Afghanistan marks 5 years under the Taliban with safer streets but pleas for jobs and education

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

By ABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN and SUZAN FRASER

Associated Press

August 14, 2026

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — As Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers mark five years since sweeping back to power, some Kabul residents say they feel safer after decades of conflict and upheaval but stress the leaders should now focus on creating jobs and expanding access to schools in the country where girls above the age of 12 are banned from education.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, after it launched an offensive as the U.S. and other NATO troops withdrew from the country after two decades of war. The withdrawal led to chaotic scenes at and around Kabul’s airport with thousands wanting to leave.

“Thank God, the past five years have passed in safety,” said Mohammad Qasim, 30, reflecting on the anniversary that comes against a backdrop of economic hardship in a conflict-stricken country. “Our wish and hope from the government is to create job opportunities for the youth.”

“We, along with the entire nation, call upon the government to create employment opportunities for the youth and to encourage them to pursue education,” he added.

Taliban curbs women’s rights despite pledge

Before the takeover, the Taliban stated that, upon assuming power, it would allow women access to education, employment and public participation, albeit in accordance with its interpretation of Islamic principles.

Soon after it seized power, the Taliban imposed an indefinite ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and, a few months later, also banned higher education for women until “further notice.”

Women also were banned from entering gyms, parks and public baths, from taking part in sports and traveling to distant locations without a “mahram,” or male guardian.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has repeatedly said the administration is working to establish conditions under which girls and women can attend classrooms or university campuses in line with Islamic Sharia laws. The restrictions, nevertheless, remain in force.

While the United Nations has acknowledged that the country has become more stable since the takeover, it has warned that lasting stability cannot be possible unless the Taliban rulers — who remain isolated internationally — lift restrictions on women and girls, protect basic rights and address terrorism concerns.

“A reduction in conflict has brought tangible benefits for many Afghans and created opportunities to focus on recovery, development and regional economic cooperation,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, said in a statement ahead of the anniversary. It added, however, that the restrictions on women and girls impede Afghanistan’s recovery and its reintegration with the international community.

UN says Afghanistan in world’s most severe women’s rights crisis

In a statement this week, the U.N.’s agency on women’s rights said Afghan women and girls are living under the world’s most severe restrictions, which not only violate their rights but also threaten the country’s social and economic future.

“Half a decade after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan has systematically dismantled the rights of half its population, making it a global outlier with no parallel in the modern world,” U.N. Women said.

“In the past year alone, this exclusion of women and girls from education, employment, public life, justice systems and healthcare has only intensified, entrenching what remains the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis,” it said.

Fazila Soroush, a 39-year-old Kabul-based entrepreneur and an advocate for women’s rights, said the government had “demonstrated its worth to the people through its actions in every area.”

“We consider it essential that the officials of the Islamic Emirate who had announced the closure of schools and universities until further notice, now make a clear and practical decision regarding this matter,” she said.

In the streets of Kabul, preparations for the anniversary celebrations were underway. Vendors sold the Taliban’s white with black scripted flags while painters were busy writing slogans in praise of Islamic laws on walls, including: “The Islamic system has been achieved at the cost of the martyrs’ blood” and “Our commitment stands firm: Consolidation and implementation of Islamic Sharia.”

Taliban says it brought security and stability

Molvi Hayatullah Mahajar Farahi, deputy minister in the Taliban government for broadcasting at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said in the five years the administration has delivered security, stabilized the currency, improved infrastructure and formed industrial parks that have created jobs.

“Naturally, challenges and difficulties exist, yet we can highlight several accomplishments,” Farahi told The Associated Press.

Farahi, when asked, did not address the issue of the education of girls and women but said “the level of investment made in universities surpasses anything seen in the past.

“The Emirate continues its efforts to further organize and improve services for our citizens in the fields of education and other sectors,” he stated.

The deputy minister rejected a U.N. report that documented terrorist networks in Afghanistan, saying “these are merely enemy propaganda, spread to portray the country as unstable.”

Asked to comment about its international isolation, Farahi insisted the Taliban government was engaged with some 40 countries. The Taliban government currently is only formally recognized by Russia.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has fulfilled all the requirements necessary for official recognition. It is now up to the international community and others to step forward and take the appropriate action,” he said.

UN points to broader educational crisis

The bans have left an estimated 2.4 million girls excluded from secondary education, UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said this week — a 200,000 increase from last year. The restrictions have reversed two decades of progress that Afghanistan had made in education, the agency said.

Pointing at a broader educational crisis, the agency said 53% of primary school-aged children are out of school. Schools lack basic infrastructure such as water, sanitation or heating, while natural disasters have also led to hundreds of school closures.

Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program said child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces and is expected to worsen as funding shortfalls force cuts in food distributions and other support.

Speaking Friday from Kabul, the special representative for the U.N. women’s agency Sarah Ferguson urged donors not to abandon Afghan women and girls, saying the agency is getting only a quarter of what it needs. She said more than half the 74 women’s organizations surveyed in April in Afghanistan said they were close to suspending or halting work because of aid cuts.

