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Millions of Girls Still Denied Education in Afghanistan, Says UK Envoy

March 23, 2026
Khaama Press

Richard Lindsay, the UK’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, expressed deep concern that millions of girls in Afghanistan remain denied access to education as the new year begins.

On Monday, March 23, Lindsay wrote on X that barring women and girls from schooling harms the country’s future and holds back all Afghan communities.

He emphasized that education must be accessible to everyone, warning that continued restrictions undermine development and social progress in Afghanistan.

Earlier, Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, also voiced concern that girls above grade six are still prevented from attending school.

Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan nearly five years ago, girls have been systematically barred from schools and universities, and no measures have yet been taken to lift these restrictions.

Before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan had made significant progress in female education, with millions of girls attending school and universities across the country.

International organizations consistently warn that depriving girls of education not only affects individual futures but also creates broader social and economic consequences for Afghanistan society.

The UK and UN continue to call for immediate action to ensure all Afghan girls can access education, emphasizing that lifting restrictions is crucial for the country’s future.

Millions of Girls Still Denied Education in Afghanistan, Says UK Envoy
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‘The UK is saying the same thing as the Taliban’: the women banned from studying in Britain

March 23, 2026

The Guardian

Mon 23 Mar 2026

Shahira Sadat was thrilled. She had received an invitation to interview for the prestigious Chevening scholarship. “I cannot describe the joy I felt,” she says. “I was hopeful. I allowed myself to dream.” The scholarships are funded by the UK government, enabling future leaders from all over the world to pursue their studies in the UK – most often a one-year master’s degree – developing skills they can use in their home countries.

In recent years, under Taliban rule, Sadat’s home country of Afghanistan has become increasingly hostile to women and girls, and the mother-of-one’s recent career achievements have happened behind closed doors. She is a software engineer, with an interest in AI and how it might help reduce the education gender gap and the digital exclusion of young people of both genders. Her skills could help generations of Afghan women, including her own daughter.

After receiving three offers from UK universities, she poured everything she had into her scholarship application. “I rewrote my essays again and again. I asked for feedback, reviewed every sentence, refined every idea. I spent sleepless nights thinking about how to best represent my goals and my country.”

On 5 March she received a devastating email. Her Chevening application, including an interview scheduled for 9 March, could no longer be taken forward, due to the visa brake. “I was so shocked,” she says. “I cried and cried for hours and woke up the next morning with a bad headache because I had cried so much.”

The offers were withdrawn because of a surprise announcement earlier that week from the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. This stated that study visas for students from four countries – Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan – are to be suspended. Mahmood considers that there has been abuse of the immigration system by some students from these countries, who have gone on to claim asylum in the UK.

There are other countries whose students come to the UK in much larger numbers – a proportion of whom also claim asylum after completing their studies – that are not facing a similar ban. A Home Office statement noted that asylum claims by students from Cameroon and Sudan “had spiked by more than 330%” before adding that this poses “an unsustainable threat to the UK’s asylum system”. However, while the percentage increase between Covid-era 2021 and 2025 is significant, the actual numbers are small – just a few hundred students. Nonetheless, Mahmood insists this “emergency brake” is necessary to control overall migration.

The women affected by the ban have always regarded the UK and its academic institutions as a beacon. In the world’s worst conflict zones, gifted young women study in hiding, swerving militias, earthquakes, power cuts, internet outages and the threat of starvation. Ironically, they want to study in the UK not to swell the country’s asylum figures, but so they can develop skills to help strengthen the fragile infrastructure back home, which may help reduce the number of people leaving these countries in future.

For Afghan women, says Sadat, “opportunities like Chevening are not just academic programmes – they are lifelines. They are rare doors that allow us to grow, to contribute and to remain connected to the world.”

Afra Elmahdi was floored by Mahmood’s announcement. A Sudanese dentist, she was looking forward to taking up a place at Oxford for an MSc in applied cancer science. Her research focuses on head and neck cancers, with a particular focus on oral cancers, researching saliva as a crucial biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis. As a clinician in Sudan, she has witnessed the human cost of late diagnosis, she says, and wants to address the cancer survival inequalities between developing and developed countries.

“We have applied for these scholarships while being displaced and surviving a war,” she says. “Although we have fulfilled all the universities’ requirements and got a yes, the Home Office is saying a bold, generalised and unjust no.”

