agriculture (if predicted conditions persist until spring 2027). However, this good news sits atop long‑standing structural constraints, especially those relating to climate change. It is already causing more frequent and more severe droughts.

This report addresses a central question: Can Afghanistan feed itself? This raises an important related issue – food security – whether all households in Afghanistan can feed themselves, given widespread poverty, weak purchasing power and uneven access to land and markets? As elsewhere, food security is shaped by broader social, political and economic factors, including who owns land, who has access to water and to capital, who controls trade and market prices and what social relations underpin farming and trade. National production alone does not guarantee food security.However, it does provide a useful starting point for analysing how Afghanistan’s food system functions and is the focus of this study. A second question is whether Afghanistan should aim for greater self-reliance in food production or continue to rely on food imports. Food imports are also vulnerable to economic and political shocks.

This report starts by mapping Afghanistan’s food deficit and explaining how it is measured. It then examines domestic production levels and the risks farmers face, before taking a detailed look at the main crops and meat production. It looks at the approaches taken by the Islamic Republic and Islamic Emirate to increase food production.

The report then briefly examines two other sources of food – imports and humanitarian food aid – and considers the problems both are facing. Finally, it ends with some practical measures to increase domestic production. Given the historical importance of irrigation, and drawing on the author’s expertise in water management, particular attention is paid to water as a key factor in increasing Afghanistan’s national production of food.

Afghanistan’s food production deficit 

Afghanistan’s food deficit is most evident in staple foods, particularly wheat and rice, where domestic harvests consistently fall short of national requirements, even in years of good rainfall. Wheat and rice show the largest deficits, while fruit is the only category that produces a surplus. Table 1 summarises estimated demand and deficits for the main cereal crops based on the Ministry of Agriculture annual reports for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. MAIL also publishes separate wheat and rice reports, including those for 2025, which are available here and here, respectively.

While these figures highlight the scale of the deficit, understanding them requires a brief explanation of how production is measured.

How is domestic production measured?

Mapping Afghanistan’s complex agricultural sector or its multifaceted food system is a formidable task. This analysis focuses on the main staples that form the backbone of the Afghan diet, locally called dastarkhan: wheat and flour, rice, maize, legumes, meat, fish, cooking oil, fruit and vegetables. It draws on data from the Annual Agriculture Reports published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL); the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) annual Trade Statistics Yearbook, which provides official data on imports and exports; and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics.

Wheat production is estimated using a combination of satellite‑based mapping and administrative reporting. Each year, Ministry of Agriculture analyses Sentinel‑2 imagery (with 10-metre spatial resolution) to determine the total area planted with irrigated and rainfed wheat, using Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) signatures, a proxy for crop health, to distinguish crop cover from other land uses. To refine yield assumptions, remote estimates are combined with field‑level observations on crop condition, rainfall and pest damage from provincial agriculture departments. Total production is calculated by multiplying the estimated area by yield factors, which vary by province and by irrigated and rainfed zones.^[4]

Rice production is estimated using a similar approach, but with greater reliance on irrigation mapping. Because rice is grown in flooded fields, satellite imagery can more easily identify rice paddies during the transplanting and peak vegetative stages, when spectral signatures are most distinct. Provincial agriculture offices submit production estimates based on field visits, which are cross‑checked against remotely sensed data, before national totals are calculated.

For other major crops, including maize (corn), legumes and fodder grains, the Ministry of Agriculture uses a lighter but consistent methodology. Satellite imagery is used to estimate cropped areas, although distinguishing these crops spectrally is more difficult than for wheat and rice. As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture supplements remote sensing with provincial reporting, which provides area and yield estimates based on local field inspections. Yield assumptions are anchored in the ten‑year baseline and adjusted for rainfall, irrigation access and reported pest or disease outbreaks. In the absence of nationwide surveys, the production figures are a synthesis of remote sensing, provincial reporting and historical baselines.

Domestic production: levels and trends

While Table 1 shows the scale of national deficits, Table 2 presents domestic production levels using the Ministry of Agriculture’s reporting for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021.^[5] Much of the variation is driven by the weather: 2019 was a ‘wet year’, with above-average precipitation; 2020 was broadly normal; and 2021 to 2024 were affected by drought. In addition, the 2022 poppy ban affected wheat production in the subsequent years.

These production patterns cannot be understood in isolation, as they are shaped by a range of structural and climatic risks.

Risks to food security

Afghanistan’s food system faces a wide range of overlapping risks – from climate-related shocks to socio-economic vulnerabilities – that affect both production and access to food. Drought remains the dominant pressure, particularly in rainfed areas, but other shocks also play a role.

Fruit cultivation has proved more resilient than cereals and livestock. However, spring floods and flash floods regularly destroy cropland, orchards and irrigation infrastructure. While their impact may be small on the national scale, they can wipe out a household’s or a village’s annual food supply. Heatwaves and warm winters trigger early flowering, leaving orchards vulnerable to late frosts.^[6] Hailstorms can also damage blossom and fruit in orchards – which are vulnerable because Afghanistan lacks protection nets – as well as other crops.

The livestock sector, which depends heavily on pasture, has been hit hard by climate change, with fodder shortages and periodic disease outbreaks forcing distress sales. Herd sizes have declined, especially in rainfed provinces such as Badghis, Ghor, Faryab and parts of the south.^[7] Cold waves and colder-than-average winter temperatures also lead to livestock losses. For instance, livestock losses ranging from 70,000 to 200,000 in Ghor province from December 2022 to January 2023, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Locust outbreaks, particularly in drought years when the collapse of rainfed pasture creates ideal breeding conditions, have historically affected the northern provinces, but can spread into irrigated zones.

Meanwhile, the return, to date, of 5.4 million Afghans from Pakistan and Iran since 2023, combined with a high birth rate, means population growth continues to outpace food production. After the economic collapse in 2021, household incomes and purchasing power fell in both rural and urban areas, reducing the ability of millions of Afghan households to buy basic staples, even when markets remain well supplied. Trade disruptions, including border closures with Pakistan and global price spikes linked to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, have further increased the cost of food imports.

Taken together, these pressures create a food economy that is chronically stretched, structurally import-dependent and highly sensitive to both climate and market shocks.

Domestic production by crop

These climatic and structural pressures shape agricultural production in different ways across crops and regions. The following subsections examine Afghanistan’s major crops and meat production, focusing on harvests, deficits, regional distribution and seasonality.

Wheat

Wheat is the backbone of Afghanistan’s national food supply, dominating both cultivated land and caloric intake. Wheat is harvested from June (Jawza) to September (Sunbula), with the lean period stretching from February (Dalw) to May (Saur).

Wheat is grown in all provinces, but production is uneven, shaped by geography and water availability. Between 2019 and 2025 (1398-1404), annual harvests fluctuated between 3.8 and 5.1 million tonnes. The 2025 (1404) season yielded 4.54 million tonnes, a decline driven almost entirely by the collapse of rainfed (lalmi) production due to drought. While the geography of production has not changed and the irrigated wheat harvest in provinces such as Kunduz, Takhar, Baghlan, Helmand, Kandahar and Farah have remained relatively stable, rainfed harvests – especially in Badghis, Faryab, Jawzjan, Baghlan and parts of Takhar – have suffered from drought and erratic rainfall (Figure 1).