In Kabul, Dost Mohammad Khan expressed support for the Taliban administration, saying the past five years have brought stability. He said, however, that the country needs trained professionals such as doctors and engineers, urging the authorities to keep “all sectors operational.”

“We also call upon the Islamic Emirate to permit women to attend school under the sharia dress code and we urge the public to heed the directives of the Emirate also,” said the 38-year-old.

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.

Islamic Emirate Leader Criticizes Int’l Community Over Non-Recognition

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

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16 August 2026

Afghan Fund Earns Over $661M in Profits, Assets Reach $4.19 Billion

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

Bibi Amina Hakimi

TOLOnews’ Reporter

16 August 2026

He stressed that any use of the fund’s assets would only be possible under specific legal conditions and after the necessary safeguards are in place.

The Afghan Fund has earned more than $661 million in profits since its establishment, and its total assets had reached $4.19 billion as of Asad 9 of the current solar year (July 31).

Shah Mohammad Mehrabi, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Afghan Fund, says the fund was established to safeguard Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves and, under specific conditions, support exchange-rate and price stability.

He added that the fund was not created to finance government expenditures, provide humanitarian assistance, or make direct payments to organizations. Rather, its primary purpose is to preserve the foreign exchange reserves and increase their value through prudent management.

Mehrabi said: “As of Asad 9 this year, the fund’s assets had reached $4.19 billion, and it has earned more than $661 million in profits since its establishment. This growth, without drawing down the principal, shows that the fund’s main objective is to preserve and increase the value of Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves, not to spend them.”

Mehrabi added that given Afghanistan’s dependence on imports and the importance of the afghani’s exchange rate against the US dollar, preserving foreign exchange reserves can help stabilize the national currency and prevent sharp price fluctuations.

He stressed that any use of the fund’s assets would only be possible under specific legal conditions and after the necessary safeguards are in place.

Mehrabi said: “This fund was not created for day-to-day expenditures. Its role is to preserve foreign exchange reserves, manage financial risks, and keep these assets available for a time when Afghanistan can once again make normal use of its central bank reserves.”

Abdul Basir Taraki, an economic analyst, said: “If this money has been frozen for five years and remains unavailable to the Islamic Emirate, there is no doubt that if this continues, the economic situation of the people will worsen day by day.”

Meanwhile, the Islamic Emirate is calling on the United States to fully release Afghanistan’s assets.

Abdul Latif Nazari, Professional Deputy Minister of Economy, said: “More than $8 billion in assets belonging to the people of Afghanistan have been frozen by the United States. We want these assets to be released as soon as possible and made available to the Afghan people. The continuation of this situation is contrary to international law and the principles of international relations.”

Azizurrahman Rahmani, an economic analyst, said: “The more of these assets that are returned to our country and can be used by the government in the economy, the greater the positive impact they can have on Afghanistan’s overall economy, including its GDP.”

The Afghan Fund was established in Switzerland on September 14, 2022, with an initial $3.5 billion in reserves from Afghanistan’s central bank.

724 Aid Trucks Enter Afghanistan Through Torkham Border Crossing, Pakistan Says

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

August 16, 2026

Pakistan said 724 trucks carrying humanitarian assistance have crossed into Afghanistan through the Torkham border crossing, delivering aid to families in need amid the country’s continuing humanitarian crisis.

Pakistan Today reported that Muhammad Yahya, the UN humanitarian coordinator and resident representative in Pakistan, said the trucks transported relief supplies through Torkham. He thanked the Pakistani government and others involved in keeping the humanitarian route open.

Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar also welcomed the movement of aid, saying Islamabad supports humanitarian efforts to deliver assistance to vulnerable families in Afghanistan.

The aid shipments come as trade and movement across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have faced repeated disruptions in recent months because of security tensions and disagreements between the two countries. Humanitarian agencies have continued seeking ways to maintain access for essential supplies despite the restrictions.

Last month, 21 of 26 trucks carrying World Food Programme assistance also entered Afghanistan through Torkham, according to the report.

The continued flow of humanitarian supplies is significant as Afghanistan faces widespread poverty, food insecurity and growing humanitarian needs. UN agencies and aid organizations have warned that funding shortages and access constraints could further affect vulnerable communities.

The border situation is also linked to wider tensions between Kabul and Islamabad. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban authorities of allowing Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants to operate from Afghanistan territory, allegations the Taliban authorities reject. Kabul has maintained that insecurity in Pakistan is an internal matter.

Despite these political and security tensions, the movement of humanitarian convoys through Torkham provides an important channel for delivering food and other essential assistance to vulnerable Afghans.

Natural Disasters Affect 92,000 People in Afghanistan, OCHA Says

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

August 16, 2026

Natural disasters have affected more than 92,000 people across all 34 provinces of Afghanistan since the beginning of 2026, killing at least 97 people and injuring 331 others, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

OCHA said in a report on Sunday, August 16, that nearly 10,000 homes were damaged, while more than 2,100 homes were completely destroyed. Overall, nearly 13,000 families have been affected by natural disasters since the start of the year.

Floods and flash floods have been the main drivers of humanitarian needs linked to natural disasters, affecting nearly 88,000 people. The scale of the flooding has added pressure to communities already facing widespread poverty, displacement and limited access to essential services.

