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.
Third, the enemy was not one organization but a network of terrorist groups and state sponsors. States provided safe haven, funds, training and weapons. Fearing that states could give terrorists a shortcut to weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials noted that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria — principal WMD proliferation risks — were also on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
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
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
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 officialcommunity-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.
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.
In a whitewashed basement in a village south of Kabul, a dozen young women bustle about, stirring cauldrons of bubbling cherries and plums, and sticking labels on glass jam jars. Ventures like this are one of the rare spaces where women are still able to gain skills and employment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
It is run by Najia, a 47-year-old Afghan entrepreneur and mother of nine children who was married at the age of 14.
If the authorities hadn’t barred girls and young women from secondary schools and universities, many of the women in this workshop, including Naija’s daughters, would be studying for a different kind of future.
Jam-making workshops are one of vanishingly few ways women can still learn and make money
But now, even this is being squeezed too. Recent rules say women have to ask men to take their products to market, and only men can sit at their stalls to show their wares at trade fairs. The Taliban gives various reasons for this, including claiming that women aren’t wearing proper hijab or head covering.
“The world has to talk to the Taliban in a different way because it’s just not working,” says Najia. “The lives of Afghan women have to change because we’re losing hope.”
Five years after this ultra-conservative Islamist movement took charge, women are banned from much of the public sphere and girls are prohibited from going to school over the age of 12. Many inside and outside Afghanistan are asking the same pressing question: what’s the best way to engage the Taliban to try to achieve meaningful change?
The issue is deeply divisive. There are fissures between many groups, with a huge array of conflicting issues at stake. These include women’s rights, unpredictable Taliban edicts, international sanctions and aid cuts during a spiralling humanitarian crisis. The international response is split between Western countries often focused on human rights and others more interested in investment opportunities. And the West itself is divided on the best response.
Many now accept that whatever they’re doing, it’s not working.
Engage, not isolate
Few voices call for absolute isolation, not when the United Nations warns that 22 million Afghans – nearly half the of the population – rely on some form of foreign assistance to help them survive.
The country has been battered by multiple shocks: an agonising economic crisis; devastating natural disasters; clashes with neighbouring Pakistan, and the influx of millions of Afghans deported from countries near and far into this impoverished land.
And there’s no avoiding it – the Taliban are in charge now.
In the years since their fighters swept into Kabul on 15 August 2021, they’ve grown in confidence and consolidated control despite intermittent attacks by armed opposition groups based abroad, as well as Islamic State fighters.
The Taliban are collecting tax revenues and signing deals in mining, energy and more with Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, and Tashkent, along with other neighbours
But they’re still strangled by international sanctions linked to terrorism and human rights. Russia is the only country to formally recognise their rule, and they haven’t been allowed to take up what they see as their rightful seat at the UN in New York.
But formal diplomatic recognition is no longer the focal point.
“The West is losing the argument over recognition,” says a former senior UN official who requested anonymity because they continue to work in Afghanistan. They point to the growing number of countries which have conferred de facto recognition by clinching deals, accrediting diplomats, operating embassies, and more.
“There’s no doubt the Taliban would like to be recognised at the UN but it’s no longer as potent a bargaining chip as it was at the beginning,” they assess.
Behind the soaring blast walls of the foreign ministry in Kabul, in the sprawling compound of manicured lawns and graceful historic buildings, Taliban diplomats keep adding names and flags to the growing collection of Afghan embassies worldwide which are now under their control, rather than the last holdouts of the government they ousted. The current tally is more than 40.
“We need to come closer diplomatically rather than talking from a distance if we want to make progress in our relationship,” says Zabihullah Mujahid, the main Taliban spokesman.
We meet in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the real seat of power. This is where the Taliban’s reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has been steadily building his political and military base and issuing hundreds of edicts, many of them focused on erasing women and girls from public life – what he portrays as an Islamic obligation to protect them.
This five-year mark is widely seen as an inflection point.
“An unstable and potentially dangerous equilibrium,” is how the situation was described in closed-door remarks by a senior UN official at a recent international gathering.
And, yet, Afghanistan has fallen far under the world’s radar. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East absorb international attention, and Europe’s burning issue is how to stop so many Afghans fleeing towards their shores. It’s a startling reversal.