In wetter years, more provinces produce wheat surpluses (highlighted in green in Figure 2), while others, including Kabul, Daikundi, Bamyan, Nuristan and Panjshir (highlighted in orange), remain in deficit.

In addition to the impact of drought, Figure 3 also shows how the 2022 poppy ban has reshaped wheat production: by 2023, most poppy fields had been converted to wheat, increasing the harvest, despite persistent drought, particularly in Helmand – previously the country’s largest opium-producing province – where, according to Alcis estimates, 98 per cent of land previously under poppy cultivation was instead sown with wheat.

Rice

Rice is the second most important staple after wheat, with production relatively stable, ranging from 383,000 to 447,000 tonnes between 2019 and 2025. Cultivation is concentrated in Kunduz, Takhar, Baghlan, Nangrahar and Laghman. Together, they account for most of the national output, while provinces such as Sar-e Pul, Bamyan and Uruzgan contribute negligible amounts (Figure 4).

Rice is almost entirely dependent on irrigation, making it highly vulnerable to water shortages. Harvesting typically occurs from October (Mizan) to November (Aqrab), with shortages most visible in early spring and summer.

Both maps below (USDA on the left and MAIL on the right) show the provinces where rice is grown. The variation, which may be due to methodology, is negligible.

Maize

Maize is widely cultivated, primarily as a feed crop. National production has ranged between 185,000 and 385,000 tonnes in recent years. The strongest producers are Helmand, Kandahar, Balkh, Nangrahar, Kunar and Kapisa, while the northern highland provinces, such as Sar-e Pul, Jawzjan and Faryab, also contribute a little (Figure 5). Because maize is planted after the wheat harvest, it depends heavily on residual soil moisture and the availability of irrigation. Seasonal availability peaks in August and September (Asad and Sunbula), but shortages mainly affect livestock feed and poultry production, rather than household food security.

Barley

Barley is typically planted in the same agro-ecological zones as rainfed wheat, meaning it faces similar drought exposure. Production fluctuates from year to year – ranging from 65,000 tonnes in 2021 to 190,000 tonnes in 2024, reflecting its concentration in drought-prone rainfed zones and its sensitivity to moisture stress. In provinces such as Badghis, Faryab, Jawzjan and parts of Ghor, yields can collapse in dry years. Barley plays an important stabilising role in both household consumption and livestock feed, particularly in years when wheat production declines. Poor harvests have cascading effects: reduced availability of animal feed increases pressure on already weakened herds, especially in regions where pasture degradation is widespread

The spatial distribution of barley, shown in Figure 6, using USDA estimates, shows the strongest concentrations in the northern and western rainfed belts.

Vegetables (potatoes and onions)

Potatoes and onions are key staple vegetables grown for both household consumption and market sale. They are valued for their storability and role in bridging gaps in the lean season, from February to May (Dalw to Saur), when fresh produce is scarce.

Potato production is concentrated in the cool highland provinces – Bamyan (the country’s potato hub), Daikundi, Ghazni and parts of Wardak – where the climate favours tuber crops. Their high yield per hectare also makes potatoes an efficient crop for land-constrained highland communities.

Onion cultivation is more widespread but depends heavily on irrigation. Major producing provinces include Kandahar, Nangrahar, Balkh and Kunduz, supplying both domestic markets and Pakistan and India. Prices are seasonal, falling during the harvest months (Asad to Mizan) and rising in winter and early spring due to storage losses. Limited cold-storage continues to drive post-harvest losses, reducing incomes and contributing to price volatility.

Legumes

Pulses, including chickpeas, lentils and mung beans, remain a small but nutritionally important component of agriculture, accounting for only a fraction of the national caloric supply.

Yields vary by crop and year, due to climate factors, pests and the size of the area under cultivation (see Figure 8 for 2021). Production is concentrated mainly in Balkh, Baghlan, Kunduz, Herat and Faryab provinces, with smaller-scale cultivation in the central highlands, mostly for local consumption. Pulses are typically harvested from July to September (Saratan to Sunbula), with market availability improving in early autumn. Their contribution to national food security is limited by both low acreage and the absence of large-scale processing.

Oilseeds

Oilseed cultivation is scattered across irrigated zones in the north, northeast and south, with crops such as sesame concentrated in Nangrahar and parts of the north, sunflower in Balkh, Kunduz and Jawzjan and cottonseed in Kandahar, Helmand, Baghlan, Kunduz and Balkh.

For generations, households relied on dairy-based butter and ghee, or oil extracted from locally grown oilseeds. While these practices continue in some rural areas, most cooking oil is now imported. Domestic production from sunflower, sesame and cottonseed, along with small amounts of safflower, falls well short of national demand, making cooking oil one of the most import-dependent components of the Afghan diet.

Processing capacity is also limited. A small number of local factories produce oil from cottonseed and other oilseeds, particularly in northern provinces, although TOLOnews recently reported on a modern factory with a 200-tonnes-per-day production capacity in Kandahar.

Fruits

Fruits are a major source of rural income and – unlike cereals – consistently exceed domestic demand, making them a cornerstone of export earnings (Figure 9). Major crops include grapes, apricots, almonds, apples and pomegranates, produced across different agro-ecological zones, with grapes having the largest share of total fruit output, followed by apricots, almonds, apples and pomegranates (For the quantity and proportional share of each fruit in the various areas under cultivation, see the MAIL reports.)

Grape strongholds in Kandahar, Helmand, Herat, Balkh and Samangan are supported by established vineyards and raisin processing facilities. Apricot production is also substantial, particularly in the northern provinces and the central highlands. Fresh and dried apricots contribute to household incomes and export. Almonds, which show strong harvests in Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Samangan, remain one of Afghanistan’s most valuable horticultural exports. Apple production is concentrated in the cooler highland provinces, with Wardak, Ghazni, Bamyan, Paktia and Logar producing most of the national supply. Pomegranate production is strong in Kandahar, Helmand, Farah and Kapisa. It remains a major export commodity, with stable yields despite water shortages. Figs, peaches, mulberries and walnuts contribute smaller but steady quantities to the national fruit supply. These crops are important for local consumption and small-scale trade.

Melons, including watermelons, are among Afghanistan’s most widely consumed seasonal crops, with significant production volumes. Major melon producing provinces include Farah, Helmand, Balkh, Kunduz, Baghlan and Nangrahar, which supply markets from July to September (Saratan to Sunbula). Watermelons are grown under both rainfed and irrigated conditions and are therefore affected by drought. Afghan melons, particularly the Kunduz and Mazar varieties, are valued for their storability and sweetness.

While fruit production is relatively stable, storage constraints and water shortages affect quality and market access.

Meat 

Although MAIL appears to publish periodic livestock assessments, the author could access only one annual livestock report – for 2020 – which provided provincial estimates for major livestock categories (sheep, goats, cattle, horse, chicken and other poultry).