Last year, Mariam* graduated from the University of Khartoum, in her home country of Sudan, with first class honours in planning. She was hoping to do her master’s in the field of the built environment, using her skills to help rebuild her war-torn country, and had been offered places at top universities, including University College London, the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester.

“This is the most difficult period Sudan has ever faced,” she says, “and for me, personally, the situation is fragile. We don’t have the resources for education right now and all the infrastructure is collapsing. I don’t have a plan B.

“I spent a long time writing a personal statement, obtaining and authenticating my certificates, and preparing a suitable CV. It took a lot of time and effort, because the internet network in my village is very bad.” She says Mahmood’s decision has “turned my life upside down. Now I will have to go back to square one.”

Sitara* from Afghanistan was entering her fifth year at medical school in Kabul when the Taliban took over and cut off university access for women. “It was like losing a part of my life,” she says. “My father works as a driver and he encouraged me to study medicine. I wanted to make my dad’s dream come true and to help people in my country, particularly women, who would often prefer to be treated by a female doctor, but they can’t, because there are so few.”

She applied to UK universities, hoping to finally qualify as a doctor. Now that dream is over.

“The Taliban don’t want girls to study, but now the UK is saying the same thing as the Taliban. All the doors have closed for us.”Like Sadat, Phyu Nwe Win, a master’s student in economics from Myanmar, had applied for the Chevening scholarship. She studies the relationship between economic development and women’s empowerment.

“Much of my work involves supporting young people,” she says, “particularly girls and adolescents, in areas such as leadership, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.” Studying abroad has become one of the few ways young people in Myanmar can continue their education, she says.

Like all the other distraught students from the four banned countries, Sadat is hoping for an 11th-hour reprieve from the home secretary.

“This is not just a simple scholarship to a UK university – it is something life-changing,” she says. “I don’t want to do this just for me, but also for my daughter, to build a better future for her and all the other girls in my country.”

* Some names have been changed

‘The UK is saying the same thing as the Taliban’: the women banned from studying in Britain
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Caught Between Two Conflicts, Afghans Flee Iran

March 23, 2026

By Elian Peltier

Reporting from the Afghanistan-Iran border and Herat, Afghanistan.

The New York Times

March 23, 2026

Fatima Sajjadi crossed the Iran-Afghanistan border last week after a two-day journey, still coughing from the smoke of burning oil in Tehran. A 26-year-old Afghan graduate student in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr, Ms. Sajjadi initially resisted going home when the war in Iran started, in part, she said, because of the many restrictions on women imposed by the Taliban government.

But as her dormitory was evacuated, her university closed and her health deteriorated, her parents pressed her to relent.

“We wanted to put up with the war, but after three weeks, fear weighs in,” Ms. Sajjadi said on a recent afternoon as she stepped back into Afghanistan.

Ms. Sajjadi, an M.B.A. student at Persian Gulf University, is one of thousands of students, construction workers, families and others from Afghanistan who have fled the conflict in Iran.

Afghanistan has received the largest influx of people from Iran since the war began in late February — more than 70,000 people over the first two weeks of March, according to the United Nations’ migration agency.

Although they have escaped the immediate danger of U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran, Afghans are returning to a country struggling with extreme poverty and where the Taliban’s tightening grip on society stifles the futures they were trying to build abroad.

They have also left a country at war only to risk being caught in the middle of another, with Afghanistan and another neighbor, Pakistan, embroiled in conflict.

In interviews with 20 people at the border crossing of Islam Qala in western Afghanistan, and in Herat, the largest city near the border, Afghans said the war has disrupted their educations and jobs, wiping out the safety nets they provided for relatives back home.

With 1,500 people crossing daily, the pace of returns has so far been much lower than last year, when Iran forced nearly two million Afghans out and up to 50,000 people crossed every day.

Yet Iranian officials have warned their Afghan counterparts and humanitarian organizations that they should brace for an increase in returns. Expulsions spiked shortly after Iran’s 12-day war with Israel last June amid a surge of xenophobia that aid groups fear may pick up again.

Iran became Afghanistan’s main trading partner last year after Pakistan closed its border with Afghanistan. But the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran has disrupted this partnership.

