Month: August 2026

Afghanistan, Five Years of Taliban Rule: An Assessment

Thomas Ruttig •

ISPI, 12 August 2025 AAN contributed two contributions to a dossier, “Afghanistan, Five Years of Taliban Rule: An Assessment” by free lance journalist and long-time Afghanistan watcher Giuliano Battiston and published by ISPI, the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (Italian Institute for International Political Studies) in Rome. First, under the title “Back to […]

12 Aug 2026

Merz’s deal with the Taliban alarms Afghan dissidents in Germany

Politico, 12 August 2026 One of the first more detailed overviews on the German discussion about what the article’s author terms German chancellor Friedrichshafen Merz’s ‘Faustian’ deportation deal with the Taleban, a taboo breaker in the EU.

12 Aug 2026

‘Where will I go?’: Afghan refugees in Germany fear Taliban’s diplomatic return

The National, 10 August 2026 AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted in this look at Germany’s and the EU’s evolving deportation-motivated relations with the Taleban regime. Generally, European governments are “very non-transparent” when discussing the forced return of Afghans, Mr Ruttig said. “That also shows that they know that there is headwind against that in civil […]

10 Aug 2026

Five Years of Taliban Rule: Consolidation Without Consent

Afghanistan International, 5 August 2026 A very interesting analysis of the state of the Taleban regime by Hassan Abbas, describing it as “a government that is administratively more capable than its critics expected and politically more brittle than its own propaganda suggests” and with its leader “Hibatullah Akhundzada (…) stronger today than at any point […]

5 Aug 2026

A Son of Jaghori: Remembering Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ishaq Fayyaz, 1930-2026

Rohullah Sorush • Roxanna Shapour •

For centuries, a steady stream of Afghan students have gone to the great Shia Islamic seminaries of Iran and Iraq in search of religious learning. Few rose as high as Mohammad Ishaq Fayyaz, who died in June 2026 at the age of 96. AAN’s Rohullah Suroush and Roxanna Shapour trace Fayyaz’s journey from a village […]

5 Aug 2026

Kindesmissbrauch: Was geschieht nun mit dem abgeschobenen Sexualstraftäter in Afghanistan?

Ruhr-Nachrichten, 1 August 2026 In this article, the Dortmund-based newspaper tries to follow up on what might happen to an Afghan who had lived in this city and was convicted for child abuse and deported to Afghanistan. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig was interviewed for this report (in German).

1 Aug 2026