Afghanistan Peace CampaignSpecial Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction final report
December 3, 2025
Primary documents
BREAKING NEWS: Urgent need for aid.
September 8, 2025
Analytical articles, Primary documents
A devastating 6+ magnitude earthquake has struck Afghanistan, killing at least 800 people and leaving over 2,500 injured in communities across the country.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is on the ground, mobilizing emergency shelter and lifesaving relief items to affected areas. However, we need your help to provide emergency aid. Your donation will rush aid within 72 hours to the most vulnerable communities.
This disaster is another blow for the people of Afghanistan, who are already living through multiple crises. Millions are facing extreme poverty and hunger, as well as the impact of decades of conflict, a severe drought and economic collapse. More than 2.4 million Afghans have returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan this year, to communities that are already struggling.
Multiple crises are unfolding at once, and our resources are stretched to the breaking point. Supporters like you are needed now more than ever.
Please rush an emergency gift.
UNRefugees.org/AfghanistanRelief
Sincerely,
-USA for UNHCR
August 5, 2025
A Broken Aid System: Delivering U.S. Assistance to Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan
September 4, 2025
Analytical articles, Primary documents
Report | Aug. 13, 2025
https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/lessons-learned/SIGAR-25-29-LL.pdf
Afghanistan Reconstruction
July 28, 2025
Primary documents
SIGAR Afghanistan Reconstruction
APR 30, 2025
Link to download full report:
https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Quarterly-Reports/2025-04-30qr.pdf
MOST U.S. ASSISTANCE TERMINATED
On January 20, President Trump issued Executive Order 14169, “Reevaluating
and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” initiating a 90-day pause in foreign
development assistance for “assessment of programmatic efficiencies and
consistency with United States foreign policy.” All department and agency
heads responsible for foreign assistance programs were required to pause
new obligations and disbursements of assistance funds to foreign countries,
nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors.
The Director of the Office of Management and Budget was instructed to work
with department and agency heads to determine whether to continue, modify,
or cease each foreign assistance program.
In implementing the executive order, Secretary of State Marco
Rubio issued a memorandum on January 24 pausing all new State
Department (State) and United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) funding for foreign assistance programs.
Additionally, Secretary Rubio directed all officers administering foreign
assistance grants and contracts to issue stop-work orders to their
implementing partners. USAID leadership reiterated these instructions
in a directive to all agency personnel.
By January 27, multiple USAID implementing partners working in Afghanistan told SIGAR they had
received notices of temporary program suspensions.
Waivers for Life-Saving Emergency Assistance Programs
On January 28, Secretary Rubio issued waivers from the foreign
assistance pause to existing State and USAID programs that provide
life-saving medicine, medical services, food, and subsistence assistance.
State programs funded through its humanitarian Migration and Refugee
Assistance account were also included in the waiver to continue life-saving
care and repatriation of third-country nationals to their country of origin or
a safe third country.
However, despite the waiver, humanitarian operations
did not immediately resume. State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and
Migration (PRM) told SIGAR that its programs remained suspended while
the Office of Management and Budget reviewed them separately.
Review of USAID Programs
Following Secretary of State Rubio’s waiver notice, President Trump
appointed him as Acting USAID Administrator on February 3. Secretary
Rubio then notified Congress that a comprehensive review of USAID’s
foreign assistance was underway, “with an eye towards potential
reorganization,” to ensure its alignment with the State Department and
“an America First agenda.”
Secretary Rubio said the primary aim of the
review was to determine whether each U.S.-funded program made the
United States safer, stronger, and/or more prosperous.
Begum Academy Launches Offline Learning App to Empower Afghan Girls
April 1, 2025
Current News Articles, Primary documents
As the new academic year begins in Afghanistan, it also marks the third consecutive year that girls above the age of 12 have been denied access to formal education. In response to these ongoing restrictions, Begum Academy, a digital education initiative founded by Afghan entrepreneur Hamida Aman in November 2023, continues to expand its services to support learning opportunities for girls.
Begum Academy was launched to provide free educational content aligned with Afghanistan’s official curriculum for grades 7 through 12. The platform currently hosts more than 8,000 instructional videos in both Dari and Pashto. Thousands of users have joined the platform since its launch, accessing lessons in subjects ranging from mathematics to literature.
