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

The Measles Outbreak Cycle: A long road ahead to end epidemics 

September 29, 2026

Jelena Bjelica • Rohullah Sorush • Rama Mirzada

 

Afghanistan has faced recurrent measles outbreaks for more than two decades, with uneven routine immunisation allowing the disease to return even after large vaccination campaigns. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2025 and 2026 with doctors, health workers and parents, AAN’s Jelena Bjelica, Rama Mirzada and Rohullah Sorush hear about the latest major outbreak in 2024-25, the overcrowded wards, multiple cases in families and deaths among young children. While measles cases fell sharply in many areas in 2026 after a major vaccination campaign in November 2025, our interviews suggest Afghanistan remains at risk of renewed outbreaks unless routine two-dose vaccination coverage improves. 

“You might not believe me, but it took a long time for us to appreciate the danger of measles to children until we experienced it. We’d been unaware of its dangers and the deaths it caused.”
– Muqem, 29-year-old father of three children in Faizabad, Badakhshan

All three of Muqem’s children contracted measles in May 2025.[1] He described one of his daughters becoming so ill she could not open her eyes. The experience shook him so deeply that it changed how the family thinks. They had not previously understood how dangerous the disease could be. More awareness, he said, including through mosques, was needed to encourage families to vaccinate their children.

Fortunately, all of Muqem’s children survived, but in the same year, 550 people did die of measles. Following the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate in 2021, there had been a two-year gap in mass national vaccination campaigns (between 2023 and 2025) and in that gap, the country experienced its worst outbreak on record. Suspected measles cases rose to 60,000 in 2024 (WHO) and surged in 2025, with more than 97,000 suspected cases by mid-December (WHO).[2] Only after a nationwide vaccination campaign that reached more than 16.7 million children in late 2025 did measles cases decline – falling to almost 19,000 in the year to the end of August.[3] However, Afghanistan still faces the risk of measles outbreaks because access to health services in the country remains patchy and not enough children have the regular two-dose vaccination – also called ‘routine vaccination’. This is when parents take their infants for regular check-ups and vaccination in designated local health facilities.

Measles outbreaks are not a new problem: Afghanistan has experienced recurrent measles epidemics in the period under review, ie since 2001,[4] reflecting longstanding problems with routine childhood immunisation, which, in turn, are driven by poor access to health services, poverty, illiteracy, prejudice, malnutrition and the health system’s poor ability to respond.

This report draws on 12 interviews conducted in 2025 and 2026 with doctors, health workers and parents about the spread of measles, access to vaccination and the pressure outbreaks have placed on families and health facilities. Taken together, the interviews offer a snapshot of the outbreak at two different moments – 2025, when the measles outbreak put intense pressure on hospitals and households and 2026, when cases had fallen substantially in several provinces, but measles transmission rates remained high and problems with routine immunisation remained.

The report opens with the experiences of the major outbreak in 2025, with interviews conducted in July of that year Badakhshan, Farah and Helmand, with hospital doctors and two parents whose children had contracted measles. This is followed by a look at how the situation was a year later after a major vaccination campaign, based on interviews conducted in August and September 2026 with doctors and health workers in Badakhshan, Farah, Helmand, Faryab, Ghor, Maidan Wardak and Ghazni provinces, including reinterviews with the doctors in Badakhshan and Farah. The report closes with an overview of recurring measles outbreaks in Afghanistan since 2001.

The report shows that routine immunisation is not enough, often because parents lack information or general knowledge about vaccination or because health service coverage is inadequate or difficult to access, with the system especially struggling since the 2025 aid cuts. It also shows how vulnerable Afghanistan is to outbreaks unless there is substantial development support for its health sector, and how unprepared the Emirate government has been to deal with a major health crisis, presumably because the health sector has never been a budgetary or policy priority.

The 2025 measles outbreak: why vaccine matters 

Muqem, the 29-year-old father of three in Faizabad whose story opened this report, described how in 2025, his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter became so seriously ill she had to be taken to the doctor every day. He was a little uncertain about his daughter’s vaccination status: “I asked her mother and she said she had taken her to the hospital for her vaccinations, but wasn’t sure if the measles vaccine was given.” Two nephews who lived with the family also contracted measles and became very sick: Muqem believed they had not been vaccinated. One, a three-year-old, developed such a high fever and severe rash that, as Muqem described it, his skin began to peel.

In total, eight children in our extended family, including my nephews, nieces and my own children, got measles, one after another. It started when one child got sick. After she recovered, another child got infected. The children who were in the most severe condition were those who had not been vaccinated.

The experience left him convinced that vaccination mattered, not least because of the nine children in his extended family, the only child that did not contract measles was the one the family was certain had been fully vaccinated, ie had received two doses.

At the other end of the country, in Farah, another parent, Razia, described how her eight-month-old daughter contracted measles before receiving her first vaccination.[5] The child became critically ill, she said. Her whole body turned red and she appeared lifeless and was unable to drink milk.

Her body had no strength – it was like a dead body. Only her heart was beating, which was the only way we could tell she was still alive. She was admitted to hospital for eight days. It was a truly horrible situation. I pray to God that no mother ever experiences this.

For Razia, with five children, the experience also became an argument for vaccination. She said her older children had previously had measles, but experienced the illness far more mildly – which she attributed to them having been vaccinated (with at least one dose) or having contracted the disease at a later age. Children under five are particularly vulnerable if they have not received both recommended vaccine doses to measles because protection from maternal antibodies fades during infancy. Also, once infected, young children are more likely to develop serious complications, particularly if they are malnourished or have weakened immune systems. Razia’s baby was not yet of age for vaccination: “I hope and pray that no child will ever contract measles before receiving the vaccine.”

During those eight days in hospital, Razia said the number of children admitted with measles rose from around 15 to around 50. This scenario was echoed in our interviews with doctors in Badakhshan, Farah and Helmand in 2025, who described how the severe measles outbreak h placed considerable pressure on hospitals and families. Doctors in all three provinces reported substantially higher caseloads than in previous years. According to the WHO’s infectious diseases monitoring report from 2025, the highest cumulative incidence of suspected measles cases per 10,000 population was reported in Helmand (69.4) and Badakhshan (49.9).

In Badakhshan, Dr Mushtaq at Faizabad Hospital said they were admitting 50 to 60 measles patients a day in mid-2025, compared with no more than six a day in 2024. Although admissions had fallen to between 12 and 18 a day by the time of the interview (in July 2025), he estimated that as many as 2,500 measles patients had been hospitalised over the previous five months. “At the peak of the outbreak, we were admitting up to 80 patients a day,” he said. The children’s ward has only 30 beds, he said, but could be caring for as many as 180 children, forcing staff to put several patients in one bed and use corridors. “We even had to use the kitchen as a temporary ward,” said Dr Muttaq. There had been between eight and twelve deaths a month, most of them, children under two.

Dr Gulli described a similar situation at Boost Hospital in Helmand: they were seeing around 200 to 300 measles patients a week at the time of the interview (July 2025) and earlier in the year had recorded as many as 120 patients a day. He said around 15 to 20 children were admitted every 24 hours, principally those with complications or underlying health problems. “In some instances,” Dr Gulli said, “I was treating ten or so members of a single family infected with measles.” Although less than one per cent of the measles patients died, he said that still meant they had as many as four deaths every week at the hospital.

Farah’s hospital was also struggling with overcrowding. At peak periods in 2025, paediatrician Dr Farid Hakimi said they were admitting as many as 20 measles patients a day. He said the hospital lacked a dedicated quarantine section with enough nurses and also that several sick children sometimes had to share a single bed, making effective isolation difficult. “At times,” he said “we had 25 inpatients with only one nurse, working a 24-hour shift, and one doctor attending to 120 patients.” He described an unbearable situation.

In every family, around two or three children had measles. They were treated at home because their financial situation was not good enough to admit their children to private hospitals and the capacity of the public hospital wasn’t enough to admit all patients. It was such a horrible situation. People were affected both mentally and financially. For instance, three children from the same family had contracted measles, but they had no money to hospitalise them in a private hospital. So, the family bought medicine for one child and shared it with the other two as well. 

The doctors we interviewed repeatedly stressed that malnutrition, poverty and other illnesses made measles more dangerous. Dr Gulli said around eight out of every 20 children admitted with measles were malnourished. It is among the principal complications associated with deaths, along with pneumonia and dehydration. Families’ economic circumstances are also an underlying factor in a child’s prospects of recovery, with some families lacking the resources to seek treatment promptly or provide sick children with adequate food.

What the parents we interviewed instinctively felt, the doctors confirmed: gaps in vaccination emerged as the most consistent explanation for the scale of the outbreak. Doctors said many of the children they treated had no record of measles vaccination, particularly those coming from remote areas. In Helmand. In Farah, Dr Hakimi also said that most of the children he treated had not been vaccinated and described greater reluctance towards vaccination in villages and districts than in the provincial capital. In Badakhshan, access to remote areas is the main problem: while mobile vaccination teams can operate in many villages and districts, Dr Mushtaq said that places such as Wakhan, Pamir and parts of Darwaz were difficult to reach.

The doctors we interviewed also raised concerns raised about how vaccines were transported, stored or administered, particularly in remote areas. Measles vaccines must be kept within a functioning cold chain, generally at between 2°C and 8°C and protected from heat and light.[6] The doctors suspected possible breaks in the cold chain and inadequate vaccinator training.[7] In Badakhshan, for example, Mushtaq said he believed delayed delivery, cold-chain problems and administration errors may have contributed to vaccination failures in 2024 and 2025. The Helmand doctor raised similar concerns, while saying storage and handling at Boost Hospital itself were properly monitored. There is no doubt that Afghanistan’s vaccine cold chain faces persistent logistical challenges, including unreliable electricity, shortages of refrigeration equipment and the difficulties of transporting vaccines to remote areas. UNICEF and its partners have invested substantially in solar-powered refrigerators, generators and other cold-chain infrastructure. In 2024, they installed 318 solar direct-drive refrigerators in health facilities across all 34 provinces, alongside cold rooms, freezers, vaccine carriers and generators (UNICEF). There is also no evidence that might verify that it was a cold-chain failure that caused the recent measles outbreak.

What the 2025 outbreak did clearly show was that gaps in mass national immunisation campaigns in environments such as Afghanistan, where multiple children can become infected in succession in large households, are dangerous. The images of overcrowded wards, shortages of staff and large numbers of seriously ill children last year displayed how serious a measles outbreak can be. At the same time, the interviews suggest that attitudes towards vaccination were not uniformly hostile. Many parents saw vaccination as beneficial, while some who had experienced severe measles firsthand became strong advocates for immunising children. The central challenge emerging from these accounts was therefore not vaccine hesitancy, but ensuring that children, particularly those in remote and poor communities, were actually reached by effective mobile immunisation campaigns, if routine vaccination is not available, before outbreaks occurred.

The situation in 2026: a decline in cases, but not an ending 

Interviews with doctors and health workers in selected provinces conducted in 2026 showed that measles cases have fallen in many parts of Afghanistan since the 2024-25 outbreak, although the picture remains uneven. In some provinces, like Helmand, as we will see, there has been little improvement.

In Farah province, we reinterviewed Dr Hakimi. He said the number of measles cases had fallen significantly:

The number of cases hasn’t yet dropped to zero. However, the number of patients admitted has gone down compared to 2025. … to three per day on average and on some days, we have only one. These are only patients with severe conditions, not those whose condition is normal and who can be sent home. 

In Faryab province, another Dr Hakimi also reported a decline in measles cases: “The situation is good and under our control now. We have one to two cases a month.” In Badakhshan, Dr Mushtaq whom we had interviewed in 2025, said the situation was far better than that year, with only up to six measles patients admitted each week. He also said the patients’ cases were “not as complicated” as last year. However, he highlighted staff shortages and the remoteness of some areas in Badakhshan as the main problems in the province, problems that had not gone away. “We have vacancies, but we lack doctors and nurses, and if there are measles complications, we don’t have the doctors specialising in malnutrition and infectious diseases.” Also, he added, “Most of our doctors work in volunteer positions.”

Interviewees credited mass vaccination campaigns with much of the improvement. Safiullah Seddiqi, who supervises health services in Maidan Wardak and Ghazni, said measles cases fell after the ten-day vaccination campaign in late 2025 and that the children who continued to contract the disease were largely those who had not been vaccinated. In Ghor, the deputy head of the Emirate’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Dr Faroqi, described a similar cycle: a 2022 campaign was followed by very few cases in 2023, but outbreaks returned in 2024 and became very severe in 2025 after the two-year vaccination gap. “In 2025,” he said, “the cases increased to the level that the infectious ward of our hospital didn’t have the capacity to admit patients.”

Our interviewees in Farah, Ghor, Faryab, Badakhshan Maidan Wardak and Ghazni all agreed that access to vaccination remains highly uneven – and for a variety of reasons. In Faryab, one doctor described “white areas” that are beyond the reach of regular health services, although mobile vaccinators were increasingly being used to reach them. In Ghor, a doctor told AAN that even mobile teams could not reach remote districts, while transport costs, restrictions on women’s mobility and families’ workloads prevented many parents from bringing children to clinics for vaccination. In Farah, a doctor described a different cause: some parents avoided vaccinators and were reluctant to vaccinate their children, underscoring the ongoing importance of public awareness alongside physical access to services.

Helmand province stands out from the downward trend in cases. Dr Seraj, who works at Boost Hospital, said there had been little change from 2025 and that measles remained the most prominent disease in the hospital’s isolation ward. The ward has 34 beds, he said, and they are usually full. The peak this year had been in April, four months before the interview, when he said that 50 measles patients had been admitted, forcing the hospital to restrict admission to only complicated cases.

From my point of view, there’s not been much change compared to 2025. In our isolation ward, the number of measles patients is higher than for other diseases. It’s been two years since I started working here and I’ve reviewed the records of admitted patients. Based on these records, we still have many measles patients. Our beds are full most of the time. 

The main reason for the high incidence of measles cases in Helmand is the same, however – missed immunisation.

Our interviews, supported by the monitoring data, suggest that the mass vaccination campaign in late 2025 was followed by a substantial reduction in measles nationwide, but that it has not eliminated the underlying conditions that allow outbreaks to recur. Routine immunisation in local clinics, hospitals or other health care establishments is still not common practice, particularly in remote communities, while poverty can prevent families from seeking timely care, and health facilities may struggle when cases surge. The situation in Helmand also shows that statistics showing a national decline can conceal significant local outbreaks. Afghanistan’s dependence on nationwide mass vaccination campaigns, rather than a routine two-dose immunisation, which requires a more comprehensive health infrastructure, suggests that there is still a long road ahead in eradicating measles.

Setting the 2025 epidemic in historic context 

Afghanistan has faced recurrent measles outbreaks for the last quarter of the century, largely because routine immunisation never achieved full coverage or consistent delivery, with many children, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas, left unvaccinated. Following the years of conflict and international isolation, beginning in 2001-02, the Ministry of Public Health, WHO and UNICEF launched large vaccination campaigns (WHO). Around 11.5 million children aged six months to 12 years were immunised in 2002. Another five million children were immunised in 2003. Reported measles cases consequently fell sharply, from 8,762 in 2001 to 559 in 2004. However, the gains were difficult to sustain. Cases rose again to 836 in 2005 and 1,835 in 2006 as routine coverage remained inadequate and many children were left unprotected, especially in the south and southeast of the country (Relief Web).

In 2005, the Country Report on Afghanistan’s Millennium Development Goals (written by the United Nations Development Programme) said the measles vaccination campaign had been effective, at least in the cities:

The measles immunisation programme has been a success in Afghanistan, with 75% of children aged less than 12 months having being immunised. Owing to much higher immunisation coverage of children in urban as opposed to rural areas, infant and child mortality rates in the rural areas are around 25% higher.

However, routine immunisation alone never reached enough children, which meant Afghanistan has kept going through the same vicious cycle: a rise in cases followed by an immunisation campaign whether that targeted a specific province or was nationwide. That brought cases down, but without routine immunisation, they were bound to rise again. Afghanistan’s 2018 Health Survey concluded that the measles immunisation rate had fluctuated, without overall improvement between 2003 and 2018, with estimated measles vaccination coverage at about 64 per cent, and with only 51.4 per cent of children ever fully vaccinated (ie, with two jabs). This suggests that emergency campaigns repeatedly reduced outbreaks, but that routine immunisation was failing to reach enough children, enough times.

Reported measles cases per year, 2020-2025. Source: WHO Immunization Portal. Graph generated on 28 September 2026

After relatively lower transmissions in 2019 and 2020, suspected measles cases again began rising across Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, from around 30,000 in 2021 (WHO) to more than 77,000 in 2022 (WHO), as explained in more detail in the following section.

Epidemics under the Emirate

The rise in cases is directly linked to the deterioration of the healthcare system and the economic crisis that struck the country following the abrupt change of government. Since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate in August 2021, funding for healthcare has plummeted and the number of health facilities and medical staff has shrunk (see this 2025 AAN report on rural women’s access to health). WHO’s 2025 Public Health Situation Analysis, using 2023 data, estimated there are only 10.3 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 people. It described the workforce shortage and its distribution as critical. The sharp reduction in donor support in 2025, most significantly caused by the cut in US aid under President Trump’s Stop Aid order from January 2025,[8] resulted in the closure of approximately 595 facilities since then, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), with 445 closed or suspended in 2025, plus more than 150 additional health centres during the first half of 2026 (MSF). At the same time, the Emirate’s spending priorities mean health gets only one to two per cent of the budget (compared to 40 to 50 per cent spent on security).[9] The limited availability of health facilities across the country, coupled with staff shortages – particularly of specialist doctors and female health workers had the most severe impact on women, who are often tasked with taking care of children’s vaccination schedules. A series of prohibitions targeting women promulgated by the Emirate since 2021 has made independent travel difficult and in some areas, impossible, especially over long distances. In particular, a ban instituted in December 2021 on women and girls travelling “long distances” without a mahram (a close male relative) is often applied to any woman travelling independently, at all.[10]

Number of suspected measles cases based on WHO data. Graph: AAN, 2026.
Number of measles-related deaths based on WHO data. Graph: AAN, 2026.

As the two graphs above show, 2022 was the first major peak since 2001 for measles in Afghanistan, with 77,210 suspected cases and 388 deaths. The response was extensive: several subnational campaigns reached around three million children, followed in November and December 2022 by the first nationwide measles campaign since August 2021. It vaccinated 5.36 million children aged 9 months to 5 years across all 34 provinces. This appears to have contributed to the much lower incidence seen in 2023: annual suspected cases fell by roughly two-thirds to just under 29,000. Nevertheless, WHO monitoring showed cases again beginning to increase towards the end of 2023.

2024 saw another major resurgence, with 59,753 suspected cases and 289 deaths – more than double the number of suspected cases reported in 2023. Eighty per cent of suspected cases and more than 95 per cent of deaths were among children younger than five. The underlying vulnerability was considerable: Afghanistan’s 2022–23 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey had found that only about 51% of children had received their first measles-containing vaccine dose and only 37% the necessary second dose. This is far below the level of 95 per cent, two-dose coverage (UNICEF) required to prevent outbreaks of a disease as infectious as measles.