“Many Afghans rely on daily labor in Iran that can quickly disappear amid the ongoing conflict, and which could become a major driver of returns,” said Charlie Goodlake, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Afghanistan. “The country is already at breaking point in terms of reintegration capacity.”

Ms. Sajjadi was traveling with a friend, Khalida Ahmadi, and the two women said they were aware of the bleak future awaiting them. The Taliban have banned women from public spaces and most jobs, and nearly half of Afghanistan’s 44 million people need humanitarian assistance. In recent weeks, its cities, including the capital, Kabul, have been hit by airstrikes from Pakistan, which accuses the Afghan government of harboring terrorist groups.

“Kabul has been through war and at the moment, it’s not as bad as Tehran,” said Ms. Ahmadi, whose family lives in Kabul. Both said they would go back to Iran as soon as the war there recedes.

Afghan and Iranian officials have said that trade has continued uninterrupted, and a steady flow of trucks has come and gone through the border. More than 22,000 people also crossed from Afghanistan into Iran over the first two weeks of March.

But Afghan drivers said that products imported from third countries through Iranian ports are not coming through. And with money exchangers in both countries unable to communicate with one another, Afghans working in Iran have been unable to send money back home.

“It all goes through us, but we can’t make transfers,” said Abdul Qudos, a money exchanger in Herat, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities and an important hub for trade with Iran.

The U.S.-Israeli strikes have also injured dozens of Afghan workers, returnees said.

Khalil Ahmad lay on a mattress in his mud brick home near Herat one afternoon last week, surrounded by four of his six young children, who had not seen their father in months. Mr. Ahmad worked as a street cleaner for the municipality of Tehran, and as he stepped outside one evening recently to go to the bathroom, shrapnel from a strike on a nearby factory hit his left leg and foot, he said.

Mr. Ahmad, 35, had been sending $160 home monthly — the family’s only source of income. He made the 700-mile journey from Tehran to the border by bus, on crutches, uncertain if he could ever return to Iran to work.

Internet blackouts in Iran have also cut off families and pushed relatives to travel to the border edge, hoping to catch Iranian cell signals for news of a son or brother.

Abdul Ghafar sat on a mound of gravel by the border and tried to call his brother, who sent the equivalent of $200 a month from his construction job in Iran.

“Those who are in Iran can’t work, or not enough, because of the war,” said Mr. Ghafar, as he smoothed wrinkled papers with relatives’ numbers scribbled on them. “Families like us, on the other side, aren’t receiving the money our relatives usually send.”

The mass expulsions of nearly three million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan last year had already crippled Afghanistan’s economy and sent housing prices surging in cities like Herat and Kabul because of heightened demand.

The war in Iran is likely to deal the economy yet another blow, analysts say.

The Afghan economy grew by 4.3 percent last year, according to the World Bank, driven by higher demand for basic goods and housing from returnees. But that sharp population increase has also made individuals poorer: Growth domestic product per capita fell by 4 percent.

“Iran provided stability and assurance to the Afghan economy, and money transfers were the backbone of household survival,” said Nassim Majidi, the co-founder of Samuel Hall, a research firm based in Nairobi that recently released a report on the cost of deportations in Afghanistan. “It was an informal social protection system in a country where you don’t have any.”

Many Afghans crossing the border last week were coming home to celebrate Eid as part of the holy month of Ramadan. But many others cited fear and insecurity as the main reasons for leaving.

Barakat Ibrahimi, 36, came back with his two aging parents because his mother had issues breathing after the bombing of a petroleum depot in Tehran.

Masouma Husseini, 16, an art student, also fled with her family because of the war. “Painting requires patience, and I wasn’t able to focus,” she said. She said she planned to continue studying painting in Afghanistan online.

But many also said they didn’t know whether they would or could go back to Iran.

Javid Arwati, an Afghan business management student in Tehran, said he had to leave his degree unfinished. “We’ve lost three years,” he said, as he crossed the border.

Ms. Sajjadi, the graduate student at Persian Gulf University, said university officials had evacuated their dormitories on the first day of the war out of fear of airstrikes. “We thought civilians might also be targeted,” Ms. Sajjadi said, mentioning the U.S. strike on an Iranian school that killed at least 175 people. “Americans do not show mercy.”

Returning to Afghanistan puts her in another bind. “We can’t implement here the knowledge we’ve learned there,” Ms. Sajjadi said.