OCHA said that between July 20 and August 3 alone, nearly 5,000 people in 10 provinces were affected by natural disasters. The provinces included Nuristan, Kabul, Ghazni, Kapisa and Parwan.

Eastern Afghanistan has recorded the highest number of people affected, with more than 51,000 people impacted by natural disasters. Southern and western parts of the country have also suffered significant damage, according to OCHA.

The destruction has extended beyond homes. Damage to agricultural land, roads and other essential infrastructure has disrupted livelihoods and increased the vulnerability of affected families. For households that depend heavily on farming, the loss of homes and productive land can create longer-term food and income insecurity.

OCHA warned that the destruction caused by natural disasters is increasing the reliance of vulnerable families on humanitarian assistance. The impact is particularly serious in communities that have limited resources to rebuild homes, restore farmland or replace damaged household assets.

The latest figures come as Afghanistan continues to face a severe humanitarian situation, with millions of people already dependent on humanitarian assistance. Recurrent floods, droughts, earthquakes and other natural hazards are compounding existing economic and social pressures and making recovery more difficult for vulnerable communities.

Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly stressed the need for adequate funding and early preparedness to reduce the impact of natural disasters, particularly as extreme weather events continue to pose a major risk to communities across Afghanistan.

Entrenched, Embattled and Defiant, the Taliban Celebrate 5 Years in Power

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

By Elian Peltier

Elian Peltier is The Times’s Afghanistan bureau chief.

The New York Times

Aug. 15, 2026

The Taliban have Afghanistan in a chokehold that spares no one. But threats are starting to crack their veneer of stability and control.

The black and white flags of the Taliban were flying high along the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, as the group celebrated five years in power on Saturday.

Shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove casually in front of graffiti praising the Taliban fighters’ “sacrifice,” the word painted in crimson, with depictions of drops of blood. Young Afghans chanted independence songs below posters hailing how “the carpet of democracy” had been removed for Islamic rule.

But the triumphant tone is only half the story. The Taliban may be boisterous in Kabul and have a tight grip on power, yet elsewhere they find themselves targeted and face crises both at home and abroad.

They face a conflict just short of open war with neighboring Pakistan. They’re dealing with new waves of attacks from armed groups that want to topple them. Add to that mass unemployment, international isolation and growing domestic discontent, and the Taliban face their most serious threats since their return to power in 2021.

It is too early to tell whether all those challenges will escalate and threaten their survival as a governing force. And as the scenes of celebration on Saturday showed, the Taliban are popular among many.

Still, the threats they face have cracked the veneer of security and stability that the Taliban have heralded as their primary achievement — and their main selling point to the world.

As workers were preparing Kabul for celebrations on Thursday, a resistance group claimed responsibility for the killing of the Taliban mayor of a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. Two weeks earlier, another Taliban official had been assassinated in the same province.

A tight grip on power — and yet

The Taliban are holding Afghan society in a chokehold that spares no one. Girls and women face restrictions to a degree unseen anywhere else in the world. Religious minorities are witnessing the forced closure of their places of worship. Anyone who voices criticism is repressed. United Nations staff members face arrests; journalists and rights workers suffer forced disappearances.

The Taliban are collecting taxes and building roads, dams and canals. European countries have welcomed them in Brussels to facilitate the deportation of Afghan migrants and asylum seekers. They have expanded trade ties with Central Asian states and want the Trump administration to come back to Afghanistan.

Troubles in the north

Sporadic sounds of gunfire reverberated across the remote mountains of northeastern Afghanistan on a recent evening. Weary Taliban fighters peppered drivers with questions at checkpoints dotting the main road snaking through the province of Badakhshan.

On the same road, two attackers had killed a senior provincial Talib official a week earlier. A small group of anti-Taliban fighters had briefly seized control of a police headquarters in a nearby district.

Now fighting between the Taliban and another group opposing their rule was continuing in another district of Badakhshan. The province, bordering China, Pakistan and Tajikistan, is emerging as a hot spot.

On a trip to the province this month, we talked to residents ready to support anti-Taliban groups because they said they were fed up with the Taliban’s iron grip, the lack of job opportunities and the government’s confiscation of natural resources.

We drove through dozens of checkpoints and witnessed the heavy presence of intelligence officers in the isolated village where anti-Taliban fighters had stormed police headquarters.

The clashes and the attacks have so far been scattered. The leader of one of the anti-Taliban groups described them as “opportunity targets” aimed at challenging the Taliban’s sense of control. But the leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s strategy, said the number of attacks would only increase in coming months.

Tensions in the east

An underequipped Afghan Army waits nervously at the border with Pakistan. Once a sponsor of the Taliban, Pakistan has launched dozens of airstrikes on Afghanistan, killing 500 civilians since October, according to the United Nations, and has threatened to use even more force if the Taliban don’t rein in militants who are staging attacks on Pakistani territory.

The mistrust goes both ways: The Taliban have accused Pakistan of supporting the armed groups that have attacked Taliban outposts in Badakhshan.

