New Restrictions on Women and Girls, Media; Forcibly Returned Refugees at Risk
(Bangkok) – The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan in 2025 increased their repression of women and girls and enforced new regulations further curbing media freedom, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. The country’s humanitarian crisis worsened because of cuts in foreign aid and the forced return of millions of Afghan refugees.
“Governments need to press the Taliban to end their horrific abuses while also alleviating Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis and extending protections to Afghan refugees,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Taliban’s unrelenting repression should push governments to support efforts to hold all those responsible for serious crimes in Afghanistan to account.”
In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.
The Taliban issued new draconian laws that further restrict women’s freedom of movement and access to public spaces while enforcing existing bans on post-primary education and limitations on employment, abuses that United Nations experts have described as “gender apartheid.” In July the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender persecution.
On October 6, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a landmark resolution creating an independent mechanism to investigate past and ongoing rights abuses in Afghanistan.
The Taliban imposed new restrictions curbing media freedom and arbitrarily detained critics. The authorities also detained people for alleged infractions of “morality” laws, such as wearing inappropriate hijabs or failing to maintain separate workplace facilities for women and men. Fewer journalists were working due to foreign aid cuts and Taliban policies.
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis grew more acute in 2025 as the US government imposed massive cuts to foreign aid and other countries followed suit, and countries forced millions of Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan. More than 22 million people were at risk of food insecurity, with women and girls disproportionately affected.
Governments should press the Taliban to end human rights abuses and should also provide humanitarian assistance to the Afghan population, Human Rights Watch said. No country should forcibly return Afghans who could face persecution or threats to their lives. UN member countries should fund and support the new investigative mechanism on Afghanistan.
Major powers have renewed diplomatic links while others seek deals to deport migrants. And all the while gender repression is getting worse
Last weekend, on the international day of education, UN agencies sounded the alarm on a situation that is far too neglected. It was just over four years ago that Afghanistan’s Taliban government banned all girls from secondary education. Since then it has extended the ban to include higher education. In a situation that has been rightly condemned as “gender apartheid”, the UN tells us that a staggering 2.2 million girls have been denied their chance at school.
The waves of repression, which should be classified by United Nations legal authorities as a crime against humanity, mark the victory of the extreme Kandahar clerical faction over Kabul-based government ministers. They are also part of the plan of supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to erase girls and women from public life.
The appalling situation exposes, too, the miscalculations and errors being made by foreign governments that, even as the regime has stepped up the suppression of women, have recently sought to rebuild diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime. Four-and-a-half years into the Taliban’s ascent to power, more children than ever are being denied education.
In successive edicts since 2021, women have now been banned from universities and most employment, including with the government and NGOs. They have been required to cover their faces, to be accompanied by male relatives for any long-distance travel, and have been warned they face arrest if seen in public spaces such as parks, gyms and beauty salons.
This appeasement of the Taliban, led by Russia, China and India and followed by some European governments, has led Afghans’ religious rulers to believe they can act with impunity.
December saw the arrest of a female journalist, Nazira Rashidi, in the northern city of Kunduz. Another young woman, Khadija Ahmadzada, was imprisoned in Herat for being in “violation” of rules by running a women’s sports gym and spent 13 days in jail until Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, successfully pressed for her release.
Bennett is warning that conditions for girls and women are deteriorating and that the Taliban’s newly issued criminal procedure code foreshadows even more violations of girls’ and women’s rights.
The latest repression marks the triumph of Akhundzada, the supreme ruler, and has seen key government departments and functions, including the control of weapons, redirected from Kabul to Kandahar. While the Kabul faction acknowledges that the economy requires women’s participation and access to technology, Akhundzada has become increasingly determined to impose a strict Islamic emirate, isolated from the modern world, where religious figures loyal to him control every aspect of society.
His ideology is so rigid that he approved of his son’s choice to become a suicide bomber. He lost out – but only momentarily – when, within days of his 29 September order for a complete internet shutdown that would have severed Afghanistan’s links with the world and prevented girls from enjoying online education, he was defied by the Kabul-based telecommunications ministry, which switched the service back on. But by December, as a UN monitoring team noted, Akhundzada’s consolidation of power had also involved “a continued buildup of security forces under the direct control of Kandahar”.
Central to the latest repression are internal disagreements within the Taliban, not least about the future of education and women’s employment. Indeed, evidence compiled by the BBC includes a tape of Akhundzada from January 2025 warning that “as a result of these divisions, the emirate will collapse and end”. The rifts are significant. After warning publicly of the regime “committing injustice against 20 million people” – the entire female population of the country – and saying the denial of education was “straying from the path of God”, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the then-deputy foreign minister, had to flee the country.
European countries have increased engagement with the Taliban as part of a push to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers, lending credibility to the regime despite its persecution of girls and women. Yet the 59th session of the UN human rights council, held in June–July 2025, debated this matter, and Bennett, the UN special rapporteur, has persistently advocated making girls’ rights a condition for engagement with the Taliban and devising mechanisms to hold the regime accountable, including referring the denial of education to the international criminal court (ICC).
They want to make gender apartheid an international crime, and already the UN’s sixth committee (legal) has advanced a draft global treaty targeting the denial of girls’ and women’s rights as crimes against humanity. In July, the pre-trial chamber of the ICC issued arrest warrants for Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the two most senior Taliban officials charged with gender-based persecution. But because of the Taliban’s refusal even to discuss girls’ rights, and their insistence on excluding women’s organisations from any talks, international negotiations held in Doha, hosted by the UN and Qatar, have secured no concessions on girls’ schooling or women’s rights.
Whereas India, Iran and Russia backed forces that put the Taliban under real pressure in the 1990s, there is no organised armed anti-regime force within Afghanistan this time.
There is underground schooling in areas such as the Panjshir valley, where radio broadcasts cover everything from breastfeeding to basic school science lessons for women and girls. Girls also study in what are called “home schools”, or leave for Pakistan or Iran to continue their education abroad, even in the face of those countries’ repatriation of 2.6 million Afghan refugees in 2025. Some young women have recently come to Scotland on scholarships to study to become doctors.
There is a good reason why a failure to educate girls will eventually bring down the regime: Afghanistan’s population has swelled to more than 43 million and is only growing, with a predicted 17.4 million people food-insecure by March and 4.9 million mothers and children suffering from malnutrition. But building an economy that will take millions from poverty to prosperity will be impossible so long as the Taliban deny half their population the chance to be educated and to join the workforce. That is their failure. If we are in any way sanguine about this medieval repression, that will be ours.
Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
As the Taliban continue their war on women and girls, it is clear that appeasement has failed
For women – and often not for men either – marriage is rarely a personal choice. It is usually decided by families, most often by fathers. In Panjshir province, some young women try to escape unwanted marriages by taking refuge in the home of a man they do wish to marry – a practice known as shingari. A Panjshiri girl arriving alone and unannounced at a family’s door is likely not just paying a visit – nor is she just asking for a husband – she is challenging a system. In this instalment of the Daily Hustle, AAN’s Hamid Pakteen hears from a man in Panjshir about how a girl’s refusal to marry her cousin reshaped his family, forcing him to weigh up tradition, financial survival and his hopes for his son’s future against his sense of what was right and to recognise the courage of the woman who would become his daughter-in-law.When a girl comes to your doorThere’s something every Panjshiri family secretly fears – a girl turning up at your door saying she’s come to marry one of your sons.
In Panjshir, we call this shingari. It often happens when she falls in love with a boy and shows up at his house, asking to marry their son. Sometimes, though, a girl runs away not because of love, but because her home has become unbearable. In those cases, she might take refuge in a house where she barely knows anyone.
Once she’s crossed that line, there’s no easy way back. If the boy refuses to marry her, things can turn ugly. In the worst cases, both the girl and the boy could be killed, but this happens very rarely. Most of the time, the marriage goes ahead because, to be honest, the boy doesn’t really have a choice. If there’s no unmarried son, or if the boy refuses, another male relative is expected to step in and marry her.
The day this trouble landed on our doorstep, I was working in Parwan, a neighbouring province. My wife was alone at home when there was a knock at the front door. When she opened it, she found a young girl standing outside. She said she’d come to marry our youngest son. She told my wife that she and my son had been secretly talking on the phone and had fallen in love.
But when a girl takes the drastic step of leaving her father’s house and turning up at a stranger’s home asking to be married to one of their sons, there’s almost always more to the story.
What waited for me at home
After my wife called, I got myself home as quickly as I could. All the way back on that journey to Panjshir, I thought about what this would mean for our lives. We were not well off. I had lost my job when the Islamic Republic fell in 2021 and was working as a day labourer, taking work wherever I could find it. My son was barely 18 years old – too young to start a family. I had hopes he’d go to university and make something of himself. And then there was our reputation. What would people say? How would the community react? And what about the girl’s family?
By the time I got home, the girl was in the kitchen helping my wife prepare dinner. My wife looked at me with pleading eyes, silently asking me to be gentle with this girl and our son.
I sat on the kitchen floor and started talking to the girl. I wanted to understand why she had done this to our family and to talk some sense into her. She told me she’d been engaged to her cousin when she was seven, but she didn’t want to marry him because he was mentally ill. She begged her family not to force her into the marriage, but her father had refused to back down – even if it meant condemning his daughter to a life of misery. When she realised her father would never change his mind, she decided to take control of her own future. She ran away and came to our house, hoping we would take her in as a daughter.
I told her we had no money. I couldn’t afford to pay for a wedding party or pay a toyana (bride price). I said I’d take her home and when my financial situation improved, I’d go with my son to ask her father for her hand. I told her my son was still very young and couldn’t manage his own expenses, let alone support a wife.
But she wouldn’t budge. “I’m not going anywhere, she said, “I’ve taken refuge in your house. You must marry your son to me. I don’t want a big wedding – just a simple nikah [marriage ceremony]. If I go home, my brothers will kill me.” I tried to reason with her. I said we’d make up an excuse and tell her family she’d come to visit one of my daughters. She shook her head: “Either you marry me to your son,” she said, “or I’ll kill myself.”
Seeking help from the elders
I had no choice but to go to her family. I took four of our neighbours, some elders from the area and the imam of our mosque along with me. It was a delicate matter. I told her father that his daughter was in my house and that we’d come to resolve the matter quietly, before things got any worse. Then I asked for his daughter’s hand for my son, so the issue could be settled honourably.
He was furious. He said she’d been promised to her cousin since childhood. “What am I supposed to tell my brother?” he demanded. “How do we live with this shame?”
The imam told him that promising children in marriage was against Islam and that, in his experience, this was one of the main reasons girls in our area ran away from home.
We asked him why his daughter had run away. He said the problem had started two years earlier when his daughter turned 18 and his brother wanted to make things official by throwing an engagement party. But his daughter refused, saying she wouldn’t marry “a crazy man.” The stand-off continued and the situation became increasingly tense – tempers rose, unkind words were spoken and threats made— but his daughter would not agree and now she had run away.
Breaking the engagement
I asked the village elders and our local imam to help me find a solution. We held several meetings with both families – the girl’s and her cousin’s – to convince them that forcing through this marriage was wrong and that, according to Islamic principles, the engagement should be annulled. We told them that the die was cast and by committing shingari, the girl had left the families little choice. My son had to marry her. This is our custom.
Eventually, her father agreed to cancel the engagement and allow her to marry my son. I suggested that, to save face, we should return the girl to her family home and hold the wedding there, but he refused. He said she was no longer his daughter and he wanted nothing to do with her.
After several days, he softened – but only slightly. He agreed to hold the wedding at his house, but made it clear he would neither help organise it nor would he spend a single afghani on her. Finally, her maternal uncle stepped in and said he’d help organise the wedding so that his niece could go to her husband’s home with honour.
Borrowing money for the wedding
In Panjshir, the mahr[1] and the toyana for a girl who has committed shingari are both much higher than normal, as a way of setting an example for other boys and girls who get ideas. The elders usually set the amount and the groom’s family is obliged to pay it. Normally, the toyana is between 200,000 and 300,000 afghani (about USD 2,880 to 4,320), but in shingari cases it can be as high as 1,000,000 afghani (USD 14,400). In this case, knowing my financial situation, the elders set the bride price at 200,000 afghani. It was far less than usual for shingari cases, but still, a fortune for me.