It took only hours for her and her friend, Ms. Ahmadi, to face restrictions in Afghanistan. When they reached Herat, a bus company refused Ms. Ahmadi a ticket to Kabul, citing a Taliban-imposed rule that bans women from traveling without a male companion.

Yaqoob Akbary and Kiana Hayeri contributed reporting.

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

Caught Between Two Conflicts, Afghans Flee Iran
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Afghan Journalist Mahdi Ansari Released From Bagram Prison After 18 Months in Custody

March 22, 2026
Khaama Press

The Afghanistan Journalists Center said Mahdi Ansari, a Kabul-based local journalist, has been released after spending one and a half years in Bagram prison, marking the end of a lengthy detention.

In a statement issued on Friday, the media watchdog welcomed his release and said Ansari’s fundamental rights had been seriously violated during his imprisonment on allegations linked to media work.

The center said Ansari had been detained over accusations of cooperating with foreign media outlets, describing his case as another troubling example of mounting pressure on journalists in Afghanistan.

According to the report, Ansari disappeared on October 6 last year after returning from work in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, before his family confirmed his arrest three days later.

Press freedom groups and media support organizations have repeatedly voiced concern over the detention, intimidation, and harassment of journalists since the political changes in Afghanistan in 2021.

Many Afghan journalists have faced threats, arbitrary arrests, censorship, or exile for reporting on sensitive political, security, and human rights issues in an increasingly restrictive media environment.

Ansari’s release is expected to be welcomed by advocates of press freedom, but it also highlights continuing concerns about journalist safety and shrinking space for independent reporting in Afghanistan.

Afghan Journalist Mahdi Ansari Released From Bagram Prison After 18 Months in Custody
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Pakistani strike killed hundreds, Afghanistan says, as regional conflicts boil

March 21, 2026
By Shaiq Hussain and Haq Nawaz Khan
The Washigton Post
19 March 2026
As attention focuses on Iran, the conflict between two of its neighbors is escalating.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani airstrike on a crowded drug rehabilitation center in Kabul killed more than 400 people earlier this week, Afghanistan’s health ministry said, amid an escalating conflict between countries that neighbor Iran.

Pakistani authorities acknowledged striking what it says were military targets in the Afghan capital but denied attacking the rehab center.

A funeral for dozens of people whose remains could not be identified drew mourners to the streets of Kabul on Wednesday. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister in Afghanistan’s Taliban government, decried the attack but warned against the impulse to seek revenge.

U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is posing challenges for Afghanistan and Pakistan as energy prices surge and remittances come under pressure. At least 10 people were killed in clashes with security forces during anti-war protests this month outside the U.S. Consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan, authorities there said.

Pakistan, facing security threats along multiple borders, has increased its attacks in Afghanistan.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have deteriorated since U.S. forces withdrew in 2021 and the Taliban returned to Kabul. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of harboring Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group that pledges loyalty to the Taliban’s leader in Afghanistan and has repeatedly attacked Pakistan. Days before the United States and Israel launched their campaign against Iran, tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan flared again into open conflict. With attention focused on Iran, Pakistan has carried out increasingly deadly strikes in Afghanistan.

Pakistani authorities called the Afghan figures propaganda. Pakistani forces, they said, attacked only military facilities Monday night.

“The addiction? The Afghan Taliban’s constant lies,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, a spokesman for Pakistan’s prime minister. “The cure? Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations.”

“No hospital, no drug rehabilitation center, and no civilian facility was targeted,” Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said. He posted a video of what he said were Pakistani strikes on “military installations in Kabul” on Monday night.

Trevor Ball, a conflict researcher for the investigative group Bellingcat, said the strikes seen in Tarar’s video could be geolocated to buildings within 400 meters of the rehab center. An overhead photo of the treatment center issued by Afghanistan’s national disaster management authority shows a wide path of wreckage that includes the buildings targeted in the video and most of the rehab center.

Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai told Sky News the strikes shook his house.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said “hundreds” of people were killed. “Civilians and civilian infrastructure must never be a target.”

The State Department said it was aware of reports of an attack on a rehab facility, but would not confirm details. “The Pakistani people have suffered greatly at the hands of terrorists, including the Taliban, who continue to allow Afghanistan to be used as a launching pad for horrific cross-border attacks,” the department told The Washington Post in a statement Wednesday. “The United States does not condone military targeting of civilians and supports Pakistan’s right to defend itself against attacks from the Taliban, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.”