Whether, or to what extent, Pakistan is actively supporting anti-Taliban groups is not clear, but suspicions are running high.

“The Pakistanis are happy to be portrayed now as a potential patron for the armed opposition to the Taliban, because that increases their leverage over the group,” said Fabrizio Foschini, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

Food, education and the economy

The picture on the domestic front is also grim. Extreme hunger has been spreading fast from one province to another after aid cuts last year plunged millions into deeper food insecurity. The Taliban’s ban on secondary and university education for women and girls is stifling development, experts say.

The Taliban have deprived 2.4 million Afghan girls of an education, according to UNESCO — the equivalent of all school-age girls in New York, Mexico City and Moscow combined — forced to stay home indefinitely.

Some scattered signs of discontent have popped up. At a rare protest in June, demonstrators chanted “Work, education, freedom,” similar to what their Iranian neighbors chanted in 2022. And the leader of a large religious minority warned the Taliban in May: Don’t squeeze Afghan society too much, or it will explode.

The potential to spiral?

The Taliban know the world wants a stable Afghanistan — one that isn’t a source of refugees, drugs or terrorism.

They assert that the country no longer poses a security threat to the region or the West. They say that they have cracked down on the Islamic State, and that they want peaceful relations, based on trade and diplomacy, including with the U.S.

Since the Taliban no longer carry out suicide attacks, bomb schools or target the security forces they now represent, their main argument may hold.

They don’t want their various crises to spiral either.

All the ingredients for things to get out of control in Afghanistan again are here, analysts say: A vast population of unemployed young Afghans are fertile ground for radicalization, especially as economic opportunities are nearly nonexistent. And with animosity growing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is unclear who might come to the Taliban’s aid: Afghanistan is, once again, a pariah state, with barely any allies.

The past five years have brought some predictability and an end to almost two decades of fighting, which many Afghans have welcomed, despite the immense hardship and repression. But the country remains shattered, and the fragile peace is already at risk.

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

Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan

August 16, 2026 Current News Articles

Jason Burke

The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.

Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare.

Campaigners fear that the individual contacts by different countries risk undermining “coherent, consistent” demands for an improvement in human rights in return for any diplomatic concessions.

The United Nations described a recent “cascade of [Taliban] edicts and laws” that have banned women from universities and most employment, denied teenage girls education and imposed strict dress codes. Minorities have been persecuted, while activists and journalists face repression. Afghanistan has become a “graveyard for human rights,” the UN said in March.

India, Qatar, China, Iran and several central Asian states all recently welcomed Taliban officials or opened new channels of communication. Russia, which recognised the Taliban government in Kabul just over a year ago, signed a military cooperation agreement last month. In June, the European Union held talks with Taliban officials in Brussels about returning failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan. Individual European countries have also deepened their own contacts with Kabul.

“There is no doubt there has been an evolution. The Islamic emirate is now in a confident position. They have realised they are indispensable for regional countries right now and even with Europe and the US they have identified how to engage,” said Shivam Shekhawat, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.4:33

“The Taliban see any kind of contact as a diplomatic win and they have been able to capitalise on that as a sign granting legitimacy to the regime.”

A strict policy of isolation imposed after the Taliban seized power in 2021 towards informal or “de facto” recognition is now fragmenting. Some western commentators have suggested more countries recognise the regime. Others want intensified “back channel” engagement.

“We are not against any engagement … There is a need for engagement even if just for aid agencies to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis but we are worried about the end goal of these contacts and the discussions that are taking place,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“There should be a consistent and coherent message from the international community to the Taliban that they will not have any friends if they do not show real progress in terms of the women’s rights and human rights situation … and that is not happening.”

The new contacts stem from a combination of regional security concerns, pressure in the west to reduce illegal immigration and a general recognition that the Taliban are unlikely to be forced from power in the foreseeable future.

The meeting prompted outrage.

“You cannot condemn Taliban abuses in one breath and then announce talks on immigration in the next … The Taliban are telling their constituency back home that they are now accepted by the international community,” said Abbasi.

This year officials from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have all visited Kabul or other Afghan cities, seeking trade routes and pipeline deals that would allow their landlocked countries access to seaports or third countries beyond.

India too has moved to reinforce relationships that were frosty after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, in part to exploit new tensions between the movement and the Islamist movement’s historic sponsors, Pakistan.

New Delhi secured a sanctions waiver last year so that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister and a veteran official who has spent decades at the heart of the movement, could travel there.

In June, India’s UN envoy suggested a rethink was necessary on sanctions, such as travel bans, asset freezes and arms embargoes, that target dozens of Taliban members.

“The political reality of Afghanistan has changed in the last five years, and the current UN sanctions regime must take that into account,” said Harish Parvathaneni.

Afghan authorities’ diplomatic strategy has involved hosting envoys in Kabul, including those from China, Japan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Last year, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, made the first visit by an Iranian foreign minister to Kabul for almost a decade.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “seeks relations with all countries”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, though “the countries of the region and our neighbouring states have particular importance, because our economic ties and interests are closely linked”.

Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute focusing on Russia’s policy towards the Middle East, said Moscow had multiple reasons for recognising the Taliban regime and seeking closer relations.