In the absence of consistent annual reporting, meat, poultry and fish production figures are often released through press releases or media reports. For example, Afghanistan produced an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of beef and mutton in 2021 (MAIL) and the country’s 10,000 poultry farms were producing a reported 1,700 tonnes of chicken meat per day in 2024 (Pajhwok).

Aquaculture is expanding, with more than 2,600 active fish farms in provinces such as Nangrahar, Kunduz, Balkh and Herat (Ariana News). However, fish consumption accounts for only a small share of the country’s protein consumption, and output remains below demand, which peaks in winter.

Availability is highly seasonal, with drought and pasture degradation reducing herd resilience, leading to year-to-year fluctuations, while winter months always bring tighter supplies and higher prices as fodder becomes scarce.

Mapping Afghanistan’s food deficits makes it very clear that the country cannot feed itself, but is there potential for it to do better? The following section considers government actions over the last quarter century which have aimed at increasing Afghanistan’s capacity to grow more of what it eats.

Government actions

State responses to Afghanistan’s food security challenges have evolved over time, reflecting changing political systems, institutional capacities and external support. The following sub-sections examine how successive governments have sought to increase Afghanistan’s food security.

Under the Islamic Republic

During the relatively stable period of the Republic (2001-21), the government introduced a range of strategies aimed at improving food production, nutrition and agricultural resilience, but was unsuccessful in closing food deficits. Most of these measures date from the Ashraf Ghani governments, including the Wheat Sector Development Strategy, the National Comprehensive Agriculture Development Priority Program (NCADPP), the Food Security and Nutrition Strategy, the Afghanistan Drought Risk Management Strategy, the National Irrigation Investment Roadmap, 2020-30 (seen by the author), alongside efforts to reform the Ministry of Agriculture to a more decentralised, farmer-oriented institution (as part of the ministry’s Comprehensive Agricultural Development Programme -archived on the Wayback Machine).

These strategies were supported by extensive donor-funded programmes, including the On-Farm Water Management Project, and the Afghanistan Agriculture Inputs Project (AAIP), both funded by the World Bank; the IFAD-supported Community Livestock and Agriculture Project (CLAP); and climate-related initiatives such as the Climate Change Adaptation Project (CCAP) and the Community-Based Agriculture and Rural Development (CBARD), funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Additionally, the European Union and the Asian Development Bank supported several watershed management and irrigation programmes, in the Kunduz, Amu and Panj river basins.

In parallel, the Republic-era Ministries of Energy and Water and Agriculture initiated a number of water infrastructure projects, including the Kamal Khan Dam in Nimruz province, Shah wa Arus Dam in Kabul, Pashdan Dam in Herat; the Zamin Dawar and Musa Qala Canals in Helmand province; diversion tunnels for the Bakhshabad Dam in Farah province, the Kama Barrage in Nangrahar province; the Shahi Canal in Laghman province; and the Qush Tepe Canal in Balkh province.^[8] Progress, however, varied and the Kamal Khan Dam was the only major project largely completed before 2021, although several were later continued, some of them to completion, by the Emirate. While these projects have the potential to improve water management, their impact on expanding arable land has so far been limited.

Launched in 2017, the Afghanistan Food Security and Nutrition Agenda (AFSeN‑A) aimed to provide a multisectoral framework for addressing hunger and malnutrition. Its practical impact was limited, beyond aligning Afghanistan with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: 2 (Zero Hunger) and 17 (Partnerships). AFSeN-A effectively ended after the fall of the Republic, continues to influence the government’s reporting systems and UN programming (see for example FAO’s agricultural sector strategic roadmap, 2026–2028).

Despite all these plans, technical support and donor funding, little was achieved to actually increase food production during all the years of the Republic, a problem familiar in almost all sectors of the economy and government.^[9]

Under the Islamic Emirate 

Since 2021, the IEA has continued and completed several infrastructure projects initiated under the Republic, including Shah wa Arus Dam, (Amu TV), the diversion tunnels of the Bakhshabad Dam in Farah (Al Emarah) and work on the Pashdan Dam in Herat (The Diplomat), as well as phase II of the Qush Tepa Canal (Bakhtar). Smaller projects, including the Shahi Canal and several dams, remain under development or are focused primarily on drinking water supply, with limited impact on irrigation or agricultural expansion.

The Emirate has also moved to revive state‑owned grain infrastructure, including reopening government‑owned silos that had long been inactive (Hasht-e Subh). Wheat will be purchased during harvest and released later to help stabilise prices (The Kabul Times), although the scale of this initiative remains unclear. Official statements have also highlighted Afghanistan’s fast approach to self-sufficiency in poultry – 80 per cent in 2019 and, more recently, 99 per cent in 2025. According to a Ministry of Agriculture official, who asked not to be identified, the country is now largely self-sufficient in poultry but still relies on imported breeding stock. The Emirate has also started exporting sheep meat to Central Asia to curb the smuggling of lives animals to neighbouring countries and incentivise private-sector investment in livestock production.

Achieving major improvements in food production will be difficult. The Emirate is hamstrung in what it can achieve in terms of developing irrigation and other projects aimed at improving agricultural production. International aid has focused on humanitarian efforts since 2021 (for political reasons and a political impasse between donors and the Emirate, AAN).

The Emirate has limited resources to spend on development, partly because it concentrates funding on the security services. The March 2026 World Bank Economic Monitor reported that 48 per cent of spending in financial year 2025 (ending 20 March) went to the army, police and intelligence and just 1.6 per cent on agriculture (figures from the Emirate Ministry of Finance). The Emirate is now putting a greater portion of the budget into capital spending, rather than running costs (largely wages) and capital spending has tended to focus on water management projects, especially the Qush Tepa Canal. It is also increasing, albeit from a very low level.^[10]

It is also worth mentioning that immediately on taking power, the Emirate introduced agricultural taxes – ushr (a tithe on the harvest) and zakat (a wealth tax, usually taken on livestock), which is collected by the Ministry of Agriculture and delivered to the Supreme Leader’s Office, ie it does not go into the general budget via the Ministry of Finance (in most Muslim countries, these are given as personal acts of charity, rather than taxes taken by the state).^[11] While this measure may not affect national production, it may hit the food security of individual households and communities.

The next section looks in detail at one technological intervention as an example of how interventions can bring costs as well as benefits. The solar‑powered borehole is a relatively new technology that has spread rapidly across Afghanistan in recent years, without any push, or indeed, any control by the state, whether the Republic or Emirate. Greater state intervention here would have been helpful.

Agricultural expansion by groundwater and its limits

In recent years, unregulated solar-powered boreholes that extract groundwater at low cost have spread widely across the country, helping farmers cope with drought and expand irrigated agriculture.

Although their contribution to national production has not yet been systematically quantified, their output is already included in official production figures.

In 2023, NSIA reported around 310,000 boreholes nationwide; FAO identified far more in 2025 – 489,314 solar-equipped boreholes in 32 provinces, indicating a sharp increase, particularly in 2023 (Figure 10).