My earnings were barely enough to cover our household expenses and I had no savings. I tried to borrow money from friends and relatives, but at the time, no one had money to spare. Even if they did, they wouldn’t lend it to me because they knew I had no way of paying them back. A friend suggested I take a loan from the bank. The bank’s conditions were strict, but I had no other choice. Using my house as collateral, I took a loan from the MicroFinance Bank for 250,000 afghanis (USD 3,650). I had to pay off the loan with interest within two years. I paid 11,300 afghani (USD 165) monthly, of which 11,000 (USD 160) was deducted from the principal and 300 afghani (USD 5) was taken by the bank as interest.
I gave 200,000 afghani to the girl’s father and used the rest for the wedding. We had the nikah ceremony at her family home and held a modest celebration at ours. True to his word, her father didn’t contribute to the wedding. He just took the money. He didn’t even buy her a wedding dress. Her uncle and I paid for the wedding and did our best to make it as joyous as possible. It was not right that a girl of 20 should start her married life like a widow.
Three years on
It’s been three years since my son’s wedding and my daughter-in-law still doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. For the first year, no one from her family came to see her. Sometimes, during the holidays, I’d take her to see her family, but they weren’t very welcoming. Later, her mother and sisters started coming over to see her, but only occasionally. There was a thaw after my grandson was born and for the past year, the families have been visiting each other and my daughter-in-law can once again go to her father’s house.
People often talk about shingari as if it is only a scandal or a crime against honour. Few talk about the courage it takes for a young woman to say no when no one is listening. My daughter-in-law risked everything to refuse a marriage she had not chosen and put her trust in strangers to protect her when her own family would not. Those tense and uncertain days are now in the past, but I will always remember them as the moment that a frightened, but brave girl claimed her future.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
References
References
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Mahr is a gift given by the groom to the bride at the wedding, as mandated by sharia.
When a Girl Turns Up at the Door: How an Afghan custom helped one young woman refuse a forced marriage
Much has been written about Afghanistan’s police force during the Islamic Republic, but so far almost nothing about policing under the Islamic Emirate. In August 2021, when the Taliban took over the Ministry of Interior and more than 500 police stations spread across the country, the Emirate’s ability to police the country became a key test for its survival. In this report, AAN guest author Antonio Giustozzi* draws on interviews with police officers, intelligence officials, Ministry of Interior staff, drug smugglers and poppy farmers to provide a ground-level picture of policing across Afghanistan’s districts and cities. It traces both continuity and change from earlier periods, examining how the Emirate’s police operate in practice, how effective they are in curbing crime and where they struggle the most.
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
The police of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan were known for inefficiency and corruption, weaknesses that contributed to the Republic’s collapse. Yet, despite the change in regime and the Emirate’s assertion that it now polices according to sharia, much is familiar. The techniques for controlling population and territory have changed little since the pre-1978 era; they include a reliance on community elders to handle disputes as a means of reducing police workload. However, the author, who visited police stations in the early years of the Republic when police were also largely civil war veterans, finds that compared to then, the Emirate’s chiefs of police and senior officers are at least all literate and some record-keeping is in place. Compared to the Republic’s police, the IEA’s are also more proactive and more determined to assert control.
Overall funding is now much smaller than under the Republic due to the end of international support to the Afghan armed forces. Even so, half of all government spending goes to the Ministries of Interior and Defence and the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) and the security forces have expanded since August 2021. That expansion has come despite the country now largely being at peace – previously, one of the police force’s main duties was combatting the insurgency. The most significant driver of this expansion appears to have been competition among Taliban leaders. That has led to personnel inflation and, in the Ministry of Interior, an excessive concentration of manpower in special forces.
Even so, the police are short of the manpower needed to carry out their duties. To help compensate for this, the IEA relies on informal local militias, composed of Taliban commanders and their former fighters. These militias have the authority to detain thieves and are known to have sometimes exceeded their mandate and acted arbitrarily. Some key police functions have also been transferred from the police to the GDI, including intelligence, counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism. Criminal investigations, beyond the preliminary stage, which used to be the preserve of the Attorney-General’s Office, have been transferred to the GDI and the courts.
The Emirate believes there is no need for a police academy and scorns the ‘Western style’ training received under the Republic as having been ineffective. It points to the practical experience gained in the years when it policed insurgency-controlled areas of the country and, in terms of training, prefers courses carried out by clerics. However, the research points to relatively few policemen having received any training as yet. Many police are, in fact, illiterate. Another hurdle is that the Taliban are not immune to abuses of power and nepotism.
At present, controlling population and territory is likely the IEA’s top priority and its police force can deliver on that. This is no mean achievement compared to other Afghan governments since 1978. However, if the Emirate is to deliver on its aspirations to attract investment and boost the economy, it will need to make greater efforts to create a rule-of-law environment that investors deem adequate and improve its capacity to fight urban crime. Any increase in spending on policing, however, would come at the expense of other sectors also critical to the economy, including health, education, agriculture and infrastructure.
Edited by Fabrizio Foschini, Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark
* Antonio Giustozzi is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He took his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is the author of many books, articles and papers, primarily on Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Afghanistan, his main contributions on are Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency, 2002-2007 (Columbia University Press), Empires of Mud: War and Warlords in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press), Policing Afghanistan (with M Ishaqzada, Columbia University Press, 2013), The Army of Afghanistan (Hurst, 2016), The Islamic State in Khorasan (Hurst, 2018, second edition 2022), and Taliban at War (OUP USA, 2019, second edition 2022).
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.
In 2025, AAN followed many major developments in Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate continued to consolidate its rule, implementing its ‘vice and virtue’ law and making efforts to control the narrative about its rise to power in books, films and on TV. We examined the consequences of the United States stopping all aid and the mass return of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan. We also traced the difficulties now for women trying to get a divorce and the slightly easier situation for those trying to inherit, as well as the slowly mounting international legal efforts to hold the Taliban accountable for curbing the rights of women and girls. Among the 50 reports published last year, we also delved into longer-term trends, such as the changing role of rural mullahs in Afghanistan and how climate change is affecting urban water supply and the all-important wheat harvest. Kate Clark has been taking a look back at 2025 – what we wrote and which reports you were most interested in reading – and, as 2026 begins, introduces some of AAN’s research plans for the coming year.What we wrote in 2025In 2025, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) celebrated its fourth anniversary of rule. United Nations and United States sanctions remain in place and the Emirate has yet to occupy the country’s UN seat. Although to the north, relations with its Central Asian neighbours look increasingly solid, based on mutual, pragmatic, economic concerns, Pakistan and Iran continued their mass return of Afghans and there were clashes and border closures along the Durand Line. The US also cut all aid. Even so, the IEA appears increasingly confident.
Our coverage looked at many of these issues, drilling down into the IEA promoting its version of recent history in books,films and on TV, and by banning books and closing whole university courses. Allied to the re-establishment of the Emirate, we looked at how members of the Taliban are moving into the private sector in urban areas and at the rise of a once fairly marginal group, rural mullahs, politically and economically and in terms of learning. Part of the consolidation of IEA rule has also been about taking control of resources, including mines and through urban planning, and attempting to control how men and women should dress and behave – see our reports on the IEA’s vice and virtue law, an Islamic scholar’s reading of it, how it is being implemented and a full translation. A dossier of reports on women’s rights brought together all of our publications on women since the re-establishment of the Emirate. We also published two separate reports on women’s struggles to get a divorce (now almost impossible) and secure their inheritance (which the Emirate backs, so now slightly easier, despite continuing opposition from many families and communities).
We also covered some positive stories: drought-resistant wheat seed that saved at least some Afghan farmers from catastrophic crop failure in dry 2025 and a decline in blood feuds in Khost province and areas of life where little seems to have changed since the days of the Republic, such as the maddening struggle that Afghans face trying to negotiate state bureaucracy.
What sort of reports were prominent in 2025?
At AAN, we try to cover a broad range of topics, aiming to cover eight thematic categories:
Culture and Context
Economy, Development and the Environment
International Engagement
Migration
Political Landscape
Regional Relations
Rights and Freedoms
War and Peace
Whether a particular category features more or less strongly in our publications varies from year to year. Before 2021, reports on the theme of War and Peace often topped the list. Last year, we only published one report in that category, on allegations that British special forces had carried out dozens of summary executions in Helmand province in 2010-2013. Instead, reports to do with the Economy, Development and the Environment and Rights and Freedoms dominated our research agenda (see the table below).
Publications by Thematic Category
Economy, Development, Environment
16
Rights and Freedoms
13
Context and Culture
7
Migration
5
Political Landscape
4
International Engagement
1
War and Peace
1
Regional Relations
1
Dossier of reports on women’s rights
1
Resources
(a full translation of the vice and virtue law)
1
Total
50
What you read in 2025
We also monitor how many readers each individual report gets. Looking through the list of AAN reports that were most widely read in 2025 (see the list at the end of this report), some clear themes emerge: reports about women occupied the top four slots, with Afghan men’s thoughts about the curbs on women’s rights also coming into the top-twenty most-read publications.
Reports exploring Taliban policy and thinking also featured strongly: for example, on the vice and virtue law and a 2023 report on how former Taliban fighters had experienced living in the capital – a surprisingly positive read. Analysis of the impact of the US decision to abruptly cut all aid to Afghanistan, when it had supplied 40 per cent of aid in 2024, was widely read. There were also reports with a very long shelf life: two reports on cannabis – production and consumption – published in 2019 and another from 2020 on the largest standing Buddhist stupa in Afghanistan, again made the top-twenty most-read reports. Historic insights, such as the continuing impact of the PDPA, with a piece written on its 60thanniversary, also featured.
As for our readers in Dari and Pashto, a rare look at the portrayal of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks, published in 2015, again topped that most-read list (English version: ‘From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in Western writing’), along with reports on how people who live along the Durand Line are faring in the wake of Pakistan fencing the border, the 2024 Herat earthquake and reports on opium and the wider economy (see the list of most-read reports in Dari and Pashto at the end of this report).
The year ahead
Several themes are already emerging for our research this year. Migration looms large, both returns from Pakistan and Iran and potentially from Europe (including what that could mean for Emirate relations with European countries), and the continuing push to leave. We will continue to follow Taliban policies and actions on women’s rights, but also look into less-covered social dynamics, for example, the evolution of authority within families and communities. Climate change will again be a major topic, as will other environmental issues, including how pollution affects people and the economy, and the crucial issue of land ownership.
Early reports on our agenda include a scrutiny of Afghanistan’s police force under the Taliban. Much was written about police during the Islamic Republic, but, as far as we know, this will be the first look at the Emirate’s police force – their numbers, training, priorities and what the Emirate believes the police are for. We are also looking into radio education, a growth sector since the Emirate stopped education for girls beyond grade six, but is it useful and engaging? Is it, in any way, an alternative to school?
We began this year with a review of a book written in the last century and recently translated from Bengali to English, Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam. The author had been a teacher in Kabul in the 1920s and his novel draws on his experiences at King Amanullah’s court, including during its overthrow, as well as on Persian epic poetry and mystical traditions. The review of Shabnam will be the first of several reports marking 100 years since the failure of that significant period of reform in Afghan history.
Finally, as 2026 begins, we wish all our readers – and Afghanistan – a Happy New Year.
Many of the Afghan refugees who have entered the United States in recent years are heroic allies of this country. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when American forces went to war in Afghanistan to crush Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban, they joined the fight. They took extraordinary risks during the long conflict that followed, working as soldiers, intelligence agents, interpreters, medics and more.
Since the Taliban won that war in 2021, more than 190,000 refugees have come to the United States under two programs, Operation Allies Welcome and Operation Enduring Welcome, that were designed to protect these heroes and their families from retaliation. Those programs are part of the most honorable tradition of American immigration policy, in which this country welcomes people who have reason to fear imprisonment or death for political reasons. Refugees from Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and other countries have arrived via similar programs over the past several decades. Most of them end up becoming proud and productive Americans.
Yet President Trump has betrayed the loyalty of Afghan refugees by conducting a mass crackdown against them. Shortly after taking office, he called into question the legal right for many of them to be in the United States. Now, in response to the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members, Mr. Trump has gone even further. His administration has prevented the admission of Afghans still trying to find safety here. It has cut off support services for Afghan immigrants who have made it here and has detained some people for more than a month without charges. Stephen Miller, a top Trump official, has threatened to deport refugees who came here legally.
