P.O.Box 21375, Washington, D.C. 20009

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

May 24, 2026

Mhd Assem Mayar

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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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.

Table 1: Demand for agricultural products in Afghanistan (1,000 metric tonnes). Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock annual reports

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.

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.

Table 2: Summary of the agricultural products in Afghanistan (1,000 metric tonnes). There is no data for the demand for potatoes and onions, although there are production figures. Source: Ministry of Agriculture annual reports

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).

Figure 1: Wheat production by province, rainfed and irrigated (2021-23 average). Source: USDA

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.

Figure 2: MAIL’s estimates of excess and deficit wheat production in 2019 and 2023 per province. Map by Roger Helms for AAN

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.

Figure 3: Transition from poppy to wheat in Helmand province, before and after the ban. Source: Alcis
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.

Figure 4: Rice harvest distribution across Afghanistan. The map on the left shows USDA’s estimates, the map on the right MAIL’s. Map on the right by Roger Helms for AAN 
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.

Figure 5: Maize production in Afghanistan. Source: USDA
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.

Figure 6: Barley production in Afghanistan. Source: USDA
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.

Figure 7: Irrigated area and vegetable harvests in Afghanistan, 2021. Source: MAIL, English translation by the author
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.

Figure 8: Irrigated area and production of legumes in Afghanistan, 2021. Source: MAIL, English translation by the author
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.

Figure 9: Irrigated areas and production quantities of fruits in Afghanistan, 2021. Source: MAIL, English translation by the author
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.

Figure 10: Groundwater extraction in Afghanistan. Source: FAO Afghanistan

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.

Figure 11: Area level classifications for acute food insecurity in Afghanistan, October 2025. Source: FEWS NET

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 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).

Table 3: WFP food distribution, 2021-25 (metric tonnes). Lipid-based nutrient supplements are designed to prevent and treat malnutrition, particularly in children aged 6-23 months and pregnant and lactating women. Source: WFP.

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.

References

References
↑1 In How the water flows: A typology of irrigation systems in Afghanistan, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, 2008, Bob Rout identified ten major irrigation projects: the Helmand-Arghandab irrigation scheme in Helmand and Kandahar provinces (103,000 hectares of irrigable land); the Sardeh scheme in Ghazni (15,000 ha); the Parwan scheme in Parwan and Kabul (24,800 ha); the Nangrahar scheme (39,000 ha); the Khanabad scheme in Kunduz (30,000 ha); the Shahrawan scheme in Takhar (40,000 ha); the Kelagay scheme in Baghlan (20,000 ha); the Nahr-e Shahi scheme in Balkh (50,000 ha); the Gawargan scheme in Baghlan (8,000 ha); and the Sang-e Mehr scheme in Badakhshan (3,000 ha).
↑2 For more on the Afghan economy, see AAN’s The Afghan Economy Since the Taleban Took Power: A dossier of reports on economic calamity, state finances and consequences for households.
↑3 See UNOCHA, Overview of Funding Shortfall and Impact on Humanitarian Operations as of 14 August 2025, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026 and the UN Financial Tracking Service (FTS) for data on the decline in humanitarian aid since 2022.
↑4 Alcis, a UK-based private company, has been using satellite imagery to monitor wheat and poppy cultivation in Afghanistan since 2022. Its data is accessible here.
↑5 See MAIL’s Annual Agricultural Reports for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. The reports for 2020 and 2019 are not currently available online, but the author previously downloaded them. The FAO Food Balance Sheet (FBS) for Afghanistan (2010-23) provides internationally comparable per‑capita food supply estimates for major commodities, including cereals, pulses, meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables and oils. For Afghanistan, the FBS consistently shows a diet dominated by cereals, particularly wheat, alongside very low per capita consumption of meat, dairy and oils compared with regional and global averages.
↑6 For more on the impact of climate change on agriculture in Afghanistan, see the author’s AAN report The Economic Consequences of Climate Change for Afghanistan: Losses, projections … and pathways to mitigation, March 2025.
↑7 Read more on drought risk in Afghanistan, in the author’s AAN report Droughts on the Horizon: Can Afghanistan manage this risk?, February 2021.
↑8 The Qush Tepa Canal has raised concerns among downstream states, particularly Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, about its potential impact on the Amu Darya flows. Afghanistan argues that it is using its share of transboundary water resources, while analysts have highlighted risks related to water allocation and sustainability (The Diplomat and Kunduz Adylbekova, Water Crisis Looming: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan’s Imperative for the Grand Afghan Canal, Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting/Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 23 July 2023).
↑9 For an analysis of why such programmes failed, see Kate Clark, The Cost of Support to Afghanistan: Considering inequality, poverty and lack of democracy through the ‘rentier state’ lens, 29 May 2022, AAN.
↑10 In its first ‘mini-budget’, for the last three months of financial year 2021 (the only time the Emirate’s Ministry of Finance has released detailed spending figures), 8.7 per cent was allocated to development, although thebudget line was unfunded. The Ministry of Water and Energy had by far the biggest percentage development budget: 673 million afghanis, 76.7 per cent of which was for development. Other ministries ranged from just over 1 to just under 15 per cent) (AAN). In the financial year 2025, the Emirate spent 13.75 per cent of its budget on development, an increase of over a quarter compared to the previous year (World Bank).
↑11 See AAN, Taxing the Afghan Nation: What the Taleban’s pursuit of domestic revenues means for citizens, the economy and the state, showed (2022), especially pages 37-8, which note that taxation of agricultural products can be problematic for poorer households, even though the very poor should be exempted from such levies.
↑12 See also the author’s AAN report, Afghanistan’s Urban Water Dilemma: Why are Afghan cities running out of water?, (2025) for the map of boreholes and their status.
↑13 See NSIA’s Afghanistan Trade Statistics Yearbooks 2024-25, 2023-24, 2022-23, 2021 and 2019 (NSIA has not yet published its 2025 trade report), which are primarily based on ASYCUDA customs records. Afghanistan’s 2024 imports included 272,000 tonnes of wheat (USD 52.67 million); 2.58 million tonnes of wheat flour (USD 680.97 million); 540,942 tonnes of rice (USD 342.68 million); fish (USD 27.98 million); cooking oil (USD 351.5 million) and tea imports valued at USD 65.8 million (green tea) and USD 25.6 million (black tea).
↑14 Iran exports little wheat because its own domestic needs are unmet. On 3 March 2026, following Israelis and US attacks on the country, Iran imposed an indefinite ban on all food and agricultural exports to protect domestic supplies (Global Food Industry News).
↑15 See FEWS NET projections for early 2026 and the UN Financial Tracking Service, which documents the decline in annual civilian aid to Afghanistan from a high of USD 3.8 billion in 2022 to USD 1.2 billion in 2025.
↑16 FEWS NET, Afghanistan Food Security Outlook: October 2025 – May 2026 identifies the northern rainfed belt (Badghis, Balkh, Faryab, Jawzjan, Samangan) as the area of greatest concern due to repeated droughts, high returnee inflows and insufficient humanitarian coverage.

 

Can Afghanistan Feed Itself? Agriculture, trade and food security under pressure
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Holding the Line in Afghanistan: Women’s health in crisis and one NGO’s response 

May 18, 2026

Kate Clark • Fabrizio Foschini

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AAN has considered women’s health in Afghanistan from several angles in recent years, with bleak conclusions. We found provision for women living in rural areas under particular threat, with clinics closing, shortages of female health professionals and economic pressure making it difficult for families to afford transport to a clinic. In 2024, the Islamic Emirate also completely turned off the pipeline for educating new female health professionals – it had already stopped the training of doctors. In an environment where women’s health needs are ever more acute and the operating environment more difficult AAN’s Kate Clark and Fabrizio Foschini wanted to see where female healthcare was faring better. They took up an invitation from the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC) to see some of their work, which includes some creative initiatives on health care and training. They also heard some striking personal stories of how women’s lives and status had been changed by health education.

Patients waiting to be seen at the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee’s 4C clinic in Gardez, Paktia province. Photo: NAC, 26 December 2023
Previous reports by AAN on women’s health include: Is maternal mortality on the rise in Afghanistan? No official data, but much cause for concern and Rural Women’s Access to Health in Afghanistan: “Most of the time, we just don’t go”, both in 2025, and Rural Women’s Access to Health: Poverty, insecurity and traditions are the main obstacles in July 2021.

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.

Lab work carried out at the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee’s 4C clinic, in Gardez, Paktia province.
Photo: NAC, 20 December 2023
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.”

One of the doctors at the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee’s 4C clinic in Kapisa province, sees a patient. Photo: NAC, 24 September 2024
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

References

References
↑1 The Norwegian Afghanistan Committee is one of the grassroots solidarity NGOs established in various countries to support Afghans in the wake of the Soviet invasion. Active since 1980, it opened its first office in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1983, followed by field offices in Ghazni province in 1986 and Badakhshan in 1991 and, from 1997 onwards, an office in Kabul. It currently has programmes in the following fields: health, technical and vocational training, climate change and disaster risk reduction, food security and natural resource management, disability inclusion, humanitarian aid and early childhood development.
↑2 The World Bank gives the following figures for other countries: Bangladesh 115 women dying in childbirth for every 100,000 live births; India 80; Uzbekistan 26; US 17; Iran 16; Tajikistan 14; France 7; Norway 1.
↑3 The order to halt aid, pending an assessment, was made by Donald Trump on the day he was inaugurated for his second term, 20 January 2025 (AAN). The decision to resume only two tiny, short-lived projects came gradually over the next few months and finally the almost complete cessation of aid became clear on 30 April (AAN).
↑4 At its peak in the late 2010s, Afghanistan had more than 3,000 health facilities. By 2024, that had been reduced by about a half, with just over 1,500 still operational. According to the WHO July 2025, Health Cluster Bulletin, only 297 of the approximately 400 districts in Afghanistan’s 34 provinces now have health facilities.
↑5 Research for the report was led by the Afghan Midwives Association (AMA), with the technical and financial support of the Afghanistan Nurses and Midwives Council (ANMC) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
↑6 A pharmacy technician works under a pharmacist and plays a more junior, but still vital role.
↑7 Under the Islamic Republic, insurgency-related insecurity meant that some districts never got girls’ schools. Elsewhere, the plague of ‘ghost teachers’ and ‘ghost schools’ that only existed on paper, while officials pocketed money meant for wages and operations, undermined education at all levels and of both boys and girls (see AAN’s 2017 report, A Success Story Marred by Ghost Numbers).

 

Holding the Line in Afghanistan: Women’s health in crisis and one NGO’s response 
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The Final Hours: An Afghan family’s flight to safety

May 13, 2026

An Afghan family’s flight to safety

By George Packer
The Atlantic Magazine
Illustration of a man and a woman holding a child, being questioned by officials with a plane overhead.
Illustration by Susie Ang
This is a story about what happens when you are stateless and powerless—the daily humiliations, the endless waiting, the impossible choices, the dependence on strangers, the danger in every official encounter, the high price of survival, the struggle for dignity.

Safia Noori and Fakhruddin Elham are a young Afghan couple who both served in the Afghan special forces, fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan. After the fall of Kabul, they fled Taliban persecution in their own country, then escaped to Pakistan, where they lived as refugees with their two small children, waiting for the United States to make good on its promise to bring Afghan allies to this country. Last year, Donald Trump returned to power and broke that promise, closing the doors to resettlement. Around the same time, the Pakistani government stopped renewing the visas of Afghan refugees and began deporting them by the hundreds of thousands. The family became fugitives with no legal status, hiding from the police in Islamabad to avoid being sent back to death or misery in Afghanistan, trying to find a way to safety.

On March 24, this magazine published my story about Safia and Elham. (I gave them pseudonyms for their own protection, but can safely use their real names now.) That day, an acquaintance who leads an international humanitarian organization, and who had brought the family’s plight to the attention of high-level Spanish officials back in January, used my essay to nudge Madrid about the family’s request for asylum, and Madrid nudged its embassy in Islamabad, setting in motion the maddening, dreamlike events that followed.