As could be anticipated, the situation became still more serious in 2025. Cases rose steadily from the beginning of the year and reached a peak of 4,172 suspected cases every week in April. By 13 December, WHO had recorded 97,368 suspected measles cases and 552 associated deaths. This was the highest number of suspected cases recorded since 2001. In response, Afghanistan carried out a large two-phase national vaccination campaign in late 2025, reaching more than 16.7 million children aged six months to ten years across all provinces. By 29 August 2026, the national surveillance system had recorded 18,826 suspected cases and 78 deaths, compared with more than 97,000 cases already recorded by late June in 2025. Children under five still accounted for 14,367 cases, or 76 per cent of the 2026 total. Weekly cases have also been declining: between 23 and 29 August, only 292 suspected cases were reported, with no deaths and the Ministry of Public Health says the downward trend had been evident since June (MoPH).

However, there are still many children in Afghanistan who have not received at least one dose of measles vaccine. A recent REACH Initiative Whole of Afghanistan Assessment (WoAA) 2026 survey found that a fifth of respondents (21 per cent) had a child who had never received a measles injection at nine months or later and five per cent did not know if their child had received one.

Conclusion

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. The only way to really stop major outbreaks is to achieve ‘population immunity’, which requires the vast majority of the population to be vaccinated or to have previously had the disease (the UNICEF/WHO goal is 95%). Afghanistan’s vaccination practice cannot achieve this: large vaccination campaigns have repeatedly brought cases down, but weak routine, double-dose coverage caused by poor and uneven access to health services, malnutrition, periodic conflict and insecurity and the geographic isolation of many communities have allowed outbreaks to return. The fact that more than three-quarters of measles cases in 2026 were registered among children under five (both doses of measles vaccine should be administered before the age of 18 months; see footnote 5) (MoPH) clearly shows that the immunisation has not reached every child and the country remains vulnerable to renewed outbreaks.

The remedy is difficult. Rather than periodic vaccination campaigns, Afghanistan’s children, nationwide, need a two-dose routine immunisation. That it does need to be two-dose was the conclusion of a 2026 journal article, “Measles outbreak risk in Afghanistan: provincial immunity gaps and epidemic potential following immunisation system disruption,” in Vaccine, published by Elsevier. A single dose, the study found, would not give sufficiently high immunity, even if coverage were dramatically improved. The authors argue that controlling measles will therefore require a combination of sustained two-dose vaccination, large and well-targeted supplementary campaigns in vulnerable areas and the broader restoration of Afghanistan’s routine immunisation system, rather than relying on a single-dose vaccine alone.

However, in the current global political climate, Afghanistan has slipped down the international agenda and funding for basic services has become increasingly scarce. This leaves health providers, most of whom are NGO-run and donor-supported, struggling to sustain already depleted services, let alone expand preventive care or reach long-underserved communities. At the same time, a shift in Emirate policy that prioritised health and well-being is not on the horizon. Without sustained donor commitment or a change in national budget allocations, the cycle of avoidable illness, overstretched services and avoidable deaths among small children is set to continue.

Edited by Rachel Reid and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes measles as a highly contagious viral disease that is easily transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes and can cause serious complications and even death. While it can affect anyone, it is most common in children. The infection starts in the respiratory tract and then spreads throughout the body. Symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose and a rash all over the body. There is no specific cure for measles. Vaccination, which began in 1963 and has since become widespread, is the most effective way to prevent measles infection and transmission. The vaccine is safe, effective and affordable and community-wide vaccination has proven the most effective way to prevent measles.
↑2 The approximation for the number of suspected cases is based on the World Health Organization’s Afghanistan Infectious Diseases Outbreaks Situation Reports, which are published weekly. The annual estimates are provided in the situation report for week 52 each year.
↑3 The exact figure was 18,826 suspected cases by the end of August 2026 and 78 deaths had been reported, with weekly infections continuing to fall (MoPH).
↑4 This report is concerned only with measles in Afghanistan in the last 25 years, ie since 2001. This period was chosen because of the availability of data and analysis on the topic. While same data for the period before 2001 exists, it is based on estimates, or it is generalised or patchy.
↑5 The WHO recommends that children receive two doses of measles vaccine to ensure immunity. In countries with high measles incidence, the first dose is usually given at 9 months of age and a second dose typically at 15-18 months (WHO).
↑6 Once the freeze-dried vaccine has been mixed with its diluent, WHO recommends that it be kept refrigerated and used within six hours.
↑7 There have also been allegations of corruption in the recruitment and management of vaccination staff. In September 2026, Hasht-e Subh reported claims from local sources in Helmand that some vaccinator posts had been allocated to individuals with connections to local officials and that applicants had paid money to secure positions (8AM, 15 September 2026). Similar allegations emerged in Takhar, where sources accused provincial health officials of placing fictitious vaccinators on campaign payrolls and replacing experienced workers with people willing to pay for jobs (8AM, 3 September 2026). In Kandahar, vaccinators interviewed by Hasht-e Subh complained about delayed salaries and alleged that officials were recruiting relatives into vaccination campaigns (8AM, 5 September 2026). Concerns about such practices are not new: a 2018 review of the global polio programme identified the diversion of frontline workers’ payments and claims for ‘ghost vaccinators’ as financial risks in Afghanistan, although it found no evidence at the time of major systemic diversion of programme funds (The Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative).
↑8 See this press release from the Norwegian Refugee Council from 26 March 2025, which says:

In January the United States (US) suspended ongoing aid projects which forced the majority of US-funded humanitarian work to be put on hold or end (Devex). In February, the United Kingdom announced it would be cutting Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) from 0.5% to 0.3% of Gross National Income (UK Government). In February the Dutch government also underscored their scale back in aid announcing a 2.4 billion cut on development aid from 2027 (Government of the Netherlands). The French government announced it would reduce public development assistance by more than 2 billion Euros – close to 40%of its annual funding (RFI). Swiss, Swedish, German and Belgian governments have also announced cuts in aid assistance budgets (Devex, Devex SwissInfo, Development Today). 

See also Kate Clark and AAN team, The End of US Aid to Afghanistan: What will it mean for families, services and the economy?, 9 May 2025, AAN.
↑9 For the 2022 figures on health and security spending, see the October 2023 Afghanistan Development Update. See also figure 13 of its December 2024 Afghanistan Development Update for the split between civilian and security spending over several years. Data on public finances from the Emirate is scarce, but occasional information suggests little has changed. See also AAN’s, Survival and Stagnation: The State of the Afghan economy, 7 November 2023, and What Do The Taleban Spend Afghanistan’s Money On? Government expenditure under the Islamic Emirate, 16 March 2023.
↑10  See Jelena Bjelica and AAN Team, Rural Women’s Access to Health in Afghanistan: “Most of the time, we just don’t go”, AAN, 27 March 2025.

 

The Measles Outbreak Cycle: A long road ahead to end epidemics 
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Thirty Years after Najib: A dossier of reports on the PDPA and its legacy

September 26, 2026

Afghanistan Analysts Network

AAN Team

Thirty years ago, on 27 September 1996, former president Dr Najibullah was killed alongside his brother, Shahpur, in the Afghan capital, Kabul. He had been sheltering in a United Nations compound since the mujahedin captured the city four years earlier, but on 26 September, the Taliban took Kabul. By the next morning, the two brothers had been seized and killed, their bodies hanged from nearby traffic lights. To mark the anniversary, we have compiled a new dossier of reports about Najib’s party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had seized power in the 1978 coup. The reports look back at the people and events that shaped this turbulent period of Afghan history and at the contested legacy of the PDPA and its rule.

This dossier follows our 2018 Thematic Dossier XVIII: The PDPA and the Soviet Intervention, which brought together AAN reporting on the 1978 coup and its aftermath, war crimes and resistance, the Soviet intervention and the PDPA’s successor parties. Here, we bring the collection up-to-date with the relevant reports we have published since then.

These two AAN dossiers trace a political party that profoundly changed Afghanistan and whose coup d’état led to half a century of conflict. The earlier dossier looked at how the PDPA seized power in 1978 and the repression that followed, including mass arrests, torture, forced disappearances and killings, and the resistance its government sparked. It also examined the relationship between the PDPA and the Soviet Union, whose forces invaded in December 1979, as the government in Kabul faced a growing rebellion, and the decade-long occupation and war that followed.

The reports featured in this second dossier revisit that history. Thomas Ruttig’s account of the PDPA on the 60thanniversary of its founding traces the party’s contentious history – from its beginnings in 1965 and its factional struggles to the coup and its years in power, including Najibullah’s attempt to remake it as Hezb-e Watan in 1990. Two reports marking the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion revisit December 1979 from different perspectives: one places the invasion in the wider history of the Cold War, while the other asks Afghans what they remember of the arrival of Soviet troops and how it changed their lives. Together, the reports show how the struggle over political power, modernisation and the direction of the country became entangled with the Cold War, with consequences that long outlasted the Soviet withdrawal.

Three obituaries examine the PDPA era through the lives of people who held prominent positions in the party but are also remembered for their achievements and commitments that went beyond their party membership: Sultan Ali Keshtmand as a senior politician and advocate of greater equality for Hazaras, Sulaiman Layeq as one of Afghanistan’s most highly regarded poets and Soraya Parlika as a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights.

Accountability, which featured prominently in the earlier dossier, remains an issue decades after the crimes were perpetrated. The reports in the war crimes and accountability section follow investigations and prosecutions in the Netherlands of former PDPA-era officials accused of crimes committed more than four decades ago, including the case of a former Pul-e Charkhi prison commander, whose war crimes conviction was overturned on appeal. AAN’s analysis uncovered several areas where the tribunal’s arguments appeared flawed, including it misunderstanding the role of the PDPA intelligence agency, KhAD, and not taking into consideration legal understandings reached by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR). Abdul Razaq Arif died in 2025 before Dutch prosecutors could appeal the court’s ruling. These reports illustrate both the possibilities offered by universal jurisdiction when alleged perpetrators have left Afghanistan and the legal difficulties of prosecuting crimes committed so long ago.

The war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the PDPA are detailed in the final publication for this dossier. The UN Mapping Report, authored by Patricia Gossman and Barnett Rubin, also covers the crimes committed by the mujahedin parties – in opposition and in government – and the first Taliban emirate, and by both the Soviet (1979-1989) and US (in 2001) armies.

The PDPA and the Soviet invasion

Between Reform and Repression: The 60th anniversary of PDPA

Thomas Ruttig, 20 January 2025

The leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) irrevocably altered the country’s trajectory with its coup d’état in 1978, setting off a chain of events that would have lasting repercussions. The debate surrounding the extent of the Soviet Union’s influence on the party prior to this, as well as Moscow’s desire to see its rise to power, continues to this day. What is clear, however, is that the PDPA’s takeover of power and the subsequent Soviet military intervention in December 1979 touched off a shift of seismic proportions not only in Afghanistan’s political landscape but also in the lives of ordinary Afghans. Along with Western support for the mujahedin who opposed the party, the PDPA internationalised Afghanistan’s internal conflicts over modernisation and governance – they would last four decades, marking it as the last ‘hot war’ in the context of the Cold War. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at the party’s history, drawing from earlier AAN reports, as well as adding details from lesser-known sources.

“Our Lives Changed”: Afghans remember the coming of the Soviet troops

AAN Team and S Reza Kazemi, 27 December 2019

Forty years ago, Soviet forces entered Afghanistan, killed then President Hafizullah Amin from the Khalq faction of the ruling communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) on 27 December 1979 and brought to power Babrak Karmal, who was from the rival Parcham faction. The move was meant to be a relatively short-lived regime-change operation, but swiftly turned into a fully-fledged occupation that would last one long decade and plunge the country into an intricate, devastating armed conflict from which it has yet to emerge. AAN has spoken to a range of people about their memories of those days and how the Soviet invasion affected them and changed their lives (interviews by the AAN team, compiled by Reza Kazemi).

A Turning Point in World History: 40 years ago, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig, 25 December 2019

Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan 40 years ago today, on 25 December 1979. Two days later, on 27 December, they toppled and killed Amin’s Khalqi’s government which had called for the troops and had assumed they had come for their rescue. The resulting occupation that would last for more than ten years became the last direct Soviet involvement in a ‘hot’ war in the global Cold War of that era. What was meant to be a relatively short and limited regime change operation, ended up changing history. It became part of a larger configuration of events that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union and its dominance in Eastern Europe and what, at the time, was described as the ‘end of history’: the end of the Cold War and the final triumph of liberal democracy (an illusion that has become obsolete). In Afghanistan, armed conflict did not end with the Soviet withdrawal, making Afghans the main victims of this war. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reminds us of the unfolding events and the history they were part of.

Lives and legacies 

Obituary for Sultan Ali Keshtmand (1935-2026): Afghanistan’s Soviet-era political leader and Hazara rights advocate

Thomas Ruttig, 21 March 2026

Few Afghan politicians from the era of the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime combined technocratic skill with a clear focus on combatting ethnic inequality, as Sultan Ali Keshtmand did. Born into a modest Hazara family, he rose to the top echelons of the party, navigating imprisonment, internal PDPA purges and shifting Soviet strategies to twice become head of government during one of the country’s most turbulent decades. For some, he symbolised opportunity and the potential for political inclusion, but for critics, he remains inseparable from the broader record of the Soviet-backed PDPA – a loyal functionary complicit in its failures and excesses. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, with contributions by Rohullah Sorush, examines Keshtmand’s legacy, which sits at the crossroads of ethnic politics, state-building and the Cold War, as well as his contested place in Afghanistan’s political memory.

AAN Obituary: PDPA leader and poet Sulaiman Layeq

Thomas Ruttig, 19 August 2020

Sulaiman Layeq, one of the last surviving founding members of the leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which changed the country’s history with its coup d’état in 1978, has died in late July. In 1992, he even made it to the top of the party, albeit in its final moments. The circumstances of his death were tragic and symbolic for the state of Afghanistan at the same time: Layeq, 90 years old, died of the wounds he had sustained in a suicide bombing in September 2019 in Kabul. AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig looks back at the two sides of his life – the life of a highly esteemed poet and of a controversial politician.

AAN Obituary: Unfaltering women’s rights activist Soraya Parlika (1944-2019)

Thomas Ruttig, 15 January 2020

Soraya Parlika, political and women’s rights activist, has died at the age of 75. She had, said Sahraa Karimi, Chair of the Afghan Film Organisation, who made a documentary about Parlika, “dedicated her life to the life of women of Afghanistan and never left her motherland even during the hard years of civil war and Taleban regime.” This earned her the respect even among many who opposed her for having been a leading member of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks back at her life.

War crimes and accountability

1980s Pul-e Charkhi Commander Walks Free: War crimes conviction overturned by Dutch Court of Appeal

Kate Clark, 19 August 2024

A senior figure overseeing the notorious Pul-e Charkhi prison in the 1980s who was convicted of war crimes in the Netherlands, where he had been given asylum, has seen his conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal. His lawyers successfully argued that Abdul Razaq Arif’s crimes – arbitrary deprivation of liberty, cruel and inhuman treatment, and assault on the personal dignity – were not admissible because they had no link to the armed conflict between the then government and the mujahedin and could therefore not be considered war crimes. The Public Prosecution Service has now asked the Dutch Supreme Court to consider the appeal judgement. Senior analyst Kate Clark, has, with other AAN colleagues, followed this and similar cases over many years and here delves into the substance and points of law made in the appeal court’s judgement that may now be considered by the Supreme Court.

War Crimes Trial Begins in the Netherlands: Former commander at Pul-e Charkhi faces justice

Kate Clark, 16 February 2022

The trial of an Afghan man suspected of committing war crimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s will start today in the Netherlands. Abdul Razaq Arif is believed to have served in leadership positions in the Pul-e Charkhi prison from 1983 to 1990 and is being charged with being an accessory to or allowing inhuman treatment and the deprivation of liberty. Arif was arrested in November 2019 in the Netherlands following a tip-off in 2012 from a Dutch Afghan citizen and a seven-year- long investigation. As AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the trial is a rare instance of an Afghan accused of war crimes facing a court.

Afghan War Crimes Trials in The Netherlands: Who are the suspects and what have been the outcomes?

Ehsan Qanee, 25 March 2020

At least six Afghan, or Afghan-Dutch, citizens have been investigated for war crimes and torture in Afghanistan by the Dutch authorities. Two were found guilty and received prison sentences, one was acquitted, one died during the investigation, one was investigated but released due to insufficient evidence, and the sixth is still under investigation. All were military officials belonging to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) which governed Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992. The trials were conducted based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national courts to try the gravest crimes, even when they allegedly took place in another country. AAN’s Ehsan Qaane provides details about the identity of the six, the allegations against them, context about the PDPA’s era, as well as analysis about the significance of these trials for victims (with input from Thomas Ruttig and Rachel Reid).

The UN Mapping Report

 15 August 2024

In 2004, a major report mapping the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001 was published by the United Nations before being swiftly taken down under political pressure, allegedly from then president Hamed Karzai, some of his ministers and foreign backers and from within the UN. What became known as ‘the UN Mapping Report’, authored by Patricia Gossman and Barnett Rubin, was subsequently made available to the public on a website. As the link is now broken, the AAN is posting this important report here.

Compiled by Nur Khan Himmat and Kate Clark

Edited by Roxanna Shapour

Thirty Years after Najib: A dossier of reports on the PDPA and its legacy
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From Kabul to Pittsburgh: Book profiles women who fled the Taliban

September 22, 2026

By Bill O’Driscoll

90.5 WESA
NPR Pittsburgh Affiliate
Published September 22, 2026
A woman in jean shorts sits on steps
Grand Central Publishing
Samira Rustami is now a nursing student in Pittsburgh.

The 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan inaugurated the longest war in U.S. history. But the war’s end in 2021 came rather suddenly, accompanied by much chaos.

That was the case for the more than 120 Afghans in the orbit of the New York Times’ Kabul bureau, who were among the estimated 200,000 Afghans who fled in the midst of the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country. Many of the refugees were women, who under the Taliban would have faced the heaviest consequences of the reinstatement of fundamentalist Islamic rule that the 2001 invasion had temporarily ended.

A new book tells the stories of four of those women, some of whom ended up in Pittsburgh. “The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan & Coming of Age in America” (Grand Central Publishing) is co-written by Rebecca Blumenstein, who as Times deputy managing editor led efforts to relocate the refugees, and San Francisco-based journalist Diana Kapp.

WESA spoke with Kapp and Samira Rustami, one of the refugees now living in Pittsburgh.

‘Locked inside the house’

Rustami said she grew up in Kabul, one of six daughters in a family where daughters were not valued or even desired.

“It was very hard on us,” she said.

book cover

But coming of age in the 2010s, Rustami managed to get an education and, at 16, earned a scholarship to a business school in India. Three years later she returned to Afghanistan and got a job in a hotel. She’d been there only seven months when the U.S. occupation ended in August 2021.

