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

The Taliban are burning musical instruments in the name of morality. It is an assault on all culture

February 25, 2026
The Guardian
Wed 25 Feb 2026

The sounds of Afghan history are being erased to prevent music’s ‘moral corruption’ of the Afghan people. We can help keep Afghanistan’s music alive. Plus, Eliane Radigue’s deep listening, and the brilliance of Sinners’s score

The horrors of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan are all-encompassing. New laws that effectively legalise domestic abuse means that every woman in the country now lives with the threat of state-sanctioned violence. In the context of the twin tragedies of the Taliban’s fundamentalist zealotry, and the rest of the world’s silence in the face of their atrocities, the fate of Afghanistan’s cultural life might seem a smaller catastrophe. Yet it’s equivalently devastating.

The recent burning of hundreds of musical instruments and equipment – reported last week on Afghan National Television – is the latest stage of the Taliban morality police’s ongoing mission to destroy all these artefacts. Last week’s pyre included tablas and harmoniums, instruments that are the bedrocks of Afghanistan’s unique tradition of classical music, as well as keyboards and amplifiers.

“Since their return in 2021, the Taliban have waged a war on music, claiming that it causes ‘moral corruption’,” writes Sarah Dawood in Index on Censorship. “The Taliban outlaws music, and criminalises performing or even listening to music. Musicians in the country live in fear of discrimination, humiliation, torture, imprisonment, sexual violence in the case of women and even death.”

This silencing of musical culture is another humanitarian nadir the Taliban are enforcing, an attempt to create a sharia-compliant, music-free country for which there is no precedent anywhere.

The bravest musicians I’ve ever met are the women of Zohra, the Afghan women’s orchestra of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music – based in Portugal now. Across its orchestras and its training, ANIM works for the “musical rights” not only of the 300 members of the institute, but for the country’s culture as a whole. In their orchestras and ensembles, there’s a mix of western orchestral and traditional instruments – like the lute-like Afghan rubab, whose repertoire is among the treasures of world music, a tradition of pieces and ways of playing passed down across the generations that’s today imperilled as never before and is sustained only in exile.

Meanwhile we can help keep their music in the forefront of our listening lives, renewing that radical activity that no-one in Afghanistan is legally allowed to do. Listen to the cry of hope of Dawn by Meena Karimi, composed for International Women’s Day 2021 and dedicated to Afghan women’s struggles for equality, or hear rubab virtuosos such as Homayoun Sakhi and Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz. There’s no more urgent musical emergency on the planet.

Listen to the Zohra orchestra

What does it mean to listen? I mean, really to listen to the infinite possibilities of every moment of our sonic lives? No composer in 20th and 21st century music asked the question more sensitively, or more profoundly than Eliane Radigue, who has died at the age of 94.

Radigue was a sonic pioneer. Pre 2001, her music was made exclusively for synthesisers, because the technology allowed her to get inside the world of sound, stretching individual pitches into seeming infinities of slowness and concentration, in a way that traditional composition didn’t. Listen to the epic scales of ever-changing changelessness – a paradox that makes sense when you encounter her music – of her Trilogie de la Mort to experience what I mean. As Pascal Wyse wrote in his interview with her, Radigue’s use of synthesisers meant that “the music didn’t contain sound: the sound contained the music”.

Radigue’s epiphany of working with acoustic instruments – and human performers – in the 21st century, and in her Occam Ocean pieces, brought a lesson in how to listen. These works are full of sounds of superficial slowness but they release teeming energy from their musicians.

The Bafta winners have been overshadowed by the row over the TV coverage, but congratulations to Ludwig Göransson, whose original score for Sinners won the Bafta on Sunday night. For me, the standout moment of Ryan Coogler’s film was Rafael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson’s Oscar-nominated I Lied to You. Five delirious minutes on screen in which Sammie (played by Miles Caton)’s performance at the dance-hall draws the spirits of Black music from African griots and shamans to blues, jazz, hip-hop, and DJ culture to appear, all seamlessly woven into the shots of the dance-floor. You feel you’re there with the dancers and singers, a still point around which the roots and futures of the blues swirls, celebrating the truth that the song is all about: that Sammie loves the blues more than the Bible that his preacher father threw to him on that Mississippi road. That’s the film’s closest reference to the legend of the real-life blues pioneer Robert Johnson, in the mythology of his supposed deal with the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi, giving him his talent in exchange for his soul.