Those affected include Afghans who protected U.S. forces and who, with their families, may face retribution from the Taliban. They also include human rights advocates who worked with American officials, journalists who helped U.S. news organizations report on Taliban atrocities and tens of thousands of others who face credible fears of persecution. Mr. Trump is threatening to return them to a country where punishment for the most basic expression of dissent includes maiming or death. Afghan women forced to return home face a particularly brutal future, given the Taliban’s violent, state-enforced misogyny.
To be clear, there are legitimate questions to ask about the Afghan resettlement program after the horrific shooting in Washington. It killed Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and seriously wounded Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, both members of the West Virginia National Guard. Authorities have charged Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan refugee who was reportedly a member of a C.I.A.-directed Zero Unit in Afghanistan. The federal government should take every reasonable step to avoid any similar cases. More than a year before the shooting, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found flaws with the vetting and monitoring of some Afghan refugees and made five sensible recommendations about how agencies can better flag risks.
The Trump administration, however, has threatened to turn that process into an excuse for hunting down and deporting refugees who have done nothing wrong and who have every reason to fear that a return to Afghanistan could threaten them and their families. If any group of people deserves to qualify as refugees, it is the brave Afghan men and women who worked alongside Americans. The Trump administration’s betrayal of them is inhumane and contrary to America’s national interest.
It is inhumane because fair-minded countries do not punish all members of a group for the actions of a single person. Over the past decade, members of a wide variety of demographic groups, with varying ideologies, have committed political violence. Each act is abhorrent. The answer is not to punish all people of the same race, religion or nationality. Refugees are among the most scrutinized migrants, and immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens. There is no evidence that refugees from war-torn countries are more prone to violence when given shelter here.
The Trump policies are contrary to America’s national interests because of the message they send to the world. The United States relies on local allies to accomplish its goals — be it in Venezuela, Ukraine, the Middle East or any other hot spot. In peace and war, the United States asks foreign nationals to take risks to help us. The C.I.A. goes to great lengths to protect its sources, not just for their safety but also to show others that Americans can be trusted. Mr. Trump’s moves against Afghans send the opposite message, suggesting that the United States will turn on those who risk their lives for us once we no longer need them. As a former Marine and intelligence officer, Elliot Ackerman, has said, “Breaking faith with former allies projects weakness to current and future partners.”
Mr. Trump should confirm the legal status of all the Afghan refugees who came to the United States under the resettlement programs and reopen their pathways to permanent lawful residence here. He should instruct the U.S. immigration services not to use investigations triggered by the November shooting to deport refugees without proving they are an imminent threat. He should reopen asylum consideration for Afghans abroad.
America owes a debt to those who risked their lives to fight alongside this country against Osama bin Laden’s militants and their Taliban allies. Mr. Trump’s dishonorable treatment of those refugees is morally wrong and makes Americans everywhere less safe.
The Cruelty of Trump’s Crackdown on Afghan Refugees
SIGAR was born in 2008 to fill a critical gap in accountability for U.S. reconstruction efforts. Its last report distills hundreds of audits into hard truths: systemic weaknesses that outlasted the mission and reforms that never fully took hold.
Interview transcript
Terry Gerton You are the Acting Inspector General for the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. That’s about to stand down, but tell us the origin story of the organization.
Gene Aloise Well, SIGAR was created around 2008, got started around 2009. We were created especially to look at Afghanistan. We’re the only IG created to look specifically at Afghanistan. Our legislation created us as an independent agency. We worked directly for the Congress and the administration. We’re not housed in any other federal agency, which made us very independent, which helped us do the work we did.
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Terry Gerton Was there a specific gap or incident back in 2008 that prompted Congress to stand this up?
Gene Aloise Yes, Congress was getting concerned that there was so much money going into Afghanistan and they really didn’t have a special IG to look at it. They had other IGs going on, but they wanted a specific focus on Afghanistan.
Terry Gerton Over your nearly two decades, you’ve issued hundreds of audits and lessons learned reports. Are there any that stand out as significant and consequential, maybe the most consequential for U.S. Policy or operations?
Gene Aloise I think our final report summarizes all our work in the past 17 years. It lays out where the money was spent, how it was spent, what our audit work covered, what our investigations covered, and what our lessons learned report covers. It’s a very first-time-only comprehensive collaboration of all our work.
Terry Gerton As I read through it, one of the themes I took away was there were a lot of missing internal controls. Processes could have been organized and designed better from the beginning that would have prevented some waste. Could you give us some examples there?
Gene Aloise There are a lot of examples of missing controls. The problem with Afghanistan is we spent, and this is often said, too much money, too fast in a country that couldn’t absorb it. So there was, you know, a lack of agency control over the money going in there. We had too many people rotate too frequently to keep track of all the money. And so it was really easy — I use that term — for SIGAR to go in and find negative findings because of all the money that was going over and the lack of accountability for it.
Terry Gerton One of the things that really struck me was a description of sort of a misapprehension of the problem from the beginning, and it’s reflected in your name, Afghanistan Reconstruction, but we weren’t really reconstructing, we were constructing. What difference did that make in how the process played out?
Gene Aloise When you think about what we were trying to do, build a vibrant economy and democracy in a severely undeveloped country with high illiteracy rates, high poverty rates, it was really a Herculean task. And it wasn’t really reconstruction, as you mentioned, it was construction. We actually constructed the Ministry of Defense building, all the ministerial buildings over there we constructed. There was nothing there.
Terry Gerton We constructed institutions as well. How did that play out?
Gene Aloise Not well. I mean the government we created in Afghanistan, we being the United States and the donor countries, was basically a white collar criminal enterprise because of the corruption that was there. It was a good faith effort, but for many years we ignored, the United State and others, ignored the corruption. And by the time we created a government over there, it was endemic. Corruption was endemic.
Terry Gerton Did you notice in your final report that any of the previous reports and findings led to measurable change?
Gene Aloise Our reports led to about 30 legislative achievements, either specific legislation or amendments to legislation, to correct problems. We made over 1,500 recommendations to agencies. About 73% of them were implemented. We did change programs for the better. We did save money. About $4.6 billion we were able to save. So yeah, our reports had impact.
Terry Gerton Did you see that in real time or only in looking backwards?
Gene Aloise No, sometimes in real time. We stopped the purchase of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters at a tune I think of $40 million, or there was infrastructure that was being built that we thought was not warranted. We stopped that. The report goes in just lists of a series of things we were able to stop.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Gene Alois. He’s the acting inspector general for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Despite all of those accomplishments, the report also notes some systemic issues that were never fully resolved. What were the toughest problems to fix, and why did they persist?
Gene Aloise A lot of it dealt with agencies’ pushback to what we were trying to do. We were a very aggressive IG, probably the most aggressive IG in Washington, D.C., but a lot of people didn’t like that, that we were so aggressive. So sometimes we had a battle to get things done. We had a lot support on the Hill. We had, I think, 24 hearings over our time span, and we were able to get things done, but it wasn’t easy. For example, under the Biden administration, they delayed our work for over a year because they said in 2021 the troops left, your jurisdiction is over. But our jurisdiction was always follow the money. It was never tied to the troops. So that delayed our word for about a year.
Terry Gerton And how did you pick that back up then?
Gene Aloise Through a bipartisan congressional effort that got the administration to start cooperating with us.
Terry Gerton Well, speaking of following the money, your charter, I guess, sunsets in 2026, but there’s still money out there. Who will pick up the responsibility for tracking what’s left?
Gene Aloise For Afghanistan? We’re talking about the DOD IG and the State Department IG. We’ve transferred a lot of our material over to them. And they will pick up what’s left over there. But money has stopped. The Trump administration has stopped funding to Afghanistan.
Terry Gerton In this transition, how will you be able to protect the lessons learned? You’ve done a lot of reports about lessons learned. Where will those go?
Gene Aloise Hopefully, policymakers will look at our lessons learned reports and our other reports and use that to learn from, because if we go into Gaza and we go in Ukraine, they’re going to be facing the same challenges. I can guarantee you, as we sit here today, there are corrupt individuals, corrupt corporations, corrupt tribal leaders, ready to get whatever reconstruction money is going to go into those places. Look at SIGAR’s work. Look at our recommendations. Look at what we’ve discussed for 17 years. And it will give you what you need to do to prevent that.
Terry Gerton Do you think that there are specific legislative actions that would help prevent that in the future if we do create new contingency responses?
Gene Aloise Yeah, I think the best thing they could do is create another SIGAR-like organization because only an independent organization that is not feeling the pressure from an agency head or whatever to not report the facts is going to do what we were able to do in Afghanistan.
Terry Gerton What about on the front hand in terms of designing those contingency response missions? Are there particular lessons you wanted to put a pin in right now for people who are thinking about those?
Gene Aloise Here’s one, think about what you’re gonna do and if it really has any chance of success because what we saw in Afghanistan is really, did we ever have a chance for success in Afghanistan? I mean, the mission was so difficult to do. So be realistic about what you’re going to try to do in these countries that you’re going to pour lots of money in.
Terry Gerton Is that realistic assessment something that the government can do itself? Does it need outside red teamers to help it with? How do you really get a comprehensive realistic assessment?
Gene Aloise Plenty of smart people in the State Department, Defense Department, and other agencies that could sit down and lay out a strategy for wherever country they’re going into that yeah they can figure this out. You know, it’s not rocket science, it is a lot of common sense.
Terry Gerton Would you have a handover book for the next acting IG, for the next contingency IG?
Gene Aloise Yeah, once again, I’ll use our final report. Take a look at that. And it references all the other work we’ve done in the past. You couldn’t have a better plan than what we’ve laid out for the past 17 years or so.
Terry Gerton Well, now you’ve documented the lessons. Here’s hoping we learn them.
Gene Aloise Yes, I agree.
SIGAR’s final report closes a chapter on Afghanistan oversight
The recently published English translation of the Bengali novel Shabnam, written by Syed Mujtaba Ali and drawing on his experiences of Kabul during the 1920s, deserves a closer look from anyone interested in Afghanistan’s history and its literary and cultural heritage. Mujtaba Ali set Shabnam in the momentous historical period of King Amanullah’s attempts at social reform and to open up his country, as well as its descent into violent rebellion and civil war. The novel is also deeply grounded in the tradition of Sufi-inspired mysticism so prominent in classical Persian-language poetry that has, for centuries, provided a shared intellectual reference for the broader region. AAN is pleased to present a review of the book by guest author Shirazuddin Siddiqi,* who delves, in particular, into the many layers of poetic and mystical meanings that underly this story of love in the midst of civil war. This is the first of a series of reports that we hope to publish in 2026, loosely linked to the 100th anniversary of the Amanullah period and its overthrow.
Persian miniature depicting the meeting of Shirin and Farhad, one of the legendary tales that Mujtaba Ali drew on for his novel. Here, Farhad sculpts Shirin’s image. Source: Iran ArtMag“Where the angels dare not tread, the ignorant one rushes in!”[1]
The novel, Shabnam,by the Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali,[2] written in the mid-20th century, has recently been translated into English by Nazes Afroz. The 1920s was a period when Afghanistan was going through a turbulent time. King Amanullah (r1919-29) saw his authority challenged by internal and external forces until a fully-fledged civil war broke out in 1928-29, and chaos replaced order. Mujtaba Ali was then a teacher at Habibia College in Kabul and witnessed these events. He wrote two books: a memoir in 1949 titled, In a Land Far from Home – A Bengali in Afghanistan, also translated by Nazes Afroz into English (see AAN’s review), and later a novel called Shabnam (1960), which is the focus of this review.
Mujtaba Ali (1904-74) was born into a Saayed family in Karimganj, then part of Sylhet district in British India (Kaptai.club).[3] He briefly studied at Aligarh Muslim University, although the exact dates of his time there are not clearly documented in available sources. He was, however, one of the first students to enrol in Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, graduating in 1926, before moving to Kabul in 1927 to take up a teaching position. He later continued his studies at the University of Bonn in Germany and Al-Azhar University in Egypt, going on to teach in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He left East Pakistan after falling out with the Pakistani authorities, who sought to impose Urdu as the sole state language, and relocated to India, where he worked for All India Radio before returning to Visva-Bharati University as a professor of German language and Islamic Culture. He was said to speak 12 languages.[4] His knowledge of Persian seems to have been exceptionally deep and extensive. This comes across quite clearly in Shabnam, as we will see in this review.