“It’s extraordinary given the scale of Western effort from 2001-2021 how ignored Afghanistan is now,” remarks a Western diplomat who recently served as an envoy to the country. They did not want to be named because they’re still in the diplomatic service.
“The real diplomatic gap is the US,” they added, in reference to the current US administration’s decision to eliminate their special envoy position and dismantle many agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which once led the world’s approach on almost every Afghan issue.
Even within Taliban ranks, especially among those known to differ with some of the strictest edicts handed down by their emir, there is frustration that the world doesn’t seem willing or able to forge a different kind of relationship.
“We want to be part of the international community,” emphasises Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban who now runs a madrasa for boys and girls on the outskirts of Kabul. Unlike mainstream schools, madrasas take girls of all ages and some, especially those run privately, are teaching more than religious classes.
“Just putting pressure won’t work,” he tells us. He takes the long view of Afghanistan’s history of resisting foreign invaders. “We didn’t surrender to the Russians, to the Americans, so why would the Taliban surrender now?”
Open dialogue
UN officials believe their presence in Afghanistan makes a difference, however limited. They point to progress on issues such as the treatment of prisoners, their detailed discussions on the harsh implementation of the morality code known as the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as well as efforts to improve humanitarian access.
“Engagement is slow, progress is incremental, and reversals are frequent,” is the UN’s sober summary of the past five years of on-off dialogue.
But it still insists it needs to stay the course.
“A stalled process is better than no process,” emphasises Georgette Gagnon, a deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, who is now the acting head of the UN mission in Kabul.
The UN has been criticised for not pushing back enough against the Taliban, including for holding forums such as the so-called Doha Process, in which a Taliban delegation travelled to the Qatari capital in 2024 to discuss a range of issues, on condition that no Afghan women’s representatives were at the table. UN officials insist all issues were discussed, and that subsequent meetings included their participation.
A new process called Mosaic approaches negotiations in a more structured format, on six core issues. On one side there are human rights including women’s rights, inclusive governance, and counterterrorism. On the other, there are Taliban demands – sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, diplomatic representation.
“Confidence and reciprocity are beginning to take shape to open the door to engagement on the most difficult issues,” says Gagnon whom we meet inside the UN’s vast, heavily fortified compound. She calls them “small steps on the long road”.
She insists it has to be done through a collective effort, not only through discussions by individual governments. “Pressure has not worked so far, threats have not worked; our best chance lies in consistent and common messaging and action.”
For some sceptics, even inside the UN, there’s worry that the Mosaic approach isn’t going to work either.
But just keeping the lights on, preventing a slide into isolation, and continuing protection work with vulnerable communities, especially women, is seen as essential.
Talk quietly
In dusty provincial capitals and farmers’ fields, where international and Afghan aid agencies wrestle with ways to work on the ground, the conversations continue day in day out.
It’s there that edicts handed down by the reclusive emir are translated into what are known as workarounds. These workarounds can mean women are able to work in some agency sectors from home, or in different rooms, on different floors, or even in different buildings to men.
“Everything in Afghanistan is relationships, and day-to-day that can help make things easier,” says Chris Kinder, the chairman of Afghanaid, a British charity which has been working in Afghanistan for more than 40 years. He emphasises that most of these conversations on access and implementation are conducted by experienced Afghan staff.
My own visits to provincial cities and towns in recent years have underscored how some local Taliban officials try to find pragmatic solutions. But others remain deeply suspicious of any foreign assistance.
Local agreements were described by another charity as “verbal and fragile”.
Kinder rejects criticism that aid agencies have had to compromise on principles to keep their projects in place.
“The Taliban have their red lines and we, and our donors, have ours. We discuss approaches so both sides understand where they are coming from.”
Here too, many aid officials call for a more unified approach.
Talk tougher
“We need to keep talking, but now we need to set conditions,” is the view of Najia the jam maker. It’s a stance also taken by women activists in the diaspora and human rights groups who say dialogue has been a one-way street, with the Taliban not offering any significant changes in return.
They insist discussion should not go beyond aid issues until they do.
A recent flashpoint was the decision by EU officials in June to host a Taliban foreign ministry delegation in Brussels for the first time since the Taliban returned to power. Representatives of 15 member states joined this one-day meeting to discuss processes to send back Afghan nationals who had no legal right to remain in the EU.