To address connectivity issues that limit access to online learning in many parts of the country, the Academy has developed a mobile application that allows students to access content without the need for an internet connection. Supported by the Malala Fund, the app is now available on the App Store and Google Play.
The application also includes interactive features such as student discussion forums, direct messaging with instructors, customizable avatars, and a weekly activity leaderboard. According to project staff, these elements are designed to encourage engagement and create a more connected learning environment.
Elissa Rocheteau, Educational Project Manager for Begum Academy, stated that incorporating interactive elements into the app was intended to improve user experience and help students feel part of a broader learning community.
To enhance support, Begum Academy has also increased its academic team. As of this school year, 20 subject teachers—10 in Dari and 10 in Pashto—are available to assist students with questions and guidance.
In addition to academic courses, the Academy is preparing to introduce vocational training programs within the app. These programs aim to provide learners with practical skills that may contribute to employment opportunities and personal development.
Aman noted that the Academy is also exploring offline technology solutions through a partnership with a French startup. The collaboration is focused on developing portable devices that will allow students in remote or underserved areas to access the Academy’s educational content without requiring an internet connection.
While access to education for girls in Afghanistan remains limited due to current policies, initiatives like Begum Academy are working to provide alternative pathways to learning for those affected.
The Begum Academy app can be downloaded here:
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/begum-academy/id6741149474
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.corvit_mobile_bow
SIGAR Quarterly Report to Congress, Jan. 30, 2025
February 3, 2025
Analytical articles, Primary documents
Special Inspector General for
SIGAR Afghanistan Reconstruction
Quarterly Report to Congress
January 30, 2023
https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Quarterly-Reports/2025-01-30qr.pdf
State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review
September 10, 2024
Analytical articles, Primary documents
U.S. Department of State
OFFICE OF THE SPOKESPERSON
The Department appreciates the Committee’s longstanding interest in Afghanistan policy, and we strongly believe in Congress’s independent role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. We remain committed to working with Congress on its oversight requests and advancing the interests of the American people.
Since 2021, we have expended thousands of hours fulfilling congressional requests for documents, briefings, and interviews related to Afghanistan. The Department has provided approximately 20,000 pages of documents to Congress, conducted nine high-level briefings for committees and members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and made available or engaged 15 senior officials for transcribed interviews to House Foreign Affairs Committee staff and members. This includes the Department taking the unprecedented step of providing Congress with a highly-sensitive cable and internal memos related to the Department’s After-Action Review.
Additionally, Secretary Blinken has testified before House and Senate Committees 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times directly before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It was critical to have done so. Americans deserved to hear directly from their leaders on the decisions made to end America’s longest war and the steps taken to fulfill our commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of two decades.
As the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority and Minority members complete their review of the 2021 withdrawal from Kabul, the Department wants to especially recognize the dedicated State and Department of Defense professionals who showed extraordinary courage and tenacity as they worked tirelessly on the ground in Afghanistan, in Washington, and at other sites, alongside other critical U.S. Government and civil society partners, to evacuate and assist as many people as possible in the closing days of our presence in Kabul. Our people remain our greatest asset.
We also share our abiding respect and reverence for the 13 servicemembers whose lives were taken by ISIS-K during the withdrawal. These heroes embodied the very best of who we are as a nation and we owe them an immense debt we can never repay. Their selfless sacrifice in the line of duty saved thousands of lives. Our deepest sympathies are with the Gold Star families they left behind.
**
Ending America’s longest war was never going to be easy. But President Biden pledged to do so, and within months of taking office, he made the difficult but necessary decision to end America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan. He inherited an agreement his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. As part of that agreement, the previous Administration compelled the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including several top war commanders helping the Taliban achieve their strongest position in 20 years. Meanwhile, the agreement reduced our force presence to 2,500 troops.[1] And while the Taliban had agreed to cease attacks on our troops, it was contingent that all were withdrawn by the May 31 deadline.
It was, and remains, a flawed agreement that hampered efforts to end the war through negotiations among Afghans. As General McKenzie, the CENTCOM Commander who served both the current and past administration, testified: “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military…”[2]
Due to this agreement, when the Biden Administration entered office it found a revitalized and emboldened Taliban, along with a decimated SIV program and a complete lack of planning for a withdrawal.
