Month: March 2025

Beziehungen zwischen USA und Afghanistan: Beginn eines Tauwetters

Tageszeitung, 31 March 2025 In this analysis of a ‘thawing in the making’, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at recent developments in US-Taleban relations: the first Afghanistan visit of an US government official since August 2021, the release/exchange of detainees, Trump’s wishes to have a military presence in Bagram again and his aspirations to retrieve US […]

31 Mar 2025

The Daily Hustle: At Nawruz and Eid al-Fitr, a shopkeeper reflects on high food prices

Hamed Pakteen • Roxanna Shapour •

In a rare twist of the calendar, the first day of the Afghan New Year, Nawruz, came in the last ten days of Ramadan. These are both joyous occasions. Yet, in this instalment of the Daily Hustle, Hamed Pakteen has visited Mandawi, the busy central market in the heart of Kabul, which is filled with traders […]

30 Mar 2025

Rural Women’s Access to Health in Afghanistan: “Most of the time, we just don’t go”

Jelena Bjelica • AAN Team •

Since the return of the Islamic Emirate, Afghanistan’s already fragile healthcare system has deteriorated, with stark inequalities for women and rural populations. The system faces a severe lack of funding, inadequate infrastructure and a critical shortage of qualified professionals, which has been exacerbated by prohibitions targeting women since 2021. These failings are felt most acutely […]

27 Mar 2025

Fatima Amiri, the Afghan woman who cannot study because of the Taliban in Afghanistan and because of the bureaucracy in Spain.

ara.cat, 25 March 2025 Portrait, in English, of a young Afghan woman trying to persue her studied abroad. But in Spain, as in many other countries, “despite expressions of solidarity with Afghan women, there are no mechanisms for them to continue their studies here” writes colleague Mònica Bernabé who also has written for AAN in […]

25 Mar 2025

Third update on Taliban decrees and directives (July-Dec. 2024)

ACAPS, 24 December 2024 As USIP’s “Tracking the Taliban’s (Mis)Treatment of Women” overview seems to have been taken down by the new US administration (please try yourself – we do not get access), this seems to be the most recent overview of humanitarian response-, women’s rights-related and other Taleban decrees. It says in its summary: […]

24 Mar 2025

The Economic Consequences of Climate Change for Afghanistan: Losses, projections … and pathways to mitigation

Mhd Assem Mayar •

Despite contributing minimally to global emissions, Afghanistan faces escalating economic and social crises from climate change. Climate shocks, such as from floods, droughts, landslides, avalanches and extreme temperature events, cause annual economic losses estimated between USD 550 million in a year where precipitation is ‘normal’ and USD three billion in a drought year – equivalent […]

22 Mar 2025

بلخ در سکوت نوروز [Balkh in the Silence of Nowruz]

Hasht-e Sobh, 19 March 2025 It is Nowruz in two days -but “residents from Balkh province told Hasht-e Sobh say that no one dares to talk about Nowruz. One resident is quoted as saying: “No one can celebrate in the streets without fear of punishment. … We may not be able to celebrate outside and […]

19 Mar 2025

The stain of betrayal in Afghanistan is now on Republican hands

By George Packer The Atlantic, 17 March 2025 Smashing article by Pulitzer price winner George Packer: Later this week, the Trump administration may impose travel restrictions on citizens from dozens of countries, supposedly because of security concerns. According to early reports, one of the countries on the “red” list, from which all travel would be banned, […]

17 Mar 2025

Taliban Narratives (1) Books: “Who we are and why we fought”

Sharif Akram •

Until recently, the Taliban was a movement that wrote little about itself, in contrast to others – especially foreigners, but also Afghans – who have written so much about them. This was rooted partly in their reticence to discuss their movement and partly in a need to focus on fighting, when social media was their […]

16 Mar 2025

Interior ministry outlines regulations for Afghan nationals staying in Iran

Iran Front Page, 9 March 2025 The Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs at Iran’s Ministry of Interior has outlined six which categories ofAfghan nationals that are permitted to remain in Iran under specific conditions. Those with census registration documents can remain in the country; also former government officials, military personnel, or civil servants from […]

9 Mar 2025

حکومت آینده آلمان برنامه پذیرش برای افغان‌ها را متوقف می‌کند [Germany’s future government to suspend admission program for Afghans]

Deutsche Welle, 9 March 2025 Lengthy interview with AAN’s Thomas Ruttig in the Dari/Farsi service of Germany’s foreign public broadcaster about the incoming German government’s plans to suspend all evacuation programmes for its former Afghan employees and the so-called human rights list (Germany-related NGO employees).

9 Mar 2025

Deepening Discrimination: A dossier of reports about Afghan women

AAN Team •

We last published a dossier of reports about women in July 2021, just before that momentous event for Afghanistan, the collapse of the Islamic Republic and re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate. Those reports testified to how Afghan women’s efforts to overcome discrimination are nothing new. However, their struggles have only grown in magnitude as the […]

8 Mar 2025