Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Kate Clark

Holding the Line in Afghanistan: Women’s health in crisis and one NGO’s response 

Kate Clark • Fabrizio Foschini •

AAN has considered women’s health in Afghanistan from several angles in recent years, with bleak conclusions. We found provision for women living in rural areas under particular threat, with clinics closing, shortages of female health professionals and economic pressure making it difficult for families to afford transport to a clinic. In 2024, the Islamic Emirate […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

No Flamingos, but Ducks, Geese and Grebes: Afghanistan joins an international bird census 

Kate Clark •

The first survey of birds to be carried out by an Afghan organisation since the fall of the Islamic Republic has taken place. It was also the first time that Afghanistan has taken part in the annual International Waterbird Census, a global effort involving 189 countries. A volunteer team, including expert ornithologists, visited six wetland […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

Inside the Islamic Emirate’s Penal Code: Crime, punishment and authority in Afghanistan

Kate Clark •

The Islamic Emirate has circulated a new penal code to Afghanistan’s courts, standardising punishments for everything from insulting the ulema to forgery, taking and giving bribes and casting the evil eye. The Code was leaked to the human rights organisation, Rawadari, by someone in the government, presumably concerned about its implications for human rights and the rule […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

What We Wrote, What You Read in 2025: Reflections on AAN coverage last year and the year to come

Kate Clark •

In 2025, AAN followed many major developments in Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate continued to consolidate its rule, implementing its ‘vice and virtue’ law and making efforts to control the narrative about its rise to power in books, films and on TV. We examined the consequences of the United States stopping all aid and the […]

Context and Culture Read more

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 […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

A year of Propagating Virtue and Preventing Vice: Enforcers and ‘enforced’ speak about the Emirate’s morality law

Kate Clark • AAN Team •

It is a year since the Islamic Emirate issued a new law to propagate virtue and prevent vice. The goal, of changing Afghans’ dress and behaviour, has been an abiding mission of the Taliban’s since they first emerged as a movement in the 1990s. The law laid out not only the actions that the Emirate […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more

Another Drought Year for Afghanistan… But prospects are not as bad as they could be

Kate Clark •

Afghanistan is bracing itself for its fourth drought in five years. For many farmers and herders, the drought is catastrophic: spring rains failed and with them, rainfed wheat and pasture in the rangeland. Even so, agroclimate experts are forecasting a surprisingly positive picture for Afghanistan’s staple crop, wheat. Winter wheat has done well this year, […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

The End of US Aid to Afghanistan: What will it mean for families, services and the economy?

Kate Clark • AAN Team •

The full weight of the United States’ cuts to aid to Afghanistan has finally become clear. Almost all the aid that was promised – at least USD 1.8 billion – will now not be given, according to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The United Nations has announced a reprioritisation of the humanitarian […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more
Men wait to receive cash being distributed as an aid by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Pul-e Alam, the provincial capital of Logar province, Afghanistan, on 7 January 2024. Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP

‘Stop Work!’ Aid and the Afghan economy after the halt to US aid

Kate Clark •

United States President Donald Trump’s executive order halting all US aid is reverberating through Afghanistan. Dozens of NGOs that depend on US funding are reported to have already closed. United Nations agencies are scrutinising their funding to see what it means for programmes and partners and whether they can apply for a waiver for lifesaving […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more
Afghans in a restaurant in Kabul watch a television broadcast on 6 November 2024 – election night in America – as Donald Trump addresses an event in Florida. Photo: Wakil Kohsar /AFP

Trump 2.0: What difference will the new US president make to Afghanistan (if any)?

Kate Clark •

On Monday, 20 January 2025, Donald Trump will again assume the presidency of the United States. In his first term (2016-20), his administration negotiated the Doha Agreement and the near-unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan; his successor, Joe Biden, completed the pull-out seven months later, after the Taleban had already taken control of Kabul. […]

International Engagement Read more

Recommended Reads from AAN Writers: The poetry of peace, magical realism in Logar, class in Nuristan, Sufis

Kate Clark • AAN Guests • AAN Team •

We thought we would start 2025 by asking AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan. Their choices are eclectic, ranging across the academic and journalistic, memoirs and fiction, books written by Afghans and others. Our recommended reads include one book which its reviewer believes will become a standard work for universities teaching about […]

Context and Culture Read more
One boy carries another on his bicycle in the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif in Balkh province, Afghanistan. Photo: Atif Aryan/AFP, 19 December 2024

What We Wrote, What You Read in 2024: Reflections on our coverage of an evolving Afghanistan

Kate Clark •

2024 was another busy year for AAN as we tried to make sense of developments in Afghanistan. Our 51 publications ranged from snapshots of daily life – the Helmand labourer who, with his wife, took in an impoverished widow and her children, or the female student coming home for the holidays for the first time […]

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