The President acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America’s longest war. This decision ensured another generation of Americans would not have to fight and die in Afghanistan — a full decade after Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice. It strengthened our national security by better positioning us to confront the challenges of the future and put the United States in a stronger place to lead the world. It freed up critical military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other resources to ensure we are better poised to respond to today’s threats to international peace and stability – whether that be Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on Ukraine, China’s increasingly assertive moves in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, or a persistent and global terrorist threat.
**
In the three years since the end of our country’s longest war, important questions have been asked about what could have been done differently. The Department has made every effort to answer these questions transparently – whether they be from Congress, members of the media, the American public, or our own workforce.
As the Department has undertaken this effort, regrettably, others have sought to advance their own interests or agendas that have almost nothing to do with learning important lessons to strengthen American national security. Even more unfortunately, misinformation about the Department’s role and efforts have sought to tarnish the reputation of dedicated non-partisan professionals, many of whom tirelessly worked on Afghanistan policy for years.
The Department has a deep respect for Congress’ legislative mandate and responsibility, and as stated above, cooperated extensively with the Congress to provide the information necessary to do that important work. This is why it remains frustrating that time and time again, Majority members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with their Republican counterparts in the House, issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture.
Their so-called midterm report on Afghanistan in 2022 did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions. There is little reason to believe the final report will be anything different than the conclusion of a blatantly partisan exercise.
**
One of the most persistent misunderstandings of the leadup to the withdrawal was that the State Department lacked a strategy, specifically a “Noncombatant Evacuation Operations” plan to close operations in Afghanistan. This is not accurate.[3]
Noncombatant evacuation operations – often called NEOs – are partnerships between the Department, the U.S. military, and the host government to “assist the Department of State (DOS) in evacuating noncombatants, nonessential military personnel, selected host-nation citizens, and third country nationals whose lives are in danger from locations in a host foreign nation to an appropriate safe haven and/or the United States,” as described by the United States Military Joint Publication. The planning for a NEO originates within the State Department before the President approves the action to bring in the military to assist in any needed evacuations. It is a whole-of-government action — planned and decided through a National Security Council process — and statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are inaccurate.
State Department officials who spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee explained during their hours-long interviews that there was extensive planning by the State Department for a possible diplomatic exit from Afghanistan. Planning began in April 2021, with multiple inter-agency and embassy exercises, using a range of scenarios. The inter-agency developed detailed indicators and warnings to inform a decision to declare a NEO — including the encirclement or siege of Kabul, the closure of HKIA, resumed attacks on American forces, and a declared or demonstrated Taliban intent to take Kabul.
As Brian McKeon, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources during the Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, described, there was continued development of a NEO between the State Department, the Department of Defense, and CENTCOM – with the latter traveling to Kabul in July of 2021 to “further refine the NEO planning.”[4]
Additionally, the U.S. government intended for the U.S. Embassy to remain open after the end of the war — a decision Congress broadly supported. So, while U.S. military forces would end combat operations, Department personnel planned to operate out of Embassy Kabul to assist Americans and Afghan allies, coordinate diplomatic and development activity and investments, and help protect and advance U.S. national security interests after August 2021. Given those expectations, along with the continued operation of commercial flights out of Kabul until August 15, executing the NEO before that date would have signaled to the people of Afghanistan the U.S. had lost all confidence in the then-Afghan government and precipitated the very collapse we sought to avoid.
The government of Afghanistan controlled all 34 Provincial Capitals until August 6. Between August 6 and the 14, they began to fall rapidly, crossing the indicator and warning trip wires established by the inter-agency. On August 14, State initiated the NEO through an inter-agency agreement. On August 15, President Ghani abandoned his office and fled the country, and the Afghanistan Republic security services and government collapsed. The Taliban then entered Kabul.
Again, while the State Department formally triggers a NEO, the decision to do so is a collective, inter-agency one, coordinated by a National Security Council process that includes multiple Principal and Deputies Committee meetings. Statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are false – moreover, principal-level discussions did not conclude a NEO should be initiated prior to the collective interagency decision that was reached on August 14.
Executing a NEO requires substantial military and diplomatic resources, so the State Department, alongside our military colleagues, quickly adapted to the situation on the ground.