“One likely objective is simply having allies … Afghanistan is also very significant for Russia geographically and Russia just wants influence in that part of the world. There was an opening and they were able to take it,” Borshchevskaya said.

“It’s a very cold, cynical calculation. It’s part of a very simple zero-sum view that for Russia to win the US has to lose. From the Kremlin perspective, this is a global battle and whether you are looking at Europe or Afghanistan or wherever, it’s one geopolitical chessboard.”

Britain has said it pursues a policy of “limited and pragmatic” engagement with Taliban officials, largely through the UK Mission to Afghanistan based at the British embassy in Qatar. Discreet meetings with the Taliban have also repeatedly been held by other western countries in Qatar. In Germany and at least four other western European capitals, key consulates are now controlled by the Taliban, not representatives of the former Afghan government.

Taliban officials have also sought cross-border infrastructure projects to boost the country’s fragile economy and diplomacy. Natural resources are another lure for overseas powers. Kabul has expanded the mining sector, attracting firms from neighbouring China and elsewhere.

China, which is worried about Islamic militancy on and around its south-western borders, has welcomed Taliban officials in recent years, and hosted talks when Afghanistan and Pakistan went to war earlier this year.

The Taliban are split, with deep disagreements on the ban on women’s education among other issues, but remain dominated by the most conservative factions. Recent laws have further reinforced repression, designating many religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, as heretics and imposing strict punishments to silence dissent.

Other new laws recognise only “excessive” beating as domestic violence against women and facilitate the marriage of girls without their consent.

Analysts do not believe the Taliban are likely to moderate their position in the near future and point to the continuing authority of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive and authoritarian cleric leader.

Ramin Mansoori, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Endowment who studies Afghan politics, said the Taliban’s priority was its domestic agenda.

“They are not going to make any significant concessions. Most of them don’t have an international perspective,” Mansoori said.

The Taliban Kicked the U.S. Out of Afghanistan. Now They Want It Back.

August 14, 2026 Current News Articles

By Elian Peltier

Elian Peltier, the Times’s Afghanistan bureau chief, interviewed the country’s foreign minister in Kabul.

The New York Times

Aug. 14, 2026

In an interview, Afghanistan’s foreign minister called on the U.S. to reopen its embassy and invest in the country — a near-impossible sell for now, analysts and former diplomats say.

Five years after driving the United States out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are inviting it to come back — with diplomats and cash, but no military.

“We consider the chapter of war to have come to an end, and from now on, we want relations based on mutual respect and a new chapter of positive engagement,” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said in an interview with The New York Times in Kabul.

Mr. Muttaqi said the United States could “reopen its embassy, maintain a diplomatic presence and invest” in Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, dams and roads — projects that three U.S. administrations and their allies spent billions trying to develop, and that the Taliban insurgency spent two decades trying to dismantle.

The public overture, the first by such a high-ranking Taliban official in years, is the Afghan government’s latest push in a long effort to extract the country from isolation, with mixed results.

Over the past year, the Taliban administration has signed a defense partnership with Russia and secured dozens of trade agreements with Central Asian neighbors like Uzbekistan. Some of its officials regularly travel to Gulf countries and have met with Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. It is also cooperating with European countries eager to deport Afghan migrants.

The government would see renewed engagement with the Trump administration, with its appetite for commercial diplomacy and little consideration for human rights, as the crowning achievement of its diplomatic efforts, according to five former U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with Kabul’s approach.

The Taliban argue that they have brought order and security across Afghanistan, cleaned its administration of corruption and created favorable conditions for foreign investment.

But efforts to engage with the United States have stalled.

“There is no appetite in D.C.,” said Hassan Abbas, a U.S.-based scholar and the author of a recent book on the Taliban in power. “No one wants to touch this topic. Everyone wants to forget about Afghanistan.”

In fact, the Trump administration has further distanced itself from the Taliban over the past year.

It has moved closer to one of Afghanistan’s neighbors, Pakistan, which launched dozens of airstrikes on Afghanistan earlier this year. It is embroiled in a conflict with another neighbor, Iran, one of the Taliban’s few steady partners. It has also designated the Taliban as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, paused issuing visas for Afghans and barred them from traveling to the United States.

The Taliban have also rebuffed President Trump on the few things he has publicly asked for, including regaining control of Bagram Air Base, which U.S. forces occupied for 20 years; the return of U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan; and the release of a U.S. prisoner whom the Taliban deny holding.

“No Afghan wants or can tolerate the military presence of another country on Afghan soil, as history has demonstrated,” Mr. Muttaqi said at the foreign ministry this week, sitting in a plush armchair with the white flag of the Taliban behind him.

In a written response to questions, the U.S. State Department rejected the prospect of normalization. The response, attributed to “a department spokesperson,” said the Taliban had failed to make Afghanistan more stable and uphold counterterrorism commitments, instead allowing terrorist groups to use Afghanistan as a launchpad for attacks.

It said the United States engages with the Taliban “only when it is in the interest of the American people.”