The next day, on March 25, the Spanish ambassador sent a letter approving the family’s travel to Spain for “international protection.” The embassy instructed Safia to send copies of plane tickets for Madrid, as well as all-important exit permits from the government of Pakistan, before their visas could be issued.

Spain’s positive decision didn’t guarantee anything. The family now had to get out of Pakistan without being caught and deported. This was difficult for Afghans in any circumstance; two wars would make it even harder. The American and Israeli attacks on Iran had shut down commercial flights over much of the Middle East and left only one viable route from Islamabad to Madrid—through Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. The other war, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, received much less international attention, but it had turned Afghan refugees, already a despised underclass around the region, into pariahs in Pakistan. Safia and Elham became enemies of a state that wanted to punish them for the actions of a Taliban regime in Kabul that regarded them as traitors and infidels.

A few days before hearing from the Spanish embassy, Safia and Elham had paid $1,400 to a fixer at a “travel agency” that put them on a waitlist for three-month tourist visas issued through a Pakistani consulate somewhere in Afghanistan. (The official cost for such a visa was $8, but obtaining one the normal way, through Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, was virtually impossible.) Safia explained to me that this sketchy document would keep them relatively safe from the police while they looked for some way to leave Pakistan, but it wouldn’t be official enough to legalize their status. Also, the $1,400 was just a deposit. Delivery of the visas, not including ones for the children, would eventually cost $3,100—or maybe more. The price fluctuated almost daily, as if visas were being sold like black-market gasoline. Now, with Spain allowing the family to travel to Madrid, the $1,400 was a sunk cost.

The Pakistani government finds ingenious ways to profit off the desperation of Afghan refugees. It requires every foreigner without a valid Pakistani visa to obtain permission to leave the country—a document called, without irony, a “Humanitarian Safe Passage Exit Permit.” Four of them would cost the family $2,650 in fines and fees for overstaying the expired visas that Pakistan refused to renew. Even then, the exit permits weren’t certain. Like most things in Pakistan, they depended on connections and bribes.

First, Elham had to register their 2-year-old son, Yusuf, who didn’t have an entry visa, because he had been born in Pakistan, but who couldn’t leave without being recorded in the national database. This task required Elham to spend a day driving around Islamabad in the car of his Pakistani landlord, who had become a kind of guardian angel to the family because he and Safia were both Shiite Muslims, co-religionists of an oppressed minority. To prevent Elham’s Afghan accent from giving him away at the many police checkpoints, the landlord claimed him as his mute brother.

But even with a Pakistani at his side, Elham was turned away from one registration office after another. “When they checked my documents and saw that I am Afghan, they told me to leave the office and said that this matter was not their responsibility,” he told me later. Finally, the landlord called a friend in the Interior Ministry, who got the matter resolved. But Elham’s day spent wandering through bureaucratic Islamabad, he told me, “truly shows how people take advantage of the suffering of others.”

Pakistan now required all Afghans to pick up their exit permits in person at the Interior Ministry—but this seemed a likely trap for arrest and deportation. The work-around, of course, meant yet another bribe, and on Friday, March 27, Safia and Elham transferred $600 through the “travel agency” to the bank account of a ministry employee. In exchange, they were told, the exit permits would be issued digitally the following Monday.

“I do not trust the government of Pakistan at all, not even one percent,” Safia wrote to me. “But this situation is about bribery, and I know that in such cases, once they receive the money, they usually complete the work. By Monday, everything should become clear.” Meanwhile, the family would shop for suitcases and clothing to prepare for their departure, which seemed more and more like a jailbreak.

I was sending money to their landlord by way of Western Union for their expenses. (When I described the situation to my editors at The Atlantic, they decided to have the magazine reimburse me for some of the money I spent on the family’s travel.) By now I was exchanging a dozen messages a day with Safia and Elham. As they came closer to escape, I found it hard to concentrate on anything other than getting them out. But every day threw an unreasonable, enraging obstacle in their path.

Monday arrived. Safia and Elham waited all day for their exit permits. In the late afternoon the Interior Ministry issued a single permit: for 2-year-old Yusuf. Apparently, the rest were delayed by a computer glitch. Their fixer at the “travel agency” reported that the other permits would come within an hour if the glitch could be solved. If not, then tomorrow. An hour passed. Night fell. Safia and Elham drank coffee to stay awake. “Only when the exit permits finally arrive will my heart become calm and I will be able to sleep,” Safia told me.

The next morning brought no permits. The word now was that they would be sent at two in the afternoon. Two o’clock came and went. The unofficial price had apparently gone up. At 4:30 Safia wrote with alarming news: “They have stopped all exit permits and are not approving them. They said that tomorrow I and all my family members must go in person to the Ministry of Interior, and only then there may be a possibility of approval.” By now just hearing the word Pakistan left Safia trembling. She was, she said, “going crazy from worry.”

I didn’t think it was a good idea for a family of Afghan refugees to show up at the heavily guarded Interior Ministry, which was subordinate to Pakistan’s intelligence service, a rogue agency widely accused of aiding terrorist groups, including the Taliban during the American war in Afghanistan. I reached out to everyone I knew with Pakistani government contacts who could spring the exit permits. A friend managed to reach a top official in the Foreign Ministry, who agreed to help.

But Safia had already made up her mind. Life in Pakistan was unbearable. She would gather her courage and move toward her dreams or be handed over to the Taliban and killed. She was ready to accept either outcome.

The next morning, April 1, the family’s landlord drove them to the white concrete Interior Ministry building. Safia, Elham, and the children went inside the reception hall—a cramped room where two men in civilian clothes sat behind a counter. Safia handed over their passports and receipts showing that they had paid for the exit permits.

According to Safia, as soon as the men realized that these were Afghans standing in front of them, their manner turned hostile. One of them glared at her. “Come back next week,” he told her. “Then your work will be done.”

As politely as possible, Safia explained that their papers were in order, their fines had been paid along with extra “fees,” and they urgently needed the permits so they could leave Pakistan.

The official’s face hardened. “Afghans have no right to speak here,” he said. “Leave the hall.” He threw the family’s papers on the floor.

Safia was 26 years old. The past five years had brought many blows. The loss of her career in the Afghan military after the fall of Kabul, and of any hope for a decent life in her native country. A suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport gate that left scores of corpses all around her in a sewage ditch and barely spared Safia, her husband, and the child in her womb. The family’s flight from Taliban pursuers across Afghanistan, during which they survived on rice, bread, and water and slept in strange houses and mountain caves. Safia’s overwhelming desire in the worst moments to end her own life, which only her husband’s sympathy and the thought of her unborn child prevented. The two weeks Safia spent all alone in a Kabul hospital as she struggled to give birth to their daughter, Victoria, while her family stayed away for their safety and hers. The decision to sell everything she owned, including her wedding dowry, to pay for a black-market passport, then say goodbye to her parents and siblings and escape with her husband and baby into Pakistan. The refugee years that followed—the forms and interviews and medical exams the family was put through as they waited in vain for America to make good on its promise to bring its Afghan allies to safety. Those last months spent hiding from Pakistani police in a sunless room. The daily insults of petty bureaucrats. The waste of her youth, her life.

But instead of breaking, Safia clung with all her strength to the only thing she hadn’t lost.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” she told the men in the ministry. “I’m not a terrorist. I’m a woman.” She later told me that her voice shook and rose nearly to a shout. “You must not treat me this way. I deserve to be treated like a human being. We’re human beings! Look at my children—what is their fault? You should be happy we’re leaving your country. I’ll file a complaint if you don’t do your job. We won’t leave until you do it!”

She sat down in a chair as if she would never again get up. An hour passed. Then one of the men called her to the counter. “You are very stubborn,” he said, and disappeared with their documents into an inner office. Half an hour later he emerged and handed over the exit permits. “Go,” he commanded.

Safia laughed. “Soon I’ll go, and I will never see this place again.”

Elham was hearing stories of Afghan travelers at the Islamabad airport separated from other passengers by immigration officers, harassed with impossible demands, and shaken down for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. One family missed their flight to asylum, their exit permits expired, and they were deported to Afghanistan.

I discussed these last-minute risks with an American lawyer named Tom Villalon—a member of a tiny nonprofit called Rescue Afghan Women Now that helps keep dozens of Afghan women who’d served in their country’s military alive in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Last week, one of them, a widow with two young sons, was arrested and deported to Kabul. Pakistan is now deporting as many as 5,000 Afghans a day.) Villalon had a colleague who knew the brother of a senior Pakistani official, and this man agreed to contact the immigration chief at the airport to ensure that Safia and Elham would be allowed to leave. I can’t tell you the brother’s name, just as I have to keep the landlord’s name out of this story. Among all the grief that Pakistan caused the family, some Pakistanis treated them with extraordinary kindness, and for that they might be punished.

The Turkish Airlines flight was scheduled to depart Islamabad in the predawn hours of Friday, April 10. That night I was with my wife and daughter in Córdoba, in the south of Spain. We had come for a short vacation, but also in hopes of meeting Safia, Elham, Victoria, and Yusuf at the Madrid airport. A picture appeared on my phone: a family selfie inside the terminal, broad smiles; by chance, 4-year-old Victoria was wearing a T-shirt that read ESCAPE. Sometime before midnight in Spain—1:30 a.m. in Pakistan—Elham tried to reach me on WhatsApp, but the call was dropped. A few minutes later a text message came. Turkish Airlines would not let them board the flight.

Their luggage had been weighed, and they were about to receive boarding passes, when two airline employees noticed the family and demanded their passports. One of the employees, a young Pakistani woman, sneered: “Go away, dirty Afghans, damned Afghans. Sit there. No one will allow you to travel.”

When the family didn’t move, the other employee, a Pakistani man who seemed to be the manager, snapped: “The lady is telling the truth. Why don’t you go over there? Didn’t you hear what she said? Do you want us to call the police to force you to leave?” The family abandoned the ticket counter and went to sit down. The manager called Elham back and told him that they couldn’t board their flight without return tickets—to Kabul. Elham displayed their Spanish visas and the letter from the ambassador granting their request to travel to Spain for asylum, but it made no difference.

Elham had spent five years in the Afghan special forces, fighting alongside American troops. Military service had given him a highly respected place in society. Now, to save his family, he had to try to put an American journalist he’d never met on the phone with an airline employee who suddenly had the power to ruin their lives. But the manager continued to insult Elham and refused to talk with me, and it seemed as if the family’s chance at freedom was going to slip away at the very last minute. If they weren’t able to reach safety, I thought to myself, then the world was an utterly hopeless place.

Then Villalon, the American lawyer, discovered that Turkish Airlines had flights from Madrid through Istanbul to Kabul. I got online, bought four fully refundable tickets, and sent them to Safia’s email. Their sudden appearance on her phone seemed to upset the manager, but he had to let the family go. A few minutes later, Safia sent me a message: “My heart has grown very dark toward this place.”

The last station in this gantlet of abuse was immigration. The family was sent to Booth #8, but Booth #8 sent them to Booth #3. Booth #3 was empty. Then Booth #1 called them over. Several officers examined the passports and conferred. Elham overheard enough of their Urdu to realize that the officers were familiar with the names of his family. One of them told Elham. “We’ll check your documents and make sure there’s no problem.”

The children were exhausted and had begun to cry. “There’s no problem,” Elham said. “We paid a lot of money to put everything in order.” And he added—perhaps with a gleam in his eye, since he was about to recover a morsel of all that Pakistan had taken from him: “If you want, I’ll call the brother of the senior official right now.”

“No, no, don’t call. Your documents are fine.”

Passports stamped—the last trace of Pakistan. The family started toward the departure gate, but the immigration officer had one more thing to say.

“If they hadn’t reported your names to us, we wouldn’t have allowed you to leave from here. We would have deported you to Afghanistan tonight.”

“Why?”