Throughout the crisis, there was intense coordination between military and Department personnel. As former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass described, there was engagement “on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis in terms of the operational coordination of aspects of the NEO” engagement with “the senior military commanders regularly.”[5]
A NEO is but one tool in the diplomatic toolbox, and one of last resort. And NEO planning was far from the only preparation State took in the weeks and months leading up to August 2021.[6]
In March, the Department began urging Americans living in Afghanistan to leave the country. At the end of April, the State Department placed Embassy Kabul on ordered departure status.[7] That same month, State senior leaders and officials traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan alongside Department of Defense personnel to prepare for the forthcoming absence of the United States military in the region.[8] In total, between March and August, the Department sent 19 unique messages with warnings to Americans living in Afghanistan to leave, as well as offers of help, including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets.[9]
Despite these efforts, when Kabul fell, approximately 6,000 American citizens remained in Afghanistan — almost all dual nationals who had been living in Afghanistan for years or decades. Almost all were evacuated by August 31 thanks to a relentless effort by the State Department to identify them, contact them, and help bring them to the airport. This effort included more than 55,000 phone calls and 33,000 emails in a two-week period. It was unprecedented in scope and scale.
On August 31, several hundred American citizens remained in Afghanistan who could not or would not leave because they could not reach the airport, did not want to leave extended family members behind, or simply chose to remain. Secretary Blinken vowed to facilitate the departure of any remaining Americans. “We’re continuing our relentless efforts to help any remaining Americans… leave Afghanistan if they so choose,”[10] the Secretary said publicly. Between September 1 and the end of 2021, the State Department made good on that pledge, facilitating the departure of nearly 500 American citizens.
In February of 2021, the President took a crucial step to ensure America lived up to its enduring commitment to the individuals who stood side-by-side with us in Afghanistan by issuing an executive order directing a review to improve the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which was undertaken with great care. Domestic resettlement agencies have traditionally welcomed Afghan SIVs to the United States, but these critical partners had been deliberately left in shambles by the previous Administration and needed massive investments to be reinvigorated.[11]
As the White House’s summary of Pentagon reviews of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan details: “The Department of State began seeking transit agreements for Afghans with third countries in June, secured agreements with Qatar and Kuwait in July, and negotiated arrangements with other countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Kosovo, and Albania. Setting up this network of transit sites— “lily pads”—would not have been possible without the support of international partners across the Middle East and Europe.”[12]
In late July, the State Department, along with the Department of Defense and interagency partners, initiated Operation Allies Refuge to begin evacuating SIV applicants in the final stages of processing.[13] U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Europe worked successfully and quickly with host government and Department of Defense personnel to establish temporary housing for tens of thousands of evacuees. During the U.S.-facilitated evacuation, vulnerable Afghans went to overseas Defense Department facilities for security screening, vetting, and the administration of public health vaccinations.[14] Afghan evacuees were then transported by air to eight Department of Defense domestic safe-havens. More than 10,000 State, Defense, and Homeland Security personnel supported this unprecedented humanitarian effort alongside other U.S. Government partners and a cross-section of America.[15]
Throughout the first half of 2021, the Administration was constantly assessing the likelihood of President Ashraf Ghani’s government’s staying in power and considered multiple scenarios. Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict the government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained. As General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has previously said, “Nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”[16] In an August 14 2021, phone call to Secretary Blinken, President Ghani expressed his intent “to fight to the death” to stave off the Taliban takeover before subsequently fleeing the next day.[17]
Nonetheless, we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies. Because of that planning, we were able to draw down our embassy and move remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military, which had pre-positioned in the region, was able to secure the airport and start the evacuation within 72 hours.[18]
The U.S. Government achieved the largest airlift in U.S. history with approximately 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals departing Afghanistan in those final two weeks of August 2021.[19]
Throughout this process, the Department relied heavily on the expertise and guidance of those on the ground and across the globe to assess the fluid environment in Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has spoken publicly of his respect and appreciation for the selfless work of all these individuals, who stepped up to help others in their time of need, and his commitment to hearing from any State Department employee who wanted to share their Afghanistan-related insights.
