ISPI, 12 August 2025
Water is getting scarce, as a part of the climate crisis hitting Afghanistan more than most other countries: Children at a water tap in Kabul, photo: Tolo
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 Uncertainty: Afghan Returnees from Iran and Pakistan”, AAN co-director Jelena Bjelica, looked at the expulsion of millions of Afghans by Pakistan and Iran. She concludes that “return has become less a durable solution than the start of a new cycle of displacement, poverty and uncertainty in a country ill-equipped to absorb them.”
Secondly, AAN co-founder and former co-director Thomas Ruttig contributed an analysis of the EU is expanding cooperation with the Taliban regime to enable deportations, camouflaged by a language of ‘technical engagement’, testing the credibility of its human rights commitments. The article is titled: “The EU and the Taliban: Deportations Prioritised Over Human Rights.”
Other contibutions to the dossier come from Shahrzad Akbar, and scholars Antonio Giustozzi and, writing together, Antonio Donini and Norah Niland, with an introduction by Battiston. His intro also links to another analysis by Thomas Ruttig, in his German-language blog, explaining the Taliban’s two principal instruments of population control, through a monopoly over the use of force – which is not seriously challenged by any military group within the country, despite some recent small-scale successes in Badakhshan looked at by Thomas– and a monopoly over education.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 12 Aug 2026