A veteran member of the Taliban and a central figure in past negotiations between the United States and the group before it swept back to power, Mr. Muttaqi said his administration wanted to reopen diplomatic missions in the United States.

Mr. Muttaqi, 55, also confirmed that Afghanistan was negotiating migration agreements with European countries.

“We have made progress in this area, and we hope to make significant further progress in the future,” Mr. Muttaqi said, without elaborating.

In recent months, the Afghan government held several bilateral meetings on migration with countries like Germany and France. A delegation of five Afghan diplomats also met more than 20 diplomats from 15 E.U. countries in Brussels in June to discuss repatriating rejected asylum seekers and convicted criminals, according to three participants and an official briefed on the discussions.

One of the participants, an Afghan diplomat, said that in Europe, the taboo of talking to the Taliban had been broken and that Afghanistan would now engage in bilateral discussions with all interested countries to finalize agreements.

Still, no European country recognizes the Taliban administration as Afghanistan’s legitimate authority, and the government remains a pariah excluded from international bodies like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

The Taliban’s ultraconservative leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over the persecution of Afghan women and girls. And the United States has frozen billions of dollars from the Afghan Central Bank.

And yet, a growing chorus of analysts and former diplomats in the United States is calling for renewed U.S.-Afghan dialogue beyond counterterrorism cooperation against the Islamic State and prisoner negotiations.

Mr. Trump has the opportunity to do what President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could not, said Robin Raphel, a former U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moving past the current paralysis, Ms. Raphel said, could create new access to minerals, strengthen relations with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors, and counter China and Russia, which do trade and have diplomats in the country.

“But that requires hands-on engagement through a U.S. presence in Kabul, which remains a hard sell in Washington,” Ms. Raphel said.

In an initial exchange with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Muttaqi highlighted Afghanistan’s mines as a potential starting point for a “new chapter for the two countries.”

“I view President Trump’s deal-making ability, pragmatic approach and decisiveness as factors that can facilitate constructive engagement with his administration,” Mr. Muttaqi said.

Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the D.C.-based Atlantic Council, said minerals were the right pitch to make to the Trump administration. Afghanistan holds vast untapped reserves of lithium, copper and iron ore, as well as rare earth elements that are on the U.S. Geological Survey’s list of critical minerals.

“Values-based considerations like brutality and the Taliban’s horrific treatment of women and girls would not necessarily keep this administration from engaging with the Taliban, particularly if that could help advance U.S. economic interests,” Mr. Kugelman said.

Discussions around Afghanistan’s mineral wealth are not new.

The United States spent nearly $1 billion between 2004 and 2021 to develop Afghanistan’s extractive industry but failed to accomplish any “tangible progress,” according to a 2023 report from SIGAR, the defunct U.S. government oversight agency for Afghanistan. The Taliban administration now holds mining investment deals with companies from China, Iran and Qatar, among others.

Beyond the United States, Mr. Muttaqi called on any country to invest in Afghanistan, where the Taliban administration is in desperate need of foreign capital.

Half of its estimated 45 million people require humanitarian assistance dwindled by U.S. aid cuts last year, according to the United Nations. About four million Afghans have returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran since early 2025, in one of the largest episodes of reverse migration in decades.

Pakistan, which used to be Afghanistan’s primary trade partner, has closed its border over security concerns, sending the Taliban scrambling for alternative avenues of trade with Central Asian states, Iran and India.

During the interview, Mr. Muttaqi brushed aside a question about whether his government’s crackdown on women and girls was a barrier to international recognition. Earlier this year, he declared the government’s move to keep them out of secondary education was “temporary” — an argument the Taliban also used during their first rule, between 1996 and 2001, when Mr. Muttaqi served as education minister, and immediately after their return to power in 2021.

Mr. Abbas, the academic, said he expected the Taliban to remain isolated as long as they refused to move on their most extreme policies — which are largely dictated out of the city of Kandahar, the group’s spiritual heartland and home to Sheikh Akhundzada.

“Without compromising, without changing anything that they stand for, it is a no-starter,” Mr. Abbas said. “Something has to happen, and the Taliban are not offering that.”

Yaqoob Akbary and Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting.

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

Islamic Emirate FM: There Is No Need for Dialogue With the Opposition

August 14, 2026 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

14 August2026

He described the Islamic Emirate government as “inclusive” and said there is no need for dialogue with its opponents.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate, has told the BBC that the people of Afghanistan are satisfied with the current government and that the Islamic Emirate enjoys support across the country.

He described the Islamic Emirate government as “inclusive” and said there is no need for dialogue with its opponents.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate, said: “Over the past five years, there have been no problems across the country’s 34 provinces, 400 districts and thousands of villages. If a problem arises in just one village, that is all. This demonstrates the people’s satisfaction.”

Regarding foreign relations, Muttaqi said Afghanistan currently has more than 40 active embassies and consulates and described Kabul’s relations with countries around the world as good.

He added that the decision not to recognize the Islamic Emirate depends on the policies of other countries.

Amir Khan Muttaqi said: “Do United Nations rules say that a government is recognized if it is inclusive and is not recognized if it is not? Don’t we see governments in the world today that came to power through coups? Aren’t there hereditary governments? Aren’t there governments centered around individuals? If such principles exist in UN rules, then someone should show us that this is a principle and that it must be followed.”