Mujtaba Ali’s presence in Afghanistan was by no means an isolated instance. Soon after Amanullah acceded to the throne and secured full diplomatic independence from the British, he sought to bring educated foreigners to Afghanistan as teachers and advisers for the civilian and military state departments (read this AAN report). Fellow Muslims or, at any rate, individuals from neighbouring Asian countries were preferred. For many South Asians sympathising with India’s struggle for self-rule, such as young Mujtaba Ali, Amanullah’s Afghanistan represented an attractive destination, thanks to its anti-colonial credentials and open support for Indian freedom fighters. However, the reformist programme on which the Afghan king had hastily embarked had already started to meet strong domestic opposition (such as the Khost rebellion explored in this AAN report). Soon after Mujtaba Ali arrived in 1927, the number of those opposing King Amanullah’s reforms grew and it did not take long for turmoil and violent disorder to break out. Threatened by revolts from both the Pashtun tribes of the eastern region and the mostly Tajik inhabitants of the Shomali Plateau, Amanullah would eventually abdicate in January 1929. Foreigners hurried to abandon the capital as it was seized by Habibullah Kalakani, who proclaimed himself king.
Love in a time of civil war
It was against the backdrop of civil war that Mujtaba Ali conceived Shabnam, setting his love story within the very upheaval he had witnessed. The novel follows Majnun, an Indian teacher, reminiscent of the author himself, who observes the swift reforms introduced by King Amanullah with interest, and questions whether they have the public’s support and reflect the attitudes and cultural sensitivities of the Afghan people. During an evening stroll near the king’s palace, he encounters Shabnam, a young Afghan woman, bright, educated and liberal, who has recently returned from France. She shares his concerns about the unrest stirred by the king’s reform agenda. Their brief encounter sparks an unspoken desire for more frequent meetings and gradually their love for one another deepens beyond their control and they marry. But the violence and lawlessness of the civil war ultimately crushes their love. The depth of the story, reflected in Mujtaba Ali’s Bengali-style narrative, makes it into an interesting and engaging read and the translator has tried to reflect the Bengali flavour in the English translation.
A witness to chaos
On one level, Shabnam comes across as an eyewitness account of a wandering lover who happens to be in a country undergoing major social change and the attempted transformation of its system of governance. Social order is disrupted; anyone can do anything without fear of legal consequences. It appears that the writer, through a fictional format, intends to expose his Bengali readers, who had been living in peace, to the consequences of social instability and disorder. In this sense, Shabnam appears to be reinforcing his previously written memoir, In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan, by providing an eyewitness account within a novel of how the Afghan government of the time disintegrated until it ultimately gave way to lawlessness.
Afghans who lived through the period immediately after the 1978 coup d’état by the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and during the mujahidin rule in the 1990s will be all too aware of what can happen to people regardless of gender, age and nationality when social order is disrupted in a turbulent time. For Afghan readers over the age of 50 who lived in Afghanistan in their youth, the story may resonates with their own experiences.
From Mujtaba Ali’s own non-fictional account of his life in Afghanistan, the existence of a similar liaison with an Afghan woman can be ruled out. However, as Nazes Afroz has suggested, the inspiration for the story could have been derived from the many real-life instances of people – friends and lovers – whose lives were abruptly swallowed up in the maelstrom of the civil war (The Daily Star).
Perhaps Shabnam, the woman, can also be read as a personification of Afghanistan itself, a country with which Mujtaba Ali quickly fell in love, only to lose it just as abruptly. In 1929, he left Afghanistan, never to return. It is possible that he had fallen in love with the ‘new’ Afghanistan that was being born during King Amanullah’s reign, an Afghanistan that soon disappeared forever.
King Amanullah Khan drinking tea with a group of people, 1927 (unknown photographer). Source: Wikimedia
Mystical layers of the dewdrop
The novel, Shabnam, however, traverses more than one level. Beneath the surface, and reflecting historical events, other deeper layers have been woven into the story, which require more analysis. These more profound meanings can be seen in a number of clues that suggest the story may have been inspired or influenced by the mystical and Sufi content of classical Persian literature, of which Mujtaba Ali seems to have been aware. This knowledge may have inspired the choice of the title.
Here, we outline some of these clues.
The first, and most important, clue seems to be the title Shabnam, which is also the name of one of the two main characters in the story.
Shabnam means dewdrop in Persian and is a popular name for girls. It is very prominent in both classical and modern Persian literature and has been extensively used as a literary device by poets and scholars. In the so-called Indian Style of Persian poetry, the image of the dewdrop develops further, coming to symbolise humility, love, the brevity of life, the annihilation of the self, devotion and becoming one with the Whole. At its core, the dewdrop is a rich and multi-layered symbol that reflects the mystical ideas of unity and impermanence, as well as the relationship between the part and the Whole. It often represents the human soul – small and seemingly separate, yet composed of the same essence as the ocean. This is used in literature to symbolise the relationship between the individual soul and absolute reality.
A dewdrop vanishes as the morning sun rises – just like the world of shadows and illusions. It is a reminder of the transient nature of life. Its brief existence reflects the fleeting nature of worldly life. In the story, Shabnam appears in Majnun’s life, bringing a world filled with happiness, joy, hope and poetic beauty, but then vanishes, leaving behind a void that can never be filled.
The dewdrop also suggests that truth cannot be found by clinging to the current form of being, but rather by dissolving into the Beloved (or the Divine). So, by turning into vapour and disappearing, in this genre of Persian poetry, the dewdrop becomes one with the sun and ultimately becomes the Sun. It disappears, not into nothingness, but by merging into a greater reality. This illustrates fana’, the Sufi concept of annihilation of the self in the ultimate reality. Small as it is, a dewdrop can reflect the entire sky, suggesting that even the humblest soul, if pure and still, can mirror the infinite beauty. It is a symbol of spiritual receptivity and inner clarity. This symbolism is not abstract for Mujtaba Ali: it becomes embodied in Shabnam herself.
Names as symbols
In the story, Shabnam – the dewdrop – is the central character, alongside her lover Majnun, who shares a name with one of the central characters in Layla and Majnun, the classic tale of love and longing to which we will later return. During their brief but immensely joyful encounters, Shabnam and Majnun often quote classical Persian poets to express their thoughts and feelings, weaving literary references into their dialogue. Those quoted include the 10th-century poet, Kisai Marwazi, and the 17th-century poets Kalim Kashani, Sa’eb Tabrizi, and Salim Tehrani (referred to in the book as Ali Quli Salim). Significantly, Salim, Kalim and Sa’eb are prominent figures in the Indian Style of Persian poetry, while Kisayi belongs to an earlier period and, unlike the other three, is not known to have spent time in the Indian subcontinent.
There are also quotes from Hafez Shirazi (14th century) and Mawlana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi (13th century). Majnun, the protagonist of Mujtaba Ali’s story, claims that Rumi is his “favourite poet” (page 121). The story also mentions Nizami Ganjavi (the 12th century author of the most famous Persian version of Layla and Majnun, who many believe transformed a simple story into a complex mystical study), alongside Ferdowsi Tusi (the 10thcentury author of Shahnamah, or The Book of Kings) and Nuruddin Abdur Rahman Jami, the 15th century author of another version of Layla and Majnun (pages 37 and 153). This shows that Mujtaba Ali’s knowledge of Persian poetry goes beyond the Indian Style. He seems to have had a much wider knowledge of the Persian literary heritage.
The poets mentioned above have woven mystical concepts into their poems. However, none of the Persian poems quoted in the story specifically mentions shabnam/dewdrop, which in itself is interesting. It is difficult to determine whether Mujtaba Ali deliberately chose to avoid poems that explicitly mention the word and reveal the deeper meaning of the story. He may have intentionally built this ambiguity into the story, as is the norm in Persian literature, where almost every piece can have dualities of meanings embedded within it. At the early stages of Shabnam and Majnun’s relationship, a poem is quoted from an unknown Indian or Bengali source, which includes the phrase “dewdrop.” However, this poem is more about the separation of the flower from the plant and the dewdrop is used in a descriptive form for the flower:
I am thy companion
Oh, night jasmine, the dream of autumn night, drenched in dewdrops
The pain of separation
When Shabnam asks what it means, Majnun interprets the poem as carrying the following meaning:
We have a flower in our land – shiuli[5] [the night jasmine]. The poet says the autumn dreams the whole night for it to bloom – but the shiuli falls to the ground at dawn immersing the plant with the pain of separation.
Persian poets quoted by Mujtaba Ali wrote multiple poems specifically about the shabnam/dewdrop, including some related to the central theme of the novel, for example, this line from Kalim Kashani:
شبنم به بال جذبه خورشید می پرد
The dewdrop flies on the wings of the sun’s allure
Or this from Sa’eb Tabrizi:
به قرب گلعذاران دل مبندید
وصیت نامه شبنم همین است
Don’t get attached to worldly pleasures
So reads the last will of the dewdrop
There are many poems by these and other poets named in the story that include the word ‘shabnam‘.
Echoes of Layla and Majnun – and differences
Another interesting clue lies in the story’s fable-like quality, which recalls the classical tale of Layla and Majnun. First recorded in Arabic, the tale became a prominent feature in Persian literature, where it was given poetic form by the 12thcentury poet Nizami Ganjavi as part of a collection called Khamsa, and retold in the 15th century by Mawlana Nuruddin Abdul-Rahman Jami in a collection titled Haft Awrang (Seven Thrones). Each retelling introduced variations in detail, yet the essential elements of the story remained the same. (Other classical poets, including Amir Khosrow Dehlawi, also wrote versions of the story, but here we focus on those specifically named in Mujtaba Ali’s novel.) Over time, Layla and Majnun became one of the most widely known and frequently retold love stories in the Persian-speaking world.[6] Essentially, Layla and Majnun is a tragic love story about Qays and Layla, whose pure and passionate love is thwarted bysocietal pressures and family opposition. Qays, deeply in love with Layla, becomes so obsessed with Layla’s love that he earns the epithet ‘Majnun’, meaning ‘possessed’ or ‘mad’. Despite their love, the young couple are kept apart, leading Majnun to wander the desert in a state of poetic madness. In Persian literature, the story explores themes of divine love, longing and the pain of separation, ultimately portraying love as a spiritual journey beyond worldly obstacles.
While people may have viewed Layla and Majnun as a powerful story of two human souls mad with love for each other, in Sufism, the story is often interpreted not merely as a tale of earthly love, but as a profound allegory for the soul’s yearning for union with the Divine and so takes on a much deeper meaning. Majnun’s obsessive, all-consuming passion for Layla is symbolic of the divine longing that overtakes a seeker of the true path. Beyond the name of one of the central protagonists in the novel, there are references to Layla and Majnun in several other places.
In Mujtaba Ali’s story, Majnun meets Shabnam in Kabul on the fringes of a lavish party held by King Amanullah and falls in love with her, but unlike the classic tale, Majnun marries Shabnam. The marriage stands in for the joys of Layla and Qays’ early encounters, while the unruly bandits of the civil war are reminiscent of the family opposition that keeps Qays/Majnun away from Layla. Otherwise, the lovers meet a similar tragic end in both versions. Nonetheless, the variances make the two stories different in relation to the concept of junun (the madness of love). In the classical story of Layla and Majnun, ‘reason’ is confronted in various ways and at multiple levels throughout the story. Initially, both families are too proud (in other words, ‘too mad’) to consider a relationship with the other. While Majnun’s family eventually relents – after they notice the profound change in his condition – Layla’s family never does. To the very end, they are unwilling to give in to logic or reason. Majnun gives up living with people and chooses to live in the wilderness. Attempts by family and well-wishers to change his mind fail. The dominance of love’s ‘madness’ continues to the very end and is perhaps also the reason why Majnun was seen as a more fitting name for Qays. In a couplet in chapter two of the Mathnawi, Mawlana Balkhi/Rumi endorses love’s madness and expresses it slightly differently:
آزمودم عقل دور اندیش را
بعد ازین دیوانه سازم خویش را
I have tried the far-thinking intellect;
Henceforth I will make myself mad
In Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam, Majnun’s family is absent from the scene (they are in the faraway land of Bengal) and have no direct say in the matter. Shabnam’s family, by contrast, comes across as considerate and cooperative. Shabnam’s father devises a well-thought-out plan – albeit somewhat opportunistic given the circumstances – to secure the future happiness of the lovers.
