8am: Mohammad Masoud Zahidian, the deputy head of Iran’s anti-narcotics headquarters, says that drug smuggling has increased from the country’s soil. Previously, Indian, Russian and Iranian officials have repeatedly expressed concerns about the increase in drug cultivation, production and trafficking in Afghanistan under the rule of Taliban. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: In an interview on Saturday, sources said the Taliban had called women’s tailoring “haram”. On Wednesday last week, the Taliban entered women’s tailor shops in different parts of Charikar city, the capital of the province, and told female tailors to close their shops, according to sources. The Taliban have told them to find another
Despite the ongoing unrest, an economic crisis and United Nations’ concerns over human rights, more Chinese citizens are joining the country’s “gold rush”. Once a small minority, Chinese nationals now make up Afghanistan’s biggest group of expatriates.
Ariana: As winter sets in across Afghanistan and as the economic crisis worsens, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports a spike in cases of child pneumonia and malnutrition. “Afghan families face an impossible choice: To eat or to buy heat. And, really, they can’t afford either, resulting in a frightening rise in
BBC: Afghans are giving their hungry children medicines to sedate them – others have sold their daughters and organs to survive. In the second winter since the Taliban took over and foreign funds were frozen, millions are a step away from famine. “Our children keep crying, and they don’t sleep. We have no food,” Abdul
The Guardian (UK): The review finds the sheer scale of the aid resources funnelled through central state institutions was distorting. The Afghan state spent approximately $11bn each year, but raised only $2.5bn of its own resources, the report finds. Echoing previous studies it suggests it would have taken 35 years for the state to become
Al Jazeera: Call for funding grows for diplomatically isolated Afghanistan, which has faced natural disasters because of climate change. As the climate summit kicked off on November 6, the UN mission in Afghanistan called for urgent collective climate action, saying the country is “one of the least prepared against climate shocks”. It added that Afghanistan
Xinhua: At least two mine workers were killed as a coal mine collapsed in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province on Monday, Mawlawi Abdullah Hamid, head of Baghlan’s coal mine enterprise, said Tuesday. Non-standard mining, poor equipment and unskilled workers to extract the underground treasure, according to Afghans, often claim the lives of miners in Afghanistan. Click
There is a long history of keeping pigeons in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Every morning and evening, colorful birds can still be seen flying in the city skies. In the past, some pigeons were bought and sold for the equivalent of hundreds of dollars, but prices have plunged along with incomes since the Taliban retook
Tolo News: Officials of the Pashdan Dam in Herat province said that after a one-and-a-half-year hiatus of construction, most areas of the dam are in disrepair. They warned that if the water in the Pashdan dam is not released soon, floods will destroy the water source. Last year, the flood destroyed part of the structure