Elham would never forget the answer.

“Because you are Afghans.”

On the sidewalk outside the departures hall of Terminal 1 at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport, a dark-haired little girl in a yellow T-shirt is running toward me with outstretched arms. A minute later, in pictures taken by my daughter, Elham, Safia, Victoria, and Yusuf look impossibly young and hopeful.

And now they live in Madrid. Elham quickly mastered the metro, and Safia is competing with her husband in language acquisition, and Victoria and Yusuf love riding on playground swing sets. The Spanish government provides temporary housing in a neighborhood of outer Madrid, three meals a day, metro cards, Spanish lessons, recreational activities, and school for Victoria, while the family’s asylum request moves through the system. All alone in this strange country, Safia and Elham are determined to learn, work, and build a life for their children.

One day, Elham showed me a picture of a small desktop stand on which he’d placed the flags of Afghanistan and the United States. It made my heart sink. America didn’t deserve his unrequited loyalty. “Why not the Spanish flag?” I asked. After all, Spain had given his family the second chance that America denied them. Elham agreed: He would put a Spanish flag alongside the other two, which, he told me, stood for the bond between us.

When the Trump administration locked out Safia’s family and nearly all refugees, the rest of the world did the same. Pakistan and Iran have deported millions of Afghans back into misery; Canada, Australia, and other countries known for humanitarianism have narrowed the pathway to safety; most of Europe has shut itself off from desperate and oppressed people. Safia’s younger sister, a talented artist and writer, is stuck in Afghanistan, trying to resist a forced marriage to a Talib. Elham’s brother is being held in a Taliban prison because of Elham’s military service. It’s impossible for me to appreciate Spain’s generosity to this family without also thinking of the scale of injustice around the world, the toll of countless humiliations.

At night Safia still dreams of Pakistan. “It is as if our bodies have left, but part of our souls are still trying to escape,” she told me. “Those days left such deep marks on our spirits.” But after many years of only surviving, she said, “little by little I feel that a new chapter is opening before us. For the first time in a long time, alongside all the pain, I can also feel hope. I can feel that maybe life still holds beauty for us.”

The Final Hours: An Afghan family’s flight to safety
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We were doing well when I left

May 13, 2026
Tom Stevenson
London Review of Books
21 May 2026
Choosing Defeat: The Twenty-Year Saga of How America Lost Afghanistan 
by Paul D. Miller.
Cambridge, 545 pp., £35, October 2025, 978 1 009 61437 5

The United States​ brought the war on terror to practically every part of the world – landing military advisers on the Sulu archipelago in the Philippines, operating black sites in Poland and Romania, filling the cages of Guantánamo Bay. But the challenge to American power presented by the 11 September attacks came from a particular region: what Adam Garfinkle, a future speechwriter for both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, referred to in 1999 as the Greater Middle East. Iraq would suffer what George W. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, called the ‘full wrath of the United States of America’. Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia were subjected to a drone assassination programme. Iran was placed ‘right at the top of the list’ of America’s enemies by Cheney – even if it took his successors another two decades to get round to attacking it. But Afghanistan occupied a special place. The US would use the country, as Douglas Feith, who served in Bush’s administration, later put it, to ‘send signals to the Libyas, and the Syrias, and the Sudans, and the Iraqs and the Irans’. Once thought of as ‘the other war’ or the ‘good war’, Afghanistan became the forever war. By the time it ended in 2021 at least 175,000 people had been killed, not counting the far larger number of deaths caused indirectly by disease and malnutrition.

The basic story of the war can be told in relatively simple terms. A complacent empire struck at from its furthest periphery sought brutal retribution and enacted a bloody occupation. Eventually it grew tired and withdrew, leaving behind no great transformation. Many of those who had been involved in the war’s inception saw the chaotic Nato withdrawal in August 2021 as a betrayal both of Afghanistan and of the project of American power in the world. There are still eccentrics who believe the occupation failed because the US and its lieutenants were insufficiently committed to terrorising the locals. As with Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is not yet widely acknowledged to have been a crime rather than just a mistake, but even the political establishment in the West sees it as a cautionary tale.

An effort to rehabilitate the memory of the war may therefore seem to have a certain romantic quality. A former CIA officer enlisted in the war effort, Paul Miller is one of the few US officials of that period who focused his career on Afghanistan. From the CIA he made his way to the staff of Douglas Lute, adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan to both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Between 2007 and 2009 Miller was director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the US National Security Council, and was in the room when many of the major decisions of the war were taken. He has now set out to rescue its reputation from posterity. In his account, it was embarked on with fine intentions, even if it was conducted with carelessness. It dragged on for two decades and ended in a loss, but only because ‘every president who oversaw the war made major strategic errors’: Bush decided to invade Iraq; Obama announced the timeline for withdrawal during the surge; Trump gave the game away to the Taliban by negotiating that withdrawal; and Biden conducted the coup de grâce. If it hadn’t been for all that, the American adventure in Afghanistan could have been won.

Whether or not a war is winnable depends on its objectives. According to Miller, Afghanistan was ‘a clear-cut just war of self-defence’ which ‘just happened to require liberating an oppressed people’. In common with most accounts of the war, his neglects to mention that in September 2001 Afghanistan was in a state of incipient famine. In 1999 and 2000, the country had suffered drought and crop failures. A joint UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme mission found the ‘almost total failure of the 2001 harvest’, reporting that five million people would require international food shipments to survive. When the bombing campaign began that October the aid agencies were forced to suspend this programme. Médecins sans Frontières warned that ‘the air strikes, lack of aid and onset of winter will only magnify this catastrophe.’ Mass starvation was avoided by the concerted action of relief agencies when the air campaign abated in December 2001. But in September, when the decision was taken to attack, it wasn’t clear that this would be possible. No one seemed to care very much.

Miller argues that carpet-bombing perhaps the poorest country on earth as it faced famine was the only option. The standard argument used to justify the invasion was that the Taliban and al-Qaida were bound together by pact and thus were ‘indistinguishable’. But even if one were to accept that argument, the Taliban had no capacity to resist US action, so America could have ignored it – concentrating instead on trying to capture the al-Qaida leadership. This was never considered. As Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, said in December 2001, ‘If you walked in and said “Here is Mr bin Laden” the problem would not go away.’ The invasion was ineffective in targeting al-Qaida’s leaders, who largely survived it and evaded capture. Some were captured at Tora Bora, but bin Laden lived for another decade, until the raid on Abbottabad. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in 2003, not by American soldiers but by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, in Rawalpindi. Abu Hamza Rabia and Abu Laith al-Libi were assassinated by drone strikes in Waziristan in 2005 and 2008. Ayman al-Zawahiri survived numerous assassination attempts by drone before he was killed in Kabul in 2022.

Defences of the initial invasion often put great emphasis on the fact that the US had offered the Taliban the chance to surrender. Shortly after the 11 September attacks, the CIA’s Islamabad station chief, Bob Grenier, travelled to Quetta to meet the Taliban leaders Abdul Jalil Akhund and Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who told him that the Taliban ‘would not risk the destruction of their nation for the sake of one man’. The CIA director at the time, George Tenet, is said to have passed a message via the ISI to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, to say that the Taliban could avoid war if they gave up bin Laden. Omar refused to do so without proof that he had been responsible for 9/11. In Miller’s version, Bush and Cheney were models of emollience, and the fact that the US began marshalling its proxy forces on 12 September is merely evidence of prudent planning. But the idea that there was a real American attempt to avoid war is challenged by all serious scholarship. The US never entertained any option other than a full attack on Afghanistan. One reason for the Taliban’s obstinacy may have been that they knew what they were dealing with. As Wendy Chamberlin, the US ambassador to Pakistan, put it, ‘there was no inclination in Washington to engage in a dialogue with the Taliban.’ Miller disputes this. But the US certainly knew its demand that the Taliban hand over the al-Qaida leadership would never be accepted. As Bush himself would later write, it was intended to ‘firm up our justification for a military strike’.

The attack on Afghanistan began on 7 October and employed a combination of tactics – aerial bombardment and special forces working with local proxies. The CIA arrived in the Panjshir Valley with guns and cash for the Northern Alliance, a collection of mostly Tajik and Uzbek warlords who had a long history of collaborating with the agency – some of them had been involved in the destruction of Kabul in the 1990s after the fall of the communist regime. CIA officers handed $100,000 in cash to Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf (who had palled around with bin Laden in the past). The UK Special Boat Service embedded with Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose men would soon herd hundreds of Taliban supporters into shipping containers to be suffocated to death, before bulldozing their bodies into holes in the desert. The notion that the CIA teamed up with Dostum, Fahim Khan and Gul Agha Sherzai to secure the principled liberation of Afghanistan is ludicrous, but Miller never questions it.

The air campaign mirrored the brutality meted out by the US’s local auxiliaries. Miller quotes Ryan Crocker, America’s first chargé d’affaires in Kabul, who described the devastation. ‘Just driving in from Bagram to Kabul, not a building standing ... whole city blocks of Kabul were gone,’ Crocker wrote. ‘It looked like pictures of Berlin in 1945.’ (This description is offered not as a reflection on the attack but to demonstrate the need for reconstruction programmes.) In only two months the US had achieved what it thought was a ‘stunning victory’. As the Taliban leadership withdrew to Pakistan, the CIA rode into Kabul and took over the Ariana Hotel. Tens of thousands of Northern Alliance supporters sought their share of the spoils. The ease of the assault demonstrated the weakness of the Taliban state that was allegedly ‘protecting’ bin Laden, who sought the safety of the Spin Ghar mountains rather than a Taliban bunker.

By early 2002 the US believed it had won the war. Miller thinks in hindsight that the ‘light footprint’ of the early occupation was a mistake. It doesn’t help his argument that the examples he offers of successful state-building by the US and its allies are the Balkans, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The merits and demerits of state-building were much debated. But in 2002 the US wasn’t willing to spend much on Afghanistan (the easy money didn’t start flowing until much later). Miller argues that the US prioritised counterterrorism and set aside ‘virtually no resources’ for roads, schools and hospitals during the first two years of the occupation. Having spent $4.5 billion on three months of war, it set up a paper-thin transitional government on shoestring funds.

The Afghan Interim Administration and the Transitional Administration that succeeded it were dressed up as governments, but in practice they were satrapies dependent on external sponsorship. Hamid Karzai was chosen to lead the administration because of his American connection, his claim to a Pashtun lineage and because unlike Zahir Shah – another possibility – he hadn’t once been king. Days before the invasion the CIA had told Karzai, then in Pakistan, to get on his motorbike and enter the country. With his past support for the Taliban absolved, the Americans gave him a security team. After he was informed by a satellite phone call from Bonn that he would head the new government he started travelling around with American bodyguards. Almost all the political figures in post-invasion Afghanistan had ties of some sort to US intelligence. And as Miller notes, ‘for all intents and purposes, there was no government outside of Kabul and a few provincial capitals well into 2005.’

In a story brimming with failures Miller sees the internationally sponsored government in Kabul as one of the ‘islands of success’, crediting Karzai’s administration with producing ‘a more open society’. Miller praises the new Afghan army and police forces for fighting off the Taliban for more than a decade. But while they were supposed to be building a professional army, US forces were hiring local militia members whenever they needed muscle. America spent billions of dollars on anti-narcotics programmes; the result was a net increase in poppy cultivation. Miller claims to admire the work of the academic Thomas Barfield on the American state-building endeavour. But unlike Miller, Barfield saw that post-invasion Afghanistan was a corrupt paper state dependent on international donations, offering little to the population and subject to the final authority of the US empire. As he put it in 2010, the ‘unexpected measure of goodwill from the Afghan people in 2002 was heedlessly squandered in the coming years by inept policies that failed to bring security to many regions’.