Unlike in Layla and Majnun, where family opposition and Majnun’s inner madness drive the tragedy, here the ‘madness’ lies instead in the environment and the turmoil of the civil war raging in the country. The combination of her family’s cooperative attitude and the civil war gives Shabnam the tenor of a realistic love story, anchoring the mystical aspects.
While the tale of Layla and Majnun is referenced in the novel, an interesting account of it unfolds on the night of Shabnam and Majnun’s wedding when the couple reminisce over their encounters and recite Layla and Majnun to each other. This may sound like they are trying to indirectly compare their love to that of Layla and Majnun, which is not just earthly love but love on a higher plane. To make sure we do not miss this divine and mystical plane, they leave us with this revealing remark: “The mortal body of this world could not hold on to such death-defying love any longer. Holding hands, Layla and Majnun were going to Heaven, walking on the rainbow” (page 156).
Poetry as mystical testimony – and silence as eloquence
The story of Shabnam is not written entirely in prose: there are many lines of poetry, and this might sound a little unusual in English. English readers may not be accustomed to a mix of poetry and prose in the same piece of writing. However, for readers familiar with classical Persian (and Arabic) literature, this aspect of the story seems quite natural. In Persian, writers and thinkers have written in a mixture of poetry and prose for centuries.
One important point to consider is that, in modern Persian literature – at least in Afghanistan – there are very few recent works of prose with mystical content that can serve as models for new writers. Earlier poets looked to their predecessors for inspiration: Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi/Rumi drew his inspiration from Fariduddin Attar and Sanayi Ghaznawi and transformed their mystical visions to create his own unparalleled body of work, which continues to inspire people around the globe, while the 17th century Indian mystical thinker and poet, Bedil Dehlawi, drew on Balkhi/Rumi, Saʿdi, Hafez and others. This chain of influence has allowed poetry to carry the mystical tradition forward, generation after generation. Prose, however, has lacked such a lineage.
For modern writers of prose who are interested in mysticism, this absence creates a kind of vacuum. To bridge the gap, they have to do what Mujtaba Ali does in Shabnam – weave lines of poetry into their narratives, encouraging readers to reflect on the deeper mystical meanings through the authority and resonance of verse. The story of Layla and Majnun referenced in Shabnam was written in Persian verse, not prose. Mujtaba Ali may therefore have felt the need to rely on classical poetry to strengthen the mystical content of his story, positioning Shabnam as part of this ongoing dialogue between verse and prose.
The poems he quotes provide another pointer towards the mystical aspects of the story. As an example, note this couplet from Kalim Kashani (on page 23):
دل گمان دارد که پوشیده است راز عشق را
شمع را فانوس پندارد که پنهان کرده است
The simple heart thinks it has hidden its love under a veil
The lampshade thinks it has hidden the candle’s flame
In other words, in the same way that the lampshade cannot hide light, love also reveals itself, a maiden, betrayed by her blushing, who cannot conceal her love (see below). This couplet from Sa’eb Tabrizi is also quoted (page 30):
خموشی حجت ناطق بود جان های واصل را
که از غواص در دریا نفس بیرون نمی آید
Nazes Afros follows Mujtaba Ali’s Bengali translation of the couplet:
He who dives deep looking for the pearl
Bubbles if his exhalation does not swirl
However, a literal translation might provide a clearer link to the story:
Silence is the eloquent proof for souls who have converged,
For from the diver deep in the sea, no breath returns to the surface.
Running the risk of oversimplifying the meaning of this couplet, one can say that in the same way that a diver cannot hide being in water by holding his breath, a lover’s silence speaks just as eloquently and clearly to give away his love. In other words, silence, in itself, becomes the evidence.
Silence becomes a conscious effort, an active withholding and suppressing of sound, a deliberate act of surrender, of allowing oneself to be overwhelmed. It is not a passive absence, but an action that suggests the pursuit of union. In this light, silence itself becomes a form of testimony.
In the same way that light cannot be hidden by the lampshade love also reveals itself and becomes public. Elsewhere in the story, this same concept is reinforced by a quote from an unknown Sanskrit source for which the author provides a translation (page 39):
I asked: oh maiden,
Will you love me or no?
She blushed;
And her heart hid her love.
Nezami Ganjavi’s Layla and Qays try to keep their love secret, but the more they try, the more they fail:[7]
کردند بسی به هم مدارا
تا راز نگردد آشکارا
کردند شکیب تا بکوشند
وان عشق برهنه را بپوشند
They showed much tolerance of each other,
so that the secret would not be revealed.
They endured patiently and strove,
to cover the naked flame of that love.
Mawlana Jami takes a different position: Layla complains that while Majnun could speak out, should he wish to, she is destined to remain silent:[8]
رازی که توانیش تو گقتن
من نتوانم به جز نهفتن
عاشق غم دل به نامه پرداز
معشوق و به جان نهفتن راز
The secret that you can speak out
I can do nothing but keep hidden
The lover pours out the heart’s pain in letters
The beloved conceals the secret with her soul
Poets have used various metaphors to make this point. Some of them have used scent or light (as in Kalim Kashani’s lines above) to illustrate love’s revelatory qualities. In the same way that no flower can contain its scent and no lampshade can contain light, no human soul can contain love. And silence transcends speech, gaining a more expository power in love than words could.
Layla visits Majnun in the wilderness, c 1770. Source: Dallas Museum of Art via History Picture Archive
Love, reason and faith
This emphasis on silence is echoed and reinforced in the lines quoted from non-Persian sources, which also portray love as a miraculous and transformative force defying normal human logic and reasoning. In Persian literature, Rumi is recognised for his exploration of the distinction between reason and love. Love goes where reason dares not tread. Reason is often seen as divisive, while love resolves differences and bridges gaps by fostering unity. For example, note these lines from Chapter 6 of Balkhi/Rumi’s Mathnawi:
عقل راه نا امیدی کی رود؟
عشق باشد کان طرف بر سر دود
لاابالی عشق باشد نی خرد
عقل آن جوید کز آن سودی برد
How could ever reason take the path of despair?
It is love that runs there with its head (rather than feet)
Carefree is love, not reason
Reason seeks what brings it gain
Rumi finds reason clumsy and incapable of answering deeper philosophical and mystical questions, for which love does provide an explanation. On this issue, Mujtaba Ali uses a quote from a Sanskrit source in which a well-known nonbeliever, Charvaka, the founder of materialism and atheism in ancient India, is recalled by the story’s character Majnun as being overwhelmed by love and breaking with his materialistic and atheistic self by kneeling to confess belief and embrace faith:
Only for a day in life, Charvaka
Knelt before the creator
Only for a day, blessed by love –
Joyous was the day – a day of hope
This quality of love can be traced in the work of most Persian literary giants. The following lines from Mawlana Balkhi/Rumi express a similar meaning:[9]
کافر صدساله چو بیند ترا
سجده کند زود مسلمان شود
A hundred-year-old infidel, upon seeing you
Would fall in prostration, swiftly embracing faith
Another mystical aspect of love – of interest to us as it is reflected in Shabnam – that has been extensively covered in classical Persian literature is that love does not bring comfort and ease; it brings inexplicable pain. Pain becomes the yardstick for feeling the depth of love. Lovers welcome pain, and in their view, those who cannot endure pain cannot be true seekers of love. Here are some examples from the poets quoted in the book, the first two are by Sa’eb Tabrizi and the second two by Kalim Kashani.
ما را زعشق درد و غم بیکرانه است
For us, from love comes boundless pain and sorrow[10]
عشق دردی است که درمان هزاران درد است
Love is a pain whose only cure is thousands of pains[11]
Calamities pour down from everywhere in the path of love[13]
A lover who cannot accept and endure pain is not considered a lover. As in the examples above, most sources do not distinguish between love and pain: love is pain. In Shabnam, the author uses a quote from an unknown Sanskrit source (on page 67) to make this point:
There is pain in meeting the foe
More pain in losing a friend
If both inflict so much torment
Who will tell who is foe, who is friend?
In these lines, the boundary between friend and foe is lost. When a friend (or the loss of a friend) can bring you more pain than a foe does, then what is the point in trying to distinguish between them? In other words, love leaves you with unending pain. Love and comfort do not go together. This seems to be the message Mujtaba Ali conveys through the story of Shabnam.
Mujtaba Ali’s Legacy
Taken together, these themes suggest that Mujtaba Ali’s message in Shabnam is not limited to politics or personal romance. Rather, the novel points towards a wider mystical vision. While there are numerous other clues in the book, the purpose of this review is not to provide an exhaustive analysis of all of them, which might spoil the plot for readers and risk becoming repetitive. The aim is to analyse some key elements, such as the title and the names of the two leading characters, the link with the classical mystical tale of Layla and Majnun and the poems quoted in the story, to draw attention to the deeper mystical content of the novel. This helps us reach a slightly different conclusion. The author may have pursued a paradoxical and multi-layered goal. For his Bengali readers, who may never have experienced the absence of law and order in their own lifetime, he may have aimed to open a window on the chaos of the civil war and how it disrupts everyday life. At the same time, he may have wanted to make use of his extensive knowledge of Persian literature and expose his readers to mystical concepts and thinking by producing a story that does not end. Rather, the text finishes with the Persian phrase, ‘Tamam na shud’: It did not end. In the same way that life does not end with death in the mystical world, love and the story of love continue beyond the illusions of earthly life; lovers die, but their love remains beyond the reach of death.
A closer look at Mujtaba Ali’s background lends weight to this analysis. His father, Khan Bahadur Syed Sikander Ali, “traced his paternal descent to Shah Syed Ahmed Mutawakkil, a Sufi Pir” (see Sylhet: History and Heritage), suggesting Sufism and mysticism had deep roots in the family and that Mujtaba Ali was exposed to it from a young age. In 1921, he enrolled at Visva-Bharati University, which had been founded that year by the Nobel Laureate poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, whom Ali knew personally. These two pieces of information help us understand Mujtaba Ali’s profound grasp of classical Persian literature as well as his knowledge of mystical concepts in Sanskrit. Tagore’s short story ‘Kabuliwala’, about the filial bond between an Afghan vendor and a five-year-old Indian girl, may have inspired the affection Mujtaba Ali felt towards Afghans and Afghanistan (see AAN’s Afghanistan in World Literature (III): Kabuliwalas of the Latter Day).
By writing Shabnam, the author offered a precious gift to his host country, Afghanistan, where there were few examples of prose with mystical content. Afghan poets have continued to keep the Sufi tradition alive, incorporating mystical concepts into their poetry in both classical and modern formats. It is not easy, however, to find such examples in prose. Two writers from Iran, Ghasem Hasheminejad and Mostafa Mastoor, have written stories in prose that continue the mystical history. Elephant in the Dark, Hasheminejad’s most famous novel, is a modern detective story but draws on mystical concepts. His other work, a short story, Kheirunnesa: A biography, also has mystical concepts woven into it. Iranian author, Mostafa Mastoor’s Persian-language bestseller, Kiss the Fair Face of God (Rouyeh Mah-e Khoda ra bebus), is known for its mystical content.
Similarly, the late Afghan writer and philosopher Sayed Bahauddin Majrooh maintained an interest in the classical heritage and juxtaposed modern psychology with philosophy in relation to mystical thinking in his novel Azhdaha-e Khodi (The Ego Monster). Azhdaha’e Khodi is not a love story and it is not at all similar to Shabnam: it provides a more accessible comparison of Western philosophy/psychology with Sufi/mystical thinking. Another work of Afghan literature which brings in Sufi concepts is the 2018 novel by Asadullah Habib titled Dar Sawahil-e Ganga (On the Banks of the Ganges/Ganga).[14] It concerns the life and work of the great 17th century mystical poet and thinker, Mirza Abdul Qadir Bidel, and was published in Kabul. In the novel’s fictionalised format, Habib uses story-telling language with great skill to make some of Bedil’s complex metaphoric and mystical concepts more easily accessible to readers. The novel takes the reader through various stages of Bedil’s life, punctuated by deep philosophical and mystical questions and dilemmas.
Such examples are scarce, however, and none were available to Mujtaba Ali when he wrote his story. Therefore, Shabnam would sit alongside the very few examples of mystical philosophy in modern prose fiction from Afghanistan, and possibly the wider region.