The distribution of boreholes is highly uneven, with the largest concentrations in Helmand, Kandahar and Farah. In these areas, they have enabled the rapid conversion of previously uncultivated desert land into irrigated fields, much of which was used for poppy cultivation. Following the 2022 poppy ban, many of these areas shifted to wheat – a crop that requires more water but generates less income per hectare. The Alcis map illustrates the scale of land-use change for Helmand and Kandahar, showing large tracts of former desert (considered state property) now under surface irrigation (see here).

While this expansion has supported agricultural growth, it raises concerns about long-term sustainability. If groundwater is extracted faster than it is replenished, water levels drop, making such easy extraction a finite and ultimately counterproductive solution. Reports suggest this is already happening (Yale Environment 360), but comprehensive national data remains limited. There are reports of entire villages being abandoned in Helmand province’s Washir district and in Nawabad, Farah province, due to water scarcity stemming from borehole activity and declining precipitation (see TOLOnews from June 2023 and this August 2023 documentary). Boreholes have also been dug in northern Afghanistan, contributing to a gradual decline in groundwater levels, although the situation there remains stable.^[12]Possibly in response to the depletion of groundwater, in 2023, the Emirate introduced an anti-land-grabbing law that, as well as affecting urban areas, restricts further agricultural expansion onto public land, particularly in desert areas. It requires farmers who are already using public land to pay rent or risk losing access to it.

Failing to grow enough food itself, Afghanistan has relied, instead, for decades on food imports and humanitarian food aid to fill the deficit, but as the next sections outline, both sectors are under strain from global instability and cuts to aid.

Trade: imports and shifting corridors

Afghanistan meets its domestic supply gap through imports, particularly for wheat, flour, rice and cooking oil.^[13] In 2024, wheat and flour alone accounted for a significant portion of food import volumes and value, underscoring the country’s dependence on imports.

For decades, Pakistan served as the country’s primary food import corridor, including wheat flour from mills in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, rice from Sindh and vegetable oil through Karachi’s ports. However, repeated border disruptions (New York Times) have translated into immediate price spikes in Afghan markets and Afghanistan has turned to Central Asia as an alternative.

The shift away from Pakistan has been building over time. From 2015 onwards, Pakistan used border closures as a political lever, prompting Afghan traders to seek alternatives. It accelerated as the war in Ukraine disrupted global wheat flows, reducing Ukrainian wheat exports to Pakistan and tightening regional flour supplies (BBC). India’s subsequent suspension of wheat exports further tightened global markets and drove up prices (BBC). As Pakistani mills faced shortages, traders in Pakistan began buying Afghan wheat during the harvest months – particularly from the southern provinces – and exporting it back across the border. In response, the Emirate banned wheat exports in May 2022 to prevent domestic shortages (Ministry of Finance and VOA). By then, the regional supply landscape had already shifted. Finally in October 2025, border closures imposed by the Emirate effectively cut off the route that had once carried mostof Afghanistan’s food imports.

Afghanistan has become increasingly dependent on Central Asia, particularly on Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for wheat and flour imports. The northern crossing at Hiratan-Termez (Balkh province and Uzbekistan, respectively) has emerged as the country’s new logistical hub for both commercial imports and humanitarian operations. Drought has reinforced this shift: northern provinces that once produced surplus wheat – Faryab, Badghis, Jawzjan and Balkh – are now among those facing crisis-level food insecurity, according to FEWS NET, as shown in Figure 11. As local surpluses disappeared, the northern corridor became the only viable entry point for large-scale wheat imports. The World Food Programme (WFP) and other UN agencies have expanded storage facilities in Termez to ensure rapid delivery to drought-affected regions, replacing the Pakistan-based supply chain that had dominated for decades.

This new dependence on Central Asia comes with its own uncertainties. Relations with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are complicated by the Qush Tepe Canal, which diverts water from the Amu Darya and has raised concerns about downstream flows, raising the possibility that political tensions could spill over into trade. For now, however, Central Asia remains Afghanistan’s primary source of wheat and flour.

The rice trade has also been reshaped. Pakistan has traditionally filled Afghanistan’s rice deficit, but border closures and rising political tensions have disrupted this flow, with Indian rice increasingly replacing Pakistani varieties. While Iran plays only a limited role in Afghanistan’s food imports, it has become important as a transit corridor, particularly for imports such as Indian rice entering via Iranian ports in Bandar Abbas and Chabahar and transported overland to Afghanistan.^[14] Prices have risen due to longer transit distances and higher transport costs. Traders report that some Pakistani rice is now rerouted through Iran and relabelled as Indian before entering Afghan markets.

Cooking oil imports have also been affected. Previously sourced through Pakistan’s ports, trade has now shifted to Iranian ports and Central Asian suppliers, increasing transport costs. Meat imports have also been affected: buffalo meat from Pakistan, once an affordable protein source, has become scarce, driving up prices in urban markets.

Together, these shifts have made food trade more fragmented, more expensive and more politically exposed.

A supply chain once anchored in a single dominant corridor has now shifted to other routes, shaped by its geopolitical constraints. Amid declining purchasing power, drought and shrinking domestic surpluses, the reconfiguration of trade corridors has become central to Afghanistan’s food economy.

Humanitarian food assistance: coverage, gaps and trends

Humanitarian assistance, while intended to be temporary, has become a critical pillar of the food economy, supporting households unable to grow or afford enough food. However, coverage has declined in recent years due to funding constraints. Table 3 summarises the volume of food distributed by WFP between 2021 and 2025 (for details on targeted recipients, see WFP’s annual reports).

The contraction in aid is also reflected in the decline in the number of beneficiaries. In 2022, WFP reached more than 23 million people; by 2025, its coverage had fallen to around 4 million people, plus half a million returnees. This decline has occurred despite continuing high levels of need, with large parts of the country – particularly the northern rainfed belt, the west and pockets of the central highlands – classified by FEWS NET as facing Crisis (IPC 3) or Emergency (IPC 4) conditions.^[15]

Changes in aid delivery have had direct effects on markets. Large-scale wheat distributions in 2022 helped moderate price spikes in rural areas, while cash‑based transfers supported local traders and prevented supply gaps (WFP 2022 Afghanistan Country Brief). The subsequent reduction in aid has had the opposite effect: in districts where in‑kind aid distributions were reduced, wheat and flour prices have risen, particularly in drought-affected northern and western regions (WFP Afghanistan 2023 Annual Country Report). Cash‑based transfers, while effective in urban centres, have had limited impact in remote areas where markets are thin.

Coverage remains uneven, with some regions chronically underserved.^[16] The northern rainfed belt – Badghis, Faryab, Jawzjan and parts of Balkh and Samangan – has faced repeated droughts and now hosts large numbers of returnees, yet assistance remains inconsistent. The central highlands (Daikundi, Bamyan, Ghor) receive limited support due to access constraints, while in the east, Nangrahar and Kunar have seen assistance decline despite rising needs. FEWS NET has also reported that in some districts, the lack of assistance has pushed households into ‘negative coping strategies’, including distressed livestock sales and reduced meal frequency. Urban areas such as Kabul and Herat receive only limited support despite falling purchasing power.