The vampires in the movie are as much musical as they’re supernatural: Sinners juxtaposes the blues with the folk songs, often Scottish and Irish, that the band of white vampires sings outside the dancehall. And as well as the blood and gore of its final act, Sinners is a satire on how the blues has lost its soul due to the vampiric forces of commercialism and appropriation: “White folks like the blues just fine; just not the people who make it”, as Delroy Lindo’s character, Delta Slim says.

The Taliban are burning musical instruments in the name of morality. It is an assault on all culture
read more

At Risk: Afghan Allies and America’s Credibility

February 25, 2026
Feb. 24, 2026
To the Editor:

Re “Congress Ends Visas for Afghan Partners, Closing a Path to the U.S.” (news article, Feb. 6):

By allowing the Special Immigrant Visa program for Afghan wartime partners to quietly lapse, Congress has placed America’s credibility, and thousands of vetted Afghan families, in jeopardy.

At Global Refuge, where we have resettled thousands of Afghan allies, we see the human toll of this uncertainty every day: in every child who lies awake at night worrying about parents still in hiding, in spouses separated by continents and in fractured families unsure if they will ever hold their loved ones again.

That they remain stranded overseas, vulnerable precisely because of their ties to the United States, reflects a monumental failure to uphold the commitments we made to our allies in America’s longest war.

This inaction also comes amid a broader dismantling of humanitarian protections for Afghans, including unprecedented cuts to refugee admissions, the termination of Temporary Protected Status and Afghanistan’s inclusion in sweeping travel and visa bans.

At the same time, the administration’s continuing “re-review” of lawfully admitted refugees is poised to throw even previously vetted Afghans into renewed uncertainty about their status.

Taken together, these decisions send a troubling message about whether our government intends to keep its word. America’s promise to those who stood alongside our service members was never merely symbolic.

For thousands of Afghan families and the countless Americans who stand in solidarity with them, it was a commitment that must still be honored.

Timothy Young
Baltimore
The writer is the director of public relations for Global Refuge, a national refugee resettlement nonprofit.

At Risk: Afghan Allies and America’s Credibility
read more

What’s behind the latest tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan?

February 25, 2026 ,

By Reuters

ISLAMABAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Tensions have heated up again between Islamabad and Kabul this week after Pakistan launched airstrikes on militant targets in Afghanistan.
Pakistani security sources said the strike killed at least 70 terrorists, while the United Nations said at least 13 civilians were killed.
The attack threatens a fragile ceasefire following border clashes in October that killed dozens of soldiers, the worst fighting between the two countries since the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021.
WHY ARE THE NEIGHBOURS AT ODDS?
Pakistan welcomed the return to power of the Taliban in 2021, with then-Prime Minister Imran Khan saying that Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery”.
But Islamabad soon found that the Taliban were not as cooperative as it had hoped.
Islamabad says that the leadership of militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and many of its fighters are based in Afghanistan, and that secular armed insurgents seeking independence for the southwestern province of Balochistan also use Afghanistan as a safe haven.
Militancy has increased every year since 2022 with attacks from the TTP and Baloch insurgents growing, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a global monitoring organization.
Kabul for its part has repeatedly denied allowing militants to use Afghan territory to launch attacks in Pakistan.
Even as the fragile ceasefire has held there have been repeated clashes and border closures that have disrupted trade and movement along the rugged frontier.

WHAT SPARKED SATURDAY’S OFFENSIVE?

The day before the strikes, Pakistani security sources said they had “irrefutable evidence” that militants were using Afghan soil to attack Pakistan.
The sources listed seven planned or successful attacks by militants since late 2024 that they said were connected to Afghanistan.
One attack last week that killed 11 security personnel and two civilians in Bajaur district was undertaken by an Afghan national, according to Pakistani security sources. This attack was claimed by the TTP.