Much attention has been paid to the State Department’s highly-valued dissent cable – a way for State Department employees at all levels to directly reach a Secretary of State with dissenting views on U.S. foreign policy. As Secretary Blinken previously stated in public testimony before Congress, the cable did not suggest the Afghan government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure. As the Secretary also said publicly, the Department agreed with the concerns raised in the cable, and in fact, a number of the recommendations the cable made were already in motion before it was received. Still, the opinions expressed in the dissent cable were heard at the senior-most levels of State Department leadership. The Secretary personally read and oversaw a response to the dissent cable, and its contents were factored into his thinking.
“With regard to the so-called dissent channel cable, it’s something I’m immensely proud of. It’s a tradition that we have and you’re right, I read every such cable, I respond to it, I factor into it my own thinking and actions, and that cable did not predict the collapse of the government or security forces before our departure. It was very focused and rightly focused on the work we were doing to try to get Afghans at risk out of the country and pressing to speed up that effort,” the Secretary told the Congress.[20]
The continued distortion of the dissent cable – which remains classified – by Members of Congress to further a political talking point is deeply disappointing, especially after the Department went to extraordinary lengths to allow members of the Foreign Affairs Committee the ability to review the document — the first time since the inception of the dissent channel during the Vietnam War this access had been granted.
**
The State Department remains committed to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades. As Secretary Blinken has said: our commitment to these individuals is enduring.
When President Biden took office, the State Department inherited an SIV program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress involving multiple agencies – and a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applicants. There had not been a single SIV applicant interview in Kabul in nine months, going back to March 2020.[21] The program was basically in a stall as the previous Administration made no senior-level or interagency effort to address the SIV backlog or consider relocation and resettlement options for our Afghan allies and their families as they worked to negotiate a military withdrawal.
Within two weeks of taking office, State re-started the SIV interview process in Kabul. On February 4, one of President Biden’s first executive orders directed the State to immediately review the program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process SIV applications more rapidly. Starting in the Spring, Secretary Blinken surged resources to the program, quadrupling the staff dedicated to processing applications by May 1 and increasing it six-fold by August 1. The administration went from issuing 100 visas per week in March to more than 1,000 per week in August.
To date, the Administration has worked to resettle 165,000 Afghans who the American people have welcomed to communities across our country.[22]
Our commitment to helping resettle thousands of Afghan allies has continued well past the withdrawal.
Over the past few years, we’ve worked to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan families within the United States, welcoming them to their new homes and communities and demonstrating the very best of American generosity. Many international partner nations and organizations assist us in this ongoing effort. Since September 1, 2021, the Administration has approved or welcomed to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans under the SIV program. In Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) alone we issued more than 18,000 Afghan SIVs, the most in a single year. In this fiscal year (FY2024), we have already surpassed that total.
The Department has also rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which was deliberately undermined and partially dismantled by the prior administration. Drawing on best practices from processing Afghan cases in near real-time has helped make this rehabilitation a success story and speaks to the strength and ingenuity of Department and interagency personnel, as well as our refugee resettlement nonprofit partners. So far for this fiscal year, we have interviewed more than 20,000 Afghan refugees in 44 countries, contributing to the admission of one of the highest numbers of refugees through USRAP in a single year in more than three decades.[23]
Ensuring we fulfill our promises to those individuals who stood by our side is one aspect of our continued commitment to the people of Afghanistan. Since August 2021, the United States has provided more than $2.2 billion in funding toward the humanitarian response inside Afghanistan and for Afghans in neighboring countries through established partners with rigorous vetting standards.[24] The United States is also the single largest humanitarian donor for Afghans in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, providing more than $844 million in humanitarian assistance in FY 2023.[25]
The Department also stands with the women and girls of Afghanistan and has repeatedly called for their access to education and careers to be restored following edicts by Taliban leaders banning women from universities and working with NGOs. For example, through the establishment of the Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience initiative, a public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University, the Department has catalyzed innovative and scalable partnerships between the private sector, civil society, academia, government, and Afghan women leaders to support Afghan women’s education, employment, and entrepreneurship.
The Department remains committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a launching pad for terrorism, and we continue to push the Taliban to fulfill all their counterterrorism commitments. We are taking a whole-of-government approach to our Afghanistan counterterrorism efforts, cooperating with partners and allies. We are working vigilantly to prevent the re-emergence of external threats from Afghanistan.
**
There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded, which is why the Department has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.