The EU called them “technical-level” talks. The Taliban saw them differently. A spokesperson described the agenda as including possible consular presence in Europe and the “need for trust-building measures”.
“The diplomatic community is well aware that there are already existing channels through which technical issues can be discussed with the Taliban,” says Rina Amiri, an Afghan-born former American diplomat who served as the US special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights from 2022 to 2025 and also grappled with the terms under which to meet the Taliban.
“Meeting in Brussels was clearly a decision that was about politics, not logistics,” she says.
The critics call it “creeping normalisation”.
Will it work?
“After these last five years I spent in Afghanistan, what do I have to show?” asks Mahbouba Seraj, an Afghan activist who runs a shelter, when we visit her in Kabul. When the Taliban took over in 2021, Seraj made headlines when she announced that she would stay in her country to fight for women’s rights.
Seraj, 78, now says she’s preparing to leave.
Her last shelter, which provided a life-saving refuge for more than 30 Afghan women fleeing domestic abuse, was shut down in December. Her repeated appeals to Taliban leaders to re-open classrooms for women and girls have been ignored.
“These small windows that the world sees, the little openings here and there including secret schools for girls, are just meant to fool everybody,” she laments with visible sadness.
But Seraj calls on the international community to keep talking.
“They have to talk, but they have to make sure that when they sit down and talk, it’s not just a lot of people just filling the air.”
Activists say women and girls have been forgotten
There are others who say the same.
“Only more capable diplomacy through quiet and confidential engagement can deliver the change,” says a former Afghan official who’s been involved in discreet discussions with Taliban officials. He hopes whoever is chosen as the new UN Secretary General and takes office at the start of next year will engage more effectively.
But, in the end, it’s not the international community which is in the driving seat of any change.
“I don’t think the answer is the world finding the right language to talk to the Taliban,” says a Western analyst who’s long been involved in Afghanistan and like others interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous. “Five years on, it’s very clear that real change can only come from within.”
Some senior Taliban officials have occasionally spoken out about the emir’s harshest orders, in particular the closure of girls’ schools, and there’ve been rare instances when some were able to find ways to roll back his rules. One such case was last year’s nation-wide internet shutdown which paralysed daily life and was later reversed.
The emir’s edicts are regarded as absolute. The movement has shown it values unity, and power, above all else. Even the entreaties of Islamic scholars and officials of Islamic countries the world over have not bent the iron will of the emir and his enforcers, especially on the most sensitive issue of education.
Five years on, there are no simple or swift solutions.
At Najia’s jam workshop, a table bristling with her framed training certificates – from local Afghan institutes to the now defunct USAID – attests to her efforts to become a bigger and better entrepreneur in the face of cascading restrictions.
Year on year, a new society starts to take shape. But many Afghans still keep pushing and praying for a different future – and hope the world won’t forget them.
Five years after the Taliban swept to power, does the West have any influence?
Afghans areno longer welcome by those who once helped thme leave Afghanistan, abandoning them, no longer wanted. Western Values eh? Go figure.
Once welcomed, Afghans are now being deported. Once only those with criminal records. Now not so much. Taliban invited to Germany to aid with the deportation
Germany has turned to Afghanistan’sTaliban to assist its deportation of Afghans back to Afghanistan, from where they fled. It’s quite the about face even for the West.
The foreign ministry says there are about 450,000 Afghan nationals in Germany. It didn’t say how many they wanted to deport, but the spokesman, Sebastien Giese made it pretty clear at Monday’s press conference in Berlin that it is Germany’s hope to deport as many as they can.
“It is the clear objective of the Federal Government to increase the number of deportations to Afghanistan. We are also working toward that,” said Giese, thus the need to get the Taliban to Germany to give Germany’s new center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party a hand.
It seems more than a little hypocritical of Germany to refuse to reopen its embassy in Afghanistan because it abhors the Taliban’s regressive laws which Afghans are forced to live under, including those targeting women and girls, yet Germany invites the Taliban to Germany to help deport Afghans, who fled Taliban rule, back to Afghanistan.
Western values eh? Go figure.
Last year, after Germany opened the Afghan diplomatic mission in Bonn to the Taliban, the Taliban launched an advertising campaign looking for interns seeking “to gain practical and professional experience at the Consulate General of Afghanistan in Bonn, working within a diplomatic mission.” The upside: It didn’t say women need not apply.