WHO ARE THE PAKISTANI TALIBAN?

The TTP was formed in 2007 by several jihadist outfits active in northwest Pakistan. It is commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban.
The TTP has attacked markets, mosques, airports, military bases, police stations and also gained territory – mostly along the border with Afghanistan, but also deep inside Pakistan, including the Swat Valley, where they later shot schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai.
They also fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and hosted Afghan fighters in Pakistan. Pakistan has launched military operations against the TTP on its own soil with limited success, although an offensive that ended in 2016 drastically reduced attacks till a few years ago.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

After the attack, the Taliban warned “an appropriate and measured response will be taken at a suitable time.”
Analysts say this is likely to come in the way of cross-border action. Two attacks targeted security forces in northwest Pakistan in the days after Pakistan’s airstrikes.
On paper, there is a wide mismatch between the two sides. At 172,000, the Taliban have less than a third of Pakistan’s personnel.
Though the Taliban do possess at least six aircraft and 23 helicopters, their condition is unknown and they have no fighter jets or effective air force.
Pakistan’s armed forces include more than 600,000 active personnel, have more than 6,000 armoured fighting vehicles and more than 400 combat aircraft, according to 2025 data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The country is also nuclear armed.

Reporting by Lucy Craymer in Islamabad and Saad Sayeed in Bangkok; Editing by Aidan Lewis

What’s behind the latest tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan?
read more

Forty-Five Days to Spain: One man’s journey from Afghanistan in search of a future

February 20, 2026

Rohullah Sorush • Roxanna Shapour

print sharing button

War has shaped the lives of several generations of Afghans, with many pushed to travel beyond the country’s borders, seeking sanctuary or opportunity in more peaceful places. That includes the hundreds of thousands who have embarked on the dangerous journey to Europe. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from one man who made that journey in 2015 when the Balkan route was the main land gateway to Europe for many Afghans. The route opened during the Syrian refugee crisis and stretched from Turkey via Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia to the European Union. Over a million people travelled through the Western Balkans on foot, by bus, car or train in 2015 alone, including more than 250,000 Afghans. Our interviewee ended up in Spain, where he had uncles who helped him rebuild his life from scratch, and he went on to become a citizen and an entrepreneur. 

A new era, a new beginning

My family are from Baraki Barak district in Logar province, but I wasn’t born there. They’d fled to Pakistan during the civil war in Afghanistan before I was born. And this is how, in 1993, I came to be born in Parachinar in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

I was in grade four in 2003 when my parents decided to move the family back to Afghanistan. A new government had been installed two years earlier and people were saying that Afghanistan had entered a new era — one that promised hope and opportunity.

We settled in Kabul’s Dehdana area, where I finished primary school and then went on to the Ghazi Abdullah Achekzai High School. School was important to me. I enjoyed learning and did well in class. I got my high school diploma, sat the university entrance exam and was accepted into the Faculty of Accounting at Badghis University.

But life had other plans.

Stepping up for my family

The summer before I was meant to start my university studies, my father was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop working. I had to step up and start working to support my family. I didn’t go to Badghis. I had to stay close to home in Kabul, so I enrolled in a computer science course at Hazarat Muhammad Mustafa Institute.

My days were long and demanding. I went to school from seven in the morning until noon. After that, I got work tending my family’s livestock. We owned cows, sheep and goats. I looked after them, taking them to graze in nearby pastures and when there was no grass, I bought feed from the market. I sold the milk, yogurt and butter that we got from the animals to support the family.

Crossing borders in the dark

The promise of hope and prosperity in Afghanistan’s new era hadn’t lasted. Security had deteriorated and suicide attacks and explosions become commonplace, even in Kabul. Anxiety and fear were a part of daily life. So, in October 2015, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I left Afghanistan and migrated illegally to Europe.

