RFE/RL's Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan. Nearly half of the country's adult audience accesses Azadi's reporting on a weekly basis.
An Afghan teenager and aspiring digital artist has sent videos to RFE/RL in which she talks about the pain she feels about being prevented from going to school. UNICEF estimates that 850,000 Afghan girls have been barred from attending secondary school since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
A humanitarian group says that one year into the return to power of the Taliban, Afghan girls have been confronted with a grave economic crisis, a crippling drought, and new restrictions that have shattered their lives, excluding them from society and leaving them hungry.
An explosion has ripped through a mostly Shi’ite area of Kabul, killing at least two people and injuring 22 others in the second blast in two days in the Afghan capital that has been claimed by Sunni-led Islamic State (IS) militants.
For years, experts believed that Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri lived in the mountainous border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In an ironic twist, Zawahri was killed on July 31 in a U.S. air strike in Shirpur, a wealthy neighborhood in central Kabul that was largely built with U.S. money.
The Taliban continues to to crack down on domestic and foreign media through harassment, beatings, and the enforcement of haphazard rules imposed on journalists.
Many members of the former Afghan armed forces and their families are living in hiding nearly a year after the Taliban takeover. They complain of persecution and harassment despite the Taliban's announcement of a general amnesty when it seized power in August 2021.
After banning teenage girls from attending school, the Taliban is now preventing many Afghan women from being able to study at universities abroad, only allowing such students to travel outside the country with a male chaperone.
At least two people were killed after unknown gunmen attacked a vehicle being used by the Taliban’s Defense Ministry in the western Afghan city of Herat, local officials said.
The grand meeting in Kabul of more than 4,000 male clerics and tribal leaders ended on July 2 with a declaration of support for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and calls on the international community to recognize the country's as-of-yet unrecognized government.
The Taliban's supreme leader, Mawlawi Haibuatullah Akhundzada, is addressing a grand meeting in Kabul of some 3,000 male clerics and tribal leaders discussing the running of the country.
International human rights watchdogs are concerned about alleged Taliban atrocities during an offensive against a rebel commander.
Thousands of influential Afghans have assembled in Kabul to discuss pressing national issues. But the "grand gathering of Islamic scholars” leaves out women and ethnic and religious minorities, falling far short of the inclusivity Afghans have been promised by the Taliban.
The European Union's special envoy for Afghanistan says girls’ access to secondary education has been on the agenda in recent talks he's had with members of the Taliban-led government, but they have not explained why girls have been excluded or indicated when schools might reopen for girls.
Monawara Quraishi is an Afghan teenager. She is upset that she cannot complete her high school courses due to the Taliban's restrictions on schooling for girls. "Since the schools were closed, I have been crying," the 19-year-old has told Radio Azadi -- RFE/RL's Afghan service.
The Taliban has converted dozens of secular schools, universities, and training centers into religious madrasahs. It has also announced plans to build hundreds of Islamic seminaries. Critics say the Taliban's aim is to "brainwash” children and root out all forms of secular education in Afghanistan.
Tents, food, and medical supplies are arriving in eastern Afghanistan following a deadly earthquake and powerful aftershock.
An aftershock has killed five people in eastern Afghanistan just hours after Taliban authorities said they have ended search-and-rescue operations from a major earthquake two days ago and raised the death toll to at least 1,150 in the war-torn country's worst such disaster in two decades.
Survivors of the devastating earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan have offered harrowing details of their losses. Entire families have been wiped out by the tremors that wreaked havoc on remote villages. At least 1,000 people were killed in the worst earthquake in the country in two decades.
Efforts to reach communities in Afghanistan affected by the June 22 earthquake are being hampered by bad roads and heavy rain. The magnitude-6.1 quake is known to have killed at least 1,000 people and injured 1,500. The epicenter was 160 kilometers southeast of Kabul near the Pakistani border.
The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan says search and rescue operations have been completed in almost all the quake-hit areas of Paktika Province and the focus is now turning to relief efforts.
Load more
