Month: December 2025

Afghan Taliban ban over 670 university textbooks

Radio Pakistan, 31 December 2025 The website of the Pakistani broadcaster briefly mentions AAN’s recent research about Taleban book bans: According to Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), the Afghan Taliban have imposed a complete ban on more than six hundred and seventy university textbooks and hundreds of public books. As per the ANN, sociology and other […]

31 Dec 2025

[Taleban ban academic and public books] طالبان کتاب‌های دانشگاهی و عمومی را ممنوع کردند

Hasht-e Sobh, 8 Jaddi 1404 (29 Decemeber 2025) The Afghan exile online paper reports about AAN’s recent research paper about Taleban book bans: The network reported on Sunday night that more than 670 university textbooks and hundreds of general books had been banned from [Afghan] libraries and bookstores. The analysts’ sources say that important subjects […]

29 Dec 2025

What Afghans May Read: Banned books under the Islamic Emirate

Fabrizio Foschini •

In 2025, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan intensified its efforts to circumscribe the information available to Afghan citizens, following its October 2024 order to libraries and bookstores to remove books that were now prohibited. In July 2025, a special committee was set up to scrutinise university curricula. It subsequently abolished whole courses and removed hundreds […]

28 Dec 2025

Trump wants Bagram back. Satellite images show how [little] the Taliban are using it

Washington Post, 12 December 2025 The post, on the basis of satellite images and other sources, has evaluated the Taleban’s use of Bagram airbase. The findings “suggests that the cash-strapped and isolated regime has managed only limited use of many of the bases. (…) Satellite images indicate only minor military activity there over the past […]

27 Dec 2025

Tajikistan-Taliban border clashes: What’s behind them, why it affects China

al-Jazeera, 26 December 2025 Against the backdrop of recent incidents at the Afghan-Tajik border, this backgrounder looks at Taleban-Tajik and other regional relations. It comes to the conclusion that, while Tajikistan has not blamed any group, it bears the “hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP). “The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside […]

26 Dec 2025

Law, Control, Fear – and some Defiance: Citizens and enforcers talk about the ‘promotion of virtue and prevention of vice’

Kate Clark • AAN Team •

It has been more than a year since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan introduced a new vice and virtue law. This law lays out what behaviour and actions the Islamic Emirate deems obligatory or forbidden for Afghan men and women. It gives its enforcers wide-ranging powers to both police and punish ‘wrongdoers,’ who have no […]

21 Dec 2025

Afghanistan-Aufnahmeprogramm: Bemänteltes Staatsversagen

Tageszeitung, 18 December 2025 In this op-ed commentary for the Berlin-based German daily, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at Germany’s last-minute evacuations and simultaneous cancellations of admission permits to hundreds of former Afghan local employees, calling the former an alibi move and the latter “covered moral state failure” (in German): The trust in the protection by […]

18 Dec 2025

Reviewing Afghan Evacuation and Resettlement

OpinioJuris, 16 December 2025 This article, the former chief legal counsel for Task Force Liberty, as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the US mission to evacuate and resettle Afghan refugees reviews the three different pathways (bespoke legislation, refugee admissions, discretionary parole) through which, since 2021, nearly 200,000 Afghans have been admitted into the United States and the […]

16 Dec 2025

Arrested Development in Kabul: Housebuilding between legal hurdles and rising demand 

Nur Khan Himmat •

Shortly after its return to power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) imposed new curbs on building in the capital. This, together with follow-up regulations issued by the Kabul Municipality and the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, has entirely changed how the building sector operates in the capital and made it […]

16 Dec 2025

“If you applied to gender the language that defines apartheid, it applies to Afghanistan”

Justice Info, 15 December 2025 In this interview, Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, says the situation in Afghanistan is “an attempt to dominate one gender over another gender by a gender group in power.” Therefore, he concludes, the term ‘gender apartheid’ is appropriate to describe it: “if you applied to […]

15 Dec 2025

Afghan Women Spoke: The People’s Tribunal for Afghan Women listened

Rachel Reid •

The judges of the People’s Tribunal for the Women of Afghanistan have found the Taliban guilty of the crime against humanity of gender persecution. Although this civil society tribunal does not have the force of law, it was conceived as a platform that could powerfully amplify the voices of women from both inside and outside […]

13 Dec 2025

Pakistan’s evergreen poppy economy is undergoing a silent surge

Firstpost, 6 December 2025 In this opinion piece on the Indian news website, the author quotes – among other sources – from recent AAN research: According to interviews and testimonies documented by international and Pakistani media outlets, as well as field reporting by organisations such as the Afghanistan Analysts Network, Afghan farmers who migrated to Balochistan to grow poppy […]

6 Dec 2025