Germany has sought to sidestep the question of diplomatic recognition, which Germany, like all countries, except Russia, have refused to give the Taliban governemnt, with talk of seeking “technical” aid from the Taliban. But that seems disengenuous given that the Taliban are at the Afghan diplomatic mission in Bonn. You can’t have it both ways Germany.
Germany also says it is deporting those Afghans with a criminal record. Not true. On the last plane load of 81 Afghans sent from Germany to Afghanistan, at least one had no criminal record. It was the first, but given the ramped up efforts to deport Afghans it most certainly won’t be the last.
Germany appears to be the first country to openly seek the Taliban’s assistance in deporting Afghans. However it is not likely to be the last.
Because the Taliban effectively govern Afghanistan under the international-law principle that those controlling most of a country function as its government, Germany or any country returning Afghans does indeed need their help. Certainly Germany can’t just fly a planeload of Afghans to Kabul, dump them off and fly away. Nor it would seem can any country seeking to fly deported Afghans home.
It’s a far cry from the 2021 welcome many western countries gave Afghans fleeing Kabul when the Taliban defeated the United States and its NATO allies and returned to power.
The open arms were never really about affection for Afghans, but more a gesture intended to assuage the collective guilt of the largely western world for its failed 20-year invasion and its desperate and humiliating departure from Kabul.
Rather than admitting they were abandoning Afghans and Afghanistan, taking their planes and going home, the departing invaders sought to take those who had befriended them, ignoring the 42 million other Afghans, who had also hoped for a better day back in 2001 when the invaders first arrived.
As a result, there are thousands stranded in Pakistan who were helped to leave Afghanistan by their so-called foreign friends, living in fear of being deported back to Afghanistan or thousands more living in western countries, now uncertain of their future, living in countries whose governments want them gone.
Western values eh? Go figure.
Germany Invites Taliban To Aid Afghan Deportations
Afghan passengers board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III during evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Donald Allen)
Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, had been the final American service member to step aboard. Ross Wilson, the top U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, was also on the aircraft.
One minute later, Aug. 31 began in Kabul. No U.S. troops remained on the ground in Afghanistan.
Five years ago Sunday, that flight ended a military mission that had begun nearly 20 years earlier, on Oct. 7, 2001, when the United States launched combat operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban government that had sheltered Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The final day was anything but quiet. American troops were still evacuating Afghans, defending the airport from ISIS-K attacks, dismantling equipment and pulling thousands of service members out of a shrinking perimeter. The final extraction involved five C-17s that would carry the remaining American forces out of Afghanistan.
The Airport Was Still Under Attack
The final 24 hours began under the threat of another ISIS-K attack.
Four days earlier, on Aug. 26, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at Abbey Gate, where crowds of Afghans had gathered hoping to enter the airport. The attack killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians, according to the military’s investigation.
A supplemental Pentagon review completed in 2024 upheld the finding that a single suicide bomber carried out the attack. Threat reporting remained intense.
U.S. Marines with Golf Company, 2nd Platoon, 1st Marine Division, pose for a photograph at Hamid Karzai International Airport during Non-combatant Evacuation Operations in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2021. The photo was taken prior to the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate while Marines secured the airfield and processed evacuees. (Courtesy photo by Lance Cpl. Noah Smith)
On Aug. 29, the U.S. military launched a drone strike against a white Toyota Corolla in Kabul that commanders believed was connected to an imminent ISIS-K attack on the airport.
CENTCOM initially described the strike as successful. It was not.
The Pentagon later acknowledged that U.S. personnel had misidentified the vehicle and its occupants. An Air Force investigation determined the strike killed three adults and seven children. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a “tragic mistake” and accepted responsibility.
Then, on the morning of Aug. 30, five rockets were fired toward the airport.
The military’s Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar systems, known as C-RAMs, engaged the attack. Two rockets fell on the airfield, and McKenzie later said the defensive systems probably prevented more significant damage. The weapons remained operational until almost the end.
Soldiers with the Massachusetts National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 101st Field Artillery Regiment, were still operating their C-RAM guns after 9 p.m. local time. Two of their guns had engaged the five-rocket volley earlier that day. Not long afterward, the remaining equipment was destroyed, and the soldiers boarded a C-17.