Other women in the book were at similarly promising points in life. Mursal had graduated law school and her sister Marwa was months from graduating medical school.

Rustami knew what life under the Taliban — which had previously ruled from 1996 to 2001 — would be like: more restrictive for everyone, but far worse for women.

“We’ll be just locked inside the house and be a slave inside our own house, being jailed,” she said. “And if we go outside, we have to have a male [companion] with us, either our father or brother. We have to wear specific clothing that they want us to do. We would not have any freedom, any freedom as a human being.”

Rustami’s new husband, Wais, had had his job as a Times maintenance man for just three months. But that was enough to get both of them on the list of people the newspaper would aid.

‘A mad scramble’

The new book’s co-author, Kapp, said the Times was prompted to aid its Afghan workers by a note from one of its Afghan reporters in Kabul.

“It set off a mad scramble to find a way for their local reporters, drivers, translators, everyone who worked in the bureau, and their direct family members to get out,” Kapp said.

woman in a sleeveless blouse on a couch
Grand Central Publishing
Journalist Diana Kapp is co-author of “The Last Free Women.”

She said a small team led by Blumenstein “started calling embassies around the world and looking for a way to get their people out.”

The group eventually entered the U.S. under a status called humanitarian parole, which Kapp said hadn’t been used since the Vietnam War. The Times contracted with Catholic Charities, a resettlement agency, and Blumenstein led efforts to find jobs and living arrangements for people and to place young people in schools.

Kapp noted challenges like locating apartments for tenants who had fled their homeland with little notice and lacked three months of pay stubs.

As to refugees seeking higher education, Blumenstein (who today is President, Editorial, of NBC News) worked with Carnegie Mellon University president Farnam Jahanian, whom she knew, to assemble a consortium of local schools. Chatham University’s intensive English-language program made it the destination, ultimately, for five of the refugees, including Rustami, Wais and Marwa.

Rustami, who had initially been placed in Houston, said she chose Chatham and Pittsburgh largely for … the weather?

“I don’t like the hot weather,” she said. “We were in Texas, so it was like very hot. I was like, okay, so we, we were okay with Pittsburgh.” The city’s winters reminded her of Kabul.

Also, she added, “And I like [the] people here. They’re very nice and kind.”

‘A chance to build my future’

By the time Samira and Wais arrived here, in January 2023, they had an infant daughter, Durrin. But they had more help, too: Blumenstein’s sister-in-law, Laura Kessler, who lived near the Chatham campus

“She took care of everything, most of everything in our life,” Samira said. “And now she became more than a family to me.”

woman in a dark blouse in an armchair
Grand Central Publishing
In 2021, Rebecca Blumenstein was the New York Times deputy managing editor who led efforts to help Times employees and their families leave Afghanistan.

“If I have a troubling problem, I call Laura. If my husband has a problem, the first person that comes to our mind is Laura.”

Rustami is now studying both at UPMC Shadyside School of Nursing and as an undergraduate nursing student at Chatham. Her husband is also studying at Chatham while working at PNC.

Today, with the Trump administration ramping up deportations and narrowing the pipeline for asylum-seekers, the climate for immigrants and refugees is much less certain than it was in 2021.

While some of the Times-connected refugees have gotten their green cards, many, including Samira and Wais, have not. Kapp says the review process for Afghans is on indefinite pause following the shooting, this past November in Washington, D.C., of two National Guard members. The suspect was part of a secret unit of Afghans that operated under CIA direction.

While their future remains uncertain due to their legal status, Samira Rustami remains committed to becoming a nurse and grateful she was able to flee her homeland.

“I knew it was the time that I could, that it was a chance to build my future very differently because … I knew I could not have the future I do have now,” she said. “And I couldn’t even dream about it because I was not allowed to.”

While Rustami has cut off contact with her birth family, she remains in touch with friends in Afghanistan, where girls cannot attend school past sixth grade, among other restrictions.

“They’re limited in doing everything,” she said.

The publicity tour for “The Last Free Women” has included New York, Houston, and Kapp and Rustami’s Sept. 13 visit to Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum. There have been spots on NBC’s Today Show, the PBS NewsHour, and excerpts have run in the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.

“All of the women who are in the book are bravely using their voices to bring attention to this group of people who we lost this war, and it’s not something Americans seem to want to continue to think about,” Kapp said. “We really believe this is an important story to tell to bring attention to what is happening to women in Afghanistan.”

Bill O’Driscoll is a long-time Pittsburgh-based journalist specializing in the arts and the environment. Previous to working at WESA, he spent 21 years at the weekly Pittsburgh City Paper, the last 14 as Arts & Entertainment editor. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and in 30-plus years as a journalist has freelanced for publications including In Pittsburgh, The Nation, E: The Environmental Magazine, American Theatre, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Bill has earned numerous Golden Quill awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. He lives in the neighborhood of Manchester, and he once milked a goat. Email: bodriscoll@wesa.fm
From Kabul to Pittsburgh: Book profiles women who fled the Taliban
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Afghan Women Left in Limbo: Decree 18 and the struggle to end a marriage

September 20, 2026

Kate Clark • AAN Team

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Early this year, the Islamic Emirate’s Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued Decree 18, which codified the grounds on which women can end a marriage. While Afghan men can divorce their wives easily, women must either get their husband’s consent, typically with financial penalties, or a court ruling. Kate Clark and the AAN team have been analysing this law – an unofficial translation of which AAN also publishes today. This report has a special focus on one major issue stemming from Afghanistan’s high rate of male out-migration – women who have been abandoned by their husbands. We heard about husbands who are abroad, providing no maintenance to their wives and children, and in some cases have remarried, but still refuse to grant a divorce. Decree 18 effectively protects such men, although some lawyers, typically where a judge is sympathetic, are finding ways around a law that prioritises the wishes of the husband. 

A translation of the Code on the Separation of Spouses by former BBC journalist and Islamic scholar John Butt is available here. 

This situation has such a bad and damaging effect on my soul. I am completely tired and fed up with life. Every morning when I wake up, I suffer greatly from a wave of hopelessness and distress. 

This woman, whom we are calling Najma, was 22 when she was married to a man of 45, an age gap that she said was “very painful.” Her husband also deceived her. Once the nikah (marriage contract) was signed, he told her he was already married to a woman in Tajikistan. He went back a month later, promising to send a visa to Najma and take her there, then broke off contact. That was almost two years ago. “He didn’t establish any kind of life for me,” she said. “He left me helpless in my father’s house. … He doesn’t call, doesn’t provide financial support and hasn’t sent a visa. … It was all a deception. He married me only for his pleasure during the short time he was here in Afghanistan.” She went on:

Now, whenever I call him, he doesn’t treat me well. He swears and insults me, saying: ‘You’re not worthy of being my wife. You’re not worth sending money to, nor worth bringing to Tajikistan. Just stay in your father’s house.” He says he won’t let me get a separation. He says, “Whenever I feel like it, I’ll come; if I don’t feel like it, I won’t come. You just have to wait and until I come, you have to live like this.”

Najma’s case is one of several we heard about, either directly from the woman herself or from lawyers representing women needing a divorce. We already knew from earlier AAN reporting by Letty Phillips and Rama Mirzada, “The Doors to Separation Are Closed for Women”: Women and divorce under the Emirate (4 May 2025), that for Afghan women, ending a marriage had become more difficult under the Islamic Emirate. Phillips and Mirzada detailed how divorce, while never much resorted to because of the social stigma, had at least become a little easier in the 1970s. Like most states that derive their legal codes from Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh), Afghanistan introduced reforms aimed at making divorce easier for women and constraining a husband’s prerogative to unilateral divorce. It did so by enabling women to draw on the jurisprudence of any of the four schools of Sunni Islam, with Ja’fari jurisprudence[1] also formally recognised for Shia Muslims in 2004. All the other schools are more generous to women seeking a divorce than the jurisprudence of the school followed by most Afghan Sunnis – Hanafi.

After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, they ordered that only Hanafi jurisprudence be used in the courts. Even within this constraint, however, judges could still draw on different opinions, although one opinion might always be preferred (al-ra’i al-rajah). The Amir’s codification of the law has therefore further limited judges’ leeway. As one Afghan Islamic law expert told UN Women for its Gender Alert – Decree No 18 – Code of Principles on Separation of Spouses:

While many of [the Code’s] provisions do have a basis in Ḥanafī jurisprudence, the decree appears to draw selectively from that tradition – codifying narrower positions while omitting more protective ones available within the same school – with the cumulative effect of reducing safeguards for women and girls.

This report is divided into two sections. The first examines the Code, drawing on lawyers’ experiences to analyse its implications for women seeking a separation. The second focuses on the difficulties faced by women abandoned by their husbands, an issue made urgent by the large number of Afghan men who have migrated for work. Informing the analysis throughout is UN Women’s Gender Alert – Decree No 18, with its focus on the legal, procedural and rights aspects of the Code, as well as responses to it by our translator, John Butt, who combines experience as a BBC journalist with years spent studying Islam, including seven years at the Deoband Seminary in India.

The report draws on interviews carried out in July, August and September 2026 with five lawyers (two in Kabul, two in Mazar and one in Bamyan) and three women (two in Kabul and one in Mazar). The names of both lawyers and women have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

A note on terms, which in English would all be covered by ‘divorce’ 

Talaq is when a man repudiates his wife, thereby ending their marriage. He must compensate her by paying the mahr, the Islamically sanctioned gift given by the groom to his wife at their marriage (if not already paid in full), and continue to support her while she is pregnant and for the period she has to wait before she can marry again, and for any children.

Women have two types of divorce potentially available to them. Khul’a (often commonly called khul) is a separation initiated by the wife, with the husband’s agreement, in which she forfeits compensation. Typically, she must repay her mahr and may have to make other payments to free herself.[2]

A court can also sanction a separation. This is known as tafriq and is the only way a woman can end a marriage without her husband’s agreement, or in opposition to it. Grounds for tafriq form the bulk of the Code.

In some instances, the court can also annul a marriage where its validity has been challenged (by any party) and found to be unlawful.

What is in the Code?

The Code on the Separation of Spouses, dated 24 January 2026, is non-gender-specific. However, it deals almost entirely with women and the grounds on which a court can give a woman a legal separation, even despite her husband’s wishes. The lawyers we spoke to had mixed opinions. “The Code is ambiguous and contains provisions in favour of the husband,” said Shah Mahmud, a defence lawyer in Mazar-e Sharif. Another defence lawyer, Gul Agha, who practices in Kabul, said it had made it more difficult for women to get a separation and, anyway, “a woman’s voice isn’t really listened to in the courts – they don’t attach any importance to it.” Muhammad Rahman, a lawyer in Bamyan, felt that none of the grounds given for ending a marriage benefited women, largely because they had to provide evidence, including witnesses, and because courts were ultimately reluctant to act. “For instance,” he said, “when a man beats his wife, she cannot prove it in court.” Other lawyers were seeking ways to use the Code, despite its drawbacks. Rahim in Mazar said, “It carries legal weight and can be helpful.”

The Code provides twelve grounds for judicially ending a marriage. Matin, a lawyer in Kabul, who is in touch with other lawyers around the country, said they had “identified areas which could be used to protect the rights of women.” These are: obstinacy and wrongful conduct; the husband is missing; lack of compatibility; and the ‘prerogative of puberty’. None, he stressed, were necessarily straightforward and might themselves be problematic. The report will look at these in turn.

A husband’s obstinacy (muta’anat wali) is defined in article 2.7 as “a husband who, even though he is able to do so, does not give his wife household expenses or fulfil her marital rights.” Article 22 says a wife may “petition a court if her husband oppresses her, fails to fulfil her rights, or hostility exists between the spouses.” Matin liked the reference to rights arising from the marriage contract:

The first right is respect. It is mentioned in the Quran. It is mentioned in Hadith. So, the person who doesn’t provide for the rights of his wife is called muta’anat. Also, the person who does not provide [living] expenses for his wife is muta’anat. Even the person who leaves his wife and goes abroad, does not come back and does not provide for her, he’s also an example of muta’anat. 

If the court establishes that there is “martial discord [shiqaq],” it is tasked with appointing “two arbitrators from among the families of the spouses and send them to the parties for the purpose of reconciliation and for determining which party is the wrongdoer and which is the wronged party.” The court can then only “compel the obstinate or oppressive husband to cease his oppression and obstinacy or grant his wife a divorce [talaq].” Article 19 of the Code explicitly says that a judge shall not issue a judicial separation if a husband does not give his wife living expenses, or if he is absent but not missing (more on which below). As the UN Women’s Gender Alert points out, the Code embeds:

mediation and reconciliation as the default response to oppression, … prioritizes preservation of the marriage over the safety of the woman within it, and risks treating serious violence as a condition susceptible to family-based intervention rather than as conduct requiring protection and exit.

As to article 22, it says, “the basic logic of a mechanism aimed at protecting from oppression is inverted: the person most often identified as the oppressor must themselves consent before the wife can leave the marriage.”

Nevertheless, Matin said lawyers had been able to use this article in some situations. Rahim in Mazar said he had invoked it in numerous sessions and gave a current example:

I said this person is very rude and oppressive. He has children from a previous wife who are non-mahram to my client, and they have even laid hands on her. He has committed oppression and used inappropriate language. … The argument is that under this code, if it’s proven that a person is oppressive, divorce is possible.

The judge, Rahim said, summoned the husband to court and he is now under investigation.

Matin also cited the articles concerning missing husbands. If the husband is highly likely to be dead, the woman may be allowed to remarry, but, as he pointed out, this is extremely difficult to prove[3] and the court’s ruling must be ratified by the appeal court and Supreme Court and signed off by the Amir – necessitating years of waiting and money spent. Moreover, if the first husband then turns up, he has ‘first refusal’ on the wife – she does, says the Code (article 20) “belong to” him. She has no choice in the matter. Rather, the Code automatically restores his legal control of her: “the judge shall give the first husband the choice either to keep the woman as his wife, or divorce her, or, if both parties agree, to conclude a khul’a with her.”

The Code also addresses husbands who are absent but not missing, describing them in article 2.5 as someone who has

travelled far from his home village, but his whereabouts are known. Even so, he has been gone a long time and has left his wife alone at home. He does not return home, nor does he take his wife with him. He does not even attend to her necessities and does not send any money home. Neither does he divorce her, all of which is a cause of great difficulty for his wife.

One might, therefore, expect the Code to provide a legal remedy for the abandoned wife. However, as already mentioned, article 19 specifically rules this out:

If a woman requests judicial separation from the judge on account of her husband’s absence – in cases when he is not legally considered missing – or because he does not provide maintenance [nafaqa], the judge must not order separation.

Instead, her “maintenance and housing rights … together with the other rules and matters relating to such cases, shall be governed by the relevant implementing procedure.” The procedure is not specified. This means that, on the face of it, men who have abandoned their wives and provide no support to them or their children have little to fear from the courts, a deeply problematic situation that will be examined in detail later in this report.

A third potentially useful aspect of the Code, said Matin, is compatibility (kafa’at). This is defined as the spouses being equal or suitable for each other in “lineage and status, ancestry, religion, age and other such attributes.”[4] In limited circumstances, a woman or her guardian can challenge a marriage if the spouse’s incompatibility becomes evident after the wedding.[5] According to the jurists, Matin said, incompatibility includes anything that would make it difficult for a couple to live together and while, on the Day of Judgement, “all people will be equal … we look to the realities of life, if a poor man marries a rich girl, their life will be miserable.”[6]

Compatibility becomes an issue in the fourth potentially useful aspect of the Code, according to the lawyer, Matin, the prerogative of puberty – sometimes translated as the ‘option of puberty’ – (articles 5-10), which is defined in article 2.3 as:

The right of a minor – a boy, or a girl (whether she is a virgin or has been married previously) – to annul a marriage into which one of them has entered, once they reach puberty, so long as the said marriage has come about when he or she was a minor and was arranged by a relative other than a father or grandfather.

The Code, said Gender Alert, implicitly acknowledges that “a (prepubescent) child cannot meaningfully consent to a marriage contract,” but also accepts that such a marriage can be valid, provided it has been contracted by the father or paternal grandfather, with a compatible person and with the appropriate mahr. Moreover, it says, the Code provides only “narrow pathways” to invalidate underage marriage contracts: at puberty, a girl or boy can challenge their marriage if it was contracted by someone other than the father or paternal grandfather or, if by one of them, he had misused his power because of immorality, insanity or recklessness, or married the child to an incompatible person or agreed to a grossly unfair mahr.[7] A clear example of this, wrote John Butt in a footnote to his translation of the Code, would be a girl’s marriage:

to a man much older than her, for a huge bride-price from which [the father or grandfather] – not the bride – benefits. This practice is widespread – normal even – across huge swathes of Afghanistan. Successive governments have been unwilling, or ineffective, in putting an end to this practice.

Theoretically, the Code does almost address a widespread oppressive practice – although one to do with the bride price, not mahr, and not limited to minors[8] – but it creates so many obstacles that it is hard to imagine it having much effect in practice.[9] First of all, the Code does not define puberty. It also gives the minor only a short time to challenge the marriage – when they reach puberty. Their right to reject a marriage lapses if, for a boy or a “previously married girl,”[10] they have expressed their consent, or for a virgin girl, she does not speak up.[11] The Gender Alert explains why this rule is particularly unjust:

The silence-as-consent rule established by Ḥanafī jurisprudence originally rests on a presumption of modesty (ḥayāʾ): that, as a previously unmarried girl, modesty may prevent her from openly expressing positive agreement to a marriage she favours, while she remains free to refuse directly if she does not favour it. …

Decree No. 18 imports this silence-as-consent rule into a fundamentally different question. A marriage has already been contracted, and the ‘option of puberty’ is itself an implicit acknowledgement that a minor cannot consent to entering a marriage contract before puberty.

It is difficult to imagine a young girl or boy having the wherewithal – knowledge of the law and the determination to act – to reject their marriage in public, given that they will either be living with their in-laws or with the elder who gave them away.

The Republic, by contrast, set the legal age of marriage at 16 (and in some cases 15) for girls and 18 for boys, so the Code is clearly a retrograde law and human rights and women’s rights activists have condemned it for effectively legalising child marriage (see for example, a press release from the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and a report in The Guardian). Although the Republic’s age rules were widely flouted and provided little actual protection for minors, they may have started to embed a new norm of a socially acceptable marriageable age and created some space, especially for girls – and their lawyers – to argue against early marriage. The Taliban’s Code gives far less legal protection to minors than the law of the Islamic Republic did, said the lawyer Matin, but, compared to customary traditions and practice in much of the country, it is a little better.

The other “grounds for judicial separation” listed in the Code are:

  • The spouses were breastfed by the same woman, making them ‘milk kin’;
  • One of the spouses fornicated with the ascendant or descendant of the other (for example, mother or father or son or daughter);
  • The wife has been groped or kissed by her husband’s ascendants or descendants;
  • There is a defect in the husband, specified as his penis having been severed (jabb) or incapable of erection (inin) or he has been castrated (khusa), and not if the defect develops after sexual intercourse has taken place (‘divorce-worthy’ defects specifically do not include leprosy, vitiligo or insanity);
  • Apostasy;
  • Turning away from Islam;
  • Various circumstances where one spouse has embraced Islam and the other has not – with differences on the outcome depending on the religion of the other spouse, their gender and whether they live in a non-Muslim or a Muslim country or have temporary safe conduct in a Muslim country;
  • Li’an (mutual cursing by the spouse); 
  • Zihar (the husband likening his wife to his mother).