Nawaz Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan. Meg Kelly in Washington and Imogen Piper in London contributed to this report.

Pakistani strike killed hundreds, Afghanistan says, as regional conflicts boil
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Ex-Pak envoy says Kabul truce will not last without action on TTP

March 20, 2026
Khaama Press

 

Former Pakistan special envoy for Afghanistan Asif Durrani has warned that the current ceasefire between the Taliban and Islamabad will not last unless concrete action is taken against Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

Writing on X on Thursday, Durrani said the pause in hostilities could turn into a durable truce only if the Afghan Taliban carry out a series of specific and practical measures.

He said the first step should be the formal confirmation and real enforcement of an order attributed to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada declaring jihad in Pakistan to be forbidden.

Durrani stressed that the reported order should not remain a symbolic statement and must be seriously implemented at every level of the Taliban structure.

He also called the disarmament of TTP members inside Afghanistan essential, saying the current situation weakens state authority and threatens wider regional stability.

Durrani said the Taliban should also stop fundraising by TTP members and supporters, especially through mosques and informal religious networks.

He added that TTP leaders should not be allowed to use Afghanistan soil to plan or carry out attacks inside Pakistan, while Afghan citizens should be clearly barred from joining such operations.

The Taliban have denied supporting TTP and say they will not allow Afghanistan territory to be used against neighboring countries, but Durrani said lasting calm depends on visible action.

Ex-Pak envoy says Kabul truce will not last without action on TTP
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Afghanistan Again Ranked World’s Unhappiest Country

March 20, 2026
Khaama Press
Daily life around Afghanistan moves forward as U.S.Army Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion 19th Special Forces Group of the W.Va, Army National Guard conduct missions around the country in support of Operation Enduring Freedom XIII. 

Afghanistan has again been ranked the world’s unhappiest country, while Finland was named the happiest nation for the ninth consecutive year in the latest World Happiness Report. The report says Afghanistan has moved in the opposite direction since 2013, with Afghan women recording the lowest average life satisfaction levels.

The annual report is based on Gallup World Poll data collected through interviews with people in more than 147 countries. It measures life evaluations as well as positive and negative emotions, and ranks countries using factors including quality of life, economic conditions, life expectancy, freedom, trust, fairness and confidence in government.

According to the report, Afghanistan had the lowest level of positive emotions and was also among the five countries with the highest negative emotions. It said the average life evaluation for Afghan women stood at just 1.2 out of 10, underscoring the extreme hardship many women face in the country.

Iceland, Denmark and Costa Rica followed Finland among the top-ranked countries, while Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Luxembourg and Switzerland also placed in the global top 10. Costa Rica’s rise to fourth marked the best result ever recorded for a Latin American country in the report.

At the bottom of the ranking, Sierra Leone was listed as the second unhappiest country after Afghanistan with a score of 3.2, while Botswana, Zimbabwe and Malawi were also among the least happy countries. Afghanistan was the only country in the report to score below 3 points overall, highlighting how far it fell behind even other low-ranked states.

The report was produced in partnership with Gallup, the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an editorial board for the annual publication. Its findings are closely watched because they combine survey responses with broader indicators that shape how people judge their lives.

For Afghanistan, the findings add to a growing body of international evidence showing deep distress across society, especially among women. Researchers have repeatedly linked low wellbeing to insecurity, economic collapse, social restrictions, weak public trust and the loss of opportunities, all of which continue to weigh heavily on everyday life.

The latest ranking reinforces the scale of Afghanistan’s human crisis and the widening gap between it and the rest of the world on basic wellbeing. While Finland’s result reflects stability and strong social trust, Afghanistan’s position points to a country where daily life remains defined by hardship, fear and very limited hope for improvement.

Afghanistan Again Ranked World’s Unhappiest Country
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Pakistan Pauses Afghanistan Airstrikes After Outrage Over Civilian Deaths

March 19, 2026

By Elian PeltierSafiullah Padshah and Zia ur-Rehman

Elian Peltier reported from Herat, Afghanistan, Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Zia ur-Rehman from Islamabad, Pakistan.