Soon enough the Taliban recovered from its defeat. It started ambushing coalition forces, downing helicopters, attacking the funerals of collaborating clerics and conducting suicide operations at Bagram airbase, withdrawing into tribal Pakistan when necessary. The British army redeployed to Helmand in 2006 in the hope that a reputation destroyed in Iraq might be rescued by fighting the insurgency alongside the reasonable Canadians and Dutch. But in the event they often ended up fuelling the violent conflict they were ostensibly there to prevent. That is, when they weren’t executing farmers in their beds in front of their wives. Somehow this didn’t help eliminate support for the Taliban.

Miller tries to finesse this by arguing that if the occupation forces behaved poorly it is because there were too few of them, and that if there had been more they might have been more professional. But given his claims about the merits of the occupation it’s unclear why he thinks there was an insurgency at all. His view seems to be that the Taliban, by some metaphysical means, conjured up a bitter struggle across the country against an impeccable project. When American planners realised how severe the insurgency was they sent in the marines, who couldn’t speak the local languages, to train Afghan police and soldiers who couldn’t speak English. Young men were plucked from their villages, given a couple of weeks of training and then sent to man rural checkpoints. In the best-case scenario, they answered to the corrupt Ministry of the Interior in Kabul; often they ended up working with the Taliban. Miller says he knew at the time that the situation was ‘dire’. But it’s difficult to square that with his general claim, which is that if the cheques for the phantom Afghan army brigades had arrived a year earlier it would all have been different.

Obama​ entered office in 2009 believing that the situation in Afghanistan could be turned around. The first year of his presidency put paid to that. His two major innovations were the drone campaign in Waziristan and the surge. In February 2009, the US deployed 21,000 more soldiers and another 30,000 arrived in December. At the height of the surge there were 150,000 US and coalition troops in the country. Miller is very critical of Obama’s decision to put a public timetable on the surge (stating that the bulk of US forces would return home in July 2011), which he sees as the hinge point in the whole war. The timetable was intended to send a message to the government in Kabul that it had a limited amount of time to get its act together, but in fact the pre-announcement meant that the Taliban knew when the American push would end. The surge ensured there were plenty of American soldiers around, but it also drew closer attention to the nature of the Afghan government, which was festering in a way that was obvious even to the US officials who visited. When Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative, and Vice President Joe Biden met Karzai they immediately saw the problem. In 2009, Holbrooke and Karzai tried to rig the upcoming elections in different directions. In the resulting mess Karzai remained in place. Miller holds the view that it was a great moral achievement that a certain percentage of women won office in these fraudulent elections – presumably so they could work alongside the CIA assets in the cabinet.

Miller is preoccupied by the reason American officials, and Americans in general, thought of the war in Afghanistan in the way they did. He records that in 2001 the war had near unanimous support in the US, and still had substantial majority support in 2008. But by the end of the surge in 2012 enthusiasm had been replaced by a sense of futility. Miller chalks some of this up to a ‘mood music of pessimism that would swell throughout the war’. But the real reason the Obama administration scaled back its ambitions was the feeling that the whole thing was beyond repair. Though the US is thought to have provided more than $130 billion to the Afghan state between 2002 and 2021, most of it went straight to security forces and much of the rest was siphoned off to accounts in the Gulf and Switzerland. Looked at from this perspective, the war in Afghanistan wasn’t ‘wasteful’ so much as an efficient vehicle for the transfer of public funds to arms companies and contractors.

The American military commanders and political appointees who circled in and out of Afghanistan in those years tended to cling to a common delusion. Miller has interviewed plenty who believe they made great progress when they were there – a sentiment captured in the phrase ‘we were doing well when I left.’ He is kinder to those who opposed withdrawal. Leon Panetta, CIA director and then secretary of defence under Obama, tells Miller it was an achievement that ‘for twenty years we were able to prevent Afghanistan from collapsing and having the Taliban take over.’ Some officials knew how bad the situation was. Miller takes to task Chuck Hagel, Panetta’s successor at the Pentagon, for believing the US was losing while also wanting to withdraw (if the war was being lost, that should have been an argument for persevering). The fate of the surge was another example of a lack of commitment among American political leaders to ‘the moral necessity of victory in a just cause’.

The first time US officials made formal contact with the Taliban was in 2010, when a former aide to Mullah Omar came to Munich. The US insisted the Taliban accept principles (inclusion, pluralism) that it claimed were hallmarks of the administration it had erected in Kabul. The Taliban said it wouldn’t talk to Karzai. It was two years before the talks were picked up again. The second round of negotiations was half-hearted, but it did lead to the establishment of the Taliban office in Doha, which Karzai worried might look like a government in exile. The main problem the US had in dealing with the Taliban was that it had little to offer: its soldiers were already going home in advance of a planned full handover to the Afghan government. But the Kabul administration was already starting to lose territory. Narrow defeats for government forces in 2014 were followed by routs in Kunduz and Helmand in 2015. Obama was soon talking of bringing the war to a ‘responsible conclusion’. Miller credits Peter Lavoy, a veteran of the national security bureaucracy, with persuading Obama not to withdraw in 2016 and to keep 12,000 troops in place.

From then on the occupation was a holding action. Most of the coalition soldiers were doing little fighting, with the exception of American and British special forces death squads, which continued to terrorise the countryside. When Trump entered office it was on a platform that included getting the US out of Afghanistan. But he ended up introducing another 3000 troops and increasing the rate of airstrikes. It wasn’t until September 2018 that he tasked the US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, with reopening negotiations with the Taliban. The Doha Agreement signed by Pompeo and Abdul Ghani Baradar in February 2020 stipulated that the US would leave Afghanistan fourteen months later and that the Taliban would not give safe haven to al-Qaida (in addition to whatever was included in a classified annex about anti-terrorism co-operation). Khalilzad, who had been there from the start, knew the US presence had run its course, but seems to have believed that the government in Kabul would persist in some form for longer than it did.

The Taliban began its offensive just after May 2021, the withdrawal deadline in the agreement. The Afghan army nominally had more than 200,000 men and should have been capable of holding the territory Kabul controlled. But the real function of the Afghan army units wasn’t to fight: it was to reinforce the political balance in Kabul. Miller blames the US for withdrawing military supplies to the Afghan helicopter fleet, which is fair enough. Still, there’s no reason to think this would have changed anything. In August the Taliban captured all the provincial capitals, including Kabul, in a matter of days. Ashraf Ghani, who had become president in 2014, fled to Uzbekistan and then to the UAE.

The debacle of the US withdrawal, being closer to us in time, now looms larger than most of the malfeasances of the war itself. The US had to scramble to evacuate more than 100,000 people in two weeks. A suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai airport in Kabul killed 170 Afghans and 13 US troops. In return a US drone strike killed ten Afghan civilians (seven of them children). Miller considers the withdrawal the core defeat of the war and an unnecessary act of abandonment. If the government in Kabul was still unable to govern the country after twenty years, all the more reason to stay. The forever war, he argues, ‘was affordable, sustainable, and successful at the bare minimum goal of keeping the lid on Afghanistan’. He comes down hard on Biden for going through with the withdrawal, and charges him with thinking that the war in Afghanistan was fundamentally similar to the Vietnam War (of which Miller also seems to think Biden was too critical). He makes no mention of the Parthian shot of freezing the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank during yet another humanitarian crisis.

In reality, since the early days of the Obama administration US leaders had often seen Afghanistan as an extravagance they could no longer afford. As early as 2009, the political scientist Robert Jervis argued that the presence of the international coalition was a problem in itself. The Taliban had roots in Afghan society: it was never going to be excluded from the country’s future. ‘Withdrawal without winning’ was the probable result. Jervis argued that if the Taliban simply took over, as was likely, the US would not be threatened to a significant degree. And the supposed reputational damage was exaggerated. Would the US really ‘appear more resolute – and wiser – for fighting in Afghanistan’? If not, why not withdraw?

Despite years of discussion of the prospect, the withdrawal was greeted in much of the American press with hysterical laments over the death of the American empire. Miller is unwilling to reckon with the possibility that the manner of the war’s end revealed something about its nature. He refers to the withdrawal as ‘the Versailles of the war on terror’, a comparison that speaks for itself. But the scarpering retreat can be counted among the war’s less shameful episodes. In April 2023, Biden’s White House published its official version of events, in which it blamed the Trump administration for the loss of territory to the Taliban, and US intelligence agencies for excessively sanguine assessments of the Kabul government. The withdrawal was justified by two conflicting claims. The US ‘had become bogged down in a war in Afghanistan with unclear objectives and no end in sight’, but it had also ‘accomplished its mission in Afghanistan’. The report’s conclusion was more plausible: ‘The speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan suggests that there was no scenario – except a permanent and significantly expanded US military presence – that would have changed the trajectory.’

Because the war dragged on for as long as it did (Afghanistan is officially the longest war in US history), substantial reflections on its legacy appeared quite quickly. In 2021, Carter Malkasian published a major history of the war that made stinging criticisms of practically every facet of the undertaking. His conclusion was that the US had reanimated a brutal civil war and that the international intervention was ‘a blight on the peace and wellbeing of the people of Afghanistan’. Miller is superficially respectful of the breadth of Malkasian’s knowledge and his access to Pashto sources, but still accuses him of adopting the Taliban perspective. Lapsing into the rhetorical style of the early 2000s, he charges Malkasian with believing ‘the United States was an illegitimate, occupying power’ and implying ‘moral equivalence between the mistakes of the American war and the tyranny of Taliban rule’.

Miller himself sees the war in Afghanistan as a classic defeat of the will. If the US and its accomplices had summoned the fortitude, the war could have been won. There is a clear echo here of the idea that the US lost the Vietnam War on the home front – a view popular among former officials involved in its conduct. Perhaps it is more convenient, in both cases, to believe this than to accept that you have helped lead your country into a futile war that killed tens of thousands of people. The US may have ‘fought a selfish war with little regard for the Afghans’. But that was incidental. Another war had been possible. Just think, the US could still be in Afghanistan today.

Miller claims his book is a re-examination of the war and his part in it. But it is closer to an apologia. So much that is relevant to the story is absent. Torture plays little role in his account, despite its centrality to the spirit of those years. The name Salt Pit – a CIA black site near Kabul – does not appear. Neither does the Patriot Act. The only reference to special forces death squads is hidden in brief remarks about green berets ‘kicking down doors and doing night raids and putting bullets into bodies’. As for the role the US played in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, which created the conditions that attracted al-Qaida, Miller seems to think it better ignored. Only once is some introspection evident, when he admits that, fifteen years into the war, he came to the realisation that the public at home thought of ‘the American war in Afghanistan primarily as a war of retribution’.

American military power coloured by fantasies of retribution is once again being visited on the Greater Middle East. When the US and Israel began their deranged attack on Iran earlier this year, Trump referred to Afghanistan as the kind of debacle typical of his predecessors – one he would avoid. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, stressed that Iran would not be ‘endless’ like Afghanistan but ‘realistic’. Holman Jenkins, a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has strongly supported the war in Iran, noted that even though ‘Afghanistan went on for twenty years’ it did not fatally injure the political prospects of the political leaders who prosecuted it. ‘Trump’s war is looking like a bargain in comparison and, by certain measures, even a victory.’

Who would want to rescue the reputation of the war in Afghanistan? Despite the efforts of some of those involved, its legacy is unlikely to improve with time and scrutiny. But bitter tastes fade. It’s possible to imagine a future in which disaster in Iran flatters by comparison the war in Afghanistan. The war was destructive for Afghanistan, but it wasn’t all that bloody for the home troops. And think of all the civilising we did. The tactics of mass torture and humanitarian bombing campaigns might be needed again. The damage the Afghanistan war did to America’s global position would be insignificant compared with the worst outcomes of the present war in Iran. Perhaps Afghanistan will once again come to be seen as a model rather than a warning.

 

We were doing well when I left
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No Flamingos, but Ducks, Geese and Grebes: Afghanistan joins an international bird census 

May 13, 2026

Kate Clark

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. 