Before ending this section, a few general points are worth making. Firstly, the Code consistently prioritises a husband’s wishes over his wife’s. In general, men have the power to divorce unilaterally (talaq) and can also choose whether to consent to a wife’s request for a separation in return for not paying her compensation (khul’a): this is their prerogative. Then, in determining whether there are grounds for tafriq, the Code rules that a man’s words are valued over a woman’s. For example, if a foster-mother informs the spouses that they are ‘milk-kin’, the husband’s confirmation of this, by itself, will be accepted and the marriage dissolved, but not if the wife confirms it and he rejects it. In several other circumstances, the Code also says that if a husband swears an oath that a wife’s accusation is untrue, unless she has witnesses, the court is bound to dismiss her claim, for example, if she testifies that her husband’s father, grandfather, son or grandson has sexually assaulted her. There is a proviso: if the husband refuses to swear an oath, the court will side with the wife. However, as Matin said: “But you know, nowadays, people are not afraid of God or the Day of Judgment. They swear a thousand times [to get] one afghani, two afghanis.”

Secondly is what is not in the Code. It frequently fails to specify what course of action should be taken and this can deeply affect what happens to women and children. An example here is the “relevant implementing procedure,” which abandoned women are supposed to take to get the maintenance and housing which is theirs by right when they marry. There are other examples, says Gender Alert:

Although Decree No. 18 provides two distinct paths to ending a marriage – annulment (the marriage was valid but is ended by court order) and invalidity (the marriage is treated as invalid and having not existed), it does not set out any procedure for invoking the latter path. Invalidity can carry materially different implications for mahr, the legitimacy of children, and the woman’s status. 

Another example would be a marriage which a woman has been forced into. This is already unlawful under a decree issued by the Amir in December 2022, and again in March 2025, which also says a woman, forcibly married off by her guardian without her consent, can “file a complaint to the courts and the authorities.”[12] Yet, there is no mention in those decrees or in this Code whether forced marriage would be grounds for a judicial separation. Gender Alert points out that other “core aspects of family law” are also absent from the Code, including “the minimum age of marriage and child custody and criminal liability for forced marriage.”

Finally, the Code takes no account of the obvious difficulties of fulfilling its requirements: it appears to operate in an imagined world where, for example, a woman is able to find witnesses to a sexual assault by a relative of her husband, even though it is likely to have taken place in the home where they all live, or a girl or boy who has just reached puberty is able, speedily, to get to a court to challenge their marriage or where women have easy access to the courts. Rather, the real-world context for this law is one where women have little agency and often little money and are constrained by Emirate edits requiring a mahram for public transport and to enter government buildings such as courts. That real-world context is also one, which in the words of Gender Alert, has “a high prevalence of gender-based violence and historically high rates of forced marriage and child marriage.”

What the Code means for abandoned women

For this report, we particularly wanted to hear from women who have been abandoned by their husbands and see how judges treat their petitions for separation.[13] We heard from three women and five lawyers to get a sense of what is happening on the ground since the law came into force on 24 January 2026.

Abida, who lives in Kabul and whose husband of seven years travelled to Iran and then Turkey for work five years ago, said that after a while, he stopped sending money to support her and their young daughter, stopped calling and eventually changed his phone number. She could no longer pay the rent or cover their living expenses and, having no independent income, was forced to return to her family, to her brothers’ house. That was hard, she said, but worse was to come. A friend of her husband’s told her he had married again in Turkey. One of her brothers spoke to the husband, who said he was not ready to pronounce a divorce (talaq) and “kept making excuses.” So, Abida decided to go to court, feeling she had to “clarify the status of my marriage through legal means.” With the support of her brother, who had also persuaded her husband’s family to help “free our sister from their bother,” and with a defence lawyer, she took her case to a judge. It was then that she ran into the Code on the Separation of Spouses:

They told me that my husband’s mere absence or failure to pay maintenance wasn’t sufficient grounds to dissolve the marriage. … I had thought that, since he’d been gone for a long time and didn’t provide living expenses, the court could immediately issue a separation. … [We had]

marriage documents, some messages and calls and documents showing that my husband was living abroad. My family explained about my living situation and his lack of financial support – but even all that was not enough for [the court]. 

Abida said the judge pressed her not to seek a separation, but instead wait for her husband as he might one day realise his mistakes and return. But Abida insisted that he had “built his own life abroad and I can no longer ruin my life because of him. My daughter and I have the right to live freely, and if it is meant to be, I will build a new life with someone who will support my daughter and me.”

Still, Abida’s husband refused to end the marriage, until finally her brother forced his brothers to speak to him and get him to divorce her. “My brother, along with some of my brothers-in-law and our local mosque leader, phoned him and he gave me a divorce (talaq).” The four witnesses then went to the court, testified that Abida’s husband had divorced her and the court officially validated the separation. “The court gave me an official document,” she said, “stating that I am now free. I can rebuild my life.”

The cruelty of starting a new life while not allowing his wife to do the same is not, it seems, unusual. Nor was the court’s response. The woman whose account began this report, Najma, whose husband is living with his first wife in Tajikistan and broke off contact soon after their marriage, has yet to go to court. Unlike Abida, she does not have her family’s backing and is still trying to convince them to allow her to seek a separation. “My case is with the family and the tribal elders. Because they’re discussing and consulting on it, we haven’t referred it to the government [the courts] yet.” Their reluctance to go to court, said Najma, is because

According to the customs of our region and our family, divorce is considered a great shame. Because of this, my family has been trying to stop me from separating from my husband or going to court. They say, “You’ll bring shame to our name with this action. A woman who goes to court no longer has a place in her family or society.”

That social stigma, which is nationwide, only reinforces the preference of families, society and the courts for reconciliation over ending a marriage, even if it is violent, abusive or, in Najma’s case, only exists on paper. Najma had also been told that “Taliban courts always rule in favour of the man and always advise women that they must tolerate their husband and live with him, no matter what condition he is in, and that the woman must accept her husband’s oppression and live with him.” She described other advice she was given, including from the wakil-e guzar [head of the neighbourhood]

[He] told me to wait and let my husband come, saying it would then be easier to file a request with the court and my case might be processed. Whenever my husband calls me, he said I should never tell him I want to separate. Instead, I should try to satisfy my husband and convince him to come to Afghanistan. When he arrives, all the elders of the area will sit down with him and persuade him either to reconcile with me, have him arrange a life for me and pay my maintenance, or divorce me. If he doesn’t accept their words, he said we can then take the matter to court, and in court, with witnesses and my husband present, we can quickly get the divorce [talaq] and reclaim my rights and get my [still unpaid] mahr from him.

A Taliban judge also advised her and her family that she should wait and try to persuade her husband to return, so that her “fate can be determined.” She said he told them “the courts can’t process my request unless my husband is present or unless he declares your divorce [talaq] in the presence of several witnesses.” A neighbour who worked in government also offered to force her husband to give her a divorce [talaq], but only if she agreed to marry him.

The judge did also tell her family that they should try “to bring the husband back to the country.” If they failed, then he said they should “bring the case to court. At that time, the court will address your issue and I can help you there. But right now, I can’t provide any help.”

Progress still, therefore, depends on the husband’s presence, or Najma overcoming family opposition to bring the case to court.

Our third interviewee, interviewee, Shakila, lives in Kabul and is currently battling for a separation, with no family backing and two children, a daughter of 12 and a son of 9, to support. Her husband left for Iran eight years ago. For the last five years, she said, he had not sent a single afghani and had cut off all communication. When she has managed to speak to him, he just says he will not be coming back to Afghanistan, he cannot support her and she must take care of her own life, herself:

I borrow money to get by. I ask my brothers what to do, and they say, “You’re off our hands now,” but how am I supposed to manage? I’m just a woman on my own. My husband doesn’t take care of me or support me. He knows nothing about how I get my daily bread, what we eat or don’t eat, or how I get by. When I call him, he behaves badly. Most of the time, he hangs up on me … or changes his numbers. I sent messages through his friends, saying if he doesn’t want anything to do with me, at least he should clarify my situation so I can build a new life, but … I get no reply. When I asked my brothers for help, they also refused, saying, “You’re off our hands. You know your own life.”

Shakila felt forced to go to court. But the judge asked her to prove where her husband was and why he had cut off contact, neither of which she has any evidence for. She does not even have a registered marriage contract and her brothers will not appear in court to defend her:

I’m in a hopeless situation. … I’m bewildered and I don’t know where I should go and who I should complain to. … Every time I go to court, my case is postponed to another session and they demand more documents or witnesses from me. … The judge told me I’m lying, that surely my husband has gone on a trip and might be in some kind of trouble and that he’ll come back, so he can’t make a decision based solely on my claim. And so I keep going around in circles with no resolution. There is no one to hear my voice.

Shakila works as a cleaner so that she has the money for rent – a dilapidated house – and other living expenses and for transport to the court – when she hopes her young son will be accepted as her ‘mahram’. “Most of the time,” she said, “I’m turned away at the courthouse gate. So far, I’ve only managed to appear before the judge twice.” He also told her to get a lawyer, but how, she asked, could she afford a lawyer’s fees?

Even with a lawyer, the courts may not be sympathetic. Shah Mahmud in Mazar-e Sharif described one of his cases:

I currently represent a woman who was married off to a man without her consent and now, due to lack of consent and non-payment of maintenance, she’s seeking a separation. However, the husband is abroad, in the United States. … a default judgment can’t be issued – according to the Code. The court’s issued several summonses, the case file is stalled and the court is considering issuing an order to suspend the file until the husband comes to Afghanistan. But it’s unknown if he ever will come in the next few years or not. And until he does … the woman lives in a state of uncertainty. 

Gul Agha, one of the lawyers in Kabul, echoed this account: “The first problem is that the court requires proof of the husband’s absence and tends to tell women and their lawyers that they can do nothing without the husband being present in court.” He added:

I have a case that is currently ongoing in court, a client whose husband has been living in Iran for nearly seven years. He takes no responsibility for his family, provides no financial support and has even cut off all contact – there’s no communication at all. According to his wife, he’s taken another wife in Iran and has severed ties with his entire family. She and their two children have been searching for a resolution for years. 

Gul Agha said he prepared her case according to both the law and sharia and submitted it to the court. Sharia, he said, clearly states that if a husband cannot provide maintenance for his wife, she may seek a khul’a, but the judge gave no consideration to the case file. Rather, said Gul Agha, “he insulted me, saying: ‘You lawyers are always fabricating such schemes for money and at the whims of women, deliberately trying to separate husband and wife.’”

Other lawyers have secured separations for abandoned wives, although their accounts typically feature a sympathetic judge. Rahim described the case of a woman in Kunduz whose husband had abandoned her, but was known to be in Turkey. Rahim said the husband “used to speak with us over the phone and talk to his wife using abusive and bad language. … The judge helped a great deal – regarding the children and the [wife’s] dignity and honour. I presented my argument and [the judge] accepted it.” Rahim said the judge then summoned the husband’s father to the court and “forced him to ask his son to come [to the court].” When the husband did not come, the court imprisoned the father and another son and released them only after they gave a guarantee that the husband would agree to a divorce [talaq] in absentia. Instead, Rahim said:

They threatened me, saying, “You’re from Mazar-e Sharif. If you come to Imam Sahib in Kunduz, we’ll do such and such a thing to you.” But I’d recorded them and let the judge hear [their words] in court. He got angry and imprisoned them. Then the man called his son in Turkey and told him to come because he and his other son had been imprisoned. But he still didn’t come. 

Matin said many lawyers, including female lawyers,[14] had reported that such pressure sometimes works: “Some husbands who were abroad even, the court summoned their family members [and] they divorced their wives by phone in front of the judge.” However, in the Kunduz case, despite a supportive judge taking serious action, Rahim still could not get a separation for his client in the face of a recalcitrant husband. The judge, therefore, referred them to a madrasa belonging to a religious scholar known as Hashimi sahib. In this case, the arbitrator was also sympathetic, a “good Sunni scholar,” said Rahim, “who does his best to solve a lot of cases when people refer to him.” After speaking to the parties, they agreed to a resolution:

The woman agreed to pay the money she had received earlier from her husband’s family. It was around 80,000 afghanis [USD 1,200]. She also agreed not to receive her mahr. So, it was a khul’a divorce. Her husband authorised his father to allow the madrasa to carry out the divorce [which] the court was happy with. The court didn’t do anything else, but got a copy of the decision and put it in the dossier and let everyone go.

This case demonstrates how an abandoned woman, in the face of her husband’s absence and intransigence, could not win her freedom in court under Decree 18. That she got a separation at all, albeit only by forfeiting her mahr and paying off her husband’s family, was a notable achievement, and only possible because both the judge and the arbitrator were sympathetic. That is not typically the case, said Shah Mahmud. The courts often refer disputes to local elders, who, along with families and the courts themselves, typically try to silence the wife and patch up a marriage:

In many Afghan communities, traditional custom is generally not amenable to divorce or separation. Several key customary features include prioritising the preservation of a marriage – families typically try to reconcile husband and wife, even when serious problems exist and the Taliban courts also … strive to prevent [the break-up of marriages]. More importantly is a woman’s economic dependence: if she has no independent income, then separation becomes more difficult for her. For this reason, families and local elders try to prevent separation to preserve the woman’s dignity and the honour of the family and the community. 

Custom typically offers “family-based solutions,” said Shah Mahmud, but women need “legally enforceable guarantees.”

A new order on abandoned ‘fiancées’ 

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court issued new instructions to the courts on what to do in cases involving men who have abandoned their fiancées (namzad)[15] in a ruling issued on a case presented to a court in Kabul:

Regarding those girls who got engaged years ago and whose fiancés reside abroad, whenever they refer to the court to determine their fate, the court is obligated to identify the persons to whom the girls have been engaged, ascertain their properties and assets, and, in accordance with the principles, seize the said assets until such time as they appear.

The letter goes on:

If their assets are not established, the court shall then, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, request cooperation for the purpose of bringing the aforementioned persons to court. If even then they do not appear in court, the matter shall ultimately be referred to the Council of Scholars for resolution.

Restricting the threat to seize assets to fiancés rather than extending it to husbands, limits the number of abandoned women it could help. The implications of the wording are also ambiguous (see footnote 15). Even so, it demonstrates that the state does have leverage it could use against recalcitrant husbands. Currently, it gives them an effective veto on proceedings if they decide not to engage with the court.

Looking through the Code, especially in light of this letter, which describes what the state can do to get men to live up to their responsibilities, it is clear that the Emirate’s starting point is not the problems faced by unhappily married women in Afghanistan today, but rather centuries-old jurisprudence. The Code, for example, spends more words on the repercussions of the conversion to Islam of one member of a couple who are Christian or Jewish or Zoroastrian or polytheist, with variations as to whether they are currently in a Muslim or non-Muslim country – clearly this is of infinitesimally small significance to Afghans – than it does to the desperate problem of abandoned wives.

In a country from which so many men have migrated, their ability to keep their wives, even if they have abandoned them, causes immense suffering. The Code does acknowledge the “great difficulty” abandoned wives suffer, but then facilitates the husband’s prolonging of that suffering, should he so wish, “effectively rendering the wife unable to remarry,” wrote Gender Alert, “or otherwise move on with her life, leaving her bound to a marriage that may have ended in fact but cannot be ended in law.” The Code consistently prioritises the right of the husband to decide on his marriage, without holding him to account for his breaches of the marriage contract, thereby smoothing the way for men to leave their families in poverty, their wives in limbo and their children fatherless. It provides neither relief nor remedy for abandoned women and children, nor deterrence for abusive men.

Conclusion

To escape an unhappy marriage, Afghan women need courage and determination, support from their family and/or a lawyer, money and good fortune – a sympathetic judge may be able to make proceedings easier, a hostile one will only insult and dismiss. The Code, with its bias in favour of husbands, provides few remedies for women seeking a divorce. It is one more barrier they may face alongside social stigma, family opposition, poverty, lack of documents, restrictions on travel to and entering courts, an all-male court system, antagonistic judges and a preference for reconciliation over protection. Some of the lawyers we heard from were finding ways to use the Code to help their clients, but they need to be persistent and creative, to know their jurisprudence and be able to convince judges who are often unsympathetic and may not want to listen.

These themes run through the accounts of all three of the women we heard from in this report. Abida, we know, managed to get her husband to divorce her. Still, life is not easy:

I now consider myself an independent person and feel a sense of peace, although I know that many challenges still lie ahead. … I worry about what my future holds. Who will I live with? Will I be able to protect my daughter? I’ve heard stories from those who’ve remarried and they often face difficulties and insults, such as being labelled a divorced woman [zan-e talaqi] or a ‘bad woman’. [People] say things like, “If you were good, you wouldn’t have got a divorce from your first husband,” and various other hurtful comments. But I do now feel happy and hopeful that I can start a new life with a good person.

Shakila, with her two children, in Kabul, is still trying to win her separation:

I’m deeply damaged emotionally and financially. I can’t make any decision about my future. I have neither a shared life with a partner, nor am I legally free to start a new life. The uncertainty is very hard for me and my children. I work [cleaning] people’s homes. I’m the sole breadwinner of the household. … My daughter’s sick and I can’t afford to get her treated.

I ask the authorities to pay attention to the women who’ve been left without guardians for years. Many husbands have gone abroad and take no responsibility for their families. I hope the cases of these women are handled promptly, justly and in accordance with the law and Islamic principles, so that they don’t remain in limbo for years.

Finally, Najma is still trying to persuade her family to allow her to act and take her husband, still living in Tajikistan with his first wife, to court.

At night, I can’t fall asleep due to anxiety, because on the one hand, there’s family pressure – they won’t allow me to fulfil my legitimate wish. Requesting a separation is my rightful claim and God has permitted me to ask for it, but they don’t let me and I’m forced to get their consent because I live in my parents’ house. I have no place to go, no money to support myself. I’m forced to live with my family’s permission. On the other hand, my husband’s injustice and oppression has brought me to this state. I’ve completely lost my way. I don’t know what to do or how long I should live without a destiny. I endure both friends and foes. I endure poverty and destitution. All this has had such a terrible effect on my psyche and soul that sometimes I resign myself to my own death. 