Ultimately, humanitarian food assistance cannot offset the combined pressures of drought, economic contraction, population growth and declining purchasing power. What was once a stabilising force now reaches fewer people, less frequently and with smaller rations, leaving millions exposed to deepening food insecurity.

The way forward: practical and strategic options

Afghanistan’s food security challenge is shaped less by a lack of agricultural potential than by the country’s political, financial and environmental constraints. While the country has the land, water resources and agro-ecological diversity to increase production, decades of conflict, drought, weak infrastructure, fragmented institutions and the current economic crisis have limited its ability to translate these assets into reliable food production. The way forward does not lie in imagining radically transforming agriculture, but in pursuing practical measures to stabilise production, strengthen resilience, improve access to food and revive the institutions needed to support agricultural planning and rural markets.

In the short term, stabilising wheat production while reducing the country’s exposure to climate-driven shocks remains the priority. Wheat underpins Afghan diets, but it is highly vulnerable because of its reliance on rainfed agriculture in drought-prone regions. Measures such as improving water management, rehabilitating irrigation canals and distributing higher-yielding seeds could help reduce climate‑related losses and improve rural incomes, especially in key irrigated wheat-producing areas such as Kunduz, Takhar, Helmand, Kandahar and Farah.

Meanwhile, some drought-prone rainfed areas may benefit from gradually shifting towards crops that require less water and offer higher returns than wheat. In some areas, such transitions are already underway. In Wardak province, for example, most farmers have shifted from wheat cultivation to apricot and apple orchards that generate higher incomes.

Irrigation and water management will remain central to Afghanistan’s agricultural prospects. Improvements to the country’s irrigation system would reduce the national wheat deficit, but large-scale expansion in the foreseeable future is unlikely given current financial constraints. Large-scale infrastructure schemes, such as the Qush Tepe Canal, require not only funding but also technical capacity, maintenance systems and long-term political stability. A pragmatic way forward would prioritise small- and medium-scale irrigation interventions, such as rehabilitating existing canals, expanding water-harvesting structures and improving on-farm water management. These measures are relatively low-cost, can be implemented in stages and are likely to yield quicker benefits.

Reducing post-harvest losses could also improve food availability without requiring major increases in production. Potatoes, onions, fruits and vegetables are often abundant during harvest periods but become scarce and expensive later in the year because of limited cold-storage facilities and transport corridors. Expanding cold-storage facilities in major production hubs such as Bamyan, Kunduz, Kandahar, Herat and Nangrahar, improving transport networks and supporting local processing could help reduce seasonal shortages and stabilise prices.

In Afghanistan, better food security depends not only on production and infrastructure but also on access to land, water, employment, capital, purchasing power and reliable markets. In their absence, increases in national food stocks alone will not translate into better access to food for households. In that light, food security depends as much on distribution and governance as production.

The decline in humanitarian assistance and the continuing sluggish economy mean millions of households remain highly vulnerable to drought, price rises and other shocks. Prospects for greater food security are shaped by financial, institutional and climatic constraints. While production can be increased in the long term, the country cannot finance the infrastructure needed to close its food gap in the foreseeable future. The narrowing of development aid means the country no longer has access to the financial resources available during the Republic and although the Emirate is clearly interested in agriculture and irrigation, spending priorities – allocating about half the annual public purse to the security sector – limit its capacity to act.

Given current conditions, a realistic strategy should prioritise incremental gains rather than large-scale transformation. Stabilising wheat production, improving water management, reducing post-harvest losses and strengthening market systems are more achievable and likely to deliver lasting improvements in food security. These efforts should be combined with targeted agricultural support, climate finance, regional cooperation on trade and water and investment in irrigation rehabilitation, seeds and nutrition services. Progress will ultimately depend on the consistent implementation of practical, well-targeted, high-impact interventions rather than grand plans.

Edited by Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour 

* Dr Mohammad Assem Mayar is a water resources management and climate change expert and former lecturer at Kabul Polytechnic University in Afghanistan. He is currently an independent researcher based in Germany. He posts on X as @assemmayar1.

Reaching the ‘white areas’

There are twenty ‘white areas’ in Kapisa province, just to the north of Kabul, places where at least 10,000 people have no access to health services within ten kilometres of their homes. One area, though, is white no longer. In November 2021, it gained a tiny clinic focused on women and children’s health, known as a ‘Continuum of Care Centre’ or 3C. Two midwives, previously trained by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC),^[1] work out of two rooms attached to the home of one of them in the village of Arabkhel, in the Bolaghayn area of Kohband district. One room is for deliveries. The other is a waiting room, with a curtained-off area where patients can be seen in reasonable privacy. There were already two other such tiny clinics in Kapisa. They were the only maternal clinics to stay open in the province in the weeks after the August 2021 change of government. That gave some confidence in negotiations with the new provincial authorities to open a third, the one in Arabkhel.

The day we visited the clinic, the waiting area was packed. One of the midwives, Gul Chehra, a graduate of NAC’s midwifery course, was seeing patients and because she is local, she can speak to the patients in their own language, Pashai. Pashai settlements dot the higher-lying areas of Kapisa from north to south, following the local sub-range of the Hindu Kush. They are often situated in rugged and isolated areas with rocky, low-fertility soil. Boulders spread across the fields on the approach to the clinic testified to the frequency of landslides and floods, such as those which hit the province in early October 2025 (South Asian Desk). NAC established the clinic on the further side of the river bed from the main asphalted road connecting the district to the provincial centre so that women from villages on that side of the river could access healthcare even when there was flooding and their villages were cut off from the rest of the province.

One of the patients being seen on the day we visited, Sima, was expecting her ninth child and described how, when the river flooded, the path to the main road became impassable. Her last child had been born in the clinic, the others at home. “There was no help,” she said. “I just prayed to God.”

Women’s health in crisis

The picture across the country is less rosy. Afghanistan was already in the bottom ten countries in the world for the worst maternal mortality figures. It is also an outlier in the region. The latest maternal mortality figure quoted by the World Bank is for 2023: 521 mothers dying for every 100,000 live births. The next worst country is far better, albeit still bad: 155 Pakistani mothers are dying per 100,000 live births.^[2] Yet the numbers for Afghanistan appear to be getting even worse. Although there are no recent official statistics, World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative for Afghanistan Mukta Sharma told Salam Watandar on 7 April 2025 that there were 620 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The rise is not surprising, given the pressure on and lack of support to services. The World Bank December 2024 Afghanistan Development Update had already been warning about a contraction of the health sector – by 3.1 per cent – during the previous 12 months, saying:

The health sector has managed to stay afloat due to international support. However, the ongoing struggles in education [education had shrunk even more, by 9.3 per cent] and health highlight a critical lack of investment in human capital, which could jeopardize Afghanistan’s long-term economic prospects.