A U.S. Army soldier distributes bottled water to Afghan evacuees during evacuation operations Aug. 21, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jimmie Baker)
At the same time, Army engineers were working to leave the airport’s electrical system running after American forces departed.
On Aug. 29, soldiers from the Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion started, synchronized and connected all 15 generators at the airport’s three power plants. Ten fuel storage tanks were filled to capacity to keep the plants operating after the withdrawal.
The airport still had to function while the Americans dismantled the force protecting it.
The Evacuation Continued Into the Final Day
Even as troops began collapsing their positions, evacuation flights continued. McKenzie said more than 1,500 Afghans were flown out during roughly the final 24 hours.
By the end of the operation, U.S. military aircraft had evacuated more than 79,000 civilians from Kabul over 18 days. That included about 6,000 Americans, more than 73,500 Afghans, and third-country nationals. Combined U.S. and coalition flights evacuated more than 123,000 people.
At the peak of the evacuation, approximately 21,600 people were flown out in a single 24-hour period aboard U.S. and coalition aircraft. Thirty-seven U.S. military flights carried about 12,700 people, while 57 coalition and partner flights carried another 8,900.
That pace slowed dramatically as the military approached its withdrawal deadline and shifted from moving civilians to extracting the troops who had been running and protecting the airport.
The final five C-17s were part of what McKenzie called the “joint tactical exfiltration.”
Families board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III during evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Samuel Ruiz)
No additional American civilian evacuees reached the airport in time to leave aboard those five aircraft, although U.S. diplomatic personnel, including Wilson, departed as part of the final American contingent. McKenzie said the military retained the ability to take evacuees until shortly before departure, but none reached the airport in time.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said later that evening that fewer than 200, and likely closer to 100, Americans who wanted to leave remained in Afghanistan. He cautioned that officials were still working to determine the exact number. Afghan interpreters, Special Immigrant Visa applicants and other U.S. partners also remained behind.
The Final C-17s Flew Into a Darkening Airport
Air Force records released after the withdrawal provide a glimpse of what crews encountered while flying some of those final missions.
MOOSE 81 and MOOSE 92 were two of the five C-17s sent from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar for the final flight into Kabul on Aug. 30.
As they approached the airport, the crews observed air defense artillery, flares and heavy machine-gun fire. They also received reports of rooftop snipers in the area. Despite the threats, deteriorating weather and mountainous terrain, the C-17s landed on what the Air Force described as an unsecured airfield.
Once on the ground, the crews moved quickly.
Air Force records say the loadmasters aboard MOOSE 81 and MOOSE 92 loaded the remaining U.S. personnel and sensitive equipment onto their aircraft in less than an hour. Airmen from the crews later received Distinguished Flying Crosses with “C” devices for their actions during the mission.
McKenzie said U.S. forces demilitarized up to 70 MRAP armored vehicles and 27 Humvees. Seventy-three aircraft left on the airport ramp were also rendered inoperable. Most of those aircraft, McKenzie emphasized, were already not mission-capable before U.S. forces left.
The C-RAM systems that had helped defend the airport hours earlier were also disabled.
The decision to leave them operating until nearly the last moment was deliberate. Breaking down and extracting the systems would have taken time, McKenzie said, and commanders determined that protecting the remaining troops was more important than bringing the equipment home.
The Last American Soldier
There was no formal ceremony and no formal handover of the airport.
McKenzie said the Taliban had established a perimeter outside the airfield during the withdrawal, preventing people from entering while the Americans departed. Shortly before leaving, Donahue spoke with the Taliban commander with whom U.S. forces had been coordinating and told him the Americans were leaving.
“We did not turn it over to the Taliban,” McKenzie told reporters. Then the remaining paratroopers boarded.
Army Master Sgt. Alex Burnett photographed Donahue walking toward the final C-17 through the green glow of night-vision equipment, his rifle hanging at his side. The photograph quickly became one of the defining images of the withdrawal.
Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Donahue is the final American service member to depart Afghanistan; his departure closes the U.S. mission to evacuate American citizens, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and vulnerable Afghans. (U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Alex Burnett)
Wilson boarded with him, bringing the State Department and Defense Department teams out together on the final aircraft. At 3:29 p.m. Eastern time, 11:59 p.m. in Kabul, the final C-17 lifted off.