[I think that] on that day when I finally separate from such an unjust and oppressive man, I’ll be reborn from my mother, and I will celebrate it. But for now, I’m in a state of aimlessness and chaos, with no clear fate.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Jelena Bjelica

References

References
↑1 Privately and locally, Afghanistan’s Shia Muslims always used Ja’fari jurisprudence for personal matters. However, if a dispute reached a state court or another state institution, the state’s legal framework, predominantly based on Hanafi jurisprudence, was applied. This was broadly the position from Abdul Rahman Khan’s (1844-1901) centralisation of the judicial system until the 2004 Constitution which formally recognised Shia jurisprudence as a source of state law for personal matters, later implemented through the 2009 Shia Personal Status Law. With the Taliban’s return to power, Ja’fari jurisprudence has again been excluded from the state judiciary, so in practice, the situation has largely returned to the pre-2004 position.
↑2 Article 18 of the code says that a woman may, “with the consent of her husband,” separate herself from him by way of khul’a, in return for whatever amount of property the spouses mutually agree upon. However, it says, “taking compensation for khul’a in excess of the stipulated mahr, in cases where the wife is not recalcitrant, is not appropriate.”
↑3 Article 15 says a missing person can be ruled as dead if he “is among those missing in war or is considered highly likely to be dead and there are indications proving his death, or such a long period has elapsed that the judge’s prevailing opinion is that he has died.” If that is not the case, then the wife has to wait for such a period that the death of the missing person becomes certain and the people of his generation – his contemporaries – have all died.”
↑4 Article 3 says: “Where a woman has a guardian and she marries a non-compatible person without the guardian’s permission, her marriage is invalid.” Matin considered that this means they could argue that the opposite must be true, that women could marry “whom they like, but [the spouse] must be compatible.” However, footnote 14 to the Code raises the possibility of a guardian being able to get such a marriage annulled (see AAN’s translation for more on this).
↑5 Article 4 stipulates that if a woman’s guardian marries her, with her consent, to someone whose compatibility is unknown or whose incompatibility later becomes evident (and compatibility was a condition of the marriage), then the guardian and the woman “have the right to annul the marriage,” with the separation “tak[ing] place by order of the court.”
↑6 Rahim, the lawyer in Mazar, echoed this point, saying that the Quran and Hadith “say that spouses should be a source of tranquillity and peace for each other, that there should be respect between spouses.” Where there is incompatibility, he said, the judge should approve a separation, but, “unfortunately, Afghanistan’s custom and tradition ruins this.”
↑7 While mahr is an Islamically prescribed gift given to a bride by the groom (often, in Afghanistan, it is a pledge, and not actually handed over), another payment is also commonly made, the bride price (walwar in Pashto and toyana and sherbaha in Dari), given by the groom’s family to the bride’s.
↑8 See an earlier decree from 19 March 2025, which while not mentioning bride price by name, did outlaw, “Soliciting money from in-laws for purposes other than the mahr”, which it said was considered bribery. Decree of the Esteemed Amir-ul-Momineen (may Allah protect him) Regarding prevention of improper customs during weddings, calamities, and upon return from Hajj and Umrah (official translation).
↑9 For more on child marriage, resorted to because of debt or economic hardship, see Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Living in a Collapsed Economy (4): The desperation and guilt of giving a young daughter in marriage, 20 October 2022 and some of the accounts in Gulhan Durzai, Pushed to the Limits: The struggle to survive deepening poverty in Afghanistan, 25 August 2026.
↑10 John Butt, in a footnote to his translation of the Code, writes:

The phrase in brackets, “whether she is a virgin or married previously” raises some questions. It is difficult to imagine that a girl could have been married twice, while still pre-pubescent, and horrific to imagine that the first marriage might have been consummated, transforming her status from virgin [bakirah] to married [thayyibah].
↑11 Only if a “minor virgin girl” was contracted in marriage by someone other than her father or paternal grandfather and did not know about the marriage before reaching puberty, does she retain the prerogative to challenge the marriage until such time as she “learns of her marriage … even if a long time has passed after puberty.”
↑12 “The consent of an adult woman (zanan-e balegh) is necessary for nikah [marriage]. If the nikah is between [compatible spouses], the risk of corruption and cheating is removed. No one can force [an adult woman] into marriage by pressure or compulsion.” Decree 83, vol 1, 27/4/1443 AH, 2 December 2021, see AAN’s unofficial translation of the Decrees, Orders and Instructions of His Excellency, Amir Al-Mu’minin, as published in the Official Gazette on 22 May 2023, p31; and Decree of the Esteemed Amir-ul-Momineen (may Allah protect him) Regarding prevention of improper customs during weddings, calamities, and upon return from Hajj and Umrah (official translation).

The decree from 19 March 2025 (see FN8) said: “If a guardian forcibly marries off a woman without her consent, she has the right to file a complaint with the courts and relevant authorities. In such cases, the decree on women’s rights issued by the esteemed Amir al-Momineen (May Allah Protect Him) on 27/4/1443 Hijri (No. 83J1) must be observed.”
↑13 This is not the only pressing need for women to get a divorce in Afghanistan: the report could also have looked into what happens to women whose husbands beat them or are addicted to drugs or subject them to other abuse or neglect.
↑14 Women have not been allowed to register as defence lawyers since the re-establishment of the Emirate, but as Hamed Pakteen reported for AAN in Practising Law Under the Emirate: Afghan defence lawyers fight for space in a transformed justice system, 2 May 2026, “some have found creative ways to continue practicing.”
↑15 Namzad refers to someone who is betrothed. The couple may or may not have signed the nikah (marriage contract), but the wedding party (arusi) will not have been held. The man may have been present and then left the country, or there may have been a virtual nikah ceremony.

Different communities have different expectations and customs to do with a couple becoming betrothed: if the nikah has also been signed, some communities now consider the man to be mahram to the woman. In others, as the lawyer, Matin, put it, even if the nikah has been signed, the father of the bride will issue a warning that “until the rice is cooked,” ie the wedding ceremony is held … if I see you in my village, I will kill you.”

In some places, breaking off a namzadi, even without a nikah, is seen as a dishonour and could result in a feud. Elsewhere, unless there is a nikah, it would be far easier for either of the couple to break the engagement off with neither party owing anything to the other.

 

Afghan Women Left in Limbo: Decree 18 and the struggle to end a marriage
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‘The Last Free Women’ follows 4 Afghans rebuilding their lives after escaping the Taliban

September 19, 2026

Geoff Bennett

Solveig Rennan Sandbulte

PBS Newshour
September 18, 2026

When the Taliban swept back into Kabul in 2021, millions of Afghans suddenly faced an uncertain and dangerous future. Among them were two young sisters whose ambitions to study medicine and law were threatened. Their escape and the lives they built afterward are at the heart of the new book, “The Last Free Women.” Geoff Bennett sat down with the authors, Rebecca Blumenstein and Diana Kapp.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Geoff Bennett:

When the Taliban swept back into Kabul in August of 2021, thousands of Afghans who had worked alongside Americans and their families suddenly faced an uncertain and dangerous future.

Among them were four young women who had grown up in a rapidly changing Afghanistan with ambitions for college, careers and lives of their own. Their extraordinary escape from Afghanistan and the lives they built afterward in the U.S. are at the heart of a new book, “The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America.”

It’s written by Rebecca Blumenstein, now president of editorial at NBC News, who was then a deputy managing editor at The New York Times. Her co-author is journalist and author Diana Kapp.

I spoke with them earlier today.

Rebecca Blumenstein, Diana Kapp, welcome to the “News Hour.”

Diana Kapp, Co-Author, “The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America”: Thanks for having us.

Rebecca Blumenstein, Co-Author, “The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America”: Great to be here.

Geoff Bennett:

Take us back to August 15, 2021. Kabul is falling. At the same time, you were driving your son across country to college. How quickly did you realize that what was unfolding in Afghanistan would turn out to be a life-and-death situation for your then-Afghan colleagues?

Rebecca Blumenstein:

When Kabul and Afghanistan started falling, it just happened far faster than anybody thought it would. Of course, the U.S. had signaled that we were pulling out.

But people thought the Afghan forces that the U.S. trained, they would hang in at least for a while. And province after province started falling. They started getting closer and closer to Kabul. We were scrambling, like many news organizations, like many vets, to do whatever we could to get our people out of Afghanistan.

It was clear at that moment that the U.S. was going to be of no help. And so the task to the top editors at The Times was like find them a way out of there and find a country where they can go. And I was literally calling anyone in the world I could think of.

Geoff Bennett:

And The New York Times ultimately evacuated 124 Afghan employees and their family members. What did The Times have to do that the U.S. government at the time could not or did not do?

Rebecca Blumenstein:

We were able to get a request into the deputy foreign minister of Qatar and a manifest with a list, which is a list of all of the names of the employees we wanted to evacuate, their family members, their birth dates, and their documents.

And we had been pressing the U.S. to issue visas, and they just — it was so chaotic, it was clear that it was not going to happen for the U.S. So we had to get foreign governments to help us. Qatar would only take us if we found another country. They did not want people to stay in Qatar, importantly.

And so we were able through our reporter in Mexico — he convinced Mexico’s foreign minister to take them. And you remember the images of the thousands of people who descended on the airport in Kabul, many of them so desperate to leave, with no way out, some of them so desperate to leave that they climbed literally into the wheel holes of planes and fell to their deaths.

We had a plan. We finally got Qatar to say they would take them out on a plane. They couldn’t land the plane. Our group was there for two days. They fell under attack from the Taliban and they had to try again three days later. And, by that point, the Taliban controlled the entire city.

So we had to appeal for help, and thankfully found it in the right places through some luck.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Diana, when you heard this story, when did you realize that this was more than just an extraordinary evacuation story, that there was a larger, deeper narrative here?

Diana Kapp:

As I write in the book, it’s a hell of a story. So, I had been talking to Rebecca, who’s a close college friend, and I had been interested in Afghanistan because I went to Afghanistan in 2012, and I had the opportunity to visit a woman building schools in the far north in the Takhar province.

And it was the height of girls’ education. It was, the Americans landed in 2001. The school doors flung open. Girls rushed in. There was classrooms with as many as 70 girls in them. And we walked into a few classrooms and we asked the little girls, how many of your mothers can read or write? And not a single hand would go up.

And then we would ask them, how many of you imagine going to university? And they would all shoot their hand up. So we understood, I understood that this was a generation of women that had huge aspirations for themselves, and it was washed away in an instant in a morning.

And so as soon as I heard this story and the great work The New York Times was doing, I knew it was a tale we should start to follow.

Geoff Bennett:

And you center this book on four women, Marwa, Mursal, Maryam, and Samira. Why these four? What did their different lives allow you to show about a generation of Afghan women?

Diana Kapp:

They were between the ages of 17 and 24, and they were all poised, right at the cusp of launching into their adult lives, into careers that they were passionate about.

Mursal had completed law school. Maryam was a senior in high school and headed to medical school. And Marwa was in her fourth year of medical school when she woke up that morning to learn that, instead of returning to classes after the pandemic, she would be running for the airport.

So we chose a cohort that was of similar age and was very much of that generation that had high aspirations for themselves.

Rebecca Blumenstein:

When you think about it, maybe one of the largest accomplishments of the longest war that we waged in Afghanistan was the education of the women of Afghanistan.

And we were finally fortunate enough to get this group of 124 into the U.S., and I was rather startled to hear that the typical expectations of refugees in this country are a lifetime of poverty.

And it just felt, especially for the women, especially those who were on the cusp of becoming doctors and lawyers and really wanted to build the future of Afghanistan, to lose it all in half an afternoon and to come here and to have to give it all up and have no hope of going back to school seemed wrong, and especially because of what happened, obviously, to the women of Afghanistan.

Geoff Bennett:

And there’s a question embed in the successful evacuation of the 124 Afghans. What does it mean for the millions of Afghans who didn’t have a powerful American institution advocating on their behalf?

Rebecca Blumenstein:

Exactly.

Many of the people in our group struggle with a bit of guilt that they were — they were evacuated. And I think The Times did something very significant here. They didn’t just take out the expat foreign reporters. They decided to take out the entire bureau, everybody who had had ties to the 20 years of the bureau in Kabul, the cooks, the gardeners, the translators, the drivers, and their immediate families.

But, obviously that’s a limited number of people. And I think those who made it out do feel a duty. They can’t do much to change the situation there, but the title of the book, “The Last Free Women,” does convey the sense that, for those here, whether they’re illiterate, whether they were on the cusp of becoming doctors and lawyers, they want to do whatever they can and work as hard as they can to take advantage of the freedom they have here.

Geoff Bennett:

How do the four women you profile, how do they make sense of that and how has that shaped their lives, the fact that they were evacuated and had the opportunity to start over again in the States?

Diana Kapp:

They have jumped into their lives here with just incredible force.

Of course, there was trauma and they had a lot of challenges. Some of them have been — real difficulty, like how to learn to use a computer. They had to learn to speak English. They had cultural issues. They went on to college campuses.

In Afghanistan, girls don’t leave home and live away from home in a dorm. It just doesn’t exist. So there was — on so many levels, they were confronting a lot. And yet they went after it with such, such tenacity. The young woman Mursal, she was desperate to work at the United Nations in her internship between her two years of Cornell, where she got a master’s in public administration and graduated.

But she made 30 applications to every single department she could find. And she had each of them edited by ChatGPT. She did all of that herself, because, even though professors told her this is extremely competitive and you won’t get it, she went right ahead and tried anyway.

And you — we just have seen that over and over again, where they just — they just keep stepping forward.

Geoff Bennett:

Yes.

Rebecca Blumenstein:

And our women are quite different.

Samira Rustami, she grew up in a household where her mother did not support education. Her mother actually burned her books. And she figured out a way to get an MBA in India, leave the country, come back. She had just been in Kabul for a couple of months. Her husband had worked for The New York Times just for a couple of — a couple of months as well.

They get on the manifest. And she has come here. She had a daughter. They moved to Pittsburgh,. She is about to become a nurse, and her daughter has basically been adopted by a family in Pittsburgh and now goes to the Jewish community center for kindergarten.

And you think about Durrin and the life that she will have and how different it is than even her mother’s, and it’s really quite astounding.

Diana Kapp:

It’s so striking watching these women. They don’t just work hard and do the schoolwork. They also find the joy in life. So they want to learn how to do scuba diving. They have tried — on her 30th birthday, Mursal bought an inflatable paddleboard and took it out on the Potomac River.

She’s learned to swim. They take yoga. They’re trying ceramics. They want to learn to play the piano. So they are embracing life in so many different ways.

Geoff Bennett:

Tremendous stories and a terrific new book, “The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America.”

Rebecca Blumenstein, Diana Kapp, thank you so much for being here.

Rebecca Blumenstein:

Thanks for having us.

Diana Kapp:

Thank you. Thank you, Geoffrey.

‘The Last Free Women’ follows 4 Afghans rebuilding their lives after escaping the Taliban
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Osama bin Laden shook the world on 9/11. Today it is clear how his wider plans failed

September 16, 2026
The Guardian
11 September 2026

The al-Qaida leader envisaged an economically battered US withdrawing from the Middle East – and a global Muslim uprising. Then the tide turned.

On 11 September, 25 years ago, Osama bin Laden drove with a small number of al-Qaida retainers and aides to a remote location in eastern Afghanistan. His convoy of SUVs was accompanied by a minivan converted into a makeshift communications centre.

The van’s rudimentary equipment did not allow Bin Laden to watch the 19 men he had started sending to the US more than a year before fly planes into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon near Washington DC, killing about 3,000 people. But he listened as shocked radio announcers broke the news.

Within days of the murderous assault, the then president, George W Bush, had begun framing the US response as a global “war on terror”, a clumsy, inappropriate and counterproductive strategic choice.

For those of us reporting on the ground during this period – watching US bombers over Afghan mountains and tanks in Baghdad streets, interviewing aspirant suicide bombers or the victims of attacks by extremist groups that proliferated from the UK to the Philippines – the errors and failures of this “war on terror” were glaring.

This unprecedented and indiscriminate series of campaigns would lead to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, involve torture, renditions and alliances with dubious regimes, cost huge amounts of money, destabilise swathes of the Middle East and bring suffering to millions of people.

Was this what Bin Laden had hoped to achieve?

It is frequently suggested that Bin Laden’s aim with the 9/11 attacks was to draw the US into wars that would weaken its economy and lead to its eventual collapse, much as the Soviet Union had been fatally drained by the war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. As a young militant, Bin Laden had witnessed this conflict and even participated in it, albeit in a marginal role.

But there is little evidence to back this theory up. Though Bin Laden was undoubtedly inspired by the earlier conflict, he rejected as unrealistic his aides’ warnings that the planned attack would bring US troops to Afghanistan, probably expecting little more than another barrage of ineffective missiles by way of reprisal. Certainly, he had no plan when the US troops did come. Within months of the attacks, shaken al-Qaida members described “misfortune [and] disaster”.

In reality, Bin Laden had a different strategy. He wanted to weaken the US economically and consequently force a withdrawal from the Middle East, not an invasion. In 2004, he boasted that al-Qaida was “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy”, and that every dollar the group spent attacking the US had cost Washington a million dollars in economic fallout and military spending. This lecture in the advantages of asymmetric warfare resonates today, but was wildly optimistic.

The most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack. This never came – an unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR. Nor, obviously, has it withdrawn its forces from the Middle East.

A second objective of Bin Laden was to force the US to end its support for all the rulers in the region that the once-privileged, Saudi-born dissident so hated, starting with the al-Saud family.

Some of Bin Laden’s targets have been felled since 2001, but not by his actions or by anyone aligned with his vision. Muammar Gaddafi was deposed and killed by western-backed rebels, Saddam Hussein was ousted by the US, and the Assad dynasty’s rule was ended by an al-Qaida veteran who explicitly disavowed the group’s ideology and agenda.

A third aim of Bin Laden was propaganda. His theatre of terror was designed to send a bloody, spectacular and unforgettable message that would radicalise his followers, mobilise new ones and divide communities. He emphasised how attacks such as 9/11 were “just reactions to what’s happening against our children in Palestine, in Iraq, in Somalia, in southern Sudan, in Kashmir”, and called for a global uprising of Muslims against their enemies.

While the 9/11 attacks undoubtedly focused international attention on the conflicts in which Bin Laden saw Muslims as oppressed by the west or its allies, it brought no significant improvement for the victims. The wave of support for Bin Laden and broader interest in extremist Islamism peaked only a few years after 2001, and then quickly ebbed more or less everywhere. Shortly before he was killed by US Navy Seals in Pakistan, Bin Laden was contemplating a rebrand of al-Qaida, its name tarnished by growing criticism within the Islamic world that it was responsible for killing large numbers of Muslims. His successor, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, gave up on the uprising altogether, pivoting to a strategy prioritising the local over the global.

If in 2014, in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State was able to capitalise on the chaos left by the US invasion, sectarian tension and much else to establish its appalling caliphate, even this was over by 2019.

Since then, such groups’ brand of extremism has been confined in large part to the periphery of the Islamic world, and to zones from which the threat to the developed world is intermittent at best. Al-Qaida and the Islamic State have expanded most effectively in sub-Saharan Africa, exploiting anarchy, failed states, demographic pressures, communal competition for scarce resources and the inattention of the west.

Some analysts add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001. But these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities.

There are still appalling attacks inspired by Bin Laden’s twisted ideology, and there will undoubtedly be more. This is in part due to the polarisation brought about by his violence and the reaction to it – as was his aim.