In December 2021, the Secretary asked retired Ambassador Dan Smith — a long-serving veteran of the Department — to lead a review of how the Department carried out its duties between January 2020 and August 2021. Ambassador Smith and team interviewed 150 people — including Secretary Blinken — and had access to all contemporaneous records. Studying and learning from Ambassador Smith’s review is a vital component of building a stronger Department that is better prepared to respond to future challenges and to fulfill our mission.
This after-action review[26] made recommendations on several areas where the Department could have done better by improving processes and systems. In the interest of maximum transparency, the unclassified sections of this after-action review have been made public. The Department has already taken more than 40 concrete actions and identified additional steps to guide itself in responding to future crises, including a new, state-of-the-art Operations Center opened in August 2022 with increased surge capacity and modern technology to facilitate information sharing, streamline coordination, and promote a common operating picture.
**
The Department once again expresses its respect for the Congress and its Members who remain dedicated to reviewing the actions taken ahead of and during August 2021. It is our sincere hope the Administration can work hand-in-hand with Congress to make improvements from the lessons learned from the withdrawal. The Department stands ready to work alongside any Member who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions. However, we will not stand by silently as the Department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.
The Taliban publish vice laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public
August 29, 2024
Current News Articles, Primary documents
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws approved by the supreme leader in efforts to combat vice and promote virtue.
The laws were issued Wednesday after they were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, a government spokesman said. The Taliban had set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021.
The ministry published its vice and virtue laws on Wednesday that cover aspects of everyday life like public transportation, music, shaving and celebrations.
They are set out in a 114-page, 35-article document seen by The Associated Press and are the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the takeover.
“Inshallah we assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” said ministry spokesman Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq on Thursday.
The laws empower the ministry to be at the frontline of regulating personal conduct, administering punishments like warnings or arrest if enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.
Article 13 relates to women. It says it is mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public and that a face covering is essential to avoid temptation and tempting others. Clothing should not be thin, tight or short.
Women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims to avoid being corrupted. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public. It is forbidden for women to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa.
Article 17 bans the publication of images of living beings, threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape.
Article 19 bans the playing of music, the transportation of solo female travelers, and the mixing of men and women who are not related to each other. The law also obliges passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times.
According to the ministry website, the promotion of virtue includes prayer, aligning the character and behavior of Muslims with Islamic law, encouraging women to wear hijab, and inviting people to comply with the five pillars of Islam. It also says the elimination of vice involves prohibiting people from doing things forbidden by Islamic law.
Last month, a U.N. report said the ministry was contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans through edicts and the methods used to enforce them.
It said the ministry’s role was expanding into other areas of public life, including media monitoring and eradicating drug addiction.
“Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls,” said Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.
The Taliban rejected the U.N. report.
This story was first published on Aug. 22, 2024. It was updated on Aug. 23, 2024 to make clear that the Taliban vice and virtue laws say that women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims.
War Crimes in the First Two Decades of the Afghan Conflict: Republishing the UN Mapping Report
August 15, 2024
Analytical articles, Primary documents
Afghanistan Analysts Network
You can preview and download the UN Mapping Report here.
The UN Mapping Report brought together all the published sources on the war crimes of the first two decades of the Afghan war. It is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Afghanistan. Together with the Afghanistan Justice Project’s ‘Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, 1978-2001’, published in 2005, which incorporated fresh eye-witness and survivor testimony into its account, these two reports meticulously documented patterns of war crimes up to the formation of the interim government in December 2001.[1] Crucially, they also provide the political context for the crimes, giving indispensable background to the emergence of the various political and military forces which continue to dominate Afghan life.
That some form of accountability was yearned for and expected in the first years of the Islamic Republic was made clear in a nationwide consultation by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), the results of which were published in a 2005 report, ‘A Call for Justice – A National Consultation on Past Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan’. 70 per cent of those interviewed said they or members of their family had suffered war crimes or human rights violations. Patricia Gossman and Sari Kouvo summed up the findings in their 2013 special report for AAN, ‘Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan’:
There was considerable support for either criminal accountability or for removing suspected perpetrators from power. How this was to be achieved was not included in the survey. There was also a wide recognition that sustainable peace required national reconciliation. Although the term was not fully defined, participants described it as including overcoming conflict at the local level. Reconciliation was not equated with forgiveness.