“Every single U.S. service member is now out of Afghanistan,” McKenzie told reporters shortly afterward. The departure marked the end of a U.S. military mission that had lasted 19 years, 10 months and 23 days.
It also ended an evacuation carried out under extraordinary circumstances. U.S. troops had secured and operated an international airport inside a capital controlled by the Taliban, while military and diplomatic personnel processed evacuees and troops provided security, medical assistance, food and water.
More than 123,000 people were evacuated aboard U.S. and coalition aircraft. Thirteen American service members were killed at Abbey Gate. Ten Afghan civilians were killed in the mistaken U.S. drone strike. Americans and Afghan partners who still wanted to leave remained in the country after the last military aircraft was gone.
For the troops aboard the final C-17s, the deadline had arrived.
The wheels left the runway with one minute remaining before midnight, and America’s nearly 20-year military mission on the ground in Afghanistan was over.
5 Years Later, Inside the Last 24 Hours of America’s War in Afghanistan
The country’s longest war came to an end exactly five years ago. Today it offers lessons for policymakers seeking to avoid an endless war in Iran.
For much of the Afghanistan war, the only thing harder for the United States than winning was quitting.
The country’s longest war ended in chaos and defeat five years ago Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, desperate to escape Taliban insurgents, swarmed the Kabul airport. Thirteen U.S. troops died there in a suicide bombing.
But since then, the fears that prevented three presidents from quitting the war have proven to be unfounded. Afghanistan has not become a terror haven or launchpad for attacks in the United States.
Today, the U.S. military is mired in a new war in Iran. Once again, the prospects for a military victory look bleak. Even President Trump has hinted that he would like to quit the war, only to reverse course and make a case for staying.
“We don’t have to be there,” he said in an Oval Office address in the spring. “We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”
The long war in Afghanistan raises hard questions for the generals and policymakers contemplating the way forward in Iran: Why was quitting in Afghanistan so hard? What does the long struggle to accept defeat there say about the Trump administration’s predicament in Iran?
The United States has faced questions about quitting in just about every war it has fought since its emergence as a global power after World War II. “So much of what we’ve been involved in these last several decades is really policing the empire,” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a senior analyst at RAND Corporation, a think tank that studies security matters.
In most instances, U.S. troops have gone to war to impose order on an unruly world, or to defend American values. “We’re not fighting existential conflicts,” Mr. Hoehn said.
The aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death in May 2011 offered the best opportunity to leave Afghanistan. The perpetrator of the Sept. 11 terror attacks was dead, and a decade of drone strikes had decimated his organization. The Taliban insurgents, who had ruled Afghanistan and harbored Al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion, were proving almost impossible to eradicate.
“If American officials had known then what they know now, many of them — including me — would have argued more strongly for an early withdrawal,” Carter Malkasian, who advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, recently wrote in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Presidents and the Pentagon were motivated to keep fighting by concerns about the country’s credibility, a sense of obligation to trusted Afghan allies and a feeling that defeat would dishonor the sacrifices made by dead and wounded troops.
For many of these officers, who lost close friends in firefights with the Taliban, the idea of quitting ran counter to years of training and experience.
“Simply put, one reason the Americans did not leave Afghanistan earlier is that the U.S. military fights to win,” Mr. Malkasian wrote.
Political and foreign policy leaders fretted about U.S. credibility on the world stage and the costs that they could pay at the ballot box for losing a war.
By 2011, U.S. troop levels had already begun falling in Afghanistan, and the Taliban recognized that it just needed to outlast U.S. troops and the exhausted American public’s willingness to pay for the war.
As the prospect of defeating the Taliban grew more remote, U.S. political leaders shifted their goals. They focused on reducing casualties, cutting the war’s costs and keeping the corrupt and unpopular Afghan government alive.
“They’re like a doctor in a critical care ward that knows the patient is going to die,” said Rosemary Kelanic, the Middle East program director at Defense Priorities, which promotes a more modest U.S. foreign policy. “They’re just hoping the patient dies after their shift is over. They don’t want it to be on their watch.”
The war continued for another decade after bin Laden’s death, claiming the lives of another 868 service members. U.S. commanders who led troops in the war’s waning years sensed that they were being set up to fail. On a recent podcast, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the last commander in Afghanistan, recalled his mind-set when he was selected in 2018 for the job. He expected to emerge from his tour “very tired” and with a “diminished reputation.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed earlier this year that the war in Iran would be nothing like the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Hegseth had deployed to both conflicts as a young Army National Guard officer. The experience left him angry and disillusioned.
“Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous foolish politicians like Bush, Obama and Biden squander American credibility,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters in March.
Those wars were quagmires, he said. The Iran war, he promised, would be different — “laser focused,” lethal, swift and “decisive.”
Iran responded to punishing attacks by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this summer, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that U.S. bombs and missiles likely would not be enough to defeat Iran or to even reopen the critical waterway to commercial traffic.
“Air power has got limits,” he said in Senate testimony, “and we always have to be mindful of those.”
Today the administration is betting that a U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian exports through the strait and economic sanctions will accomplish what the earlier airstrikes failed to do.
There are early signs of an uptick in the number of ships and oil exports transiting the strait.
Despite the modest gains, U.S. military leaders are no longer talking about a swift victory. Instead, they are describing a campaign that would squeeze Iran for months or longer.
Asked how long the Navy, already strained by long deployments, could sustain the blockade, Mr. Hegseth replied: “We can hold it as long as we need to — indefinitely.”
The challenge for the U.S. military resembles the one that it faced in Afghanistan. The Taliban insurgents were fighting for their survival. So too are Iran’s leaders.
For the United States, the stakes are much lower, and so too are the costs of quitting.
The U.S. military likely could open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war started. “It is a doable task,” said Thomas G. Mahnken, who served as a senior Pentagon official under President George W. Bush. “But it would take some effort on the ground, just because the Iranians have spent decades building and fortifying positions.”
For now, the costs of such an operation in blood and treasure seem higher than Mr. Trump or the American people, who polls show oppose the war, are willing to bear.
Mr. Hegseth on Wednesday marked the five-year anniversary of the end of the Afghanistan war by presenting three retired Marines with upgraded awards for valor. Two of the three suffered severe shrapnel wounds in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.
Despite their injuries, they continued to help the wounded get to safety.
In his remarks, Mr. Hegseth praised their heroism. “When the wicked sought to sow terror, these men stood as lions at the gate — bold in their purpose, fierce in their resolve and unbreakable in their courage,” he said.
The ceremony also served a secondary purpose. It reframed the U.S. military’s loss in the long, unsatisfying Afghanistan war as a victory for the troops who deployed and fought.
“You are the vanguard of a lethal, proud and undefeated force,” Mr. Hegseth told the Marines. He awarded them their long-delayed medals.
A Conversation With Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith
Foreign Affiars
Published on August 27, 2026
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Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the country remains dire, and the collective forgetting of the United States’ longest war carries costs of its own.
Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith have each spent many years working on and within Afghanistan. Miller, now president of the Asia Foundation, was a longtime U.S. diplomat who became a top official focused on Afghanistan from 2013 to 2017. Smith worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2018 before serving as an Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.
Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Miller and Smith on Tuesday, August 25, about the lessons and legacy of the American war in Afghanistan, how the country has changed under Taliban rule, and the questions that U.S. policymakers should grapple with moving forward.
This episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Rachel Powell and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Todd Yeager and Christopher Koch and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.
Every minute, 23 girls around the world wed, according to the Girls Not Brides campaign, a coalition of more than 1,000 organisations across 100 countries. No child should be married. But girls are far more likely to be affected than boys, accounting for nine in 10 of those wed before 18, and their spouses are often much older men. The consequences, beyond the immediate threat of sexual violence, include the shortening of their education, increased risks of poverty and domestic abuse, and poor health, including high rates of maternal mortality. In spring, the Center for Global Development thinktank estimated that child marriage costs $175bn annually in lost productivity and increased health risks.
The good news is that the last decade has seen a drop in rates; last year alone, Grenada, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Kuwait and Portugal introduced bans. But there are disturbing signs of regression elsewhere. In May, the Taliban issued a new judicial code enabling child marriage below the previous minimum age of 16 and preventing wives from ending marriages they entered as children if their husbands object. Previous protections were inadequate and often poorly enforced; now even those have been swept away. Activists say forced and early marriages have soared since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, thanks to the ban on secondary education and the state of the economy.