Regarding girls’ education, he said that education beyond the sixth grade has been postponed “until further notice,” while girls continue to receive education in religious schools.

Muttaqi said: “Regarding women, it is not the case that everything has been completely shut down in every sector. We see that more than three million female students are studying in religious schools and regular schools. In religious schools, they can continue their studies to the end, and they also have modern subjects.”

These remarks come as the United Nations said in a statement yesterday that improvements in the security situation have created opportunities for development and economic cooperation. However, restrictions imposed on women and girls, as well as concerns about terrorism, remain among Afghanistan’s challenges.

Abbas fought the Taliban alongside US and Australian troops. Now exiled in Iran, he feels abandoned

August 14, 2026 Current News Articles

Ben Doherty

As a child, the first iteration of Taliban rule forced his family to flee – with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what food they could carry – for the relative safety of far-distant hills.

War became his profession. Joining republican Afghanistan’s fledgling army, Abbas fought alongside American, Australian and British troops, believing in the foreigners’ ultimately false promise that they could bring peace and prosperity to his homeland.

Conflict is his constant attendant now, over Afghanistan’s border in neighbouring Iran, as the US, the country he fought with, rains bombs on the land of his exile. Back home, the resurgent Taliban – unreformed, unrepentant and firmly in charge – seek him still.

The war – for all its varied complexions, it feels the same war – goes on.

In the five years since Kabul dramatically fell back into the hands of the Taliban, those who served Afghanistan’s republican government have found themselves the targets of violent retribution. Those who took up arms against the Taliban are particular targets.

Abandoned US military databases – containing Afghans’ personal and biometric data such as fingerprints, photographs, and home addresses – are being used to hunt former soldiers who served the “infidel” west.

Social media groups share information of the latest atrocities, videos of former soldiers being whipped in the street, shot in summary executions, or dragged away in night raids to be tortured in Taliban prisons.

Abbas joined the military – initially at least – for the money. For a poor boy from the provinces, the army represented a regular income and a full belly, a reliable way to support his family. That there was a war on was barely a consideration: there was always a war on.

After basic training he passed a selection course to serve in the special forces.

“At first I joined for money but when I entered the commandos everything changed,” Abbas tells the Guardian. “There were foreign forces teaching us … they gave speeches about global terrorism.

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“It was not about money any more. I became very committed, I just wanted to serve my country and fight Taliban and destroy the terrorist groups.”

He spent 12 years in the Afghan national army, most of those wearing the distinctive red badge of the special forces, “and we fought many hard battles”.

Abbas served alongside Australian troops in southern Afghanistan, night-time missions by helicopter in late 2011, in the restive and mountainous Khas Uruzgan district.

“There were many forces we served with: Germans in Kunduz, French in Kapisa, and especially we were with Americans. The Australian forces were in Uruzgan, and we went there. We took part in combat alongside them, especially in Khas Uruzgan, we … executed two missions with them by air.”

Abbas said he and his comrades “were always on the frontline”.

“We spent many days and nights with foreign forces. I performed combat duties in [approximately] 20 provinces of Afghanistan.”

He was wounded in a firefight in Laghman district, shot twice at close range. His bulletproof vest deflected the bullet that struck the left side of his chest, “but another hit my left arm, breaking the bone”. He was taken by US helicopter to Bagram hospital: “I still have a metal plate in my left arm.”

Abbas remembers the camaraderie of his days serving alongside western troops with fondness: “We risked our lives to help each other on and off the battlefield and to rescue one another. They always called us brothers.”

But he remembers too, the commitments that were made to him.

Soldiers standing beside tank — Abbas served alongside Australian troops in southern Afghanistan, night-time missions by helicopter in late 2011, in the Khas Uruzgan district. Photograph: supplied

“They promised they wouldn’t abandon us. But in the end, when they withdrew, they simply left us. And they did it in such a way that we were left with our hands tied, the entire army was disarmed.

“Those who were high-ranking officials left, while the rest of us, sergeants like me, were left behind. No one even asked about us.”

When Kabul fell, Abbas was forced to burn most of his documents and destroy photographs: incriminating evidence in the eyes of the Taliban.

A bare handful remain secretly in his possession: pictures on patrol with western forces, certificates of appreciation from foreign militaries commending his “outstanding commitment, dedication and support” to their operations.

Life since the fall, with a wife and young son, has been precarious, often dangerous. His has been a shifting, uncertain existence in the shadows.

As the Taliban swept northwards across Afghanistan, expanding and consolidating its control from the major cities to smaller, more distant villages, there were fewer and fewer places to hide.

With his family, Abbas fled over Afghanistan’s arid, inhospitable border into Iran.

There, with no legal rights, he is vulnerable to exploitation and extortion: landlords demand thousands of dollars for tiny apartments that have been condemned as unfit for habitation; he has been forced to take dangerous, illegal work for far less than a living wage.