It was a gamble — a dangerous one — but it was what I had to do to secure a better future for myself and my family. It was a long and exhausting journey. I travelled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, then to Iran and Turkey – much of it on foot, crossing borders under cover of night. From Turkey, I crossed the sea by boat to Greece. From there, I continued through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Italy and France. And finally, 45 days after I had said goodbye to my family in Kabul, I arrived in Spain.

I could have been caught by border guards or police at any moment along the journey. But I was determined. I spoke some English and managed to make the journey mostly on my own.

A new life in Spain

When I arrived in Spain, I went to the police. They registered my fingerprints and biometric data and took me to a refugee camp in Getafe, Madrid. I stayed there for six months. During that time, I began learning Spanish and took a six-month course to learn how to make pizza and wait on tables.

With my certificate in hand, I began looking for work. I found a job in a small restaurant in Madrid. I made pizza and other snacks and learned how to prepare barista-style coffee. At first, I worked six hours a day, mostly in the afternoons. Later, I increased my hours. I worked from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, took a two-hour break and went back to work until midnight – seven days a week. It was grueling, but I was determined to make a go of things. That job helped me improve my Spanish and start to understand Spanish culture.

Later, I found a job in a Pakistani restaurant. I worked there for two months – every day from noon to four in the afternoon and again from six in the afternoon until eleven at night. After that, I went to work in an Iranian restaurant in Madrid with a similar schedule. All in all, I worked in these restaurants for two and a half years. Then, a phone call changed everything.

The phone call that changed everything

I was working at the Iranian restaurant in Madrid when my maternal uncles – who’d been living in Spain since 2010 – called me and said they wanted to start a business and asked me to join them.

We began selling dry fruits, baklava and Turkish delight. We bought baklava from an Iranian company in Madrid and imported dried fruit and other sweets from Turkey and Belgium. We sold our products to shops and supermarkets across Spain.  We ran that business together for four years. I learned a lot about how to run a business in those four years, everything from imports to distribution, from negotiating prices to customer relations.

It was time for me to stand on my own two feet. So, with my uncles’ blessing I set up my own business. For the past three years, I’ve been importing and selling the same sort of products. It’s still a small business, but it’s mine. I work long hours and I travel across Spain, spending a couple of months in different cities – Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, Huesca, Alicante.

Loss, family and a new beginning

In 2020, my father lost his long battle with cancer. We’d done everything we could and spent a lot on his treatment, but finally we had to accept that there was nothing more we could do except make him as comfortable in the time he had left. I went back to Kabul that year to spend time with him before we lost him and support my family through that difficult period.

After my father passed away, I set the wheels in motion to bring my mother, sister and younger brother to Spain. I also got married and brought my wife here. Today, we have a son. Recently, I became a Spanish citizen — something I once thought was impossible. Through years of hard work and sacrifice, I’ve been able to grow my business, buy an apartment for my small family and another for my mother and siblings.

The long road home

When I look back on the journey from a refugee child in Parachinar to a business owner and Spanish citizen, I feel proud of how far I’ve come. Life has taken me across borders and brought me face to face with many challenges. But my story is not unique. I’m not the first person forced by circumstance to leave their home with nothing but the hope for something better, nor will I be the last. If my journey proves anything, it’s that even when life begins in hardship, it’s still possible, through determination, sacrifice, opportunity – and a bit of luck – to build something strong and meaningful.

But I couldn’t have made a go of things alone. Along the way, I was helped by the goodwill of many people who saw a chance to help and did. I now feel an obligation to help others, as I was helped. I know all too well that, given the chance to work and contribute, those who arrive as strangers can become part of the fabric of the place they’ve come to call home.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour 

Forty-Five Days to Spain: One man’s journey from Afghanistan in search of a future
read more