Child marriage is almost double the global average in countries experiencing conflict or other crises, with more than one in three girls marrying before they turn 18, Girls Not Brides reports. The breakdown of economic and support systems, and the exacerbation of factors driving child marriage, such as patriarchal values, can leave families seeing marriage as the only way to protect their daughters – even though they frequently face violence from their husbands. In Gaza, the rate of child marriages dropped from more than 28% in 2009 to just under 18% in 2022. The war has reversed that progress, says the UN Population Fund, with case workers reporting steeply rising rates.
Yet child marriage happens in the developing world too. Under-18s could marry in all 50 states of the US until 2018; 17 states have now passed bans, but three – New Mexico, California and Mississippi – still have no age floor. England and Wales raised the minimum age to 18 in 2023; in Northern Ireland, those aged 16 and older can marry with parental consent, and in Scotland they can marry without it. In Australia, 16- and 17-year-olds may marry “in exceptional circumstances”.
There is still cause for optimism. Although laws are often evaded – sometimes through corruption, more frequently because marriages are not officially registered – they still send an important message. In Sierra Leone, which raised the minimum marriage age to 18 in 2024, the first trial has begun over the forcible marriage of a 17-year-old. Four men, including the girl’s father and alleged groom, face jail sentences of at least 15 years or fines. The new law allows even guests at the wedding of a child to be imprisoned.
Advocacy targeting girls as well as their communities is essential, helping some to resist marriage. Cuts to overseas aid now threaten such work. Child marriage will not end until girls also have educational and economic opportunities, reproductive healthcare and some measure of security. This must be a priority.
The Guardian view on child marriage: girls should not be wives
Much has been written about the Afghan economy since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate in 2021: the data show a calamitous economic contraction, a fragile recovery where per capita GDP is actually falling, a labour market struggling to provide jobs and livelihoods, women and children taking on home-based work for a pittance, a large number of older boys taken out of school to work and Afghans emigrating, even as millions more are forced to ‘return’ from Iran and Pakistan. This report goes beyond the macro-economic trends to look at what they mean for individuals and their families. Guest author Gulhan Durzai* hears from Afghans, especially Afghan women, about their efforts to survive deepening impoverishment, the daily calculations and sacrifices, their relentless determination to try to keep households afloat and the point at which survival requires the unthinkable.
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The accounts in this report reveal the sequence through which households exhaust one coping mechanism after another, something that economic indicators alone cannot convey.Some of the interviewees were once self-reliant, with professional jobs, savings and assets. Others were already poor and had little cushion against further economic shocks. Yet their stories reveal a common progression as families exhaust one option after another. Savings are spent and assets sold. Women and children take on home-based piecework for meagre returns or become street vendors. Families borrow from relatives, neighbours and landlords. Sons are sent on dangerous journeys to Iran in the hope that remittances will keep those left behind afloat. Children are withdrawn from school to work, or sent to residential institutions that can provide them with food and shelter. Strategies that ensure immediate survival often erode the very resources – education, assets and earning potential – on which a family’s future depends. The accounts show, as well, how Emirate policies have removed many of the options available for women by severely restricting their access to education and paid employment. For those with no male breadwinner, the options are desperate indeed.
These stories illustrate how sudden shocks – work drying up, illness, a breadwinner dying – can push even the better-off into previously unimagined poverty and already vulnerable households into extreme hardship. They show how economic shocks cascade through Afghan society: when a university lecturer loses her job, the widowed cleaner she employed loses her income as well and is pushed to begging; when a son who has been sending back remittances, is deported, his whole family is impoverished, overnight; when a widowed mother becomes too ill to work, it is her eldest daughter, just 11 years old, who has to try to keep the family afloat.
The interviews also demonstrate how households struggle relentlessly to survive, rather than passively succumbing to poverty, tracing a process that aggregate economic indicators cannot capture. The strong social contract whereby Afghans try to help each other in a crisis still holds, but is under strain. As one coping mechanism after another fails, today’s survival increasingly comes at the cost of tomorrow’s prospects, until some families are left facing choices no parent would willingly make.
Edited by Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour
*Gulhan Durzai graduated in 2026 with a Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has worked as a freelance researcher for AAN since 2023, and as an archive researcher, interpreter and assistant in documentary film production.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
Entrepreneurs take part in business development training at a women’s centre in Parwan province. Photo: UN Women/Ali Omid Taqdisyan, January 2025