Waterbirds at Sardeh Dam, Ghazni province. Photo: Organization Rewild, 2026

Traveling across frozen valleys and remote wetlands, the team from Organization Rewild (OR) surveyed six key wetlands, from the reservoirs of the Kabul River to the reed-filled marshes of the Amu Darya floodplains, counted waterbirds, assessed habitat conditions, spoke with local communities about changes they have witnessed over the years, and walked across the dry basin of Ab-i-Estada – once a sanctuary for flamingos and a resting place for the now-lost Sibe­rian Crane of Central Asia. Shepherds spoke of lakes that no longer fill as they once did. Farmers described shifting seasons. Yet in hidden marshes along the Amu Darya, reeds still sheltered wintering birds, reminding the team that nature’s resilience has not disappeared. 
In this way, the volunteer scientists from a new NGO, Organization Rewild[1] began their account of their survey of six Afghan wetlands (read it on this map by clicking on Afghanistan). Afghanistan has been important for migrating birds, a place to rest on their great flight north in the spring and south in the autumn. Yet, over the last few decades, it has become more difficult for the flocks to land safely, as historic wetlands have dried up because of climate change and the extraction of ground water, and habitats and birds threatened by the encroachment of agriculture, pollution and hunting.[2]

The CEO of Organization Rewild, Ayub Alavi, has spent many years in conservation, working mainly with communities to establish protected areas, and in management and planning, including, most recently, setting up Rewild. Surveying birds was a new experience: “Joining the team in the field,” he said, “learning so much, was a joyful experience. I was so happy to get out, to travel and do some fieldwork.” They were fortunate, he said, to have two experienced ornithologists on the team: Mirza Hussain Rezai, who has ten years’ experience in wildlife monitoring and conservation projects, and Sayed Naqibullah Mostafawi, with 20 years’ experience, during which time, he has recorded 600 species of birds in Afghanistan, including the large-billed reed warbler, that had not been seen anywhere for a hundred years (AAN). The fourth team member, Noorullah Ahmadzai, is a para-veterinarian and climate adaptation expert.

The survey was undertaken as part of the International Waterbird Census, which has been carried out every year since 1967. “From coastal areas in northern Europe to tropical estuaries in Asia and Africa,” its website says, “volunteers and professionals alike,” have been joining “this global citizen science effort dedicated to tracking the health of waterbird populations and the wetlands they depend on.” For Organization Rewild, the survey was an opportunity to re-establish baseline information on wetland habitats and their waterbird populations, identify priorities for future wetland conservation and research but also to use the survey to work with Afghanistan’s national environmental authorities about the need for wetland conservation measures.

Organization Rewild’s team at work at Sardeh Dam. Photo: Organization Rewild, 2026.
The wetlands surveyed

Organization Rewild carried out its survey at the start of the year when many lakes and wetlands in Afghanistan are frozen, so they focused on six that they expected to be at least partially clear of ice and suitable for waterbirds. Two are natural wetlands:

Amu Darya Marshes at Sasukkhol (Ai Khanum), Dasht-e Qala district, Takhar province – a floodplain on the Amu Darya;

Ab-e Istada in Nawa district, Ghazni province, an alkaline lake, lying in a large depression created by the Chaman Fault system in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush, fed largely by groundwater. Two rivers, the Ghazni and Gardez, also drain into Ab-e Istada, but rarely, is there any outflow (ie, it is endorheic). Before the war, the government had designated it a Waterfowl and Flamingo Sanctuary, with guards posted to prevent egg collection or other disturbance.

The other four sites are reservoirs. The first three were built for hydroelectricity and are collectively recognised as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International:

Naghlu Dam in Sarobi district, Kabul province, built in the 1960s on the Kabul River;

Sarobi Dam, a smaller reservoir in the same district, eight kilometres south of Naghlu, where the Panjshir River joins the Kabul River, built in the 1950s;

Darunta Dam near Jalalabad city in Nangrahar province, further down the Kabul River, also dating from the 1960s.

The fourth reservoir was built to ensure water supply:

Sardeh Dam in Andar district of Ghazni province, fed by snowmelt from the mountains to the northeast which flows into the Gardez River (aka Jilga River, aka Sardeh River), built in the 1960s to ensure water supply to the south of Ghazni province.

The Wetlands of Afghanistan, with those surveyed in January 2026 in red. Source: Organization Rewild

The best site, and the one which most surprised the team, was Sardeh Dam, which had not been monitored in the past. It offered, said Alavi “some opportunities for conservation, with acceptable outcomes, provided there were good efforts.” Sardeh supported the highest abundance and concentration of waterbirds recorded during the survey, especially in the shallower, more extensive eastern section, although its margins were being encroached on by farming. A deeper western basin next to the dam has some recreational infrastructure developed along its southern shore, including a pedal boat operation. The team counted 45 different species at Sardeh, many in sizeable numbers – almost 300 common teal, more than 600 mallard and almost 2000 Eurasian coots (see the list of birds at the end of this report for all six sites).

At Sarobi, the team had expected “a good number of birds, but because of net fishing and hunting – human activities,” said Alavi, “the birds couldn’t settle.” While it had the highest concentration of waterbirds of any site monitored in the eastern region, they were in far fewer numbers than at Sardeh, both species (19) and individuals – 32 teal and 18 coots, but still 256 mallard. The team observed little birdlife at Darunta – just 15 species. “Most obvious,” said Alavi, “was a group of black kites (Milvus migrans) roosting along the western side of the reservoir on one of the islands, playing with a piece of plastic – taking it for prey.”

At Naghlu, 12 species were observed, of which only four were waterbirds. At all three of the sites along the Kabul River, said Alavi, the team witnessed “the usual issue with any dam – there’s not been enough maintenance, and we see agricultural run-off, extending into what was wetland.” The result? “A space that was water is now salt, dust and soil.” Water levels were down, and around Sarobi and Darunta what had been marshy wetlands on the margins of the reservoirs were now being farmed. In the dry season, the team’s survey report (seen by the author) said, water from the Kabul River, which first enters Naghlu, is largely “untreated urban wastewater… a major source of pollution affecting the surface water quality of the reservoir and the outgoing downstream flows.”

On its visit to Ab-e Istada (a name that means ‘standing water’), the Rewild team found no ab whatsoever. This wetland had once measured approximately 13,000 hectares, including a surrounding mudflat zone ranging from 0.5 to 7 km deep (Scott). In 2026, said Alavi, Ab-e Istada was “entirely dry. There were no waterbirds at all.” He said that if there was water there in the spring, even temporarily, migrating birds might stop, “but it would be hard to restore its flamingo habitat.” That was a reference to a greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) colony, first mentioned by Babur, founder of the Moghul empire, that the emperor encountered in 1504 on his way from Dera Ghazi Khan to Ghazni and Kabul:

When we still had one körüh to go to Ab-e Istada, we became witnesses of a splendorous spectacle: From time to time, a red glow lit up, almost as the shine of the afterglow. … When we came closer we realized that this were gigantic swarms of wild flamingos.

Babur wrote that there were more than 10,000 or even 20,000 birds. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig cites this (with some interesting questions about translation) and mid-twentieth-century surveys putting the number of flamingos at 1,000 (1965), 4,000 (1966), 5,100, plus 1,000 young birds that had hatched on some of the islands (1969) and 2,900, with almost 12,000 at another site, Ab-e Nawur, also in Ghazni (1970). “Some flamingos were caught for the Kabul Zoo and successfully raised there,” wrote Ruttig, citing German ornithologist, Gunther Nogge. “Apart from the flamingos, some 40 other species of birds were spotted, among them different kinds of cranes and seagulls, herons, spoonbills, brown ibises, geese and ducks.” Historically, bird counts (from 1959 and 1977) at Ab-e Istada and the surrounding area comprised 122 species (cited by conservation biologist, Ahmad Khan).

Ruttig writes of the drying up of this wetland in the 1970s during the terrible drought of 1971, when snow and rain failed across Afghanistan. Even before that, in 1970, the newly built Sardeh dam had blocked one of the tributaries flowing into the wetland, reducing the water supply. That year, the water level dropped low enough for people to wade across to the islands where the flamingos bred. German ornithologists found evidence of hunting, which would have prevented any breeding.

A 2003 visit by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found the lakebed and inflow rivers completely dry and the water table approximately three metres below surface level. It said that, according to local people, “the lake has dried each year since 1999. In spring 2002 the lake filled for a brief period but was dry again within 10-15 days.” Locals reported that no flamingos had bred successfully for the previous four years. UNEP did observe numerous falcon trappers on the dry flats, looking for saker (Falco cherrug) and peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), which, it said, could be sold to local dealers for as much as USD 3,400. It also said local people were “active waterfowl and flamingo hunters.” A 2006 survey by Ahmad Khan described a lake of 13,000 hectares, surrounded by 14,000 hectares of mudflats. With good rains, Ab-e Istada may fill temporarily. However, droughts – now occurring more frequently and more severely because of the climate crisis – tube-well extraction of groundwater, encroachment of agriculture and the damming of one of the inflow rivers, suggest this wetland habitat may be lost. When the Rewild team visited, they observed just seven species, none of which were waterbirds. “There were only larks on the dry bed,” said Alavi, “and it was being grazed by sheep.”

The team found a more mixed picture at the Amu Darya wetlands. It comprises, they wrote, “heavily degraded riverine and floodplain wetland systems. At present, only fragmented remnants of these habitats persist, characterized by reedbeds, in­terspersed with stands [of] bushes along [the] riverbanks and on alluvial islands.” The Imam Sahib and Darqad areas have been recognised as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by BirdLife International and were once designated a Royal Hunting Preserve. The team found one relatively intact area at Sasukhkol in Dasht-e Qala district. It lies at the confluence of the Panj and Kokcha Rivers and comprises approximately 450 hectares of marshland and riparian (river) woodland, in two patches, roughly two and six kilometres, respectively northeast of the Ai Khanoum archaeological site. This is one of the “last relatively intact wetlands … along the Amu Darya River in this region,” said the team, an example of a rare riverside ecosystem, once widespread in the floodplains and valleys of the arid regions of Central Asia. A 2007 survey by Stéphane Ostrowski, Ali Madad Rajabi & Hafizullah Noori for the Wildlife Conservation Society described the area:

With its diverse stands of poplar and willow trees and its shrubs of various genera such as Tamarix, Elaeagmus, and Hippophae, along with its patchwork of tall reed grass communities and grassland clearings, [which] offer oases for resident and migratory wildlife species. The Tugai forest ecosystem is also a resource of great value for water and soil conservation. It has evolved over thousands of years in response to successive periods of harsh and moist conditions. Typically Tugai areas are continuous but often narrow strips of forested areas along river valleys and constitute important corridors for wildlife. 

Yet, often, the 2007 surveyors wrote, tugai areas are the most fertile lands that can be irrigated and most have been converted to agriculture. What is left suffers from logging and grazing. Its destruction, it warns, “leads to an increase in river flow fluctuations, and river-bank erosion. In Afghanistan the last strongholds of this rare and fragile habitat are located on the relatively less accessible islands of the Amu Darya River.” The 2007 surveyors counted 72 species of birds in this area. Two decades later, in 2026, the Rewild team observed 21 species, including 13 waterbirds, but, their report said, the “presence of extensive dense marsh vegetation limited full visual coverage of the … area.”  They thought Sasukhkol could still provide suitable wintering and stopover habitat for waterbirds migrating along the Central Asian Flyway, albeit with some trepidation:

The wetland’s persistence to date has largely been due to the presence of permanently flooded and swampy basins, which have limited land conversion for agriculture and grazing. Extensive reedbeds con­tinue to offer important wintering and roosting habitat for waterbirds. The birds seem to be very calm and not very scared of nearby people. However, this condition is beginning to change, as border-control and trade in­frastructure are being developed in the area, along with the emergence of small-scale gold extraction activities. These developments pose increasing risks of habitat degradation and disturbance. 