The New York Times

March 18, 2026

At least 143 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul on Monday, according to a top U.N. official.

Facing growing pressure from international agencies and foreign governments, Pakistan said on Wednesday that it would pause its campaign of airstrikes against its neighbor, Afghanistan, for five days of Eid al Fitr celebrations, which mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The announcement came two days after a Pakistani airstrike hit a drug rehabilitation center in the Afghan capital, Kabul — the deadliest single strike in an escalating conflict that has already killed hundreds and displaced 40,000 people in Afghanistan and put Pakistan on edge.

At least 143 civilians were confirmed dead in the strike on the rehabilitation center, according to a United Nations official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing U.N. investigation into the strike. The official said at least 119 others were injured, and that the death toll was likely to rise.

Pakistan, claiming to be targeting military sites, has carried out dozens of airstrikes on military infrastructure that have also hit or damaged health facilities and civilian homes. Afghanistan has responded with border raids and rudimentary drone attacks.

Shortly after Pakistan’s announcement that it was pausing its airstrikes, Afghanistan also announced a pause in its military operations, said Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has vowed to punish the Taliban government for harboring an Islamist terrorist group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, that has staged hundreds of attacks on its soil in recent years.

The Taliban government has denied hosting the group, despite repeated assessments from U.N. independent experts that it has enjoyed a safe haven in Afghanistan and financial support from the country’s leadership.

Until Wednesday, both Afghanistan and Pakistan had vowed further escalation in the conflict, ignoring calls by China, a close partner to both, to engage in talks. Pakistan’s information minister, Ataullah Tarar, said in a social media post on Wednesday that the pause in the military campaign came at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

A top Afghan government official called for talks to de-escalate the conflict.

“We do not have the spirit of revenge. Our doors for dialogue and negotiations are open,” said Afghanistan’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who for years oversaw the Taliban’s most lethal suicide squads. Mr. Haqqani spoke during the funeral for dozens of the victims killed in Monday’s strike on the drug rehabilitation center, named Omid, or “Hope,” in the Dari language.

The Omid facility sits in a former U.S. military base less than three miles from Kabul’s international airport and is run by the Afghan Interior Ministry, which also manages the country’s counternarcotics department.

Pakistan claimed responsibility for the strike but maintains that it had targeted a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.”

A senior Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the continuing military campaign, said Pakistan was aware that the Taliban government had hosted a drug rehabilitation center years ago. He said the military had intelligence that the broader compound housing the center was also used to train suicide bombers and store drones.

The official didn’t respond to a follow-up request for details on that intelligence, or about whether Pakistan was aware that the drug rehabilitation center was still operational at the time of the strike.

“Those who were killed were drug addicts, and they were all civilians and innocent people,” Mr. Haqqani said at the funeral. “They had no connection with any military group or government.”

Pakistan’s ultimate goal for its military campaign remains unclear.

“The minimum Pakistan will do is what we’re seeing now,” Qamar Cheema, a Pakistani security analyst, said about the airstrike campaign. “The maximum we could see is elimination of the top leadership.”

Privately, Afghan officials and top representatives of international institutions in Kabul say they believe that Pakistan might be seeking to topple the Taliban government. The United States has said that Pakistan has a right to defend itself — a stance that Pakistani officials have said that they interpret as a green light to conduct their operations.

Amid fear of retaliation for its air raids on Afghanistan, Pakistan has tightened security in its major cities. Officials have barricaded the capital, Islamabad, with dozens of checkpoints, reducing the number of entry points into the city from over 100 to 25.

A senior police official in Islamabad, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about security measures, said intelligence officials feared that the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups could attempt to strike Pakistan with encouragement from the Taliban government in Kabul. He cited recent statements by the groups threatening new attacks.

Although the Pakistani government and military have so far enjoyed wide public support for the campaign, some political figures have expressed growing concern over the humanitarian cost of the cross-border conflict.

Three Pashtun ethnic political parties issued a joint statement earlier this week urging both governments to de-escalate.

“Unless there is a clear change in Pakistan’s policy toward Afghanistan,” the statement read, “The continuation of this war will put civilian lives at even greater risk.”

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

Pakistan Pauses Afghanistan Airstrikes After Outrage Over Civilian Deaths
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As Pakistan and Afghanistan declare truce, civilians in Kabul count the cost of war

March 19, 2026

By

National Public Radio

March 19, 20268:11 AM ET

A crowd gathers outside Kabul's Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital.

