UNAMA, 1 September 2026 This new report by the UN’s political mission in Afghanistan looks at the civilian victims of the two decades of war between 2001 and 2021 and also briefly looks at some countries’ inquiries into the conduct of their own troops in Afghanistan. It says that more than 40,000 civilians were killed […]
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UNAMA, 10 August 2026 The UNAMA report “finds that the de facto authorities have taken steps to promote discipline and oversight including through directives and internal monitoring units within the main security institutions and by establishing new bodies mandated to address misconduct of de facto security personnel (…), while such steps have been taken, they have not been accompanied […]
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PBS, 25 August 2026 It’s been 18 months since the Trump administration made cuts to foreign aid. One of the countries hardest-hit is Afghanistan. In January 2025, the Trump administration terminated more than $1.7 billion in assistance, causing a major strain on the system and putting women and children throughout the country at risk. In a […]
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The Guardian, 15 August 2026 Some very useful graphs on Afghanistan’s socio-economic situation five years after the second coming of the Taleban – although the province of Ghor is misspelled (in the graph for child marriages). Particularly striking is the one that compares its relation between population and economic growth with other countries of the […]
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Spiegel, 15 August 2026 Veteran Afghanistan reporter Christoph Reuter looks back at five years of the Taleban’s second rule. (in German): Afghanistan, five years after the Taliban came to power, appears to be a changing picture: Depending on your perspective, the “Emirate” is a success in terms of state building, economy and infrastructure compared to […]
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BBC, 14 August 2026 Lyse Doucet’s look at the debate about whether and how to talk with the Taleban regime, and the UN’s role in it, even if progress – if there is some at all – is very limited. “A stalled process is better than no process,” emphasises Georgette Gagnon, a deputy special representative […]
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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.
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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 […]
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Substack, 14 July 2026 A view by three former Afghan diplomats, Farid Zarif, Asila Wardak and Omar Samad, on UNAMA’s task of a “balancing act diplomacy” in aa changed international environment.
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CACI, 13 July 2026 Very interesting analysis of the repercussions of the US-Iran war for connectivity in Eurasia and, for example, on the Iran-Afghanistan-China route. The authors conclude: Afghanistan is becoming Tehran’s overland insurance against maritime pressure, and the railway to Herat, together with the plan for Mazar-i-Sharif, anchors that link. A through bypass of the […]
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The Loop, 10 July 2026 In an opinion piece, Kaweh Kerami, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, writes that … the Taliban’s first EU-hosted visit to Brussels was not recognition, as the EU insists, but something politically consequential all the same: proof that repeated contact can hand an unrecognised regime […]
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The Persistent, 9 July 2026 Ruchi Kumar, long-standing Afghanistan watcher, looks back at the Herat protests against the Taleban’s policies, providing so far unknown detail on what happened there.
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