In June 2026, HAMRAH Network published Taliban Madrasas: Ideological Consolidation, Gender Persecution and Afghanistan’s Future Stability, which documented the scale of the Taliban’s madrasa expansion...

For many small traders, buying goods on credit is part of doing business. It allows them to trade even if they do not have the money to pay for stock up front. However, that also leaves them vulnerabl...

Why do measles outbreaks keep returning in Afghanistan? Doctors and parents describe the 2024–25 outbreak and the gaps in vaccination.

Thirty years ago, on 27 September 1996, former president Dr Najibullah was killed alongside his brother, Shahpur, in the Afghan capital, Kabul. He had been sheltering in a United Nations compound sinc...

Read AAN’s unofficial English translation of Decree 18, the Islamic Emirate’s Code on the Separation of Spouses.

AAN examines Decree 18 and what it means for Afghan women seeking to end a marriage, including women abandoned by husbands.

For generations, authority within the Afghan family rested with its eldest man, the grandfather or, in his absence, the father or oldest brother. They decided everything from marriage and money to mig...

As opportunities have narrowed for women and girls outside the home – under the Islamic Emirate’s many restrictions – many have turned to the internet to try to replace what they have lost. In this in...

The closure of schools for girls beyond grade six is the most glaring example of the Emirate’s discrimination against women and girls. Without access to secondary and higher education, most teenage gi...

Monday night, Centcom Commander General Kenneth McKenzie announced the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan as complete, while the Taleban declared the country once again a “free and so...

Since the crash following the collapse of the Republic in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy has witnessed a modest recovery, although many households have not. In a new longitudinal study, AAN has fo...

Much has been written about the Afghan economy since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate in 2021: the data show a calamitous economic contraction, a fragile recovery where per capita GDP is ac...

What happens when the medical treatment you need costs more money than you have? For many Afghans, illness comes with an impossible calculation. Paying for healthcare places a heavy burden on househol...

What happens when the medical treatment you need costs more money than you have? For many Afghans, illness comes with an impossible calculation. Paying for healthcare places a heavy burden on househol...

Afghanistan has a new government. Its exact shape is not yet clear, but its contours can be discerned from a combination of messaging, how the Taleban entered and then took control of Kabul and report...

After a siege of almost two months, the centre of the strategic district of Zurmat in Paktia province fell into the hands of the Taleban on 2 July 2021. This followed the successive collapse of 11 of ...

With the fall of five provincial capitals in three days – Zaranj in Nimruz, Sheberghan in Jowzjan, Sarepul, Kunduz and Taloqan in Takhar –, the Taleban switched pace. After an unexpected and highly su...

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 i...

In the past decade, Afghans aged 14 to 23 have become the single largest group of migrants in the Western Balkans. More than 2.5 million people – a fifth of them Afghans – are estimated to have crosse...

Since the crash following the collapse of the Republic in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy has witnessed a modest recovery, although many households have not. In a new longitudinal study, AAN has fo...

In October 2024, Norway appointed a second Afghanistan Commission to evaluate the country’s efforts in Afghanistan, this time covering the period from 2015 to 2021. As part of its review, it examined ...

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, the space for organised religious activism in Afghanistan has narrowed sharply. Islamic parties have been suppressed or gone quiet. The Islamic Emir...

One of the first things the Taliban did after returning to power in August 2021 was to ban girls from going to school beyond grade six. Nearly five years later, the ban remains in place. For many, the...

Some six million Afghans have been forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan since September 2023, almost half of them in 2025, making it one of the largest return movements of any nationality in recen...

Afghans studying in Pakistan had hoped they might avoid the collective expulsions that, since 2023, have upended life for over two million Afghans living there. However, as the scope of deportations h...

For generations, the tradition of ashar – voluntary, unpaid communal labour – was one of the strongest expressions of solidarity in rural Afghan society. Whether harvesting a neighbour’s wheat, buildi...

The pressures on Afghanistan’s environment are increasingly urgent as the climate crisis bites. Our last dossier of reports on this subject was published in November 2022 when Afghanistan – one of the...

What happens when a family that once enjoyed a comfortable life can no longer afford the things it once took for granted? This is the situation for many Afghan households still struggling in the wake ...

Afghanistan’s food system is under growing strain. Domestic harvests remain insufficient and uneven and trade routes have shifted repeatedly in recent years. This spring’s rainfall has been good enoug...

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 c...

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 I...

Today, we launch a new type of publication, an Expert Opinion, a short piece of analysis filed by someone from a particular academic discipline or with relevant experience who wants to respond to an A...

After the fall of the Islamic Republic, the newly empowered Islamic Emirate radically overhauled the courts and the criminal justice system, elevating sharia as the sole source of law, along with the ...

After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan returned to power in August 2021, women and girls were barred from continuing their education beyond grade six. Women were also banned from working in most gov...

An Afghan proverb, tang amad, ba jang amad sums up the circumstances which led to rebellion in a northeasterly corner of Afghanistan, the poor and isolated Shughnan district of Badakhshan province, a ...

Afghans in the UK who do not have permanent residency are facing years of insecurity and hardship amid a hardening of British immigration policy. Those who were granted refugee status within the last ...

Afghans in the UK who do not have permanent residency are facing years of insecurity and hardship amid a hardening of British immigration policy. Those who were granted refugee status within the last five years may face a lengthy wait before they get settled status under new policies proposed in November 2025 that are intended […]

Over the past six months, the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has extended from low-level border skirmishes to talk of “open war.” Pakistan conducted its first-ever air strikes in Kabul in O...

When classrooms fell silent for older Afghan girls in 2021, millions were cut off from formal schooling, deepening long-standing inequalities between girls and boys. Yet learning did not stop – it ada...

Few Afghan politicians from the era of the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) regime combined technocratic skill with a clear focus on combatting ethnic inequality, as Sulta...

The mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is due to be renewed by the UN Security Council on Monday, 16 March. Although the penholder on Afghanistan, China, had not i...

Today, we bring you some book reviews. We asked AAN writers and friends to recommend books about Afghanistan that they had enjoyed. Their choices are an eclectic mix, ranging from the scholarly to the...

AAN is pleased to publish a translation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Penal Code for Courts by Islamic scholar John Butt.* The Code largely deals with what in Islamic law are called ta’zir p...

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...

War has shaped the lives of several generations of Afghans, with many pushed to travel beyond the country’s borders, seeking sanctuary or opportunity in more peaceful places. That includes the hundred...

Kabul’s winters bring a suffocating haze, as residents burn coal, wood and even plastic to heat their homes and use outdated vehicles, releasing toxic fumes into the city’s dry air. However,  perhaps ...

For women – and often not for men either – marriage is rarely a personal choice. It is usually decided by families, most often by fathers. In Panjshir province, some young women try to escape unwanted...