A crowd gathers outside Kabul’s Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, where the United Nations says an airstrike killed more than 100 people on Monday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — On Monday night, residents living near the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in the Afghan capital heard a sharp sound tearing through the sky, followed by an explosion.

Two days later, Abdul Basir Watan joined dozens of inmates’ families crowding outside the hospital in central Kabul. They listened to doctors donning white medical gowns read out the names of survivors over a megaphone. A faint smell of burnt wood and plastic hung in the air. Through the bars of the iron gates, they saw a mound of concrete and metal where a building once stood.

Watan said his cousin Zamarek was seeking drug addiction treatment at this facility for the past four months. “He is not on the list of wounded. He is not on the list of dead,” said Watan. Someone had told him of bulldozers digging mass graves at a Kabul cemetery for those who couldn’t be identified. “I will go and pray there,” he says.

Taliban officials say a Pakistani airstrike hit the hospital, killing more than 400 people and injuring more than 250. According to estimates provided by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, at least 143 people died and 119 were wounded in the attack.

Pakistan says it had struck only a “military and terrorist infrastructure.”

But Georgette Gagnon, officer-in-charge of the U.N. mission, told NPR that the facility was “a well-known rehabilitation center” run by the Taliban’s interior ministry. “Our colleagues who visited the place found widespread destruction, including complete destruction of one block that housed adolescents receiving drug treatment.”

As Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid vowed retaliation following the strike, further escalations seemed imminent. But by Wednesday, both neighboring countries announced a five-day ceasefire for the celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid.

The hospital attack was the deadliest in the three-week fighting between the two countries. Islamabad accuses the Taliban regime of giving safe haven to Islamist groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) that carry out armed attacks in Pakistan. In retaliation, Pakistan has closed borders, halted trade and expelled millions of Afghans over the past year.

Tensions peaked last October as the two countries carried out cross-border strikes. At the time, Qatar and Turkey mediated a fragile ceasefire. But negotiations broke down shortly after.

“While Pakistan’s goals in degrading and punishing the Taliban government seem clear enough, it is unclear how they link to the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan,” says Ibrahim Bahiss, an Afghan expert with the International Crisis Group.

“Pakistan claims there’s a sprawling network of the TTP in Afghanistan. But we have not seen clear proof of any senior TTP bases or leaders being targeted. Oftentimes, the target is either the Afghan Taliban military installations or Afghan security military installations,” he says.

At the heart of the issue, says Bahiss, is Pakistan’s linking of many internal conflicts to powers beyond its borders.

“They’ve lumped everything together. The TTP is a Taliban proxy. The BLA is an Indian proxy. And then the Taliban are Indian proxies,” he says. “But when you’re looking at it from an analytical point of view, it is a slightly confusing picture.”

Meanwhile, families in Kabul continue to count this war’s cost.

At the Emergency Hospital in Kabul, dozens crowded around a thick book to check the names of the victims. Sahil, who goes only by one name, ran his finger down a page, searching for his brother Mohammad Yahya. Unable to find him, he walked along a cement path to the morgue.

Three bodies lay on metal beds. They were charred, covered in cotton sheets. Sahil couldn’t identify his brother in any of them.

By the time he left the morgue, the skies had darkened. He walked past women in veils, crying out the names of the ones they lost, and headed to another hospital. There were two left to search.

As Pakistan and Afghanistan declare truce, civilians in Kabul count the cost of war
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Afghan Officials Say Hundreds Dead in Pakistani Airstrike on Kabul

March 17, 2026

By Safiullah Padshah and Elian Peltier

Safiullah Padshah reported from the site of the airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan. Elian Peltier reported from Herat, Afghanistan.

The New York Times

March 17, 2026

The attack hit a drug rehabilitation facility, Afghanistan said, suggesting that its victims included civilians. Pakistan said it had targeted an ammunitions depot.

At least 400 people were killed and 250 others injured on Monday night after a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack of the three-month conflict between the two neighbors.

As emergency workers pulled bodies from smoking rubble in the Afghan capital, Pakistani military and government officials called statements from their Afghan counterparts “false claims.” They claimed responsibility for the strike, as part of six strikes carried out on Afghanistan, but said the target had been an ammunition depot.