How the UN Mapping Report came about
The genesis for the mapping report had come during the final year of the first Islamic Emirate as a response to human rights groups’ dismay at the United Nations’ failure to investigate two massacres that followed successive captures of Mazar-e Sharif in the late 1990s, of Taleban prisoners of war by General Malek in 1997, and of largely Hazara civilians by the Taleban in 1998.[2] In mid-2001, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) launched an attempt to ‘map’ human rights violations in Afghanistan over the course of the war. Later that year – after the 9/11 attacks and the United States’ toppling of the first Islamic Emirate – two researchers travelled to the region to assess what was required for the mapping exercise. At the time, news of a third mass killing was emerging, again of Taleban prisoners of war and again after Mazar-e Sharif had changed hands; the men who asphyxiated in shipping containers had this time been under the control of General Abdul Rashid Dostum’s forces.
The Secretary General’s new Special Representative in Kabul, Lakhdar Brahimi, opposed taking action over that third massacre, reported Gossman and Kouvo, and also opposed a callmade in October 2002 by Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Asma Jahangir for a commission of inquiry “to undertake an initial mapping-out and stocktaking of grave human rights violations of the past, which could well constitute a catalogue of crimes against humanity.” [3] In the end, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) commissioned only a limited mapping exercise that drew on already published material. Gossman and Rubin’s cataloguing of the major patterns of violations over the course of the war, from the 1978 coup d’état to the formation of the interim government in December 2001, became known as the UN Mapping Report.
How the UN Mapping Report was received
The mapping report was due to be published alongside the AIHRC’s ‘A Call for Justice’ in 2005. However, reported Gossman and Kouvo:
In the weeks before the scheduled release of the two reports, UN officials pressed the High Commissioner [for Human Rights], Louise Arbour, not to make the … report public. UNAMA officials argued that a public release would endanger UN staff, and complicate negotiations surrounding the planned demobilization of several powerful militias. They also argued that as a ‘shaming exercise’, the report raised expectations that neither the UN nor the Afghan government could meet: namely, that something would be done about the individuals named in the report.
Journalist and author Ahmad Rashid, who was in Kabul for the launch, described in an AAN report how deep and broad the pressure on OHCHR not to publish had been:
The Mapping Report … clearly implicated Afghan communists, present day warlords still holding power in Afghanistan, Taleban and a host of others as being responsible for war crimes. But when the report was about to be published – [UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] Louise Arbour already had arrived in Kabul -, almost all major players – the Americans, the Afghan government, many Europeans, the UN mission for Afghanistan – insisted that the Mapping Report be suppressed and not be made public.
They did not want to rock the boat of the fragile Karzai government that had been cobbled together of unlikely partners – Karzai and his circle of Afghan returnees from exile who had started as reformers and most mujahedin leaders (except Hekmatyar, Khales and Nabi Muhammadi) who were dead against all reforms that would threaten their key positions in the institutions, the security forces and the (licit and illicit) economy. These ‘Jihadi leaders’ were about to see their names printed in the report and threatened all kind of action to avoid this happening.
However, the UN Mapping Report slipped through the net. It was published briefly on the OHCHR website, “most likely,” reported Gossman and Kouvo, “by accident.” Despite being swiftly taken down, it had already been picked up by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations and as it had officially been published could legitimately be disseminated by others.[4] Moreover, as Rubin said, it was based on already public material so it could hardly be ‘suppressed’.
The pressure not to discuss or take action on war crimes never went away. Indeed, a worse fate was to befall the far more comprehensive mapping report compiled subsequently by the AIHRC.
The AIHRC mapping report
Following AIHRC’s publication of ‘A Call for Justice’, together with the United Nations and Afghan government, it drafted an action plan focussing on transitional justice. The plan was formally adopted and publicly launched by Karzai in December 2006.[5] However, said Gossman and Kouvo, the government “implemented little and finally shelved it for all intents and purposes.” The major action that did come out of the plan was the AIHRC’s own mapping report. This was an ambitious, multi-year-long project which gathered fresh material about the war crimes of 1978-2001 from witnesses and survivors from all of Afghanistan’s provinces. That report was never published. AIHRC chairwoman Sima Samar said she could not publish without Karzai’s support. He never gave it. Ahead of the 2014 election, when AAN asked the two frontrunners if they would publish the AIHRC mapping report should they become president, Ashraf Ghani said he would, Dr Abdullah appeared not specifically to have heard of it.