But it is noteworthy that neither al-Qaida nor IS have prominent charismatic leaders. One reason is that any such figure will be swiftly killed by the vastly more capable US, making identification risky. But it is also because the era when such individuals could command a significant following is over.

It is often said that for an insurgent or terrorist group to win, it merely needs to survive, but there are exceptions. That al-Qaida still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder. But it should not be described as any victory.

Osama bin Laden shook the world on 9/11. Today it is clear how his wider plans failed
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The Erosion of One Man’s Rule: How household authority is shifting in rural Pashtun society

September 16, 2026

Sharif Akram

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For generations, authority within the Afghan family rested with its eldest man, the grandfather or, in his absence, the father or oldest brother. They decided everything from marriage and money to migration and disputes and the rest of the household was bound to obey. That arrangement is loosening. AAN’s Sharif Akram has been looking at how decisions, once taken by a single elder, are now shared, argued over and sometimes overturned by the younger, educated and earning male members of the family and, in a more limited way, by women and children. Taking southeastern Afghan society as his case study and drawing on interviews with tribal elders and educated younger men, he considers the nature of authority within the family, what it used to look like and how and why it is changing. He also asks what the change says about the wider transformation of the Afghan countryside.

A family picnics at Qargha Reservoir on the outskirts of Kabul. Photo: Bulent Kilic/AFP, 26 October 2021

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

The men interviewed for this report described a very different world emerging, one in which younger men are more educated, more mobile and more connected to life beyond the village. They have travelled, possibly worked abroad and encountered new ideas through television, the internet and social media. Many now earn and control their own money. All this has changed not only what they know, but their willingness to question decisions by elders that an earlier generation of young Afghan men would have accepted.

The change can be seen in the everyday decisions families make. One young man ignored his grandfather’s insistence that he study medicine and chose computer science instead. Another rejected his father’s demand that he take a government job, borrowed money from a friend and established a successful business importing solar panels. A father in Paktia recalled how, when he forbade his son, who owned a restaurant in Dubai, from buying a car because the family was already in debt, the son simply bought one anyway. “There was nothing I could do,” the father said, “because he’d earned the money.”

Money may indeed be one of the most important drivers of change. Where sons once handed over everything they earned to the head of the household and depended on him for their needs, the relationship has sometimes been reversed. Fathers may now depend on sons working in Dubai, Saudi Arabia or further afield to support the household. As one interviewee put it: “If you have money, you have power.” Education and knowledge matter too, though. The world is a different place from when there was little travel outside the village. Now, in dealing with businesses, government offices and a monied economy, older men may know less well than their sons and grandsons.

The elders, however, have not been completely sidelined. Their judgement still carries particular weight on questions of land, lineage and custom, where experience and accumulated knowledge count. Some elders have also adapted, bringing educated and earning younger men into discussions and listening to their points of view. What is emerging is less a transfer of authority from old to young than a division of it, with different family members carrying weight on different matters. At the same time, the ground on which authority rests is changing – from age and seniority to schooling, knowledge and earning power, from a position a man is given to one he increasingly has to win.

The consequences extend beyond who gets the final say. Elders were more likely to dwell on what had been lost: families are less united, disputes are harder to settle and young men are increasingly inclined to consider themselves their own masters. Even payghor, the public shame that once helped enforce obedience, has lost some of its power because defiance has become too commonplace to mark one household out from another. Younger interviewees saw gains in their ability to question decisions they considered wrong or unjust, including marriages imposed on young people and customs that harmed women and children. Yet, as one interviewee said of the young, who now manage everything for themselves, the change brings a measure of freedom but also a loss they cannot name.

The changes within the family also point to a wider transformation in the Afghan countryside. Land, which for generations was at the centre of Pashtun family life and a foundation of household identity, livelihoods and standing, has lost some of its weight relative to the salaries, businesses and remittances increasingly controlled by younger men. As the economic foundations of the old order have shifted, so too have the relationships and mutual obligations built around them. The result is greater room for individual choice and independence, but also less certainty that family members will act together.

Where this leads is not yet clear. It may settle into a new balance in which the experience of elders and the knowledge and earning power of younger generations complement each other. Or the dispersal of authority may contribute to the weakening of the family and collective life that many of the older interviewees fear. Either way, the fading of one man’s unquestioned rule offers a window onto something larger: a rural society in which inherited duties and hierarchies increasingly have to contend with individual judgement, economic independence and choice.

Edited by Kate Clark and Fabrizio Foschini

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

20260914 Family Authority ReportDownload

 

The Erosion of One Man’s Rule: How household authority is shifting in rural Pashtun society
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The 9/11 response got the most important thing right

September 11, 2026
By Douglas J. Feith
The Washington Post
Opinion
10 September 2026

Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005 and is the author of “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism.”

9/11 is misery. It is horror, with people jumping from twin towers windows. And it is grateful amazement at the self-sacrifice of first responders. On that day 25 years ago, fright, rage and disorienting shock made it hard to think straight.

But those of us on President George W. Bush’s national security team had to think as straight as we could about what to do. In the days after the attack, the team reached general agreement on certain points.

First, the Sept. 11 attacks were more than a crime. A global jihadist network was at war with America. Its leaders boasted of their role in destroying the Soviet Union and intended to destroy the United States, too. 9/11 was not when the war began. But it was the day that most Americans discovered they were in it.

Second, we had entered a new era of terrorism. Terrorism had long been understood as political theater: shock people, gain attention, win support. Palestinian groups provided the model: Hijack planes, shoot up airport terminals, attack Israeli school buses — killing a few hundred people over several years — and by 1974 the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization is addressing the U.N. General Assembly. The goal was large — to destroy Israel — but the violence was relatively small scale. The idea was to influence spectators, and perhaps win their sympathy.

The 9/11 attackers had a different idea. They wanted mass destruction. The attacks — four hijacked planes crashing within 77 minutes — resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths. Had the attackers possessed more destructive means, they would have killed more people. U.S. officials therefore focused on the danger that jihadists might acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Fourth, repeated 9/11-scale attacks would endanger the freedom and openness of U.S. society. Liberty and security are always in tension. If Americans felt increasingly unsafe, they would demand stronger government action, even at some expense to their rights.

Critics accused officials of being too willing to curtail civil liberties in the name of security. What I saw was the opposite: concern that repeated catastrophic attacks would create irresistible public pressure for measures adverse to freedom.

As some of us put it, we had to change the way we lived or change the way the terrorists lived. To preserve an open society at home, we had to act strongly abroad to prevent follow-on attacks.

That was the heart of the global war on terrorism.

The war’s results are judged largely with reference to the regime-change campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. A small U.S. force helped Afghan rebels overthrow the Taliban. An interim government, a new constitution and national elections were then promptly organized. But the multinational reconstruction effort fell short in nearly every sector, and Afghanistan failed to achieve political stability.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq ousted Saddam Hussein, an important and good result, but the United States made major mistakes: erroneous intelligence assessments that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles, a prolonged occupation government, slow development of Iraqi armed forces and ineffective counterinsurgency strategies retained for too long. The fighting lasted longer than was generally expected, and it had higher costs, especially in U.S. military dead and wounded. Many Americans came to see the entire effort there as a failure.

That view strengthened isolationism. As pressure to retrench intensified, the United States committed itself to withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2020 and completed the exit in 2021, helping trigger the Kabul government’s collapse and the Taliban’s return to power. Many Americans came to regard the Afghanistan campaign as a failure, too.

There is much to criticize in the war on terrorism. On its main objective, however, the success has been remarkable: For 25 years, our enemies have failed to carry out another 9/11-scale attack on the United States. Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums or power plants across the country. They have not transformed America into a police state. The post-9/11 response initiated by the Bush team deserves a great deal of credit for that.

The years since 9/11 have reinforced the eternal verity that failure breeds failure — and quitting in a way that looks like defeat can be as damaging as defeat itself.

Osama bin Laden depicted the United States as weak by invoking Vietnam and the 1984 withdrawal from Lebanon. Saddam calculated similarly. Captured Iraqi records and postwar interviews showed that he saw the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo as evidence that America was unwilling to take casualties. He therefore discounted U.S. threats to overthrow him. Such perceptions matter. Deterrence works only if the people to be deterred take the threats seriously.

Historians will continue to reassess all of this. Meanwhile, the past quarter-century poses basic questions about threats and war.

When should U.S. presidents act against national security threats? How should they account for intelligence that is inevitably incomplete and often wrong?

How should presidents counter well-resourced ideological enemies? Are there good options short of regime change? When, if ever, is regime change warranted?

If America overthrows a government, should it try to put a better one in its place? Does it necessarily — or ever — have an interest in democracy spreading abroad? In Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush was committed to helping establish non-tyrannical, perhaps democratic, governments that would not again threaten the United States or oppress their own people.

Was that a strategic mistake?

The cases of Germany and Japan suggested that successful reconstruction could enormously benefit the defeated countries, their regions and the United States. But World War II ended with enemy surrenders and organized resistance crushed. Afghanistan and Iraq were different. The Taliban survived and regrouped in Pakistan. Saddam’s regime disappeared, but former members of it helped create a Sunni insurgency. Also, Iran funded, trained and supplied Shiite militias that fought U.S. forces and the new Iraqi authorities.

Afghanistan and Iraq both improved to the point where a relatively small U.S. force could help secure the new governments at comparatively low cost in U.S. casualties. But neither conflict ended once and for all. Impatience with “endless wars” fed pressure to disengage. Afghanistan’s government was routed as the U.S. withdrawal proceeded. Regarding Iraq, advocates of a U.S. pullout accentuated the negative, but, despite its many ills, the country is no longer under Saddam’s tyranny. Its government holds competitive elections, is not a U.S. enemy and does not threaten its neighbors.

Is criticism of “endless wars” well grounded? It reflects understandable frustration, but can distort reality by implying that peace is the normal condition and wars short-lived anomalies. Ending U.S. participation in a war does not necessarily end the conflict or danger. The Cold War lasted roughly half a century and ended only as the Soviet empire and then the Soviet Union collapsed. America cannot always control whether it is at war.

Does anyone object to domestic crime-fighting as an “endless war”? People do not expect theft, rape and murder to disappear and allow police to turn in their badges and go home. So long as dangerous criminals exist, societies must defend themselves. The logic is similar in world affairs. A self-defense effort is not unnecessary just because it lacks a foreseeable end date. Dropping a necessary effort will not produce peace, only an enemy with a freer hand.

Even appreciating the war on terrorism’s benefits, it is fair to ask whether the United States overinvested in Afghanistan and Iraq at the expense of defenses against other state threats, especially from China, Russia and Iran. Strategists must keep sight of problems down the road. History never ends — at least it hasn’t so far.

An essential lesson of Sept. 11 is that perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself. The war on terrorism helped prevent the follow-on attacks widely expected after 9/11, but terrorist threats persist — from Sunni jihadist groups and from Iran and the groups it supports. The United States also faces security challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. Others will arise.

Staying power is essential to America’s safety, and three of its key ingredients are:

Love of country. Military strength depends heavily on morale, and morale on a sense that one’s cause is just. Americans should understand why their country is worth defending.

Weapons — in ample quantities. Recent missile and drone wars have revived the old truth that quantity can have a quality all its own. America needs deep stocks of munitions, missile-defense interceptors and counter-drone systems before a crisis makes it urgent to have them.

Resolve. The United States needs leaders willing to do the right thing for the right reason and keep doing it, if necessary, when costs mount and popular applause tapers off.

Ronald Reagan put the grander purpose this way: “Freedom is not the property of one generation; it’s the obligation of this and every generation. It’s our duty to protect it and expand it and pass it undiminished to those still unborn.” Americans who lived through 9/11 learned that lesson the hard way. The question on this anniversary is whether we will do our duty — or require the next generation to learn it the hard way, too.

The 9/11 response got the most important thing right
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The Virtual Girl: One woman’s digital life under the Emirate

September 9, 2026

Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

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As opportunities have narrowed for women and girls outside the home – under the Islamic Emirate’s many restrictions – many have turned to the internet to try to replace what they have lost. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, Roxanna Shapour hears from Sayeda, a young Afghan woman in Kabul who not only studies and works from home, but also volunteers. She has even established a network to help other women earn an income and build a sense of purpose. Yet even as the internet has become a lifeline, Sayeda’s story shows the limits of this virtual world. Poor connectivity and security concerns constrain what she can do. Nevertheless, she has persisted with her online activities, continuing to learn and create opportunities for herself and other women.

Entrepreneurs take part in business development training at a women’s centre in Parwan province. Photo: UN Women/Ali Omid Taqdisyan, January 2025

My name is Sayeda. I’m a young Afghan woman and I live much of my life online. I tell people I’m a virtual girl because almost everything I do happens in the virtual world. I study online, volunteer online and socialise online. I get training online and give training to other people online. I even search online for things I need to buy. I even have a job that is entirely online.

But life wasn’t always like this.

When I lived in the physical world 

When the Taliban came back to power in August 2021, I’d just finished college and started working for an NGO in Kabul. For six months, I got a taste of what life with a career and a purpose would be like. I worked in an office every day and as part of my job, I moved around a lot. I visited project sites, including a school and a clinic, where I’d talk to staff and monitor their work. When there was an aid distribution, I’d go along to see what was happening and talk to the people receiving it. I worked with six other women and when we had some free time, we’d sit together, joke around or have long conversations about our plans and dreams for the future. One of my colleagues wanted to create a clothing brand and sometimes we’d meet in a café to talk about her plans. She’s now started an online clothing business and, like me, she lives online.

Afghan families are protective of their daughters, so even before the Taliban, I couldn’t just go wherever I wanted. I had to ask my parents if I could go out with friends. They’d want to know where I was going, how I’d get there and when I’d be back. I had to be home before dark and there were places they didn’t want me to go. Still, compared to now, I led a very mobile and active life. I was always meeting people, seeing and learning new things. I’d go shopping with friends, meet them in cafés and visit them at home. There were family outings too, especially on Fridays, when relatives and friends joined us for picnics, meals in restaurants or visits to each other’s homes.

Now, that’s all a thing of the past. Many of our friends and relatives have left Afghanistan. The friends I used to meet for coffee or shopping are scattered across the world and the colleagues I used to sit with and discuss our plans aren’t part of my everyday life anymore. Those who are still here are struggling financially. You can’t just invite people to a restaurant as you did before because there’s often an expectation that they’ll reciprocate and many people can’t afford it anymore.

It’s funny, the internet gives you access to the whole world, but for me, the world feels a lot smaller these days.

A butterfly that can go anywhere

In the early days after the Taliban came to power, some friends and I started helping other young Afghans find educational opportunities. We’d organise motivational sessions and show people how to find scholarships and apply to universities. Eventually, we had to stop because our work was attracting a lot of attention. Drawing attention to yourself as a woman doing this kind of work can feel unsafe and my family was worried. Now, I volunteer online for an NGO that helps Afghan women find higher education opportunities. I manage its scholarship database, looking for opportunities in different countries and adding them so that women in the programme can find them.

But I kept thinking I could do more.

As part of my job, I talk to women in different provinces about their lives, their work, their families and their economic situation. I’ve spoken to women who’ve lost their jobs and women who are trying to keep their businesses going despite all the difficulties. Those conversations made me think about how I could help women not only earn an income but also find a sense of purpose. That’s why, in 2026, I founded the Behbud Network.

Behbud means improvement and that’s what I want the network to offer women – the chance to improve their lives by working, earning and building something of their own. Our logo is a butterfly. I chose it because the butterfly is free. It can go anywhere without restrictions. It goes to beautiful places and when people see it, they feel happy and at peace. We’re still small and self-funded and everyone’s a volunteer. But we already have around thirty women in our network – founders, entrepreneurs and businesswomen trying to establish or expand their businesses. Eventually, I hope we’ll have a hundred members or more.

We recently organised an online training session on networking with around fifty participants and we’re hoping to launch a monthly podcast where women can talk about their experiences so that other Afghan women can learn from them. We communicate on WhatsApp and by email and have a shared workspace on Google Drive. We can share documents, add comments and ideas and see what other team members are working on, even though we’re far apart. Some of us have worked together since 2021 without ever meeting face-to-face. We live in different provinces, but online we can meet whenever we need to.

But working online doesn’t mean we feel completely free or safe. Before I organise something, I have to think about what might happen. Before I invite someone to join us, I have to think about who they are. Before I share something, I have to think about who might see it. I have to think about security, not just my own but also the security of the other women who take part in our activities. I worry all the time about who’s in an online group. We’ve heard rumours that WhatsApp groups or online networks have been infiltrated, so we always have to worry that someone we don’t know very well could find their way into our workspace or group chats and create problems for us.

More than just earning money

I want Behbud to create opportunities for women to work and not only to earn an income. Work gives you something beyond money – a sense of purpose, something to do and something to build. We’re still in the start-up phase. Our first idea is a pickle-making business, but we haven’t hired women or produced anything for sale yet. We don’t have outside funding, so I’ll have to start with some of my own money. Even something as physical as a bottle of pickles starts online. When I need bottles or other materials, I search for them online, contact the vendors online and either arrange for samples to be sent to me or ask one of my brothers to pick them up.

Eventually, I want us to sell our products across Afghanistan. When somebody buys a bottle of our pickles, I don’t want them to feel they’ve only bought pickles. I want the packaging to have motivational messages and maybe a small gift, something that gives our customers some positive energy. Later, I’d like Behbud to develop other businesses, maybe making soap or disinfectants. I’d rather have different businesses employing different women so we can create more opportunities, especially for women who’ve lost their jobs and women who’ve returned to Afghanistan and need a way to earn an income.

Looking for ways to keep learning

I was applying for graduate school when the Taliban came back to power. I wanted to do a master’s degree abroad, but opportunities for Afghans have kept narrowing. Now, I can’t simply decide what I want to study and where. When you’re living in Afghanistan and you’re an Afghan woman, you have to look at what opportunities are available. This also happens online – searching for programmes, preparing applications and attending university interviews. I’ve been accepted into a master’s programme in human rights and data science at the American University of Paris. I was even offered a 50 per cent scholarship, but I’ve had to defer my place until 2027 while I look for a way to pay for the rest of the costs.

I keep learning other things online too. This year, I started learning Arabic and Turkish on Duolingo and I’m also taking some business courses. I don’t join every course I find. There are plenty of certificates available, but that’s not what interests me. I’m looking for quality, not certificates.

Like a party on Zoom

The internet isn’t only where I work and study. It’s also how I keep up with my friends. We stay in touch through Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and sometimes have group video calls – like a party on Zoom. That doesn’t happen very often. We’re in different time zones and finding a time when everyone’s awake, not working and not busy is no small feat. But every couple of months, we try to get together online and catch up. That’s what I do for fun. Otherwise, fun isn’t something I have very much of these days. I’m almost always busy with work. But sometimes I watch films online or spend time with my family.