X-ray of a metal plate in Abbas’s arm — Abbas was wounded in a firefight in Laghman district, shot twice at close range. ‘I still have a metal plate in my left arm.’ Photograph: Supplied

When US bombs started raining down on Tehran, Abbas and his family fled once again for the mountainous countryside.

“Our life in Iran is very difficult, refugees face a lot of problems. Especially for us former military personnel … we are still being threatened by Taliban groups even here. We also fear that we might be deported to Afghanistan.”

Abbas said his family’s future depends on being able to find a safe country, far from the reach of the Taliban, and the American war which has blighted his Iranian exile.

“I am waiting to see what will happen, but I am hopeful … I will build a better life for my family, a better future for my son.”

Many in Afghanistan feel as Abbas does – betrayed by the foreign forces in whom they placed their trust.

On the day of his second inauguration as US president, Donald Trump halted all Afghan refugee resettlement by executive order. The shutdown left more than 1,000 Afghan former interpreters and soldiers stranded in a US-run camp in Qatar, and hundreds of thousands more vetted applicants stuck in neighbouring countries like Pakistan.

In Germany, a new government sought to renege on a commitment to resettling hundreds of Afghan refugees it had identified as being at risk. The country’s highest court ruled it could not arbitrarily cancel hundreds of resettlement places it had already promised.

And in Britain, a House of Commons committee report this month reported that a massive data breach from within the UK government’s Afghan relocations and assistance policy exposed thousands of Afghans to potentially life-threatening danger. Afghans still trapped inside the country are being told by the UK government to “self-move” to safe third countries, a policy that “risks excluding people the UK has promised to help,” the committee chair, Tan Dhesi, said.

A spokesperson for Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said five years on from the fall of Kabul: “We stand firm in our pursuit to do all we can to protect the people of Afghanistan from the oppressive acts of the Taliban, particularly women and girls.

“We also remain committed to assisting those who helped Australia’s mission in Afghanistan.”

Until 2023 the Australian government ran a dedicated “locally engaged employee” (LEE) program for Afghans who worked for and with Australia “and are at risk of harm as a result of their work”.

The program certified 2,059 Afghans – but only 1,208 of those have reached Australia, according to the latest government figures (along with 4,493 immediate family members).

But hundreds of Afghans still living in hiding inside the country, or stranded in perilous situations elsewhere, say they were unable to apply before the LEE program closed, or had their applications rejected despite providing evidence of support for Australia, including fighting alongside Australian troops. A government review of the program found it was riven by “delays, double handling and confusion”, and it imposed an unreasonable administrative burden on those fleeing the Taliban seeking safety.

Abbas has family in Australia, and, having fought alongside Australian troops on their missions in Afghanistan, he applied for LEE protection from Australia.

He was rejected, the government ruling he had not been “in a direct employment relationship with defence”.

Zaki Haidari wearing glasses and a green T-shirt — ‘Many people who supported Australia’s mission remain at risk and continue to wait for protection’, says former Afghan refugee and Amnesty International advocate Zaki Haidari

“While the applicant might have worked alongside the coalition forces, including members of the Australian Defence Force in partnership on operations in Afghanistan, it does not appear that the applicant was ‘employed with’ the ADF,” the government decision states.

Wong’s spokesperson said the current government had approved more LEE applications than any before it. “Since the Albanese government took office, Dfat has certified close to 650 applications from Afghan Locally Engaged Employees, more than the total approved under all previous foreign ministers combined since the program began in 2013.”

Australia, too, has provided broader support – more than $310m in humanitarian assistance, through established partners and UN agencies – “to ensure our aid supports those most in need – not the Taliban”.

Zaki Haidari, a former Afghan refugee who is now an Australian citizen, remains in close contact with dozens of former soldiers, interpreters and others who supported western nations in their failed two-decade mission in Afghanistan.

“Almost every conversation I have with people inside Afghanistan is filled with fear, uncertainty and hopelessness. Families tell me they struggle to afford food, many have lost their livelihoods, and parents worry constantly about the future of their children,” Haidari, Amnesty International’s Australian refugee rights advocate, says.

Haidari said women live under constant surveillance, fearing arrest for speaking out or failing to comply with the Taliban’s ever-tightening restrictions. Members of the Hazara ethnic and religious minority – for decades Taliban targets – are forcibly evicted from homes, and face discrimination and violence.

Haidari said Australia’s LEE program “undoubtedly saved lives”, but there were still thousands endangered by their support and assistance for Australia.

Hopes that a Taliban desperate for international legitimacy would temper their more repressive instincts have proven illusory: with global attention shifted to other conflicts, the Taliban has further entrenched their brutality across Afghanistan.

Australia’s obligation to the people of Afghanistan “did not end with the military withdrawal”, Haidari says.

“Many people who supported Australia’s mission remain at risk and continue to wait for protection.

“Many fear for their lives every day.”

*Name/s have been changed

By ABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN and SUZAN FRASER

Taliban curbs women’s rights despite pledge

UN says Afghanistan in world’s most severe women’s rights crisis

Taliban says it brought security and stability

UN points to broader educational crisis

A tight grip on power — and yet

Troubles in the north

Tensions in the east

Food, education and the economy

The potential to spiral?

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