A Taliban spokesman warned on Tuesday that Afghanistan would retaliate, further escalating the risk of all-out war between the countries, whose populations share deep cultural bonds and whose government officials regularly met until tensions sharply escalated in late February.

Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of harboring an Islamist terrorist group responsible for hundreds of attacks in Pakistan in recent years. Though Pakistan’s ultimate objective remains unclear, it has pummeled Afghan military infrastructure with strikes that have also hit or damaged civilian homes, refugee camps and more than 20 health facilities, according to the United Nations.

The compound hit by the Pakistani airstrike on Monday housed a drug rehabilitation facility run by the Taliban government and was widely recognized as such by local residents and nonprofits. A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Health said 200 patients were staying in the building that had been struck and left in ruins.

A billboard atop an adjacent, charred building read “Support and Treatment Center, Omid” — or “hope” in the Dari language. On Tuesday, hundreds of people pressed against the compound’s entrance, many inquiring after relatives admitted to the center.

On Tuesday, Basmina Khudadadi stood in front of the compound’s entrance as she asked for news about her brother, whom she said had been admitted there about six weeks ago. She had brought him fresh clothes last month, she said.

“We have not informed his wife yet,” Ms. Khudadadi said.

Dejan Panic, the country director for Emergency, a nonprofit operating a hospital in Kabul, said 27 people had been admitted to the hospital, including one woman.

“Among the locations hit was an addiction treatment center,” Mr. Panic said. “We call for health care facilities to always be respected.”

A reporter who visited the site of the strike shortly after it was hit on Monday, and again on Tuesday, saw at least 80 bodies being pulled from the rubble or in body bags.

“The numbers are in the hundreds,” Jacopo Caridi, the head of the Afghanistan office for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nonprofit, said about casualties after visiting the site. He said he had seen no military facilities in the immediate area.

In a statement on Tuesday, Pakistan’s minister of information, Attaullah Tarar, said: “All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime.”

Pakistani officials declared an “open war” against the Taliban government on Feb. 26, and have launched dozens of attacks on Afghanistan.

As of Sunday, at least 75 civilians had been killed and 115,000 others had been displaced, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The United States has said that Pakistan has a right to defend itself — a stance that Pakistani officials have in private said they interpret as a green light to conduct their operations. Pakistan has ignored calls for dialogue made by China, its primary partner, despite public mediation efforts over the past week.

Some facilities built during the U.S. war in Afghanistan have been repurposed by the Taliban authorities, including former military bases now housing religious schools. The Omid drug rehabilitation center was set in a former U.S. military base, less than three miles away from Kabul’s international airport.

By Tuesday, dozens of bloodstained mattresses lay scattered among the debris as firefighters and emergency teams carried bodies into ambulances, under the close watch of hundreds of armed personnel.

The destroyed building, Afghan officials said, was a 180-foot-long structure that was used for meals and prayer. In smaller adjacent buildings, the debris contained white and blue patient gowns, identical sandals, and bottles of medicinal syrup.

Pictures taken throughout the night and shared by emergency workers with The New York Times showed no sign of weapons, ammunition or military equipment in the targeted building.

Other buildings adjacent to the large structure, each containing 20 to 30 bunk beds, also caught fire. White and blue gowns and identical sandals that looked like part of uniforms distributed to patients, as well as bottles of syrup and pills, could be found in the debris.

Afghanistan has long been the world’s leading source of illegally produced opium, but a ban by the Afghan authorities led to a sharp decline in opium production in 2023. Still, the use of cannabis, methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs remains a major public health concern and Afghan officials have interned thousands of people suffering from drug addiction in recent years.

Mr. Tarar, the Pakistani minister, said that there had been secondary detonations at the site, a sign that ammunition depots had been hit.

Across the compound, the smell of burned flesh, mixed with those of explosives and melted iron, filled the air.

As flames were still raging in the early hours of Tuesday, Muhammad Haidari, 23, stood dumbfounded near the facility, in search for answers about his two uncles that he said had been admitted at the center in February.

“I don’t know if they are alive or dead,” Mr. Haidari said. “Each one has children and family waiting for them to return home.” 

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

Afghan Officials Say Hundreds Dead in Pakistani Airstrike on Kabul
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