Going out isn’t so simple anymore

I do have a very busy virtual life, but in the physical world I hardly go anywhere – maybe once or twice a month. When I do go out, I worry about the restrictions on women’s movement and dress and how they might be enforced. I try to wear everything in black – clothes, shoes, socks and scarf. I even wear a black mask, so my face is completely covered. I like wearing colourful clothes, so wearing all black feels suffocating, as if I’m in mourning. It’s not only Amr bil-Maruf [the enforcers from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) that I worry about. Taliban soldiers are everywhere in the city and we hear stories about them stopping women. Family members tell us what they’ve seen a girl in a taxi without a mahram, for example, being stopped by a Taliban soldier. So when I have to go somewhere, I take my mother – because my father and brothers have their own work and responsibilities and she’s often the only person available. It’s not easy for her. She has trouble with her knees and sitting in a car for a long time is difficult. Recently, I had to go to an office to fill out some paperwork. My mother had to come with me. She waited outside in the blistering heat while I filled out the forms. When we got home, she was unwell and had a headache. I felt terrible. I was making my mother suffer just because I needed somebody to come with me on an ordinary trip to an office.

Under the Republic, I could’ve gone on my own. I’d have taken a taxi and wouldn’t have had to worry about having a mahram or wearing the right clothes. Now even arranging a work meeting can become impossible. I once wanted to work with two other people to set up an online platform about climate change. One of the co-founders was a man. We needed to meet in person to discuss the project, but we couldn’t find a safe way to do it. We thought about meeting in a restaurant or café, but worried the Taliban might question why we were sitting together when we weren’t related. In the end, we didn’t meet. And the project never got off the ground.

The day the internet disappeared 

Leading a virtual life has its own challenges. The internet in Afghanistan isn’t very reliable. I recently changed providers because my old connection wasn’t good enough. I’m now paying 1,800 afghanis [USD 26] a month for a faster connection, but even that isn’t always reliable. Sometimes I have an important meeting or training session and the connection’s so poor I can’t join. Sometimes I can’t turn on my camera or even get a voice connection. I mostly use mobile data for important meetings because it’s more reliable. We recently held a training webinar and I wanted to upload the recording to YouTube, but the connection was too slow. I still haven’t managed to upload it.

And I know what happens when the internet disappears altogether. At the end of September 2025, the internet went down across Afghanistan. Everything stopped. All my work stopped and all my communication stopped. I couldn’t work with colleagues, join meetings or communicate with the people I normally speak to online. When so much of your life depends on being connected, life stops when the connection stops. And for this virtual girl, life stopped.

This is not the life I chose

The internet gives me access to a world far beyond my home. I can find scholarships, courses, possible collaborators and even buy supplies. I can help other women find opportunities and talk to friends thousands of kilometres away. Recently, I had an online meeting with the head of an organisation in Canada. He was there and I was in Kabul, but we could sit down together online and talk about working together. Almost everything I’ve built depends on the internet. My work, my network, my studies – without it, it’d be like multiplying everything I’ve achieved by zero.

But this online life wasn’t my choice. My choice would’ve been to lead a rich, active life in the physical world, to have something tangible. I want to meet people in person. If I’m talking to a friend or contact in Mazar-e Sharif or Herat, I want to be able to go there, meet them and work with them.

I don’t want to make light of what the internet’s given me. I’ve learned important things from this online life. It’s given me knowledge, skills and confidence. It’s given me the courage to carry out ideas, share them and make plans.

But telling you my story has made me cry. I thought about what my life was like before, what I’d want it to be in the future and what all the women in the rest of the world have that Afghan women don’t. Here, you don’t have choices. You don’t even own yourself. You don’t have a real identity, only a virtual one.

Edited by Kate Clark

 

The Virtual Girl: One woman’s digital life under the Emirate
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Beyond the Ban: Older girls finding alternative forms of education

September 1, 2026
 Rachel Reid

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The closure of schools for girls beyond grade six is the most glaring example of the Emirate’s discrimination against women and girls. Without access to secondary and higher education, most teenage girls and young women see little hope for a future beyond family life. But for some, the restrictions are not absolute. Whether through their own initiatives or those of their communities or NGOs, some Afghan girls are finding opportunities to learn beyond grade six, particularly in the virtual realm. Rachel Reid, with input from Rama Mirzada, has been hearing from students and teachers about the rewards and limitations of informal education. 

Being a student in my position is a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, I feel incredibly resilient and proud that, while many doors have been closed to girls, I’m still standing and fighting for my right to learn. On the other hand, it feels heavy. It’s not just about books for us; it’s about carrying the weight of the uncertainty about our future. 

Sima is one of the lucky few – a teenage girl in Afghanistan who is managing to continue her studies. Six days a week, she attends grade 11 via online classes. With girls’ secondary schools closed since 2021, this is more than most Afghan girls can dream of. But hers is not an isolated story.

Older girls’ continuing education is a grey area: while the vast majority remain excluded, nobody counts how many girls have found a way to keep studying, either because it is done unofficially, circumventing restrictions, or because of the fragility of efforts that are outside formal education but have a degree of state sanction. This report will focus on the unofficial, alternative end of the spectrum, for those excluded from grades 7-12. These efforts range from very small and local, such as student-driven efforts to help each other’s continuing education or the efforts of a determined teacher to keep girls in her own community learning, to larger-scale schemes run by NGOs offering physical, online or hybrid classes, often from outside the country. Some follow the old school curriculum of the Republic or international curricula, others offer a more informal medley of courses, from literacy to coding. The educational landscape for older girls has also changed since 2021-22, as this report details: some of what was safe early on may now feel risky, with far more happening online than is possible in person.

There was much attention – understandably – on the courage of those running clandestine schools in the first years after the Emirate seized power. As that power has consolidated, with enforcers exerting more control over society, including education, some providers of underground education have been forced either to close or pivot to online learning, while others have chosen to move to at least some digital provision to increase access. Others collaborate with providers of video and radio content, as explored in a 2025 AAN report on radio education. There are also pockets of learning for older girls that are outside the formal system but state-sanctioned to some degree, although that is not the focus of this report.

This paper focuses on the unofficial ways in which girls are managing to keep learning beyond sixth grade (approximately aged 12-13 upwards). It focuses on alternative learning channels, primarily online. It is based on 28 interviews – nine students,[1] seven teachers or psychologists working directly with physical or virtual schools and twelve key informants working for or running NGOs delivering education services. Of the students, three were interviewed remotely, the others shared voice notes of their experiences in response to voice note questions, as a means of reducing their exposure. Most were in grades 9-12, approximately aged 14-19, though ages tended to vary given the disruptions they had encountered. All of those based in Afghanistan have been given single-name pseudonyms for their own protection. Given the sensitivity of the work, identifying details of some of the educators and their work are also omitted.

Background: girls’ education before 2021 

Education has been far from universal in Afghanistan, regardless of the prevailing political winds. Children in rural areas, particularly girls, were often excluded, given the mix of conservative gender attitudes, high levels of poverty and low levels of development, including literacy, as well as decades of conflict. Formal education in schools has always been supplemented by madrasa education or other community-based learning.

Under the first Taliban rule in the 1990s, all girls’ schooling, including primary education, was banned. However, it was not a uniform picture, particularly for younger girls in rural areas (AAN). Pockets of education for girls continued, organised by communities, Afghan NGOs and educators, often in homes or community buildings, often in secret. The writer, Axana Soltan, studied in a secret basement school, thanks to her mother’s determination, as she recalled for the HuffPost: “when I turned seven, she wrapped my books in grocery bags, dressed me in my brothers’ clothing and sent me to an underground secret school for girls.” Not all girls’ education was clandestine – some NGOs negotiated permission to run girls’ schools from the authorities (AAN). In 2000, AAN’s Kate Clark visited a girls’ primary school in the capital and a mixed primary school in Kabul province run by an NGO. However, while some schools had permission to teach girls, it could always be revoked or officials might choose one day not to ‘look the other way’. Teachers and students always risked punishment.

Under the Islamic Republic, more schools were built, teachers were trained and investment was made to enrol children across the country. For girls, the increase was dramatic – from a fraction of girls enrolled in primary school in 2001 to over 80 per cent in 2021, according to UNESCO, though the actual number of school students was always lower than the corruption-inflated figures claimed (mostly through ‘ghost’ schools and teachers, which existed only as a budget line) (AAN). The jump was not as big for older girls, however, with around 45 per cent of girls finishing grade nine in 2019, compared to 75 per cent of boys (World Bank).

Access to education varied by geography. In areas where the conflict raged, schools were often caught in the firing line, with teachers’ and students’ access imperilled. In areas where the Taliban took control, they sometimes banned or indirectly prevented older girls from going to school, particularly prior to 2009. After that, in areas under their control, they tended towards a more passive role, allowing girls’ access where it already existed, at least in primary schools, though these were often rural communities where girls’ access was already quite low (AAN). For children in remote or hard-to-reach areas, efforts were made to reach them through a parallel system of community-based education, which often involved classes in homes or mosques, mostly provided by the United Nations and international NGOs and often prioritising girls (UNICEF). So, overall, the Republic offered a mixed picture, though certainly one marked by a strong trend towards greater access.

Closing the door on older girls’ education 

Within weeks of seizing power in August 2021, the Emirate ordered the reopening of primary and secondary schools for boys. In theory, the wait for secondary-age girls to go back to school was temporary, with various justifications given. Indeed, at the start of the next school year, on 23 March 2022, girls’ secondary schools did open, but within hours the Taliban’s leader, Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada, ordered them shut and the girls were sent home – this time for good. (AAN’s account of the full, convoluted tale, including the arguments over this issue within the movement, was published later that week).

Afghans who had lived through the first Taliban Emirate may not have been surprised by this, but many students were blindsided. Zolaikha was a year away from finishing grade 12 when the Taliban seized power. She told AAN that for her, the new rulers were just an abstract idea: “I didn’t really understand what the Taliban really were until the spring of the year after they took over.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, schools had been closed, then the situation was confusing in the autumn of 2021 – while a few provinces opened girls’ secondary schools, most did not. Zolaikha’s school remained closed until the new school year began on 23 March. On her first day back, she initially just noticed that the class size had shrunk:

People had been talking about whether we’d still be able to go back to school, but I couldn’t believe they’d stop girls studying. Then after just an hour or two in class, the principal came and said, “I’m sorry, they’ve cancelled girls’ education until further notice, so you need to go home.” Just like that. It was such a shock.

Among the many justifications, an insistence on gender segregation, for both girls and female teachers, was the most prominent. “I was so, so mad,” said Zolaikha. “In my school, girls and boys were already separated, we were in different buildings, so it made no sense to send us home.”

What was officially claimed as a temporary ban, however, was followed by a series of additional barriers to education for girls and women, which made the wider intent clear.[2] They included closing private educational centres for girls beyond grade six, preventing women from attending universities in December 2022 (Zan Times) and barring medical training for women and girls in December 2024 (BBC). There are also indirect barriers to girls’ education, such as Emirate restrictions on women’s ability to travel and work. Other obstacles that had also existed under the Republic persisted, for example, conservative families or communities and financial constraints. All told, the UN estimates that since the Emirate seized power, restrictions on education beyond grade six have directly affected at least 1.5 million girls (UNESCO, p1).

Despite the ban: education opportunities for older girls 

While the impact of these restrictions is profound, they are not absolute. Officially, madrasas remain open to older girls, although what girls are taught varies hugely: some focus on religious studies, while others provide core subjects such as maths, science and social studies.[3] Standards also vary: one girl in the capital described to AAN how, during the Republic, religious education at school had been to a far higher standard than anything she had found in a madrasa.

There has also been some non-formal education for adolescent girls taking place outside the state system but with a degree of state sanction, though these have faced growing scrutiny. They include programmes by UN agencies, international NGOs and Afghan NGOs registered with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). Some are vocational education programmes, such as embroidery, computing and language classes, some of which are (or were) open to older girls.[4] Interviewees said that accelerated learning programmes, which mostly provide an ‘accelerated’ catch-up for those who missed primary education, also sometimes include adolescent girls. Community-based education (CBE) also provided a little leeway for older girls – for a while at least. The number of students enrolled in CBE classes held in community buildings, homes and mosques, peaked in 2023 at around 1 million, of whom 60 per cent were girls (UNICEF, 2025, p11). But in 2023, the IEA began restricting CBE programmes, first closing CBE classes in two provinces in April, then informing international NGOs and the UN to hand over management of CBE programmes to the local authorities or registered Afghan NGOs (RFE/RL).[5]

Alternative education 

Unofficially, there is a complex web of informal education being provided without state sanction, sometimes described as ‘alternative education’, which is the focus of this report. This includes online education, which seems to attract little attention from the authorities and is often provided by educators who had already been offering tech solutions to education during the pandemic and before, as well as by new actors in the field. Some families or communities have taken the high-risk approach of creating ‘secret schools’ or classrooms based mostly in homes or other community locations, without permission, as many communities had done under the previous era of Taliban rule. As the education restrictions hardened, however, some of these providers have been forced to shut classes down or shift their work into the virtual realm.

One example of the latter is LEARN Afghan, founded by Pashtana Durrani in her home province of Kandahar in 2018. It began working in fairly conservative communities, finding different ways of getting girls into education, including digital education, teacher training and working with existing schools to add accelerated learning. After the Republic fell, there was a limbo: “Although the ban was not yet there, they were not opening the schools either,” Durrani told AAN. “People tend to forget that it had been COVID and the schools were closed, so the girls went from COVID into the Taliban regime without having exposure to school.”

Initially, she opened a school in Kandahar in October 2021, expecting it to be a “temporary lifeline” for two or three months. But as the months passed and there was still no sign of girls’ secondary schools reopening, she was approached by someone in central Afghanistan who had heard about what she was doing in Kandahar. “Although it was a very different ethnicity and different geography, the thing we had in common was that their girls couldn’t go to school like our girls.” They went ahead. Soon after, they received a request from a community in the northeast and within four years, LEARN Afghan was in 25 provinces, providing a mix of in-person and online learning.

Informal schools like these grew, mostly under the radar, all over the country. Interviewees told AAN of both the opportunity and the high cost of operating in the shadows. Student Khadija attends a community school operated by another NGO, Daricha:

We fear people may discover we’re studying. We fear going to the course and not returning home safely. We fear that death or injury could happen at any moment. We fear the Taliban may find out we’re continuing our education. These fears are a part of our daily lives, but still we continue because education means hope for us.

The only way to navigate this degree of risk, for those determined to defy the ban, is through strong community ownership. Durrani says that when they are approached by a community, they are very clear about who takes responsibility for security from the outset:

We say we’re going to provide you with laptops, salaries, internet, teacher training, curriculum, pedagogy training, everything you need, but you need to provide the security because it’s your community, you have the understanding around it and you need to make sure that you have a security parameter. 

The students and teachers are selected by the community, providing another level of protection. Roya, in western Afghanistan, works for another NGO that sets up schools in homes, with “trustworthy schoolteachers” and “trusted students.” The discretion they ask for, though, is also designed to manage a level of demand that is higher than they can meet:

When we enrol a student, we ask that she doesn’t inform other candidates because there are many families who want to send their daughters, but we cannot manage them all. This shows the community’s support for education: everyone wants to enrol their daughters, but the office does not have a big enough budget to support them. 

The levels of vigilance required vary from province to province, says Durrani. In some provinces, “[the schools] are secret. Nobody tells anybody anything.” Only the teachers know where the students gather, and she is confident that even when they move on, “they don’t go and snitch on us. It’s that simple because they know they’re part of an ecosystem that has to be secret.” However, in other provinces, “there is less pressure, the wider community knows.” This does not necessarily mean that the local authorities are tolerating them, Durrani says. It may be that the school is “completely ignored or is under surveillance – you never know which.”

Durrani, like many of those running such programmes, now lives in exile. Those taking the greatest risks tend to be the teachers, particularly when they have to travel to teach. Mina has been teaching at a school run by another Afghan NGO for two years. She says that holding classes in someone’s home is “the only way we can be sure that the government don’t know about us. But it’s dangerous. I worry about this, in case we have any problems with the government.”

Mina says the risk is personally worthwhile: her work gives her a sense of purpose in an otherwise difficult time. Her dream had been to become a doctor, but when the Taliban took over, she pivoted to training as a midwife, until that road, too, was blocked. “At first, when I decided to become a teacher, it was very hard, it didn’t feel real, with all my dreams gone,” she admitted, “but now that I am teaching, I feel so much better. I learned to laugh with the students. I feel responsible for them; a teacher should treat her students as she treats her own children.”

Some NGOs lower the risk threshold by having teachers join remotely while students gather in person. AAN talked to two NGOs that have adopted this practice at least in some of their locations. Roya is employed by one of them to provide psychological support to students. For this, she does need to visit in person:

The teachers at these schools teach in their own homes and know their students. But for people like me, the situation is different because we don’t know anyone at those schools. When I commute between my house and the schools, there is fear in my heart. I am afraid of being stopped at the checkpoints or followed by someone. 

She hasn’t had problems so far, which she says is partly because she closely observes the dress code for women. Mina, who teaches at an underground school in an eastern province, also relies on her clothing for protection. “For now,” she said, when she travels to work, “I just wear a big scarf,” and “they haven’t stopped me so far.” She needs textbooks, but “I can’t take anything in my hands,” so she uses digital copies, in case she gets stopped on her way. She teaches maths, English and biology.

They don’t want us to do this, they don’t want girls to learn, they don’t want them to study, they have so many problems with girls. They say they shouldn’t study ‘foreign’ subjects, they shouldn’t study mathematics, chemistry, physics. These [subjects] are not for girls. You should only teach girls the Quran. 

More pressure from the authorities

Operating under the radar has become harder as restrictions on girls’ education have been formalised and the Amir’s grip on power has tightened.[6] Enforcers from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice now conduct regular inspections of places of learning, including schools, madrasas and official community-based education (UNAMA 2025, p14 and UNAMA 2026, p4). The General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) has detained education workers and activists, including some high-profile cases, such as Wazir Khan, who was detained for a month in March 2025 (Kabul Now) and Matiullah Wesa, who was held for over 200 days in 2023 (Al Jazeera). AAN is aware of several additional cases that have not been made public.

Over time, as these pressures mounted, physical classrooms have become harder to sustain. One Afghan NGO worker told AAN:

There was a tightening up across the country and the Taliban started coming after NGOs in this sector. Our NGO was a target because we had a lot of students. It started in 2021, but in 2024 they got really harsh. 

A 2025 report by the Women and Children’s Research Organisation on the impact of the education ban noted a crackdown against “informal and underground schools,” starting in mid-2023, with “community-based learning circles harassed and dismantled” (pp6-7). Beneath the surface of such harassment, there can be more than a straightforward enforcement of the law. In 2024, LEARN Afghan had a colleague detained when auditing a school. “They were arrested and tortured for almost six months,” said Durrani. Her assumption is that the local authorities had been wrongly tipped off that she was coming in person and that they were probably hoping to detain her for extortion, since she comes from a well-known southern family. “So, it might be about what they can get out of it – the Taliban can be very transactional.”

Another interviewee working for an education NGO was aware of two incidents where education workers had been detained. In both cases, the arrests appeared to have been triggered by parents who had reported the school. In one example, a tip-off meant “the head was jailed and tortured, [but] with the intervention of elders, he was released.” The school was able to continue in some form. In the other example, “a girl had refused child marriage, she was saying ‘I want to continue my studies.’ The father became angry and reported the school to the Taliban.” The school was shut down.