Since then, in early 2025, the United States, which had provided 40 per cent of aid to Afghanistan in 2024, decided abruptly to cut all aid to Afghanistan.^[3] As a direct result, the WHO July 2025 Health Cluster Bulletin said, 422 health facilities had closed.^[4] Several other donors have also cut funding, although not to the same extent. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has also continued to prioritise spending on its security services. According to the World Bank’s March 2026 Economic Monitor, the Ministries of Interior, Defence and General Directorate of Intelligence, had been allocated 48 per cent of government spending in financial year 2025 (ended 20 March 2026). Public health had been given just 2.6 per cent. Afghans have also been hit by a struggling economy (AAN), which has eroded the ability of many families to pay for private healthcare, or even to pay for transport to a free government or NGO-run clinic. Emirate restrictions on women’s travel and its insistence that they must have a mahram to enter government medical facilities in some parts of the country have further blocked women from getting access to treatment.

Donor funding has underpinned Afghanistan’s health sector for many years. That left it vulnerable to the decisions of donors – as seen both in cuts to aid and international sanctions against the Taliban, which, since they captured power, have been applied to Afghanistan. Although multiple waivers have since been introduced, sanctions still have to be factored into NGO decision-making. Their health programmes, now, as under the Republic, also have to be planned and implemented in close coordination with the Ministry of Public Health.

For NGOs working in the health sector, navigating the needs of communities, as well as the restrictions, demands and priorities of both donors and the Afghan authorities can be a tricky path to tread, particularly when something major happens. For some NGOs, the USAID cuts this year forced them to close clinics or stop deploying the mobile clinics that reached the most under-served communities. NAC, fortunately, received only very limited US money. However, a decision by the Emirate, in December 2024, to ban all training of female health professionals, including in midwifery, nursing, laboratory sciences and physiotherapy (BBC, Radio Azadi) did leave it with some difficult decisions to be made.

Only paper-trained?

The IEA made no official statements about the ban on health training for women, but the Ministry of Public Health did call the directors of private training institutes to a meeting on 2 December 2024 to tell them this was the case (RFE/RL). Three types of public and private organisations had previously provided health training to Afghan women:

The Institute of Health Sciences, officially known as the Ghazanfar Institute of Health Sciences, is a training authority under the Ministry of Public Health, that provides two to three year diploma programmes for healthcare workers and is responsible for curriculum development and supervision of regional institutes of health sciences. Female students were already blocked from studying there, following the closure of universities to female students in December 2022.

Community education programmes training midwives and other female health professionals in rural areas was carried out by a mix of national and international NGOs and other international agencies and, in a few cases, the government. The benefit of this route was that, as well as being local and often in under-served areas, entry requirements were lower (no need for 12th grade schooling). This avenue for training is also now closed.

Private institutes that offer health training had become the last avenue open for higher education for women and are now also closed to women. However, there was scepticism over the quality of some of the training that had been provided in the private sector. The State of Afghanistan’s Midwifery 2021 report, which delved into the training, qualifications, need and numbers of midwives, found there were almost 35,000 midwife graduates and that the sector was “saturated in terms of quantity of professionals.”^[5] However, it questioned the competency of the 77 per cent of midwifes who had graduated from private institutes, which were not accredited with the Afghan Midwifery and Nursing Education Accreditation Board. It quoted a rapid assessment carried out in 2018 which had found that less than a third of the institutes (31 per cent) met the criteria as clinical sites requiring students to perform a minimum of 40 births assisted before graduation. The equivalent rates for community midwifery education and Institute of Health Sciences courses were 100 and 67 per cent respectively – and the 2021 midwifery report was satisfied it could assume their midwife graduates were competent.

The 2021 report also pointed out that there was high unemployment among midwives – 82 per cent – at the same time as Afghan mothers’ needs were not being met. It said the country needed 18,000 more employed and qualifiedmidwives. In particular, the rural/urban imbalance needed addressing, with an acute need for qualified midwives in rural and hard-to-reach areas.

This data is several years old, but it seems the overall picture is little changed. If anything, the situation will have worsened, as more midwives have graduated from private institutes, while no female doctors or other health professionals have graduated from university since the December 2022 closure. At the same time, as well, qualified and experienced health professionals were among those who left Afghanistan during the mass exodus of 2021.

Adapting to the Emirate’s training ban: apprenticeships and other stopgap measures

The ban on training female health professionals has applied to all community education programmes, including NAC’s. In Kapisa, it had been running midwifery, nursing and physiotherapy courses for the Institute of Health Sciences near Kapisa’s provincial capital, Mahmud-e Raqi, in Kohistan district. NAC’s involvement in medical training began there in 2014 with two-year programmes for 30 female students each in nursing and midwifery. In 2019, the ministry lengthened the courses nationally, to three years. NAC also added physiotherapy to its offer.

In 2020, NAC’s medical courses moved into a new building, with a smaller building alongside that serves as a clinic for women and children, both built by the Ministry of Public Health. The co-location meant students could easily also gain practical skills and experience. In 2023, the clinic was upgraded to a ‘Comprehensive Continuum of Care Centre’ (4C), offering far more extensive services to women and children. There are doctors, including an obstetrics and gynaecology specialist, midwives, specialist nurses, two lab technicians and a pharmacist – the latter three all commuting two hours each way every day from Kabul because of the scarcity of qualified women locally. In the month of October 2025, the clinic treated some 950 patients and delivered 11 babies. It mainly serves local women and children, but also attracts patients from elsewhere in Kohistan, from Kohband and Nejrab districts and the neighbouring provinces of Panjshir and Parwan.

NAC has produced many graduates in midwifery and other specialities over the years. “We give a good quality education,” said NAC Country Director, Terje Magnussønn Watterdal, “our graduates are sought after.” Significantly, he said, there is a focus on medical ethics and patients’ dignity. “There is a reason,” he said, “why many women chose to give birth at home – because medical staff are often not very nice to patients.”

The last cohort of trainees in Kapisa in 2024 had been 148-strong. Some of the women, studying nursing, midwifery and physiotherapy, had come from nearby, but most had travelled a long way – from Bamyan, Parwan, Panjshir, Ghazni and Wardak and remote parts of Kapisa – and stayed in the NAC hostel. Then, the Emirate’s ban came in. “We’d invested a lot in these facilities,” said Watterdal. “We wanted to protect our assets. We had a very open discussion with the provincial director of Public Health about that, so that [those assets] are there when the ban is lifted.”

NAC decided to redirect its activities. In coordination with provincial local health authorities, it set about planning three-month apprenticeships for women who have graduated in nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy, pharmacy and as laboratory technicians from private Institutes of Health Sciences. The aim is to give the apprentices practical experience either in an NAC clinic or in the government provincial hospital. Most, said Watterdal, “had studied theory and had had no opportunity to study anything practical.” So, the apprenticeships are an effort to turn their ‘paper-only’ qualifications, as described in ‘The State of Afghanistan’s Midwifery 2021’ report, into qualifications which are grounded in the necessary practical experience to enable them to work effectively and professionally.