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

February 13, 2026

Mhd Assem Mayar

 print sharing button

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

Afghanistan’s rapid population growth and urbanisation have overwhelmed its cities, which lack even basic infrastructure. Particularly Kabul, but also Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, Kandahar, Nangrahar and Khost, have seen rapid growth, leading to the spread of unplanned settlements and peri‑urban fringes. These expanding informal and peri-urban settlements face chronic shortages of water, sewerage and waste services, exposing residents to multiple environmental hazards. Yet even in the city centres, pollution has become a defining feature of urban life, driven by winter heating fuels that spew acrid smoke into the air, exhaust fumes from the outdated vehicles that clog city streets, diesel generators, contaminated groundwater, unmanaged waste and persistent noise. In the southwest and west, north, and east of the country, dust storms blown in from across Afghanistan’s borders devastate the air quality in rural and urban areas alike. The climate crisis, making for more frequent droughts and a reduction in those natural cleansers of the air – rain and snow – has only exacerbated many of the hazards facing Afghans.
These environmental stresses carry profound social and economic costs. Preventable illness and premature deaths are widespread, with all the concomitant cost to the economy. Given the failure of state institutions to provide basic services or protection, households are left carrying the financial burden, with the need to purchase water, filters, masks and medicines. Yet private solutions can never substitute for state action. The persistence of polluted air, contaminated water, unmanaged waste and chronic noise reflects decades of weak coordination, uneven enforcement and a failure to reach even basic environmental standards.

This report, which consolidates the available scientific data into readable English, maps out the various types of pollution afflicting Afghans. It looks at whether and how pollutions is being monitored, and at government actions – or inaction – over the decades. It also lays out remedies.

Edited by Kate Clark and Jelena Bjelica

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

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

20260210 pollution report FINALDownload
Pollution in Afghanistan: Air, water, waste and noise under weak governance
read more

Afghanistan’s Institutionalized Silence and the Cost of Inaction

February 12, 2026
By 
Foreign Policy in Focus
February 10, 2026

Children are denied education, women are barred from work, and minorities live under constant threat.

Four years after the Taliban returned to power, Afghanistan is experiencing what many call a “great muting.” This is not just the result of war or economic problems, but a deliberate effort by the Taliban to erase voices. In communication theory, a group is considered “muted” when those in power control the main ways people can express themselves, such as language, law, and media. This leaves marginalized groups unable to share their experiences in a way others can understand.

For Afghan journalists, women, and ethnic minorities, this is not just a theory; it is a daily reality enforced by the Taliban. The streets are quiet, not because there is peace, but because the Taliban has created a culture of silence where speaking out can cost someone their life.

Afghanistan once had one of the most dynamic media landscapes in South and Central Asia. Hundreds of television channels, radio stations, newspapers, and online platforms reported on politics, corruption, and social issues. Journalists risked their lives to hold the powerful to account. Today, fewer than 50 independent media outlets operate nationwide, down from over 400 in 2021. Human Rights Watch reports that dozens of journalists have been threatened, arbitrarily detained, or beaten in the past year alone. Female reporters, once prominent voices in newsrooms and on air, have largely been forced out. Many journalists report living in constant fear, aware that every article could provoke retaliation. In this climate, truth itself has become dangerous.

Targeting Women and Hazara

Women and girls have suffered the most dramatic and visible losses under Taliban rule. UNESCO estimates that more than 22 million girls are barred from secondary school and university, reversing decades of educational progress. Many will never see the classroom again. Women are prevented from working in most sectors, must travel with male guardians, and are constantly monitored by morality police. Public spaces, workplaces, and recreational areas have effectively been closed to them.

Observers describe watching an entire generation of girls vanish before their eyes. The consequences extend far beyond classrooms. Hospitals operate without female staff, businesses lose vital contributors, and families struggle to survive. In Afghanistan today, half the population is effectively silenced, unable to participate in shaping the society around them.

Amid these restrictions, Afghanistan’s Hazara minority faces a quiet but persistent crisis. Predominantly Shia Muslims, Hazaras have long endured discrimination. Under Taliban rule, forced evictions, land confiscations, and targeted attacks have intensified. Reports document extrajudicial killings, torture, and intimidation against Hazara civilians. Hazara women are particularly vulnerable, facing oppression both for their gender and their ethnicity. Many live under constant fear, with little protection from the state. Their plight is often overlooked internationally, yet it reflects a systematic targeting of a minority population and the fragility of rights under the Taliban.