Habitat degradation, they wrote, “is approaching critical levels, as much of the surrounding landscape has already been convert­ed to agricultural land and pasture, and large areas of swamp woodland have been cleared.” Artisan goldmining is also changing the land (see AAN’s August 2025 report, with details on goldmining in Takhar). There was one bright spot: “Field observations about [the] tameness of the waterbirds suggest that bird hunting pressure may currently be limited at this site.”

As to the general conclusion of the teams’ survey of eight wetlands, “Compared with reports from the past,” said Alavi, “the situation is not good. The birdlife is under stress and pressure. It’s very difficult to get a full picture because there are many wetlands we’ve not yet been able to visit. There are at least 28 sites that we’d like to visit. But from those we have seen, the picture is really not good.”

List of bird species observed at six wetlands in Afghanistan. Source: Organization Rewild, January 2026
Where are the birds?

Building up a regional picture of habitats and numbers and diversity of species is important for understanding how a phenomenon like the Central Asian Flyway is being affected by human activities, including the changing climate, and how birds may – or may not – be adapting. Alavi conjectured that the migrating flocks might, for example, have learned to avoid stopping on the Shomali plains, famous for its fowlers, and indeed, anywhere south of the Hindu Kush, if they possibly can.

“People play a major role in making it near to impossible for a healthy population of birds to overwinter and breed or stop over.” Those birds that survive trapping and shooting, he said, remember where to avoid and where it is safe to stop. “The birds may now be stopping in higher altitudes, far from communities, and if the weather allows, try to get as far as possible from people.” But, he said, “this needs a more in-depth and thorough assessment.”

The weather, Alavi said, is a crucial factor. Bad weather can mean migrating birds have no choice but to land near people, where there is “very little chance of them surviving.” In March last year, following two nights of heavy rain, he and Rezai had found a single hunter in Bagram district of Parwan province had captured 200 demoiselle cranes in one night. The birds had been forced to land in an area they would normally avoid as unsafe. Alavi and Rezai had been working on a project for the Wildlife Conservation Society, aimed at finding out more about the hunting and trapping of cranes in areas known for high hunting pressure during the migration period (report seen by author).

At the bird market in Kabul, Alavi and Rezai also found that, out of 15 shops they visited, two were selling live cranes – at a price of USD 100 for a pair. They also found three shops in Bagram District selling a total of 18 dead cranes for meat, each priced at about USD 7. In one village in Sayedkhel district, in Parwan province, they observed 13 trapping sites – artificial ponds surrounded by nets, with plastic lures and recordings of crane calls to attract birds in the hope of capturing them alive. Alavi and Rezai concluded that “most cranes taken in the Shomali Plain were captured for the pet trade, and a few were hunted for their meat.” The price of cranes has fallen significantly: in 2017, they were selling for USD 2,500, perhaps because there is less ‘easy money’ in Kabul to spend on luxuries, so less demand, or maybe the bad weather had driven supply up and prices down.

Demoiselle cranes (Grus virgo) that were captured after they were forced to land in bad weather in Bagram district of Kabul province, as they migrated north in spring 2025. Their eyes have been stitched shut to keep them calm and ease their domestication. They were to be sold in a local market, such as the Bird Market in Kabul, as pets. Photo: Ayub Alavi

The people of northern Shomali are famously avid hunters and trappers (see also a previous report by the author on a Bagram shopkeeper’s attempt to sell an inedible Great Black-Headed Gull, (Ichthyaetus ichthyaetus) as “very tasty” meat). The loss of adult and young birds during migration through these areas, write Alavi and Rezai, is thought to have been “the leading factor behind the decline and extinction of the Western Population of the Siberian Crane. Nowadays, the Demoiselle and Eura­sian cranes are the main species [that hunters] target between the last week of March and mid-April.”

An energetic response to a bleak outlook 

Despite the dismal picture for waterfowl and migrating birds presented by Organization Rewild’s survey, Alavi noted one positive – the good cooperation they had received from Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA). After they briefed NEPA on the survey, officials suggested they collaborate, for example, by the agency “dedicating staff to join us on field trips.” Alavi also said the head of NEPA suggested they provide NEPA with relevant reports, for example about hunting or conservation, that NEPA could use to lobby central government to better enforce the official ban on hunting (mentioned, for example, by Pajhwok). Better-managed wetland sites, where local communities are centrally involved, could bring benefits, and not just for birds and ecosystems: they can provide pleasant recreation sites, with the potential also for tourism.

Some joint work has now started. In March, ahead of the spring migration, Organization Rewild and NEPA set up a temporary Crane Conservation Taskforce which is carrying out, said Rewild, a media campaign highlighting “the prohibition of hunting, trapping, illegal trade and to avoid disturbance and to provide the safe passage for the cranes during the spring migration season across Afghanistan.” The taskforce has already undertaken field visits to stopover sites for migrant birds and known hunting hotspots. One was to the Shomali plain, lying across parts of Kapisa and Parwan provinces, north of Kabul, which functions, Rewild said, “as a critical migratory bottleneck for numerous bird species, including cranes, as they concentrate in this landscape prior to crossing the Hindu Kush range and continuing northward along the Central Asian Flyway.” It is also, as described previously, famous for its hunters.

The taskforce also visited Ab-e Istada in Ghazni where, Rewild says, the immediate need is to coordinate with the Ministry of Energy and Water and the relevant dam management authorities “to establish and maintain sustainable environmental flow regimes from the Sardeh and Hawz-e-Sultan Dams,” something which is critical to at least “partially restore hydrological conditions necessary for wetland recovery.” There is also a need to understand groundwater dynamics to to enable evidence-based water management and long-term restoration planning.”

One small, good piece of news is that, as of 7 April 2026, “following several days of sustained rainfall and the release of overflow from the Hawz-e-Sultan Dam [upstream of Ab-e Istada], reports indicated the presence of a substantial volume of water in this wetland.”

Alavi also spoke about how much conservation work there is to do. The team is keen to survey other wetlands, and other habitats where Afghanistan is important, such as the western deserts, with their endangered houbara bustards (Chlamydotis undulata), so beloved of Gulf Arab falconers, who have already hunted the species to near extinction in Arabia, but pay to come and hunt them in Pakistan and Afghanistan.[3] The team would also like to monitor vultures that migrate in spring and winter through the Salang Pass – lammergeiers (Gypaetus barbatus), Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) and griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) – and work with local communities and government in the Bamyan plateau – important for birds of prey and mammals, and declared a protected landscape by the Republic. “Given the size and type of habitat,” said Alavi, “it would be a unique opportunity.”

Alavi’s experience is in community-based management of natural resources, but the hope is that the wetlands bird survey will be a first step in greater conservation efforts in Afghanistan. It was also important in its own right, the team wrote:

This was more than a bird count. It was a reconnection of Afghanistan to the global flyway, the first renewed national count. It re-establishes Afghanistan’s pres­ence in global waterbird monitoring and provides the first updated baseline in decades for some of the coun­try’s most important wetlands. The data will be shared with national authorities to support better wetland man­agement and conservation planning. 

Alavi recognises that, without funding, they could not replicate the methodology of earlier surveys, but even so, Organization Rewild’s 2026 Afghan wetlands bird survey, though limited, made plain the huge decline in habitats, in the number of species and the number of birds. The four-member team paid to carry out this research from their own pockets. Such voluntary work is unsustainable. Afghanistan certainly has the expert scientists to do far more, but without funding, it will be difficult to match outcomes with that expertise.

Edited by Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica

References

References
↑1 Wetland, as defined by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, adopted in 1971 in Iran, includes “areas of marsh, fen, peatland, or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish, or saline, including areas of marine water where the depth at low tide does not exceed six meters.”
↑2 Organization Rewild (OR) describes itself as a conservation institution that brings together a multidisciplinary team of Afghan conservation professionals with up to two decades of field and technical experience in wildlife conservation, protected area management, ecological monitoring, and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), supported by an international Scientific Advisory Board providing remote technical guidance. The organization’s work is grounded in applied ecological research, participatory conservation planning, and long-term capacity development at local and national levels.Alavi said a grant of USD 2,000 from the international NGO, Wetlands International, and invaluable help from the Central Asian Conservation Network in connecting them to Wetlands International, had enabled the team to carry out the the wetland surveys and bird counts.
↑3 Permits to hunt houbaras were reported in the first Emirate, under the Republic (see the author’s Bird Bomber: Police kill ‘dangerous’ houbara bustard, AAN, 5 December 2014), and more recently under the second Emirate (see Amin Kawa Arab Hunters Given Access to Afghanistan’s Endangered Wildlife Under Taliban Sanction, Hasht-e Subh, 16 November 2025, and Fabrizio Foschini’s already cited, Of Hunters and Hunted (2): Falconry, bird smuggling and wildlife conservation).

 

No Flamingos, but Ducks, Geese and Grebes: Afghanistan joins an international bird census 
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Where is one of worst places to be a woman? Afghanistan.

May 12, 2026

The Conversation
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Published: May 11, 2026

That’s what most people think when it comes to the topic of the women’s rights crisis under the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan. But this only tells part of the story.

Focusing on the word “rights” hides something more serious underneath: how people live and survive in this situation. What’s unfolding in Afghanistan is not just a women’s rights crisis, but a humanitarian disaster.

It affects how people access health care, education, food systems and basic supports and whether these system can function at all when half the population has been systematically removed from them. It forces families to deal with women’s limited access to work and services, often pushing households into deeper economic and social vulnerability.

The Taliban has steadily removed women from public spaces including work, health care and education. Recently, for example, female health-care workers were stopped at the gates of a United Nations office and banned from entering the facility by Taliban authorities.

These ongoing removals are incrementally creating a system that determines who has the right to exist, to provide assistance and to receive assistance.

What’s happening in Afghanistan is not simply gender discrimination; rather, it’s pushing an entire gender out of public systems altogether. The predicament of Afghan women is less a social problem and more a structural crisis that shapes institutions and everyday life.

Gender apartheid

This is why the situation in Afghanistan is increasingly referred to as a form of gender apartheid rather than a women’s rights crisis. The exclusion of women reveals how institutions are built and will be maintained in the future.

Gender apartheid refers to a situation in which people are banned from certain spaces or activities based on their gender identity.

This discriminatory and violent practice in Afghanistan has been widely documented and heavily reported on, but the situation continues to deteriorate daily.

Its effects are also accumulative, with each restriction reinforcing others and deepening the overall crisis. These systemic rights violations would be increasingly difficult to reverse even if political bodies and the ruling government changed tomorrow.

That’s because removing women from professional spaces leads to schools losing teachers, hospitals losing trained staff and aid networks losing access to half the population. And this loss isn’t temporary; it limits how systems can respond to the growing needs around them.

When women get barred from institutions, the problem isn’t just that these organizations suffer in their service delivery and performance. It also results in the loss of institutional memory — the skills, professional knowledge and experience that is no longer transferred to future generations.

Over time, institutions also scale down or suspend certain services due to a shortage of female workers. As services shrink, significant gaps appear in the networks of care and support leaving entire groups of people without consistent access to support.

The Taliban refusal to allow female workers into UN and UNICEF offices is one of many examples happening today in Afghanistan that ban qualified women from entering places where they can deliver urgent care and assistance.

This effective crackdown on women’s rights is blocking aid and support in a society where it’s desperately needed.

Male workers are also limited in the ways they can assist female patients due to Taliban gender norms and restrictions, so support for women cannot be simply reassigned to them. This affects several aspects of humanitarian aid including health care, food distribution and protection systems.

It also delegates the burden of these unmet needs into households where women must provide unpaid labour and care-giving responsibilities.

Taliban rule consequently delays or prevents life-saving interventions for women and children, a violation of the human right to survive.

It’s not just UN and UNICEF offices where women workers are banned from entry: they’re being turned away at other aid organizations, hospitals, schools and various public institutions in a widespread erosion of human rights. The Taliban has put in place a network of human rights violations across the entire humanitarian system.