NAC had also established a midwifery training school in Badakhshan, funded by GIZ, in 2024. In July that year, 30 students arrived from three remote and under-served districts in the province, ten from Kohistan, ten from Raghistan and ten from Yawan. NAC’s Midwifery Programme Coordinator, Momina Kohistani, who is herself from one of those districts, distributed the forms: “We found the students and prepared a standard programme, a three year course,” she said, “the girls were very interested.” However, she said, “There were never any graduates: [the girls] just did one term, went home on holiday and then the ban was announced.” NAC has received permission to train the 30 students, not as midwives, but as community-based rehabilitation workers, serving women in general and women and adolescent girls with disabilities in particular.

In Kapisa, NAC took another decision following the ban on training female health professionals – to start a course to train male pharmacy technicians.^[6] This was driven by NAC being midway through a chunk of funding that was due to last until 2026, which it did not want to lose. It also wanted to keep making use of assets, such as the buildings, so that whenever women are again allowed to study, they would still be there. They needed a course that was two-years long, and training to be a pharmacy technician is one of the few health sector diplomas that fulfilled that requirement, besides being a specialisation that is always needed across Afghanistan. “We had to convince the donors,” recalled Dr Habib, NAC’s National Head of Health Programmes, “and then it took some time to sign the agreement with the government. So that after that, we had to rush to get all the contracts, procurement and refurbishment done in order to start with the new class in time this year. But we managed to avoid both losing the money and not putting the facilities to use.”

When the authors visited, the course had just begun. 34 students were being taught, even as some refurbishment works were still taking place to re-adapt the classrooms from their former use. The skills lab was being readied for when the students had progressed enough in their lessons to start practical training. Meanwhile, in another room of this vast complex, mannequins and other teaching material from the midwifery course had been carefully stored, in the hope that one day they could be brought out and used again.

Despite being ‘replacements’, the pharmacy students present were upbeat. Ranging in age between 17 and 24 and coming roughly from the same provinces as their female predecessors, despite the recent uprooting from their families and the busy lessons’ schedule, they were visibly excited to have passed the selection for enrolling in the school. This is now one of the few chances of foreign-funded higher education. Moreover, it is one leading to a prospective career that will allow the students to practice their skills in any corner of the country. As pharmacists, they said, they would be, by the nature of their work, able to establish a connection with Afghans from all groups and walks of life. They were ready, one claimed, to make the most of this rare chance and in the future “to show that we aren’t just khalwatgaran [people seeking protection, assistance], but rather khidmatgaran [servants, providers of service].”

The apprenticeship scheme

NAC’s apprenticeship scheme for women who have graduated from private medical courses relies on foreign funding, so the model is not ideal. However, it has one strong sustainable element in that a good education is rarely wasted and may have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences. Indeed, education was the germ for setting up the 3C clinics, such as the one in Arabkhel. The idea for them had grown, said Terje Watterdal, out of a survey of the midwives who had trained with NAC in previous years in Nangrahar and Laghman provinces. It had found that only half had formal jobs.

We were very disappointed. But then we asked those who weren’t working: Why? and What are you doing? And we found out they were working as midwives in their villages. Sometimes they were paid in cash, or in goods, but they were delivering more babies than in the formal system. That changed the picture for us completely. We wanted to set up a structure where our midwife graduates could organise in a different way.

NAC investigated different practices and found the idea of 3C clinics already promoted by the World Health Organisation in southern Africa and ideal for poor, remote and badly-served areas. “At the beginning,” said Watterdal, “the idea was that patients could pay a little – it should be less than the cost of transport to the nearest clinic. The IEA stopped that and said they should be free.” That does make the project less sustainable for the future, but even if funding ended tomorrow, it seems likely the 3Cs could turn into arrangements similar to the informal arrangements that NAC-graduate midwives found, identified in the survey in Nangrahar and Laghman.

Recovery, disability and dignity

Just how significant good quality, timely medical intervention can be was also seen in NAC’s Women and Child Rehabilitation Centre in Kabul. Set up a year ago, in April 2025, its philosophy is two-fold – curative and preventative:

• Treating those with disabilities to provide physical rehabilitation;
• Treating those who are injured to prevent their injuries becoming permanent.

In its first week, with no publicity, the centre saw 26 patients coming for treatment. By October, 200 patients had come, 15 to 16 a day. A few are referred by medical staff, said one of the physiotherapists at the centre, Nadia Haqjo, but most come through word of mouth. “We register them inside the compound,” she said. “No one waits on the street.” Three physios, provide, on average, ten sessions per patient in a women-only setting. The centre also provides psycho-social support, both at the centre and through outreach (with currently 80-100 patients) and vocational training for 30 female students.

“Lower back pain is what we most commonly see – many women do such heavy work,” said Nadia. “We also see people with spina bifida, amputees, children with delayed development, people with cerebral palsy and those who’ve had strokes or head injuries.” She gave the example of a 50-year old woman who had come to the clinic on the recommendation of a friend. She had a four-year old wound in her leg that had never healed, as well as diabetes, and she was also in a bad economic condition.

She came with a walker. Now, she just uses just a stick. The day the Taliban came to Kabul, she was accidentally injured, a gunshot to the tibia and it had got infected. She’d lost her mobility. The injury had atrophied and it was so painful, she wanted to die. I, myself, felt hopeless when I saw her. 

After cleaning and dressing the infected wound, Nadia began to treat the woman’s other symptoms:

The first job was to improve her balance, also strengthen her muscles and support her morale – that’s very important, to give psychosocial support – and to decrease her pain through manual work and using TENS [Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation, a method of pain relief where electrodes applied to the skin block impulses in underlying nerves]. Now, she’s very happy. She has some mobility. If she’d gone elsewhere, she’d have been rejected.

We also met two-year old Madiha who has cerebral palsy and had arrived constantly trembling and unable to sit up by herself. Now in her third month of treatment, coming to the centre twice a week, she was sitting up and even crawling. Nadia said her brother, five-year old Hekmat, who has the same condition, is now standing.

The centre’s secret, Nadia said, is that they are available, accessible and free, and can give patients time for follow-up visits, home-based if necessary. “If they relapse,” she said, “they can come back.” All of that, of course, costs money, and without funding for the physiotherapy, women’s injuries “can lead to their movement and mobility stopping.” Their problems then become compounded and they can become disabled, which is why Nadia thinks the physio’s work is so vital. “I’m very proud that most of our clients get better,” she said. “We improve their conditions. We have so many success stories. I love my profession.”

From training to practice: how education shapes lives and the wellbeing of communities

This report has so far largely focused on systems, funding and training opportunities – or their absence – and the constraints on women’s healthcare. We wanted to see how training and supporting female health workers affects the lives of the trainees and discovered it transforming not only the lives of the individual health worker, but also the lives of women in entire districts. Such a transformation is summed up in the personal story of NAC’s National Midwifery Coordinator, Momina Kohistani, who comes from one of those districts where there were no girls’ schools. Her own mother had died during childbirth because, Momina said, there were no professional medical staff in her district.

After that, the family moved to Faizabad and Momina was able to get the schooling that would not have been possible in her home district of Kohistan. Because of the circumstances of her mother’s death, Momina always dreamed of becoming a doctor, something her family could not afford. However, when she was in 10th class, she learned that the first midwifery programme in her province, run by Aga Khan Health Services, was to start. From then on, she said, her life changed.