The consequences of ignoring the past
The inability of the post-2001 Afghan state to accept any form of truth-telling and the fearfulness of most of its international backers of any move to face up to the crimes and hurts of the past ultimately weakened the Republic. The argument in those early years was that stability was more important than justice, and peace had to come before accountability. That meant the foundations of the Republic were built on shaky ground that would eventually prove unstable.
Transitional justice, what to do about the perpetrators of war crimes, as Barnett Rubin has put it, “some reckoning with the past,” did come up at the December 2001 Bonn conference at which Rubin participated as an advisor to Brahimi.[6] It was discussed, Rubin said, but rejected from inclusion in the Bonn agreement, which set out a road map for what would become the Islamic Republic. As Rubin has stressed, the Bonn agreement was not a peace settlement. The parties did not “painstakingly negotiate over a period of years how to structure a government that would resolve the conflicts that had torn the society apart, create new armed forces and a new police service, and confront the painful legacy of the past to lay the groundwork for national reconciliation.” Rather, one side was still being “pulverised by US bombs” while representatives of four anti-Taleban groups thrashed out the Bonn agreement, along with UN, US and other interested parties.
In retrospect, the moment of de facto regime change had already taken place: when the US decided to arm the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taleban commanders to fight the Islamic Emirate while it bombed Taleban frontlines, it had established who gain the victory and who would capture the Afghan state. Once in power, some of those featuring in the AJP report, the UN and (presumably) the AIHRC mapping reports were able to stop any attempt at national reconciliation or a facing up to the past. Their efforts included, in 2008, MPs voting for a blanket amnesty for “[a]ll political factions and hostile parties who were involved in one way or another in hostilities before the establishing of the Interim Administration.”[7]
The silencing of the discussion of war crimes, at least those committed by the groups and individuals who ended up with power in 2001, has had repercussions. This author has argued that – as it was framed – favouring peace over justice and stability over accountability led to a lack of peace, justice, stability and accountability. Ignoring the past fostered impunity, encouraging continuing and future abuses by the state and pro-government individuals and groups, which meant there were never nationally representative, accountable security forces or government. Ultimately, as well, it helped spark the insurgency.[8]
Despite everything that has happened since 2001, the mapping of the war crimes of those first two decades remains important, given how the crimes of those years have still not been dealt with and how the patterns of violation in Afghanistan seem to keep repeating themselves.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
References
| ↑1 | Both reports include material from late 2001 on US bombing and its treatment of detainees, including forced disappearances and its use of secret detention facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | These massacres are documented in both the AJP and UN mapping reports. |
| ↑3 | Brahimi argued that the time was not yet right for an investigation. As reported by the BBC, he said an enquiry should happen eventually, but the fledgling Afghan government did not have the capacity to deal with one at that time. “There is no judicial system,” he said, “that we can really expect to face up to a situation like this” and the priority had to be with the living not the dead, given the Afghan authorities were unable to protect potential witnesses. |
| ↑4 | For many years, it was hosted on a website called flagrancy net, but that link is now broken. |
| ↑5 | The Action Plan, wrote Gossman and Kouvo includes:
five measures in graduated sequence to be completed over three years: (1) according dignity to victims, including through commemoration and building memorials; (2) vetting human rights abusers from positions of power and encouraging institutional reform; (3) truth seeking through documentation and other mechanisms; (4) reconciliation; and (5) establishing a task force to make recommendations for an accountability mechanism. |
| ↑6 | See Rubin’s ‘Transitional Justice and Human Rights in Afghanistan’ published in ‘International Affairs’, vol 79, no 3, May, 2003, pp 567-581. His text is based on a lecture he gave in memory of Anthony Hyman at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London on 3 February 2003. |
| ↑7 | For the text of the law, see Kouvo’s ‘After two years in legal limbo: A first glance at the approved ‘Amnesty law’ and for a discussion, Gossman and Kouvo’s report, pp28-31. |
| ↑8 | See Stephen Carter and Kate Clark, ‘No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan’, December 2010, Chatham House, and ‘Talking to the Taliban: A British perspective’, 3 July 2013, AAN. |
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