Humanitarian aid also depends on access to information and correct data: who is hungry, who is unsafe and who needs protection. In Afghanistan, where women are limited in who they can interact with and where female staff are largely absent from outreach, surveys and home visits, this information becomes incomplete.

Poor data leads to incomplete distribution of assistance and mismatched allocation of aid. As a result, the most vulnerable populations can remain invisible in official assessments.

This invisibility especially affects households headed by women and those living in remote or rural areas with already limited access.

The impact of Aghanistan’s gender apartheid might not be visible to many outside the country, but in the near future, humanitarian systems will break down.

Future generations of female professionals have already been eliminated by the Taliban’s ban of girls from schools.

UNICEF estimates the ban could cost Afghanistan 25,000 teachers and health-care workers. In a country where women are prohibited from receiving care from male providers, banning women from both education and health-care work creates a profound medical emergency.

Read more: The Taliban wages war on women, but their voices roar on the page. Here are 5 essential books by Afghan women writers

Over time, systems will be redesigned without women as providers even as they remain central as recipients. As gender restrictions disrupt the flow of resources, knowledge and care, the capacity to deliver services is declining every day despite high demand. Many women are also pushed into informal or hidden work that is insecure and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Gender apartheid in Afghanistan will not end through recognition alone. Naming systemic terror does not stop it and, without action, repeated exposure to crisis can instead normalize it through compassion fatigue. Humanitarian organizations now face a stark choice: operate under restrictive conditions and risk legitimizing them, or withdraw and leave people without support.

The longer the situation persists, the more the exclusion of women in Afghanistan risks becoming a normalized structure rather than an emergency. The question is no longer only how to restore what’s been lost, but whether systems once dependent on women’s participation can be rebuilt at all.

Where is one of worst places to be a woman? Afghanistan.
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Returned Afghan Migrants Struggle With Poverty and Uncertainty

May 10, 2026
TOLOnews
TV Network
9 May 2026

They say they have neither shelter nor land, and even securing daily food has become an immense challenge.

A number of families deported from Iran and Pakistan in Kabul are complaining about severe living conditions.

They say they have neither shelter nor land, and even securing daily food has become an immense challenge.

Hamid, a deportee from Iran, said: “We returned from Iran, but no one checks on us. There is no one to ask where we came from or whether we have anything to survive on. These days, I work as a shoe shiner just to earn money for bread. There are no jobs at all; I may be forced once again to risk my life and leave the country.”

Meanwhile, some migrants deported from Pakistan report facing similar hardships.

Amir Mohammad, who was deported from Pakistan, said: “We paid 300,000 Afghanis for three houses. We did not take anything from anyone; we simply worked hard in exile and built our lives in that country.”

Mohammad Khan Talibi Mohammadzai, a migrant rights activist, said: “The current Afghan government, in cooperation with international organizations, must increase efforts and assistance to address migrants’ concerns so that the problems and hardships faced by Afghan returnees can be reduced.”

At the same time, the distribution of residential land to returning migrants has accelerated, and in just one week, land has reportedly been allocated to more than 9,000 families.

According to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, most of the land has been distributed in Nangarhar, Laghman, and Zabul provinces, while the resettlement process for returnees is continuing.

Another migrant rights activist, Abdul Raziq Adil, told TOLOnews: “Aid from organizations should not be limited merely to survival assistance; it should focus on self-sufficiency for returnees so they can transform from a burden on society into a driving force for the economy. Otherwise, the housing and poverty crisis will reach its peak in 2026.”

In recent years, the forced return of Afghan migrants from Iran and Pakistan has left thousands of families facing serious economic and social challenges.

Experts continue to stress that creating job opportunities and providing sustainable support are essential to preventing rising poverty and renewed migration.

Returned Afghan Migrants Struggle With Poverty and Uncertainty
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Five questions on the status of women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan

May 5, 2026
Kay Summers
School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University

The Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in August 2021, twenty years after their ouster by U.S. troops. Since then, all the progress for women made over the course of the U.S. occupation has been reversed, resulting in strict, fundamentalist rules, ongoing economic turmoil and severe restrictions on employment and education for women and girls.

Executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS) Ambassador Melanne Verveer and GIWPS Director of Policy and Programs Kimberly Hart examine the ongoing, systematic oppression in Afghanistan. They discuss how climate and humanitarian crises affect women and girls and explore ways for the international community to bolster support for Afghan women’s resistance and strengthen accountability.

Q. Since the Taliban regained control in 2021, what have been the most significant changes in women’s daily lives, especially in education, employment and freedom of movement? How uniform are these restrictions across different regions?

A. The situation for women and girls in Afghanistan today is the worst in the world. The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS) ranks Afghanistan #181 out of 181 countries for women’s wellbeing. The Taliban have engaged in systematic oppression regulating every aspect of women’s lives. Women are denied the right to an education, including midwifery training to stem child and maternal mortality. They can’t participate in the workplace outside their homes. They must be accompanied by a male guardian in public. They cannot access outdoor parks or raise their voices in public, even to recite the Quran. The burqa is the mandated dress code. The U.N. reports that nearly 80% of young Afghan women are out of education, employment or training, and the bans on girls education will increase child marriage by 25% and maternal mortality by at least 50%.

Over 100 edicts have been issued to essentially erase half the population, and the Taliban’s recent criminal regulations further violate women’s rights and entrench repression and violence. In a recent promulgation of the penal code, the punishments for abusing an animal are stiffer than those for abusing a woman. In the Taliban’s version of “justice,” a woman is basically considered property, akin to slavery. This is nothing less than gender apartheid.

Women across all of Afghanistan are suffering under this regime. Most of the legal restrictions imposed by the Taliban are national, but women’s experiences of these restrictions, as well as challenges ranging from poverty to the impacts of climate change, vary somewhat by region and in rural versus urban areas due to different local officials, enforcement, cultural norms and economics. A recent analysis of rural women in 12 regions painted a devastating picture of the situation of women, from access to healthcare and clean water to education and jobs, but it also showed variation across regions. Though it is important to note that while there are some unique challenges across different regions, discrimination against women and the suffering women and girls experience is a universal problem in Afghanistan.

Q. How would you assess the current humanitarian situation for women and girls in Afghanistan, particularly in relation to access to healthcare, food security and basic services? 

A blond woman wearing a red jacket and black shirt.
Ambassador Melanne Verveer

A. Afghans are confronting a very serious humanitarian crisis. Food insecurity, the lack of healthcare and the growing lack of essential services have been exacerbated by deep reductions in international assistance and by the poor governance of the Taliban. The U.N. estimates that 45% of the population of Afghanistan is in need of humanitarian aid, while hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid has been cut by the U.S., other countries and, as a result, the U.N.

This humanitarian crisis impacts all aspects of daily life for many Afghans. During the dry season from November 2025 to March 2026, over 17 million Afghans faced food insecurity. The European Commission has reported that nearly four million children are malnourished—approximately one in five—and about one million need medical treatment to survive. 37% of households lack soap for basic sanitation and hygiene, which can lead to outbreaks of illnesses. Public healthcare facilities are struggling to meet community needs, a problem deeply worsened by the Taliban takeover, and the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. As UN Women notes, “Women are living shorter, less healthy lives.” The humanitarian crisis in the country is directly impacting a wide range of universal human rights, from the right to health and the right to water to the right to freedom from discrimination, which is obvious in all aspects of the Taliban’s rule.

These challenges are exacerbated by shocks due to climate change. Afghanistan is one of the most seriously impacted countries by climate change. Recent droughts—exacerbated by warmer climate and a 25-year low in snowfall—and flooding have further robbed Afghans of their livelihoods and access to clean water and food. Kabul is running out of water due to climate change and over-extraction. It is estimated that over 90% of Afghanistan will experience droughts by 2050.

Women and girls are uniquely impacted by all of these humanitarian crises due to social and cultural norms, as well as their erasure from public life and, therefore, economic opportunity and access. And women’s ability to provide services and aid in communities has also been affected, from the ban on UN female personnel to limited internet access for women.

Q. What role could international actors play in addressing these needs within a closed, autocratic, theocratic system like Afghanistan’s? What realistic policy options are available to the international community to improve conditions for women in Afghanistan without exacerbating harm to them? How can other countries and multilaterals balance diplomatic engagement with accountability?

A. One of the most damaging misconceptions by international actors is that in incredibly challenging environments with authoritarian governments, like Afghanistan today, nothing can be done. Far too often, international actors mistake complexity for intractability or futility. There are steps that the international community can take, today and in the near future, to improve the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan and push back on the Taliban’s repressive rule.

A woman with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a red top and pearl necklace.
Kimberly Hart

First, humanitarian assistance is desperately needed. Funding cuts, pushback on efforts targeted to supporting women and lack of support for the multilateral system are all making a bad situation worse. The international community needs to step up its efforts to deliver humanitarian aid for Afghans while putting in place guardrails to ensure that assistance goes to those in need and not the Taliban.

Second, innovative approaches must be used to protect girls’ access to education and women’s access to employment and income, even amidst the challenges. This can range from temporary educational alternatives, including online school and home schools, to fostering opportunities for income generation for Afghan women—for example, connecting Afghan experts with virtual employment opportunities.

Third, the Taliban must be held accountable for their crimes, particularly those committed against women and girls. The pressure must be intensified and the stakes must be raised for the Taliban. The U.N.’s draft Crimes Against Humanity Treaty offers a concrete opportunity to create a new legal category for “gender apartheid.” Apartheid itself is already an international crime, defined as the “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Women and girls are experiencing this same systematic repression and domination, and by establishing a new crime, the Taliban could be held accountable in the future. There are also other legal avenues to pursue justice, including international courts as well as the use of universal jurisdiction. Afghan women recently showed the world the clear legal arguments about crimes against humanity in Afghanistan via a people’s tribunal, and now is the moment for those arguments to be elevated in formal courts around the world. Additionally, sanctions and visa bans should continue to be a key tool to hold Taliban officials accountable.

Fourth, the international community must empower the participation of Afghan women in any peace talks or formal negotiations. It must be clear and unequivocal that no progress can be made without women’s full, meaningful involvement as a prerequisite.

Finally, the international community must continue speaking out against the crimes of this regime and in support of Afghan women and girls. The more time passes, the easier it is for the world to focus on the next global crisis. International actors must never forget and always uphold their commitment to Afghanistan and use every avenue—diplomatic, legal, economic—to pressure the regime while supporting Afghan people. Last year, Russia became the first country to formally recognize the Taliban government; other countries must not follow suit. Non-recognition of the Taliban is essential. We cannot normalize brutal regimes that violate human rights.

All of these steps require investing in solutions that Afghans identify and supporting Afghan-led efforts. And there are many other actions that the international community can take. The international community must demonstrate a clear unwavering commitment to the Afghan people and work to better understand what the needs are and what solutions Afghan themselves have already identified.

Q. There have been reports of Afghan women organizing and resisting restrictions in various ways. What forms of agency or resilience are you seeing among women on the ground, and what risks do they face in doing so?

A. Every day, women inside and outside Afghanistan demonstrate their agency, bravery, commitment and creativity, finding ways to push for their rights and their needs, but it’s not easy, and many take great risks in doing so. Some women are taking great risks in defying prohibitions, including seeking out education, speaking out and documenting human rights abuses and even engaging in protests. There are a range of reported punishments from imprisonment to harassment and even death. Yet despite the challenges, women inside Afghanistan are pushing back and supporting each other.

A group of individuals wearing full-length blue burqas stand or walk in a line outdoors.
A group of women covered in blue burqas walking outdoors in Afghanistan, 2023.

Girls in particular are especially desperate to continue their education. Before the Taliban returned to power, they were enrolled in schools, getting degrees and engaging in all kinds of pursuits, from robotics to sports competitions. Today, the Taliban are snuffing out their dreams, but many are refusing to give up, seeing education as a form of resistance. And education for girls is widely supported in the country: a recent UN Women survey found that 92% of respondents believe that “it was ‘important’ for girls to continue their schooling, with support cutting across rural and urban communities.” Girls are seizing whatever opportunity is available to learn, from secret schools in homes to online opportunities. If discovered, they can pay a heavy price. Sadly, at the same time, suicide rates are rising out of a sense of hopelessness, and roughly 80% of suicide attempts in the country are committed by women.