Mujtaba Ali’s novel is, therefore, more than just a love story interrupted by Afghanistan’s civil war. It stands at the crossroads of history and mysticism, bearing witness to the collapse of a fragile state while submitting to the reader that love is eternal – that it can endure beyond death, chaos and reason. Weaving Persian, Sanskrit and Bengali strands into a single narrative, Mujtaba Ali gave Afghanistan a rare example of mystical prose with a modern edge, while also offering his Bengali readers a glimpse into a world they might never otherwise have known. In this way, Shabnam endures as a timeless reflection on how beauty and love can survive even when empires crumble and nations transform.
Mujtaba Ali shows us how mysticism and mystical values remain relevant to modern life, even when social attitudes have shifted. Tales such as Layla and Majnun, Shirin and Farhad[15] and Bejan and Manija[16] sought to challenge social norms and temper human pride. Shabnam, by contrast, belongs to a world where, while attitudes to love may have shifted, civil wars, failed governments and intolerance continue to wreak havoc on societies. Seen in this light, Shabnam reminds us that mysticism and its values still hold the potential to help societies move beyond conflict and restrictions and toward tolerance and peace. If Layla and Majnun was a commentary on personal pride and worldly attachments, Shabbam extends the criticism to social disorder, poorly-conceived and hastily implemented reforms and the violence of civil war – all forces that dispossess millions and continue to shape lives in our own time.
Edited by Fabrizio Foschini, Roxanna Shapour and Rachel Reid
* Shirazuddin Siddiqi was a lecturer at Kabul University’s Faculty of Fine Arts until the start of the civil war in 1992. He then worked for the BBC’s Afghan Education Project (BBC AEP), eventually as director, producing a range of educational and development programming for Afghan audiences, including the radio soap opera, ‘New Home, New Life’. In 2012, he led the localisation of BBC AEP, which is now operating as the Afghan Education Production Organisation (AEPO). He was also the BBC Media Action Country Director for Afghanistan, 2003-17
The author wishes to thank Ferdous, Arian and Wida Siddiqi for reading the book and/or the review to share their thoughts, which inspired him to consider new issues that he had not initially included. Likewise, thanks are due to Ubaidullah Mehak, Jolyon Leslie and Zia Dastur for being the sounding board on the wider cultural scene in and around Afghanistan. Special thanks are due to Baqer Moin for sharing information on writers in Iran, to Ismael Saadat for finding Dr Habib’s book in Kabul and making it available in time for this review, to David Morton for revising and editing this book review, and to Nazes Afroz for treating the author with copies of the books right after their publication.
References
References
↑1
The quotation opening this report is from the novel; Majnun cites Alexander Pope to explain how children in Kabul could be outside playing during fighting, without fear because they were innocent, whereas adults, fearing to die, were hiding in their homes. The quotation is from Pope’s ‘Essay on Criticism’, 1711, translated by Nazes Afroz from Mujtaba Ali’s Bengali translation of Pope’s (more famous) original wording: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!”
↑2
Syed Mujtaba Ali, Shabnam, translated by Nazes Afroz, New Delhi, Speaking Tiger, 2024. The title of this book review was inspired by a poem by the 17th century Indian Sufi poet, Mirza Abdul Qader Bedil (also known as Bedil Dehlawi), who is considered one of the greatest Indo-Persian poets:
From this rose-garden, we have reached the wondrous state of the dewdrop
A door to the abode of the sun must be opened
↑3
At the time of Mujtaba Ali’s birth in 1904, Karimganj was a subdivision of Sylhet district, which then formed part of the Assam Province of British India. Following the Partition of 1947 and the Sylhet referendum, most of Sylhet joined East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), but Karimganj remained in India. Today, it is a district in the state of Assam, while Sylhet lies within Bangladesh.
↑4
Nazes Afroz mentions that Mujtaba Ali spoke 12 languages in his 2015 English translation of In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan, published by Speaking Tiger Publishing. The Bengali newspaper, The Daily Star, lists 15.
↑5
The flower, shiuli (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis), seems to enjoy a similar position in Indian literature and mythology, as shabnam does in Persian literature.
↑6
Scholars have counted dozens of full versions in Persian and Turkish, with many more in Urdu, Azeri and other languages, alongside countless oral and lyrical adaptations. It is reasonable to assume that Mujtaba Ali’s readers would have been familiar with both the literary and the mystical resonances of the story and recognised Shabnam as a retelling of this classic tale in a modern and different context.
↑7
Nezami GanjavI, Diwan-e Kamel (The Complete Collection of Poems); Khamsa: Layla and Majnun, p 386.
↑8
Mawlana Nuruddin Abdur Rahman Jami, Mathnawi Haft Awrang, Awrang-e Shashom: Layla and Majnun, page 773.
↑9
Mawlana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi/Rumi, Kuliat-e Shams Tabrizi, Ghazal number 1005.
↑10
Sa’eb Tabrizi, Diwan-e Ash’ar, Ghazal number 1994.
↑11
Sa’eb Tabrizi, Diwan-e Ash’ar, Ghazal number 1445.
↑12
Kalim Kashanai, Diwan-e Ash’ar, Ghazal number 55.
↑13
Kalim Kashanai, Diwan-e Ash’ar, Ghazal number 63.
↑14
Dr Asadullah Habib, Dar Sawahil-e Ganga (On the banks of the Ganges), Zaryab Publishers, Kabul, 2018, ISBN: 9789936615403.
↑15
Shirin and Farhad is a famous Persian romance as told by Nizami Ganjavi in Khosrow and Shirin. Farhad, a sculptor, falls in love with Princess Shirin. King Khosrow, Shirin’s suitor and Farhad’s rival, sets him the impossible task of carving a tunnel through a mountain to win her hand. When Khosrow later deceives him with false news of Shirin’s death, the grief-stricken Farhad takes his own life.
↑16
Bejan and Manija is another classic Persian love story drawn from Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah. Bejan, a Persian prince, falls in love with Manija, the daughter of the Turanian king, Afrasiyab. Their forbidden love leads to Bejan’s imprisonment in a deep pit, from which he is eventually rescued by Rustam, the hero of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings).
Reviewing a Unique Mystical Novel Set in 1920s Afghanistan: Shabnam, a pathway to the sun
Since its re-establishment in 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has implemented a number of policies with far-reaching consequences for the country’s cultural life. They include a ban on all musical performances (AAN), severe limitations on poetry (Hasht-e Subh) and, most notably, the exclusion of girls from education beyond the sixth grade (BBC). Thousands of educated Afghans, including writers, artists and musicians, have left the country fearing reprisals or having found it impossible to continue working and living there.
In 2025, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan intensified its efforts to circumscribe the information available to Afghan citizens, following its October 2024 order to libraries and bookstores to remove books that were now prohibited. In July 2025, a special committee was set up to scrutinise university curricula. It subsequently abolished whole courses and removed hundreds of textbooks deemed contrary to Emirate beliefs and policies. The Afghan book market had already been at a standstill, for various reasons, since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. In this report, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini examines the known lists of banned books to understand which titles they contain and why the IEA may have decided to prohibit them.
In this context, the banning of books may appear a lesser step. However, as is often the case, censorship of this type is an important tool for governments seeking to exert greater control over their citizens. The prohibition of specific items serves a dual purpose: restricting access makes it more difficult, expensive and risky for people to obtain banned items, while at the same time making it easier for the authorities to punish violators by transforming transgressions from the abstract into concrete, enforceable violations. Moreover, as is often the case with political movements that ground their authority in moral and religious assertions, such actions reinforce their claims to superiority over the masses and the consequent need to guide them. They may also endow supporters with a sense of purpose by unleashing a ‘witch hunt’ against those perceived to be violating the rules. History abounds with such examples. It was, after all, only in the latter part of the 20th century (1966) that the Catholic Church ceased to uphold what was possibly the largest and longest-lasting of such lists, its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books).
Against this backdrop, few were surprised when it emerged that the Emirate had issued a list of banned books to libraries and bookstores in October 2024 (Amu TV). While it is unclear how high a priority the implementation of the censorship rules represents for the IEA, reports indicate that pressure has been exerted on booksellers to comply with the directives. Even before the circulation of the list of more than 400 titles, a significant number of books had already been confiscated – some 50,000 in Kabul alone during the first week of January 2024 – and inspections had been carried out in bookshops and libraries across Afghanistan (Radio Azadi, Kabul Now).
October 2024, however, would not be the last time a list of banned books was circulated. In fact, another major list of banned books was announced in mid-September 2025. This time, it included university textbooks and was followed by the cancellation of a number of academic courses, and then by additional blacklists related to the curricula of particular universities in mid-November 2025.
The rationale for the control of culture
Since the mass diffusion of printed books, censorship of publications has constituted a primary field of action for autocratic governments. Where political power has been coupled with religious authority, this has often made it easier to prohibit specific texts by labelling them as blasphemous or claiming they would corrupt people’s minds. Since the movement’s inception, part of the Taliban’s ideological baggage has revolved around the rejection of many secular notions of education and culture, often labelled as ‘modern’ or ‘Western’. Although this aspect was initially less prominent than in other Islamist movements – such as Boko Haram in West Africa – it became increasingly relevant for the Taliban during the years leading to their second ascent to power as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
This shift is closely linked to the transformations in Afghan society and culture during the two decades of foreign intervention (2001-2021). During the First Emirate (1996-2001), there was relatively little to ban. The Taliban assumed power from an already conservative Islamic government formed by mujahedin parties, which, alongside fighting each other and plunging the country into civil war, had already implemented restrictions on education and culture in the wake of their victory over the ‘infidel’ communist government in 1992. In a country that had experienced limited modernisation – mainly in the cities – and had been laid to waste by invasion and internecine fighting, there was relatively little written material for the Taliban censors to ban.
They did, nevertheless, act against a number of perceived threats. For example, footage of the public destruction of televisions, VHS tapes and music cassettes went viral in the outside world, contributing to shaping the image of the Taliban abroad during this period.
If the prohibition of books and printed material did not feature prominently in news reporting during the first Emirate, this was due both to the powerful visual impact of these other forms of cultural censorship and to the limited availability of books, especially as new publications and translations of foreign authors were scarce, given the previous decade and a half of war and restrictions on the free publishing and circulation of books imposed by previous regimes, first under the PDPA and later under the mujahedin.
By contrast, Afghanistan in 2021 offered a far wider range of potential targets for censorship. Over the previous two decades, book publishing had blossomed in Afghanistan, with the emergence of numerous Afghan authors across fields ranging from political science to fiction and poetry. Additionally, a large number of foreign works had become available in translation in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, while previously unavailable books from Iran and Pakistan had been widely distributed. Meanwhile, partially as a reaction to the unprecedented development of higher education in the country, the Taliban discourse had come to include, as a major component of their ideology, the rejection of what they saw as the incipient ‘Westernisation’ of Afghan society, exposed as it had been to modern curricula[1] and the circulation of foreign ideas and texts. Such distrust lies behind much of the intent to ban certain books. In this report, we examine which books and topics the IEA has objected to and how it has justified outlawing them, first by looking at the list of now-banned university textbooks and amended curricula, before turning to the more general ban affecting libraries and the wider book market.
Reshaping university teaching
Changing university curricula has often been the prerogative of governments that come to power after a period of turmoil, when disruption has affected a country’s higher education system. This was the case for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which was established after two decades of high-intensity conflict, territorial fragmentation and lack of government capacity had all but destroyed Afghanistan’s university system. However, such reform is rarely easy or smooth.
The author recalls, for example, the lengthy process that led to the creation of new curricula for the faculties of law and sharia at Kabul University in 2004-05, during which Ashraf Ghani was serving as chancellor. Extensive research and consultations across the Muslim world – and at times heated debate – accompanied the quest for the textbooks that would forge a new generation of Afghan jurists. The subsequent failure of the Republic’s judicial system and the comparative success of the Taliban courts can hardly be attributed to faulty curricula, however. Rather, they were the inevitable outcomes of the corruption and abuse of power by influential people during the Republic.
By contrast, the IEA’s efforts to reshape university curricula have been sudden, swift and opaque. At a 13 July 2025 meeting of the Ministries of Religious Affairs, Information and Culture, Education, and Higher Education, it was announced that a committee had been formed, composed of their respective representatives, who were tasked with reviewing books and referring “suspicious contents to clerics for further scrutiny” (The Independent). At the origin of this initiative lies, arguably, an order by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada urging the removal of books deemed liable to mislead and corrupt society.