I told my family I wanted to enrol, but they didn’t agree. My father said I had to complete my schooling. Luckily, I got married in the last year of school, and my spouse was interested in my education. Community elders also came to my house to ask that I get an education. My spouse convinced my family, saying to them: “The responsibility [for your daughter] has been given to me. You mustn’t be worried about her future because I’m certain her future will be good.” They gave their agreement and I started training in Badakhshan.

I was very lucky. I became the top student and the student representative for the hospital. Everyone encouraged me, especially the hospital chief. He even offered to pay my university fees, saying: “You must go to medical school.” But at that time, my son was very small – just six months – and when I shared the issue with my husband, although he was happy [with the suggestion], he said: “I can’t afford to support you. And your people need a midwife.” 

So, I graduated on 1 October 2009 and started work on 10 October, after a week spent with my spouse’s family in our home district of Kohistan. When I began to work as a midwife [with the NGO, Medair], I was very young, and the people were thinking: “She won’t be able to do a thing.” 

But in my first days, a mother was transferred to my clinic in shock. I found she had a retained placenta. I gave her IV fluid and removed the placenta with my hands and she was well again after two hours. Her husband had lost his first wife with the same bleeding. He cried. “I can’t believe my wife is alive,” he said. “I can’t believe you saved her!”

After that, all the people realised that this newly-graduated midwife could save lives, and even older women came to see me – to see how I was working – so young and with so little experience. There was a high maternal mortality rate in Badakhshan, especially in Kohistan. One thing I did was to work with my health community shura to identify and find high-risk mothers. We found them, and with UNICEF funding, there was a room in Faizabad that we referred them to go and stay in [until they delivered] because in winter, the roads are closed and emergency travel is impossible.

They’d bring me a cup of milk, an apple, vegetables and when I said the treatment was free and I couldn’t take gifts, they said: “We see you’re alone, you [and your husband] are away from your [birth families], you’re serving us, this is your portion that we’ve taken from our breakfast for you.” At Eid, they’d give me gifts and leave them with the guard to give to me. During that year, I went to many training sessions and meetings in Faizabad, but I used no annual leave or sick leave. … Kohistan is such a very poor, cold, remote area, with no transport. 

Momina’s story demonstrates the value of medical education for both the individual and the community. Especially for women in rural areas, such training means they have a viable livelihood, but the benefits are not just economic, or even to do with saving lives. Research carried out by one of the authors in 2018 for the Italian NGO, Emergency, on a maternity hospital it ran in Panjshir found a surprisingly high percentage of young nurses and midwives from some of Kapisa’s rural districts working there. Several had attended the first educational programmes run by NAC. They reported how many of their classmates had ended up finding jobs with other NGOs and in private or public medical facilities across the region, and also how their status in their home villages had changed. Their new skills and economic status had brought an unprecedented degree of social recognition and acceptance by their families and neighbours. One of the midwifes working with Emergency, hailing from Kapisa, recalled how it had been the encouragement of fellow villagers that tilted the scales in favour of what for her was a brave choice to seek training despite family opposition:

There was a need for a midwife in my village – and till now [at the time of the interview in 2018], I’m still the only girl from there who’s studied midwifery. My family was against my attempts to get a higher education and then going to work outside – my maternal uncle was against the idea, and my father and brother as well. Only my mother wanted me to and she argued with them a lot. Actually though, it was the people of the village who supported me – somebody from the village becoming a midwife who could then help them. Even before I graduated, they started to come to my home to ask for advice and in time they developed a great respect for my skills. Seeing this, even my father started to respect me more, and had to relent. 

When communities see such female healthcare workers in their midst as an asset, it helps to pull down barriers, enhancing the perception of working women, even in conservative rural areas. Momina attributed her success “to the prayers of Kohistan’s mothers,” a measure of the popular support she felt. She said that in her home district, when still in her early 20s, she had became known as the ‘Mother of the Tribe’.

Medical education, especially in rural areas, also gives women the opportunity to earn money and serve their communities in a way that is seen as respectable. It encourages progressive change, as girls’ education and women doing paid work outside the home come to be valued, even in, or perhaps especially in, the most conservative parts of Afghanistan.

A convergence of crises

The NAC apprenticeship programme is aimed, in Momina Kohistani’s words, to help “lift the quality so that there are enough skilled and experienced midwifes.” However, by itself, it cannot solve the looming staffing crisis: when the Emirate closed girls’ secondary schools, it ensured that the pipeline of girls finishing schooling to grade 12, who might go on to train as health professionals, if the ban is ever lifted, is now blocked. Past problems with schooling already mean that in some districts, there are no female high school graduates, and in some entire provinces, they are few on the ground.^[7] In those areas, it is difficult to see how the health of women will ever really improve, so long as girls’ secondary schools are never opened, while nationally, there will inevitably be a gaping deficit in female medical professionals.

Afghanistan’s health system is currently facing a convergence of crises. However, one of them, foreign funding, looks for now, to have been somewhat averted. On 4 November 2025, UNICEF announced that it was getting USD 270 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for 2026. The funding means it will be able to “expand and sustain essential health services for an estimated 23 million people across 17 provinces … support over 1,300 health facilities [and help] ensure that children, women, and men continue to receive quality primary health care close to home.” Afghanistan’s heavy reliance on foreign funding to support and sustain the country’s healthcare system has long been a topic of debate about its sustainability. The closure of hundreds of clinics this year in the wake of the abrupt USAID cut showed just how vulnerable the sector is to the decisions of donors. Yet, even if foreign funding was assured, if secondary schooling and medical training for girls is not restored, the future of Afghan women’s health can only be one of decline.

NAC’s work, always done in coordination with local communities, donors and the Ministry of Public Health and its provincial departments, demonstrates the possibilities and limits of intervention under the current constraints. Establishing small, local clinics in remote districts where there are already trained midwives, supporting women-and-child facilities and quickly adapting training programmes into apprenticeship schemes, show ongoing efforts – at NAC and elsewhere – to maintain professional standards in healthcare and safeguard earlier investments in female health education. These approaches cannot resolve the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan’s health sector, nor serve in any way as a substitute for a functioning national training pipeline, but they do help mitigate the most severe consequences in specific locations and communities.

The stories presented in this report show much of what is ultimately at stake. Momina’s experience demonstrates how education can transform an individual life and lead to long-term community trust in female health workers. Nadia’s shows how sustained, specialised care can restore mobility, dignity and hope to women who would otherwise be excluded from treatment altogether. Yet the gains demonstrated are small and vulnerable. Without restored access to education, institutional protection and sustained funding, even these openings will become fewer and farther between for the next generation of Afghan girls.

NAC’s programmes offer neither a comprehensive solution nor a scalable national substitute. They do, however, show that, even if they are constrained, locally embedded interventions can preserve professional standards and sustain essential services. Even so, without a reversal in restrictions on female education and either a solid international commitment to health financing or a radical change in Emirate funding priorities, these gains will remain fragile — and the cost of their loss will be borne most heavily by Afghan women and their families.

Edited by Rachel Reid