Other schools, however, have reached a local accommodation. One of AAN’s student interviewees, Tamana, said: “The enforcers came to my class twice,” but “they take a bribe from the school” so it can stay open. This does not stop her from fearing the enforcers’ return and the possibility of being arrested. Student Ghazal similarly recalled that “when there were rumours that the Emirate would search house-to-house, I used to hide my books and notebooks.” However, her fear, she said, remains.

A shift towards hybrid and online schools

After an initial expansion of home-schooling efforts, education providers have had to be more cautious. Many shifted to online learning, both for safety and in hopes of reaching more girls, since underground schools tend to require very cohesive communities. There are lots of hybrid variants, too, with tuition via radio or the internet, as well as in-person elements such as when students need to conduct a science experiment or sit an exam. This flexibility cuts the risk without sacrificing all the benefits of in-person study.

Setarah is in grade 12 and studies online in a class of women aged 18-22 for five hours a day, six days a week. She explained her school’s learning system:

Our teachers record lessons for us, which we watch at home. The system is student-centred learning, so after watching the videos, we prepare for a presentation and join our classes in the evening. … For the first 30 minutes or so of each class, the students explain what they’ve learned, one by one, and then the teacher gives more explanation and concludes the lesson. 

They have midterms and final exams, all online. “The school provides us with the certificate at the end of each year, just as they did before the Taliban,” though, she says “our daily activities and attendance are more important than the exams.”

Studying online is generally cheaper in terms of enrolment and tuition fees. Setarah’s school, for example, charges 500 afghanis (USD 7.50) for enrolment but does not charge tuition. The real cost, however, is internet access and devices. “My school does not pay any money for students’ internet,” says Setarah, “but it provides some names of organisations which disadvantaged students can apply to and get some funding.”

Azizullah Paeyndah runs a digital education platform in Afghanistan, Setaragan Zirak Online School. He says that less well-off families find ways to cover their costs:

You would expect rich families to provide this opportunity for their girls, but most rich families don’t care. This matters to ordinary families, those without big incomes. The poorest people are often the most committed to learning. We can’t charge fees for some students from poor families. But for most, we charge around 1,000 afghanis [USD 15] a month for fees and another 1,000 for internet.

When Shakardokht Jafari and fellow volunteers launched an online school in 2022, now called Flying Wings, she faced significant criticism, with fellow Afghans telling her that because she lived in the UK, she did not understand the poverty trap her compatriots faced. “I respond [that] I’m from the most deprived area of Afghanistan and my cousin climbs a mountain to get a signal to change his Facebook profile. So, if [they have] the same level of enthusiasm for education, they can reach it.”

This spirit was echoed by student Setarah, who is mostly learning online. She said that in her region in central Afghanistan, “families are 100 per cent happy with our studies.” She gave the example of a classmate, “whose brother accompanies her every day to a mountain so that she can access the internet.” Other classmates, she said, have to “walk two hours to reach an area where the internet is available.”

Some providers go to great lengths to make their online content as accessible as possible, including by making all content free. The Begum Academy, which grew out of the women’s radio station, Radio Begum, provides free courses from grades 7 to 12 in 12 subjects, as well as several vocational courses. SOLAx also provides free courses in Dari, Pashto and English, with classes all delivered through WhatsApp, which requires a smartphone, but only a basic mobile connection. SOLAx grew out of the School for Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), which was evacuated to Rwanda in 2021. They set up the online platform after receiving over 2,000 applications in 2023 from Afghan girls wanting to move to the East African country to join the school, which could offer only 31 places. They launched in 2024 and, by 2026, had over 360,000 learners, with the ambition to teach half a million Afghan girls.

Not all families or communities, however, are supportive, even of online learning. Sakina, who studies online, says she knows many girls whose education is no longer supported by their families or relatives, because they “do not believe in their abilities as students, so because of this, many girls expect to get married at a young age and stop their education.” Problems with online learning 

Realistically, online learning will not be feasible for most girls. Internet access, already limited, is a luxury for families struggling financially – one in three Afghan families is in need of food assistance, according to a March 2026 World Food Programme estimate. On top of this, electricity can be patchy and women and girls tend to have more limited access to smartphones and laptops than men and boys.

“Internet access,” said student Sakina, “can sometimes make it hard to attend online classes, which affects the quality of learning. Many students can’t join their lessons on time, or follow their teacher properly and as a result, they may fall behind in their studies or lose motivation.” Virtual learning can also be a reminder for students of what they’ve lost. “Believe me, learning through a screen can be very isolating,” says Sima. “I really miss the energy of a real classroom, the face-to-face interaction with my teacher and the support of my friends.”

For educators, the move from physical to virtual learning was difficult, as teacher Shukria told AAN: “It was an unhappy time when we moved to online because most students were not familiar with online classes. It was a new experience for all of us, so we faced lots of problems.” A 2025 report by the Women and Children Research and Advocacy Network suggested that many girls who enrol in online courses drop out, mostly because of poor or unreliable internet access (report available from Princeton Library, p29).

This high dropout rate was also experienced by Shakardokht Jafari at the online school, Flying Wings. They had 500 students enrolled in their pilot year, but “attendance rates were around 20 to 25 per cent,” she told AAN. “Students struggled with digital literacy, with their internet access, with the whole system.” They adapted, however: “We created a crash course for students and teachers – there had also been resistance from teachers.” The following year, she said, attendance rates rose to 65 per cent, thanks to this crash course.

SOLAx co-founder Mati Amin says they quickly realised they could not view attendance in the same way as in a traditional school: “A girl might be using her mother’s phone, her father’s phone. She might have internet today and not tomorrow, and she may disappear for a few weeks, then come back.” That’s why they developed courses that can be accessed on a “basic smartphone with WhatsApp,” allowing families to enrol multiple girls in different classes on one shared device. “We have tried to design SOLAx around her reality. The learning is self-paced and asynchronous [on-demand] and lessons are short, so she can pick up where she left off. The idea is to let learning fit into the small windows that she has.”

Online teaching requires particular skills from teachers. Azizullah Paeyndah, who runs Setaragan Zirak Online School, says they seek candidates with a bachelor’s degree and, ideally, a master’s degree, as well as “experience of online teaching and a demonstration video of their teaching style.” He tries to build a learning culture: “Every week, we have some kind of training for [the teachers]. We come together, we speak about our education practices and methodology, we have many seminars, including best practice from other countries.” Teacher Shukria also said their teachers needed specialist training, “so that they learned how to make the lessons interesting and keep the students engaged.” However, she says the motivation levels are unquestionable:

All the teachers care so much; they aren’t just working for the salaries. They’ve been through these experiences themselves and they are all working from their hearts, so they try every day to make them more interesting.

There are, however, weaknesses in the teaching standards of both online and underground schools. Underground schools often have to resort to using one teacher per class across all subjects. Back in the Republic days, says student Ghazal:

If we were studying five subjects at school, we had five different teachers each specialising in those subjects. Here we only have one teacher who teaches all five different subjects. If the teacher is good at one subject, of course she is weak in the other subjects. Because of this, we have to use online sources like Google, ChatGPT and [other] AI. These sources are not as helpful as a teacher who can make us understand concepts in class. 

There are more low-tech options for girls with limited internet access. One is the Behdukht Academy, which, says founder Fatema Uzgan, “is designed to reach village girls.” She says that girls in cities “have more opportunities, they can participate in online classes, some can even go in person to do some courses. But most of the rural girls don’t have this opportunity.” Uzgan’s motivation is very personal: when the Taliban first took power, in 1996, she was in sixth grade:

I lived in a rural district. There was no internet, no school, no courses, no nothing. So I was one of those girls who struggled to get any education at that time. … I understand what it means when life is like a prison, when you have no hope. So Behdukht is about hope.

The majority of her students, she says, “have to work to help their family financially,” so they run classes in the evenings for just a couple of hours. She initially tried live online classes, but found that only a small number of the girls could connect. So, she decided to work only with a messaging service, because “most families can only afford the one package for WhatsApp.” For each class, a teacher sends voice notes to the group, with written notes for those who do not have the bandwidth to download them:

The students are online and can ask the teacher questions. They are given homework, which they have time to complete before their next class. They must send a voice note back to the group, explaining what they learned and what they didn’t learn or understand. 

Uzgan went into exile in 2021, first to Turkey and then to the United States. During the Republic, she had worked as a defence lawyer. While in the US she is “still looking for a good job” and runs Behdukht as a volunteer initiative. She sees that spirit of volunteerism in her students, with a number of girls who are now in higher grades offering to tutor those in lower grades. “They are helping each other. They want to transfer their knowledge.”

A medley of curricula and standards 

The forms of alternative education on offer provide an assortment of standards, pedagogy and curricula. Uzgan, like other interviewees, says she’s not attempting to replicate what a school can offer: “These girls are a long way from getting a complete education.” Other providers have focused on meeting the academic standards of formal education, at least in terms of accreditation as the end goal. One example is the comparatively well-resourced Canadian organisation, Right to Learn Afghanistan, which set up an online school in 2022, in addition to its long-standing free online library and scholarship programme. Their school has around 700 students and teaches the old Afghan curriculum from grade seven, then transitions students to the Canadian curriculum by grade 10, using English as the medium for teaching, so that students are able to take Canadian-accredited exams at the end of grade 12.

Executive Director Lauryn Oates says, “Overall it’s a very rigorous system. … The key moment is that transition to taking classes in English in grade 10, we offer lots of support outside their classes around that time.” They experimented with on-demand classes to make it more flexible for students, but “we lost on quality.” They experience some dropouts, mostly because of struggles with the English language. Oates says they work hard to prevent dropouts “because it’s expensive [as a mode of teaching], and the students don’t pay anything. The demand is so high – we have thousands of applications every year. I get to see the applications; I have an acute sense of how coveted it is.” Oates says they keep track of a growing number of accredited learning opportunities for Afghan girls, so they can point disappointed applicants elsewhere. “There are Afghan girls studying alongside girls from other parts of the world in accredited and good quality organisations,” she says, which “range from free – with full scholarships to partial scholarships to private schools, but almost all have some kind of subsidy for Afghan girls.”

Having started out with an online school, Shakardokht Jafari soon felt that the alternative education sector was becoming “pretty much saturated,” while “the biggest missing piece was accreditation.” Jafari launched a spin-off from Flying Wings, Education Bridge for Afghanistan (EBA), which provides two types of high school diplomas, one based on the Afghan curriculum and the other aligned with UK-based qualifications. EBA now has over 250 schools as partners using the certification scheme and secure examination methodology. “Despite the risks, the demand is increasing, more people are signing up,” says Jafari. She says parents are starting to believe in the system. “Now they have seen their daughters sitting the exams, receiving the reports, they can [privately access] their grades online. It is very transparent.”

Online skills and vocational training are another growing sector, often focused on jobs that can be done remotely. Afghan Women Forward, for example, offers free courses in subjects including graphic design, programming, cybersecurity and teaching English as a foreign language. LEARN also offers skills training for a narrow range of jobs, including midwifery and computing alongside its secondary school curriculum. Durrani is realistic about the narrow funnel of opportunities her students face:

I’m not going to say, “Oh my God, it’s so easy.” No. We get to pick only 15 girls to go on to midwifery from among 100 girls. Another 15 girls to study mental health. It breaks my mind because many girls have a lot of potential, but we can only pick 40 women out of 400 for the technology programme. It’s hard.

The benefits of keeping girls in education go well beyond improving access to higher education or employment, of course, with well-documented impacts such as lower rates of child marriage, maternal mortality and child mortality (UNICEF). In addition, all interviewees stressed the psychological importance of alternative education.

Mental health and keeping motivated 

Education symbolises what many girls and women have lost, both in terms of education and future careers. Recognising the widespread mental health problems among their students, many educators have added psychological support to their services. These emotional pressures exist whether students are attending underground schools or studying online, says Jafari:

When it comes to physically going to classes, sometimes the Taliban go there and have a terrible attitude towards the girls, sometimes they beat the students and teachers and sometimes they close them down. Sometimes, [the girls] have to stay home for a while. This creates stress and anxiety for teachers and students. For those who study from home, they are lonely and suffer from depression; they can lose motivation. 

Psychologist Roya says that “since everything, including jobs and education opportunities, is banned for women,” depression is common. She also notes, however, that domestic stress is also increased: “because more people stay home and spend more time together, there tend to be more problems arising in the family.”

Another interviewee, Laleh, also works as a part-time psychologist. She visits home schools once a month: “Whenever I go see the girls … it feels as though they have been carrying all the psychological problems they have faced throughout the month, waiting for an opportunity to share them with me.” The students are also coping with their families’ economic problems, which for many, she says, “have forced them to go and work their land, along with the men in their families. Their parents have lost their jobs and they have no choice but to work with them to put food on the table.” This makes it difficult to find time to study.

Sima, an online student, said that sometimes it is hard to focus on “complex tenth-grade subjects when my mind is on real-world challenges.” Her description at the start of this report of studying as a “bittersweet experience” captures the tone of several interviewees: continuing her education gives her hope, but it also takes a toll: “Sometimes it’s exhausting just to be strong enough just to do something as simple as attending a class,” she said. Like her fellow students, however, she thinks it is better to study than not: “My identity as a student is what gives me hope and a sense of purpose.” For another student, Fariba, “staying disciplined” is the biggest challenge: “keeping ourselves away from getting mentally burned out and staying positive for our future life.”

Educator Azizullah Paeyndah believes that the pressure of study itself is the best remedy for these existential doubts. “When they are busy with study and homework and school activities, there is no time to think about the restrictions and adversity they face.” This is one reason they have opted for fortnightly tests. “It is hard to keep people motivated in this situation. This is the way that we create some stress for them, it keeps them regular with their study.” Jafari says regular testing helps prepare students for their end-of-year exams, since many had a gap in studying: “We need to hold their hands.” Teachers and students alike try to innovate ways to keep students engaged. Shukria says their teaching assistants created some social activities, such as book clubs, art groups and competitions between years and schools.

For Zolaikha, the digital realm helped ease her sense of purposelessness. She was particularly inspired by an online global youth exchange, in which she participated in 2021: “It was amazing to meet all these other young people. In Afghanistan we aren’t very exposed to other cultures and other ideas.” Still in her late teens, the experience gave her an idea of “helping all my former classmates to get access to other peers from around the world to learn and have conversations, see life from a different perspective.” Zolaikha launched a global mentoring initiative: “In Afghanistan, we have such a closed environment, it’s easy to think that everywhere people live the same way as you, but they don’t.”

She started with a small group of volunteers and a few international tutors, who were prepared to give an hour or two of their time to regular sessions with Afghan girls. After two years, she had 600 students, all in Afghanistan, and a big roster of volunteer tutors almost entirely outside Afghanistan. Teaching or mentoring is almost entirely done via one-to-one video calls, with a few specialist teachers offering small group classes. Zolaikha has received some support from universities and an NGO, particularly with the curriculum, but it is still mostly a volunteer operation. She is frank about her motivation for starting it:

Honestly, it was a way to help myself. I was feeling so dead. I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was attending classes online, but even if I could finish my university education online one day, I can’t work in Afghanistan. I am not allowed to do anything. So, helping other people, helping connect girls like me with people outside Afghanistan to teach and talk to these girls helped me as well as them.

An uncertain lifeline

Opportunities for online education look set to keep growing even as the prospects for circumventing the Emirate’s restrictions on girls’ education diminish. So far, this digital sphere has not been banned by the state. There was one notable interruption to internet access in September 2025, when Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered a complete shutdown. In the end, it was overturned after a few days under pressure from businessmen and senior Talibs, but for already isolated female online students, it was a frightening time (UN Women). There have also been restrictions on the use of smartphones, though these have so far been limited to government officials (Guardian). In theory, however, since older girls and women do not need to leave home to study, it would seem hard for the state to justify interference on the grounds of safety or segregation. That said, the authorities have exercised growing control over what gets taught in schools and universities, not just where, including changing the state curriculum with a growing emphasis on Islamic subjects (UNICEF, p5).

With more and more students graduating every year from online or underground schools and with limited opportunities to study abroad, the development of online higher education and employment opportunities is a natural and much-needed extension. However, Zolaikha warns that there is no certainty that even online learning will survive: “You never know with the Taliban. They might wake up one morning angry and close some more things down.”

The students themselves tend not to dwell on how they learn. For them, it is the opportunity that matters. As student Ghazal says: “Despite all the difficulties, this school is giving us hope that we will not just become housewives.” Others are keenly aware of their less fortunate sisters. Several students interviewed, including Fariba, were painfully aware that their continuing education put them in a minority. Fariba captures the ambivalence:

There’s happiness because I was lucky and took my rights seriously and found a way to study every day. Sadness, too, because I may be learning, but there are so many more girls whose hopes and motivation to study came to an end. 

Interviewees in the alternative education sector share a sense of urgency that each excluded girl matters. “Five years is a long time in the life of a child. A girl who was finishing grade six when the Taliban seized power in 2021 is now approaching adulthood,” said Mati Amin. “She can’t get those years back.”

Edited by Kate Clark and Jelena Bjelica 

References

References
↑1 This report generally refers to those studying grades 7-12 as ‘students,’ though in some education systems, such as the UK, ‘pupils’ is more commonly used for school-aged children. However, the connection between ages and grades is quite blurred in Afghanistan given the exclusion of girls and young women from secondary education, and ‘students’ was the term most commonly used in English by Afghan interviewees. Students can also refer to those in higher education, but this will be the focus of a separate AAN report.
↑2 See Banned from Education – A Review of the Right to Education, UNESCO, 2025, pp33-45.
↑3 See UNICEF’s 2025 Afghanistan Education Situation Report (p23, p26), which also notes that there are significant changes underway regarding the curriculum for both state schools and madrasas (p10). A June 2026 report by the NGO Hamrah suggests that madrasas are reinforcing gender roles, including hostility towards female education. See Taliban Madrasas: Ideological Consolidation, Gender Persecution and Afghanistan’s Future Stability, pp19-22.
↑4 There have been reports of training centres being closed down in several provinces in 2025, including Kabul, Herat, Daikundi and Bamiyan, with several teachers arrested, according to the NGO Afghan Witness, citing multiple sources in the Afghan media.
↑5 See, for example, the Afghanistan strategy of the UN’s global fund, Education Cannot Wait, which is focused on expanding community-based education and accelerated learning programmes “for adolescent girls who are unable to access the formal education system.” Vocational training includes livelihood initiatives and efforts to train female primary school teachers or medical workers outside formal training colleges, which were closed to females in 2023 and 2024. However, all of these faced growing restrictions over 2025 and 2026, according to interviewees. See also Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025, UNICEF/UNESCO 2025, pp10, 34 and 43.
↑6 See AAN’s translation of the 2024 vice and virtue law and analysis. See also UNAMA’s report on the enforcement of the vice and virtue law from April 2025 and Rawadari’s Afghanistan Human Rights Situation Report 2025, published in March 2026.

 

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