The outcome of the newly formed committee’s activities did not take long to materialise. In mid-September 2025, a list containing 679 banned textbooks – described as “conflicting with Sharia and the IEA policies” – was issued to all universities in Afghanistan (BBC). At the same time, the committee also issued lists of university subjects that were now banned (18 courses), or that should be handled with caution and taught only within certain parameters (201 courses). The committee has remained active, however, releasing additional lists of textbooks to be excluded from teaching at various Afghan universities, including one listing 96 titles at Kabul University in mid-November 2025 (Hasht-e Subh).
The eighteen university subjects banned by the committee in mid-September were:
Fundamental Laws of Afghanistan;
Islamic political movements;
Good governance;
Electoral systems;
Afghanistan’s political system;
Political sociology of Afghanistan;
Gender and development;
Human Rights and democracy;
Analysis of the Constitution of Afghanistan;
Globalisation and development;
History of religions;
Sociology of women;
Moral philosophy;
Sexual harassment;
Employment diversity in relation to gender;
Small group leadership;
Gender relations;
Role of women in mass communications.
Six of these subjects relate directly to women or gender studies. The IEA may assume that, given women’s exclusion from universities, there are no prospective students for such courses, or that they are neither relevant nor appropriate for male students. Other subjects may have been considered redundant, such as studying a political system or constitution that no longer exist. Finally, subjects such as the History of Religions, Human Rights and Democracy, and Moral Philosophy might have been considered too controversial and potentially dangerous to be taught at all.
Additionally, more than two hundred other subjects, while still permitted, are subject to limitations and further scrutiny. Among them, one can find a much wider range of topics, from the somewhat expected, such as the History of Western Political Thought and Child Psychology, to the seemingly non-controversial, such as Consumer Protection Rights and the Solar System. Peace and Conflict Resolution is also included in this list.
The list of banned textbooks features a high proportion of titles by Iranian authors or published in Iran (310) and by women (140). Most of the banned books pertain to the curricula of the faculties of Law and Political Sciences, Administration and Public Policy, Sociology, Communication Sciences and Journalism, Educational and Professional Sciences and Psychology. The latter has been particularly affected, with its curriculum severely curtailed due to the elimination of a large number of subjects. Other faculties that have seen the elimination of a number of relevant textbooks include Sharia, Languages and Literature, History, Geography, and Economics. The Arts have also seen some titles banned, especially those on the history and critique of theatre and cinema – subjects that hold little appeal for IEA ideologues.
The sciences fare only slightly better, with a high proportion of excluded texts by Iranian authors, particularly in the faculties of Engineering and Physics. In the scientific fields, banned titles tend either to have been written by women or Iranians, or deal with issues the Taliban view as controversial, either because they are ideologically or politically sensitive, such as evolution by natural selection in Biology, or mining laws and international labour rights in Geology.
However, when it comes to sensitive topics, even if addressed by male Afghan authors, the same pattern applies in all faculties. Such topics include those concerned with fundamental rights, electoral systems, penal jurisprudence, Islamic philosophy – and even the history of Sufism. This means that writing about evolution is objectionable, even if by a Pashtun man. At the same time, the work of authors from Iran is rejected even when the subject is relatively innocuous, such as Techniques of Gilding. It seems it is unacceptable to read a book, even on a topic such as topographic drawing, if it has been written by a woman, whether Afghan or foreign. This cannot be due to concerns that the feminine gaze could alter the proper perception of landscape. IEA officials have acknowledged that there is a general ban in Afghan universities on teaching any book written by a woman (BBC). A similarly categorical justification has been offered for the ban on books by Iranian authors, which was motivated, in the words of a member of the committee to the BBC, by the need “to prevent the infiltration of Iranian content in the Afghan curriculum.” This, however, ignores the fact that even some Afghan authors writing in Dari are better able to publish in Iran, and that Persian has long served as the medium through which global knowledge and literature reach the Afghan public.
Besides the mostly Afghan and Iranian women and men, the translations of Western books, some by outstanding scholars writing well before the Taliban, are also banned. One such example is History of Afghanistan’s Political Relations by the doyen of Afghan Studies, the late Ludwig Adamec[2] (see AAN’s obituary). The works of many other foreign scholars of Afghanistan, as well as those of Afghan authors, had already been targeted in a previous proscription list issued by the IEA in October 2024 and aimed at the general book market and libraries, which is the subject of the next section of this report.
A somewhat random Index Librorum Prohibitorum
One could say that the state of the book market after the fall of the Republic was too bleak to justify the state seeking to exert intellectual control over what gets published and read. The Afghan book market had already largely gone cold after the Taliban’s ascent to power, owing to the flight of many intellectuals and educated youth and to the economic crisis, which rendered the purchase of books a relative luxury (Al Jazeera). Many potential readers still in Afghanistan have grown reluctant to spend money on books, given the reduced value of education and cultural capital in the job market, or the lack of access to education altogether. Many publishing houses have shut down and the country’s declining literary output has been only partially compensated for by various new publications tolerated or even promoted by the IEA (AAN). Despite this, in October 2024, Emirate officials informed libraries and booksellers that 433 books (though a couple of titles are repeated) were now subject to bans or restricted circulation.
The titles included both non-fiction and fiction by Afghan and international authors. Overall, the list is neither comprehensive nor fully representative of what is available to Afghan readers on bookshop shelves, in terms of world literature. It is, however, sufficiently varied to prompt one to describe it as somewhat random and therefore warrants a closer look to make sense of the reasons behind the selection of titles.
Roughly three-quarters of the books on the list are by Afghan authors, the rest by foreigners, including a substantial number of Iranians and Western writers, as well as some from Pakistan and a small number from other countries. Most of the books are simply banned, while ten titles on the list can be consulted, with authorisation, for research purposes only. Some of the latter are well-known works such as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Freedom; acclaimed Albanian writer Ismail Kadare’s novel The Twilight of the Eastern Gods; and essays on postmodernity by David Lyon and Francis Fukuyama.
Most of the banned titles are about Afghanistan’s recent history and are written by both Afghan and foreign authors. Several prominent international scholars of United States foreign policy and of Afghanistan appear on the list, including Steve Coll, Bruce Riedel, Peter Marsden, Ahmad Rashid, Antonio Giustozzi, Christine Fair, Anand Gopal and Bette Dam. Notably, some of these authors explored a wide range of perspectives on the Afghan conflict, including Taliban viewpoints, during the insurgency and well before the Taliban had made their spectacular comeback.
The choice to ban these authors reflects one of the IEA’s clear concerns: rewriting Afghanistan’s recent history according to its own narratives. While effacing the large body of publications produced over two decades by Afghan and foreign authors might prove too monumental a task even for the IEA’s zealous censors, removing texts that extensively explore aspects of the Taliban’s insurgent modus operandi, leadership structures and regional links is more feasible. Notably, those titles that explore highly controversial issues, such as the use of suicide bombers against both military and civilian targets during the conflict or the movement’s relationship with Pakistan, have been earmarked for prohibition.
The issue of suicide bombers appears to be particularly sensitive for the IEA. A number of the relatively few titles devoted to the phenomenon appear on the banned list, including those by Afghan as well as foreign authors. So much so that even a dystopian black-comedy novel – The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé – is included even though it does not deal with religiously or politically motivated suicide bombers, possibly because of the connection with suicide itself, which is clear from the title (retained in Dari), rather than because of its broader mockingly nihilist undertones.[3]
Books on the Islamic State and Afghan-Pakistani relations are also forbidden, including those by former Pakistani officials and titles dealing with issues such as the Durand Line. More generally, some books on the countries of the region, whether or not they specifically focus on their role in the Afghan conflict, are also banned.
Also featured are several books by prominent Republic-era figures and members of the intelligentsia. Of particular concern seem to have been the various biographies or memoirs devoted to slain anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massud, both the more serious and informative ones by historians and the hagiographic pamphlets produced by admirers across the globe. Works by, or related to, other notable military and political adversaries of the Taliban, such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Qasim Fahim, Rashid Dostum, Abdul Ali Mazari, Muhammad Mohaqiq and Karim Khalili, all prominent members of the United Front (commonly known as Northern Alliance) and most also of the later Republican establishment, are also banned.
The same fate has befallen books about former communist president Najibullah or his policies, such as his national reconciliation programme. This seems a logical attitude towards a political figure whom the Taliban killed – and whose body they desecrated – when they first took Kabul in 1996. Other books by Najibullah’s biographer, the investigative journalist-turned-historian, Razaq Mamun, are also banned, as are works by members of the previous communist governments, such as Sulayman Layeq (see AAN’s obituary).
Another category comprises books on religion, whether on Islam or, more broadly, on religious or existential themes. Books on Shia theology – especially those on the Ahl al-Bait (the family of the Prophet) are targeted, not least because many of them come from Iran. For example, many titles by Iranian religious thinker Abdul Karim Soroush are banned as being against national interests and, at times, even against belief. Research on Afghan Shia communities is sometimes disqualified under the label of “disputed issues,” such as in the case of the volumes entitled A Profile of the Ashura Incident, by a research centre, and Hazaras by Hassan Poladi.
Books by Sunni theologians, however, have not been spared either. Some works on Sufism, including ancient and well-known Sufi treatises such as the Kashf al-Asrar [The Unveiling of Secrets], an 11th century spiritual Quranic exegesis by Herat’s most revered Sufi saint, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, are also banned.
The Emirate appears to be taking a cautious attitude towards any debate over issues of theology or Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). In some cases, there is an ‘even-handed banning’, such as books that defend and support both sides of a dispute, such as in the case of Wahhabism. The IEA officially adheres to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence and rejects Wahabi doctrines, which are derived from the Hanbali school. The banning of its principal text, by Muhammad ibn al-Wahab, is, therefore, no surprise. However, the list also bans a refutation of Wahabism by two muftis, motivated by “research problems.”
Several other titles are banned on grounds that they proselytise Christianity. These also form a motley list, ranging from the 15th century devotional manual, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, to the 1926 collection of aphorisms, Sand and Foam, by Lebanese-American writer, Khalil Gibran Khalil, who is also accused of blasphemy for his The Madman, the Forerunner and the Wanderer (1918). Other books by Christian thinkers or closely connected to Christian theology, such as the 5th century The City of God by Saint Augustine, Dante’s 14th century poem The Divine Comedy,and the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith (1830), are also on the list.
Then, predictably, there are books dealing with philosophical, socio-economic, and political systems opposed by the IEA, such as books by or about Karl Marx and titles about the Cuban Revolution.
As expected, a relatively large number of titles revolve around the condition of women in Afghanistan or feminism more broadly: from Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) by Simone de Beauvoir (published in 1949) to Kabul Beauty Schoolby hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez (2007), and Rachel Hollis’ self-help book Girl, Wash Your Face (2018). Titles by Afghan or Iranian female authors, from Women’s Political Participation by Fatima Jaffari to the Wives of the Prophet and Women with the Prophet by Marzieh Mohammadzadeh, are also banned, along with I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. Again, no big surprise.
Alongside works by prominent Afghan novelists, the list includes a number of translations of Western fiction. Inexplicable, at least to the writer, is the seemingly random selection of some Western novels, especially as they hardly represent the full range of translated titles in Dari, if not Pashto, available to the Afghan public. The inclusion of Heinrich Boll’s The Clown (1963), a critique of Germany’s post-World War II society, its conformism, loss of values and the Protestant vs Catholic split, is one such. Even more puzzling is the appearance on the list of Renee Carlino’s novel, Swear on this Life (2016), which centres on “two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.” Of all plots of potential concern to the IEA, these are hardly the first that one would single out – unless maybe the IEA censors are way subtler than assumed.
Against national interests
The list provides a range of reasons for banning titles. In most cases, the books are deemed to be “against national interests.” This designation may stand alone or be coupled with other alleged transgressions, such as being contrary to “beliefs,” “culture,” “policies,” “principles” or “values.” More rarely, two or more of these terms also appear in combination, without “national interests” being at stake.
Broadly speaking, the charge of being against national interests is applied to all books about Afghanistan’s recent history, political figures opposed to the Taliban, the Hazaras or Shia communities in general, neighbouring countries and women’s rights. However, many texts dealing with world history or the history of world religions also fall under this category, such as Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, a 1921 book originally intended to explain global history to children.