The Taliban’s brutal repression of women continues every day in Afghanistan, including targeting women themselves as well as their families and loved ones. This manifests both through its broad criminal code and edicts as well as through targeted attacks of former government officials, those seen as Western allies and communities perceived as anti-Taliban. And increasingly, the Taliban is resorting to transnational repression, harassing its critics outside of the country.

Q. In your opinion, are overall conditions for women in Afghanistan any better in 2026 than they were before the U.S. invasion in 2001?

A. This is a challenging question, because the Taliban has been consistent in their oppression of women and girls, both in the first Taliban regime and today. That is why there was great apprehension over the Taliban takeover in 2021, and so many experts on women’s rights warned about the risks. While the Taliban told the world they would be good for women and girls and their good treatment would be consistent with Islam, as Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” The Taliban returned to an extremist version of Islam, not condoned in any other Islam-majority country or with many of the teachings of the Quran. The harshest practices have returned and in some ways have gotten even more extreme since the emboldened Taliban took power, with more systematic repression and rollback of key progress made before 2021. As the global backlash on women intensifies today, it only gives more leeway to the Taliban to continue their brutal repression. The world must respond by doubling down on its support for Afghan women and girls and their demands for freedom, dignity and equal rights.

Five questions on the status of women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan
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Afghanistan is surrendering its mineral wealth – and its future

May 1, 2026

Javed Noorani Lynne O’Donnell

The Interpreter
The Lowery Institute
Published 28 Apr 2026  

Afghanistan is giving away its mineral wealth. Through a pattern of deals that export value at the point of extraction, the country is surrendering control over what could – and should – be its greatest hope for a stable and prosperous future.

This is not accidental. Nor is it the inevitable result of geography, decades of war, or even the nature of Taliban rule. It is the outcome of contracts that prioritise immediate cash over long-term management.

Raw ore is being shipped out as Afghanistan signs away its most valuable assets on terms that lock in its own irrelevance.

This is not simply mismanagement. It is a transfer of value. Afghanistan is exporting its resources at the lowest end of the chain, while others – above all China – capture the processing, pricing and strategic leverage that follow.

In a sector defined by control, that is the difference between power and poverty.

Beneath Afghanistan’s mountains sits one of the most concentrated reserves of critical minerals in the world: lithium, rare earths, copper, cobalt – the materials that power batteries, semiconductors, renewable energy and modern weapons.

Afghanistan is behaving as if it is selling gravel, not assets central to the global economy.

Geological surveys by the United States and Afghanistan’s own Ministry of Mines have confirmed nearly 90 occurrences, including more than 30 classified as “critical”.

In another setting, they would place Afghanistan at the centre of the 21st century resource economy. Instead, they are being treated as commodities to be moved quickly and monetised cheaply.

For critical minerals, value is created along the chain – processing, refining, pricing and supply. Lose that chain, and the resource itself matters far less. What is unfolding in Afghanistan is the quiet consolidation of a strategy defined elsewhere – and not in Afghanistan’s interests.

In the four-and-a-half years since returning to power, the Taliban authorities have issued hundreds of mining contracts covering zinc, lead, copper, antimony, and more, with opaque terms, minimal scrutiny, and a focus on immediate returns. Foreign companies – mainly Chinese, but also from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey – secure access, extract ore, and ship it out. Afghanistan is left with little more than environmental damage and marginal returns.

This is not new. Under the former republic, mining contracts were often pushed through under political pressure, with weak oversight and little regard for national benefit. Politicians used their influence to secure rights or protect illegal operations. Kickbacks were common.

That institutional weakness persists, but the stakes have changed.

Critical minerals now sit at the core of economic and military power. China recognised this earlier than most and has built its dominance accordingly. Over recent decades, Beijing has invested in mines abroad while consolidating processing capacity at home. Today, it controls the bulk of refining for the world’s key minerals.

When the United States restricted advanced semiconductor exports, China responded by limiting exports of the key ingredients, gallium and germanium – a reminder that supply chains can be weaponised.

Afghanistan, with world-class reserves, is not playing on those terms. Instead, it is trading away its only real leverage in short-term deals – brokered by a narrow elite – reinforcing China’s hold over processing and pricing while stripping the country of future wealth.

Consider what this looks like in practice. Antimony contracts signed without regard for global demand. Zinc and lead exported as ore rather than processed domestically. The stalled Aynak copper project, where a Chinese state company has failed to deliver on a world-class deposit yet still secures concessions. A lithium-bearing site in Herat, once deemed strategically sensitive, reissued under the guise of a salt mine.

The pattern is consistent: fragmentation, short-termism, and the absence of any coherent effort to link mineral wealth to economic strength or political leverage. Afghanistan is behaving as if it is selling gravel, not assets central to the global economy.

A strategy would mean control – over access, terms and, critically, where value is realised. Afghanistan exercises none of these.

Far from building capacity, these deals lock Afghanistan out of the parts of the market that matter. The global market rewards those who hold processing, technology and pricing power. Afghanistan has none of them.

What is lost is leverage: the ability to negotiate, build industry or choose partners. Short-term gain becomes long-term structural constraint. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is being converted into dependency. In a sector defined by control, that is not development. It is surrender.

Afghanistan is surrendering its mineral wealth – and its future
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A Marriage I Didn’t Choose: An Afghan girl’s journey into despair and back

April 24, 2026
 Rohullah Sorush • Roxanna Shapour

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After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan returned to power in August 2021, women and girls were barred from continuing their education beyond grade six. Women were also banned from working in most government jobs and NGOs, leaving many without employment or a way to support themselves. The opportunities that had seemed within reach during the Republican years suddenly vanished, leaving many women struggling to chart a course for themselves. Some families set out to secure their daughters’ futures, often by marriage, and to men they had never met. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Soroush hears from one young woman whose family married her to a man living in Europe. She was sent to live with her in-laws in Afghanistan, despite never having met him. What followed was a life of anguish, before she found her way back to her own family and began to rebuild her life.
A bride arrives in a car at the wedding hall for a mass marriage ceremony in Kabul. Photo: Sahel Arman/AFP, 13 June 2022.

Growing up too fast 

I was born in Mazar-e Sharif into a modest family. We didn’t have much money and we lived in the shadow of financial worries. I grew up knowing that life wasn’t going to be easy. I learned that some kids don’t really get to be children – they have to grow up faster than everyone else and take on responsibilities beyond their years.

Still, our home was filled with love and my parents tried their best to make us happy. They were determined that I should go to school. They said it was the only way for me to have a better life. So I went to school in worn-out clothes, taking the second-hand notebooks the extended family or our neighbours had given my mother for me. Even then, I had dreams. I wanted to stand on my own two feet.

In the afternoon, when I got home from school, I helped my mother with chores around the house. I helped her cook our family meals, cleaned the kitchen in the evenings, and on Fridays helped her with the laundry.

Later, when I was still in high school, I started working at a pharmacy. I learned how to check patients’ blood pressure and give injections when needed. I gave most of my earnings to my mother, but I kept a little for my own expenses. After graduating from high school, I took the university entrance exam. The day I got into university was the happiest day of my life. It felt like everything I’d worked for was finally paying off and my life was moving in the right direction.

Alongside my studies, I worked on a project run by an NGO in our area. The salary covered my college fees and other expenses and I was gaining practical experience for the future.

When everything changed 

Then the Taliban came back and suddenly everything fell apart. The new government banned girls from going to university. Then, they banned women from working for NGOs and I lost my job. Just like that, it was all gone. It felt like the world had gone dark. I stayed at home with nothing to do and no future to work towards. It felt like my life was over.

It was during this time that my family decided I should marry. They told me there was a man who lived in Europe. They said he came from a family of means, that he had a stable job, that he would take me abroad and give me a secure future.

They talked about security, not happiness. No one asked me what I wanted. No one asked if I was ready.

The marriage I didn’t choose 

This is how I agreed to marry a man I’d never seen. It was not my heart’s choice. It was what my parents thought best for me and I went along with their wishes as girls in Afghanistan tend to do.

I don’t blame my family for my misfortune. They thought they’d secured a better future for me – that I’d be happy and eventually go to Europe. Many Afghan families think this way. When someone who lives in the West shows up at their door and asks for their daughter’s hand, families are often blinded by the opportunity and the false hope. So it wasn’t unusual for my family to agree to the match and push me to accept it.

This is how I became a bride, but I felt no joy on my wedding day. After the wedding, my in-laws took me to their house in Kabul. No one welcomed me into that house and that family. There was no warmth, no kindness. From the very beginning, they made it clear that they didn’t like or respect me. They humiliated and abused me – emotionally, sometimes physically. I was expected to serve, to obey and to stay silent. That was my life, day in, day out.

My husband was in Europe and I had to stay in Kabul with his family while I waited for him to come and fetch me. I kept telling myself that he was busy, that he didn’t know how I was being treated by his family. I held on to the hope that one day he’d come, take me away and we’d finally start our life together in Europe.

But the days turned into weeks, then months. I waited for my husband, imagining what he might be like and wondering if he even thought of me. But he never came. I never saw him.

A house without kindness

Life in that house became unbearable. My in-laws treated me harshly. Their words were humiliating and even my small mistakes were met with anger. I learned to move carefully, to speak less, to make myself invisible.

Although my in-laws were rich, they didn’t support me. They didn’t cover my expenses and forced me to work from dawn till dusk to earn my keep. So I started working as a maid in a clothing factory. The factory was noisy and suffocating and everyone was busy meeting their quotas. No one there knew my story. No one seemed to notice my pain. No one asked.

My in-laws wouldn’t let me contact my family. It was the most alone that I’d felt in my life. The situation started to take its toll. I was always tired and I kept getting sick. My spirit was broken and my body was growing weaker by the day, until finally, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I remember going to the doctor by myself, paying the bill out of my meagre earnings and knowing that even my illness was something I had to face by myself. When I got home from the clinic, no one asked after my health. No one cared.

The night it ended 

Then, one night, everything changed suddenly. It was late at night when my in-laws pulled me out of bed and turned me out of the house. They said they didn’t want me living with them anymore. The street was dark and empty. I remember standing there in the dark, shaking, trying to understand what had just happened. I had nothing with me and nowhere to go. That night could have ended very differently, but someone saw me – a kind neighbour who took pity on me and opened the door to their home to me.

The next day, they let me use their phone to call my family and let them know what had happened. They helped me get back to my family and even paid for the bus fare to Mazar-e Sharif.

Finding my way back 

It wasn’t an easy journey. I was physically weak, emotionally exhausted and not sure how my family would react. I knew there would be talk in the family and the neighbours would gossip.

In Afghanistan, it’s not uncommon for a girl to disappear into the family she marries into. It’s not even unusual for her to be mistreated by her in-laws. But when a girl is sent back, tongues will wag. People will look for a reason and often they blame the girl. She must’ve done something, they’ll say in disapproving tones. Rooms will go quiet when she walks in – the silence is damning and pitying all at once.

But when I arrived in Mazar-e Sharif and stepped into my parents’ home, they embraced me. I’d been worried for nothing. For the first time in a long while, I felt safe and I knew I wasn’t alone. With their support, I began again from scratch. It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t lose hope. Being back with my family gave me the strength to start taking small steps to rebuild my life.

Still standing 

Today, I am still standing.

I’ve known hardship, loss, and pain, but I didn’t disappear. I didn’t surrender to what had happened to me.

To other girls and women in Afghanistan, I say this: Stay strong, even when life feels impossible. Don’t lose yourself. If you fall, get back up, because you’re stronger than you think.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark

 

A Marriage I Didn’t Choose: An Afghan girl’s journey into despair and back
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