Month: June 2025

The Daily Hustle: Afghans flee the Iran-Israel war

Nur Khan Himmat • Roxanna Shapour •

As the conflict between Israel and Iran escalated, many Afghans who had been living in Iran opted to return to Afghanistan, fearing for their safety. The Iranian government’s current drive to deport Afghans had already accelerated the pace of ‘returns’. However, for Afghans who had lived through years of conflict in their own country, the […]

30 Jun 2025

Nowhere to run: The Afghan refugees caught in Israel’s war on Iran

al-Jazeera, 28 June 2025 The Qatar-based broadcaster reports about the situation in Tehran’s Afghans population, following Iran’s recently announced plans to deport up to two million undocumented Afghans in the wake of the US/Israel-Iran war.

28 Jun 2025

The Fourth Year of the Opium Ban: An update from two of Afghanistan’s major poppy-growing areas

Fabrizio Foschini • Jelena Bjelica •

The Islamic Emirate’s ban on opium cultivation has entered its fourth year and apart from the first harvest of opium poppies in spring 2022, when farmers were allowed to harvest their standing crop, the authorities have enforced it, with one notable exception – Badakhshan. Farmers there have been better able to avoid the ban, both […]

27 Jun 2025

The Second Phase of Forced Returns from Pakistan: Afghans tell stories of hardship and misery

Nur Khan Himmat •

The Pakistani government officially began implementing the second phase of its Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan on 1 April 2025 by targeting undocumented Afghans and those holding Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC). To date, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since 15 September 2023, when Pakistan launched the plan, over 1 million Afghans have returned […]

22 Jun 2025

Manoeuvring Through the Cracks: The Afghan human rights movement under the Islamic Emirate

Rachel Reid •

The end of the Islamic Republic was a catastrophe for Afghanistan’s human rights movement, with nearly all human rights defenders thrown into exile, fearing for their lives. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) combines an austere interpretation of Islam with ultra-conservative social mores, resulting in a highly authoritarian state with strict laws and practices. While […]

15 Jun 2025

The dynamics behind the Taliban’s ban on Afghans fighting in Pakistan

Oxus Watch, 12 June 2025 The first analysis in an announced new series by Sweden-based Afghan analyst Abdul Sayed. Here, he looks at the ban in the context of discussion in Islamist circles about the permission to carry out jihad abroad but also in the light of current events, mainly the post-2021 Pakistan-Taleban tensions, motivated, […]

12 Jun 2025

Living a Mullah’s Life (1): The changing role and socio-economic status of Afghanistan’s village clerics

Sharif Akram •

In Afghanistan, where Islam has been the predominant religion for many centuries, local religious leaders, known as mullahs, are an influential group with significant say in almost every issue. While their influence is profound, their personal economic status and lifestyle have often been modest. In this first of two reports, AAN’s Sharif Akram looks at […]

9 Jun 2025

Kabul at risk of becoming first modern city to run out of water, report warns

Guardian, 7 June 2025 The British daily’s report about Mercy Corps “Kabul Water Crisis” report (see our Recommended Reads) links to 2018 AAN research (“Blue Gold: The quest for household water in Kabul city”) by Reza Kazemi when reporting: Some private companies are capitalising on the crisis by actively digging new wells and extracting large amounts of […]

7 Jun 2025

Learning the Right Lessons from Afghanistan

The National Interest, 6 June 2025 An, as usual, sharp-sighted analysis of the 2001-21 failure in Afghanistan and lessons (not only) the US can draw from it, while rejecting what he calls superficial ‘bumper sticker lessons’, by Ronald E. Neumann, US Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. He writes: Three of the most common […]

6 Jun 2025

The Taliban’s Internal Dynamics: Marginalisation of Badakhshani Taliban Commanders?

Substack, 5 June 2025 Former AAN colleague Ali Adili reports on the downsizing of Taleban security personnel and of university lecturers – many of them women – in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, among cuts of government staff in many other places, both a strategically and economically important province and one that is not controlled by the […]

5 Jun 2025

Sharp Rise in Forced Returns from Iran

IOM, 2 June 2025 In this Situation Report, IOM voices concerns over a “sharp rise in the forced return of Afghan nationals” from Iran, recording a more than two-fold increase in May from the previous month. “Particularly alarming is a significant surge in the number of families being deported – a new and concerning trend, […]

2 Jun 2025

Die Taliban sprechen in Katar mit Deutschland

Tageszeitung, 1 June 2025 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig reports in the Berlin-based daily about Taleban media reporting, for the first, time that their ambassador in Qatar had held talks with the German charge d’affaires responsible for Afghanistan (in German). While the Taleban media report discussions about political issues and see this meeting as a “crucial step […]

1 Jun 2025