Justifications can be quite blunt: Islamic State: Digital Caliphate (2015) by Palestinian-British author Abdul Bari Atwan is dismissed as “mind-numbing.” Occasionally, less generic accusations are formulated against specific titles. For example, some essays by pro-Republic Afghan scholars, together with memoirs by (retired) Pakistani generals, are labelled “negative propaganda,” while AnIntroduction to the Philosophy of Religion by Michael C Rea and Michael J Murray (2008) is seen as going against Islamic principles and mid-17th century Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is considered to be against religion tout court.
Several books on Nawruz, the vernal equinox celebrated as the new year in many parts of Afghanistan and the wider region, are also banned. The text by an Afghan youth cultural association, Nawruz, a Celebration of Transformation and Insight, is denounced as “contrary to culture,” rather than being deemed against Islamic principles, as per the longstanding position of the Taliban and some conservative Afghan clerics. This designation substantiates the impression that, for the IEA, Afghan culture must totally overlap and coincide with a narrowly defined set of orthodox Islamic practices, leaving little room for anything else, created or perpetuated by the Afghan people over the centuries, or even, as in this case, millennia, to be considered culturally legitimate – or even allowed to exist. On a lighter note, “contrary to culture” is also the reason given for discarding The Rules of Love, a self-help manual for “happier, more fulfilling relationships” by Richard Templar (aka Richard Craze).
A story that is still unravelling
The published lists are by no means a definitive or exhaustive tool for deciding which books are allowed; booksellers have complained that individual IEA officials assess the permissibility of books according to their own judgement, both in shops and at customs checkpoints. According to these accounts, officials may decide on the spot to confiscate volumes that are not included on the list, based on their own understanding of the content or on the presence of images depicting living beings (The Independent).
Publishers have reported being instructed to contact the authorities and obtain permission from the Directorate of Information and Culture before printing new volumes (VoA) and have given accounts of the difficulties they have encountered in getting such approval.
Proscribing printed texts is not the only means through which the IEA has sought to circumscribe and control people’s access to information and knowledge. Since early October 2025, following a 48-hour nationwide internet shutdown, a number of filters have been applied to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and X (BBC). Moreover, a set of rules for journalists and television and radio hosts had already been introduced (RSF); see also the 2024 Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which gives the ministry’s enforcers the power to ensure the media does not publish reports that “contradict Islamic law and religion,” “deride or humiliate Muslims,” or depict animate objects (article 17) (see AAN’s translation and commentary on the law).
During the past decade, some authors have argued that the recruitment of a new generation of Taliban, some of whom had received higher education and were exposed to the Republic’s education system, had increased the Taliban’s cultural sophistication (New Lines Magazine). Similar changes are apparent across Afghan society more broadly and the 2021 takeover was widely expected to enhance this phenomenon, as individuals from diverse backgrounds joined the ranks of the Taliban. Instead, taking control of the levers of power appears to have brought the more conservative elements of the leadership to the fore, revealing the comparatively limited influence of the younger members.
If the first list of banned books can be understood as an attempt to remove titles perceived as blasphemous, offensive or aberrant, or to erase rival narratives of Afghanistan’s recent history, the lists targeting university textbooks point to a more long-term and far-reaching objective. These later efforts seem to indicate that the IEA views book banning as part of the fight against cultural Westernisation, driven by the belief that modern education is part of an external political agenda aimed at promoting female emancipation and critical thinking as tools to weaken the fabric of the Afghan nation and its connection to Islam.
This viewpoint is outlined in a rare treatise on the juridical and political foundations of the IEA authored by one of its highest-ranking figures, The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance, by Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the IEA’s Chief Justice, which was published in 2022 (read AAN’s review). While modern sciences and knowledge are discussed at length in three chapters of the book and acknowledged as necessary, their importance is downplayed. They are presented as subordinate to religious learning and as exposing Muslims to the risk of moral corruption. Studying them is permissible only to the extent necessary and in accordance with religious studies (Zan Times).
Even more than the theoretical principles expounded by Haqqani, recent IEA actions lend credence to the blunt words of one Afghan commentator: “The Taliban are staunch and uncompromising in their beliefs because they have always received a single-source education and they believe that diversity in the sources of knowledge leads to deviation and disbelief” (Hasht-e Subh).
After four years in power, the Taliban leadership has made clear that their vision of society and the world diverges from that of a significant segment of Afghanistan’s population – namely, those Afghans who benefited from higher education and exposure to global knowledge and culture prior to the takeover. They are, therefore, resolved to gradually reshape future Afghan generations by making sure that the youth who will be able to attend university, and indeed the wider reading public, are exposed only to those notions that align with the Taliban’s own beliefs. Whether these notions alone will provide future generations of Afghans with a sufficient foundation of knowledge to meet the challenges of rebuilding their war-ravaged country, only time will tell.
Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour
References
References
↑1
The term ‘modern education’ has been used in Afghanistan to differentiate the state schooling system or that offered by secular private institutions from the religious-centred madrasa education. For recent developments in madrasa education see Sharif Akram, Living a Mullah’s Life: The evolution of Islamic knowledge among village clerics, Afghanistan Analysts Network, 20 July 2025.
↑2
Originally published in English as: Afghanistan’s Foreign Affairs to the Mid-Twentieth Century: Relations with the USSR, Germany, and Britain (1974).
↑3
Indeed, some authors whose works have been proscribed argued that the IEA censors did not even bother to read the full books, but rather banned those whose titles raised their suspicions (Radio Azadi).
What Afghans May Read: Banned books under the Islamic Emirate
Attacks by unknown assailants entering Tajik territory appear to target Chinese businesses and workers.
Tensions are flaring along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in Central Asia with the Tajik government reporting multiple armed incursions this month, straining its fragile relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.
More than a dozen people have been killed in attacks by men whom Tajik authorities call “terrorists” and the resulting clashes with Tajik forces, officials in Dushanbe and Beijing said. Victims include Chinese nationals working in remote areas of the mountainous former Soviet republic.
In the latest fighting this week, at least five people were killed in Tajikistan‘s Shamsiddin Shokhin district, including “three terrorists”, officials said.
Tajikistan has long opposed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country it shares a largely unsecured 1,340km (830-mile) border with.
Despite cautious diplomatic engagement between the two countries to adjust to new regional realities, analysts said, the frequency of the recent border clashes risks eroding the Taliban’s credibility and raises questions about its capacity to enforce order and security.
Here is all we know about the clashes along the Tajik-Afghan border and why they matter:
What’s happening on the Tajik-Afghan border?
The border runs along the Panj river through the remote, mountainous terrain of southern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan.
On Thursday, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that “three members of a terrorist organisation” crossed into Tajik territory on Tuesday. The committee added that the men were located the following morning and exchanged fire with Tajik border guards. Five people, including the three intruders, were killed, it said.
Tajik officials did not name the armed men or specify which group they belonged to. The officials, however, said they seized three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, 10 hand grenades, a night-vision scope and explosives at the scene.
Dushanbe said this was the third attack originating from Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in the past month that has resulted in the deaths of its personnel.
These attacks, Tajik officials said on Thursday, “prove that the Taliban government is demonstrating serious and repeated irresponsibility and non-commitment in fulfilling its international obligations and consistent promises to ensure security … and to combat members of terrorist organisations”.
The Tajik statement called on the Taliban to “apologise to the people of Tajikistan and take effective measures to ensure security along the shared border”.
Tajikistan has not suggested what the motive for the attacks may be, but the assaults have appeared to target Chinese companies and nationals working in the area.
How is China involved in all this?
Beijing is Tajikistan’s largest creditor and one of its most influential economic partners with a significant footprint in infrastructure, mining and other border-region projects.
China and Tajikistan also share a 477km (296-mile) border running through the high-altitude Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, adjacent to China’s Xinjiang region.
Two attacks were launched against Chinese companies and nationals in the last week of November. On November 26, a drone equipped with an explosive device attacked a compound belonging to Shohin SM, a private Chinese gold-mining company, in the remote Khatlon region on the Tajik-Afghan border, killing three Chinese citizens.
In a second attack on November 30, a group of men armed with guns opened fire on workers employed by the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, killing at least two people in Tajikistan’s Darvoz district.
Tajik officials said those attacks had originated from villages in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province but did not disclose any affiliation or motive behind the attacks.
Chinese nationals have also come under attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
China’s embassy in Dushanbe advised Chinese companies and personnel to evacuate the border area. Chinese officials demanded “that Tajikistan take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Chinese enterprises and citizens in Tajikistan”.
Who is carrying out these attacks?
While the attackers have not been identified, analysts and observers believe the attacks carry the hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which, they said, aims to discredit Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.
“The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside Afghanistan and carried out attacks on foreigners inside Afghanistan as a key pillar of their strategy,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a Kabul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.
“The aim is to shatter the Taliban’s image as a security provider with whom the regional governments should engage,” Bahiss told Al Jazeera.
How has the Taliban reacted to these attacks?
Kabul expressed its “deep sorrow” over the killings of Chinese workers on November 28.
The Taliban blamed the violence on an unnamed armed group which, it said, is “striving to create chaos and instability in the region and to sow distrust among countries”, and it assured Tajikistan of its full cooperation.
After this week’s clashes, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister, said Kabul remains committed to the 2020 Doha Agreement, its deal with the United States for a phased foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for attacking other countries.
Addressing a police cadet graduation ceremony at the National Police Academy in Kabul on Thursday, Haqqani said Afghanistan posed no threat to other countries and the door to dialogue remains open.
“We want to address problems, distrust or misunderstandings through dialogue. We have passed the test of confrontation. We may be weak in resources, but our faith and will are strong,” he said, adding that security had improved to the extent that Taliban officials now travel across the country without weapons.
The Taliban insists that no “terrorist groups” are operating from Afghanistan. However, in a recent report, the United Nations sanctions-monitoring committee cited the presence of multiple armed groups, including ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansarullah and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.
Jamaat Ansarullah is a Tajik group linked to al-Qaeda-aligned networks and active primarily in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border.
How are relations between Tajikistan and the Taliban?
For decades, the relationship between Tajikistan and the Taliban has been defined by deep ideological hostility and ethnic mistrust with Dushanbe one of the group’s fiercest critics in Central Asia.
In the 1990s, Tajikistan aligned with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, led by Afghan military commander and former Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud.
After the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Tajikistan stood as the lone holdout among its neighbours in refusing to officially recognise the new government.
However, pragmatic diplomatic engagement quietly began about 2023, driven by economic necessity and shared security fears over the presence of ISKP. Stepping up the restoration of relations, a high-level Tajik delegation visited Kabul in November, the first such visit since the Taliban’s return to power.
But the two governments continue to trade accusations that the other is harbouring “terrorists”, the major thorn remaining in their bilateral relationship, and that drug smuggling is occurring across their border.
The Tajik-Afghan border has long been a major trafficking route for Afghan heroin and methamphetamine into Central Asia and onwards to Russia and Europe, exploiting the area’s rugged terrain and weak policing.
“The rising frequency [of the clashes] is new and interesting and raises a point: whether we might be seeing a new threat emerging,” Bahiss said.
Badakshan province, from which Tajik authorities said the attacks on Chinese nationals originate, presents a complex security situation for the Taliban as it has struggled to stem the threat from armed opposition groups, Bahiss added.
This security issue has been further complicated by the Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in the province, he said. The Taliban has faced resistance to this policy from farmers in the north. This is largely because the terrain of Badakshan means poppies are the only viable cash crop.
How is the Taliban faring with other neighbours?
Since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, some of its neighbours have maintained a pragmatic transactional relationship while others have not.
Relations with Pakistan, previously its patron, have particularly deteriorated. Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistan Taliban. Tensions over this issue boiled over in November when Pakistan launched air strikes in Kabul, Khost and other provinces, prompting retaliatory Taliban attacks on border posts.
Dozens of people were killed before a ceasefire was brokered by Qatar and Turkiye. However, both sides have engaged in fighting since, blaming each other for breaking the fragile truce.
The Taliban denies Islamabad’s allegations and has blamed Pakistan for its “own security failures”.
Meanwhile, the Taliban is now invested in developing a new relationship with Pakistan’s archrival, India, with delegations visiting Indian cities for trade and security discussions. New Delhi was earlier part of the anti-Taliban alliance. However, that approach has changed with the deteriorating ties between Pakistan and the Taliban.
Tajikistan-Taliban border clashes: What’s behind them, why it affects China
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