The Taliban govern without elections, independent courts, or political parties. Laws are issued by decree, arbitrary detention is routine, and peaceful protests are violently suppressed. Journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens live in fear, weighing every word, every social media post, every public gesture against the possibility of retaliation. The absence of accountability has created a culture of impunity, where silence is often the only means of survival and courage comes at great personal risk.

State of Impunity and Economic Ruin

Economic collapse has compounded these hardships. International sanctions, combined with the reduction of foreign aid, have left millions at risk of hunger. Nearly half of Afghan households rely on humanitarian aid, and over 23 million people face food insecurity, including nearly 10 million on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations. Restrictions on women’s work have further reduced household income, while humanitarian agencies struggle to deliver aid because female staff are barred from many essential roles.

Children remain idle at home, schools are shuttered, and families struggle daily to survive. The country faces not just a humanitarian crisis but a social and generational one, as opportunities for learning, work, and basic freedoms vanish.

Four years under Taliban rule have left Afghanistan quieter, but not peaceful. Voices are silenced, not absent. International legal bodies, including the International Criminal Court, have begun investigating senior Taliban leaders for crimes against humanity, particularly gender-based persecution. Yet enforcement remains difficult. Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans continue to endure life under fear and deprivation.

What Can the World Do?

If the global order continues to treat the “silencing” of Afghanistan as a domestic Afghan issue rather than a violation of international norms, it risks setting a precedent that gender apartheid and minority persecution are acceptable costs of regional stability.

To break the current deadlock, the international community should consider these policy changes:

Make Gender Apartheid a Crime Against Humanity: The UN and its member states should back adding “gender apartheid” to the draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention. This would create the legal tools needed to hold Taliban leaders responsible for excluding women and girls as described above.

Set Up a Permanent International Monitor for Minority Rights: Because the Hazara community has been targeted, the UN Human Rights Council should create a dedicated, well-funded team to track and report on ethnic violence and land seizures as they happen.

Link Diplomacy to Media Freedom: No future diplomatic talks or technical assistance should occur unless the Taliban restores independent media licenses and ends the arbitrary arrest of journalists.

Back a “Digital Sanctuary” for Higher Education: International donors should move from building physical schools to funding strong, accredited online education platforms and satellite Internet. This will help make sure that the Taliban’s school closures do not create a “lost generation.”

Afghanistan today is a nation muted. Children are denied education, women are barred from work, and minorities live under constant threat. For many, hope has become a quiet, private act, hidden behind closed doors. But the people endure, they survive, and they wait. And in their silence lies a stark reminder: four years of Taliban rule have changed Afghanistan, and the world cannot ignore it.

Nasratullah Taban is a freelance journalist covering Afghanistan and Central Asia, with a focus on media, extremism, and human rights issues.

Afghanistan’s Institutionalized Silence and the Cost of Inaction
read more

Afghanistan: Taliban Repression Intensifies

February 5, 2026

Human Rights Watch

February 3, 2026

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.

Afghanistan: Taliban Repression Intensifies
read more

As the Taliban continue their war on women and girls, it is clear that appeasement has failed

January 29, 2026

The Guardian
Thu 29 Jan 2026
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.

Russia became the first country to recognise the Taliban government and restore full diplomatic relations without securing any concessions on girls’ and women’s rights. China accepted the credentials of an ambassador from the Taliban regime in January 2024. India upgraded its ties with the regime, including by formally reopening its embassy in Kabul, and proclaimed that “the future of India-Afghanistan relations seems very bright”.

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
read more

When a Girl Turns Up at the Door: How an Afghan custom helped one young woman refuse a forced marriage

January 28, 2026

Hamid Pakteen • Roxanna Shapour

  print sharing button

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 door
There’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
↑1 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
read more

From Insurgency to Government: How the Islamic Emirate polices Afghanistan

January 18, 2026

Antonio Giustozzi

Afghanistan Analysts Network

print sharing button

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.

Taliban Policing FINALDownload

 

Authors:

Antonio Giustozzi

 

From Insurgency to Government: How the Islamic Emirate polices Afghanistan
read more

Recent Posts