Tag: afghanistan

Afghan women lose their ‘last hope’ as Taliban shuts down internet

Fahima Noori had big dreams when she graduated from university in Afghanistan.

She had studied law, graduated from a midwifery programme and even worked in a mental health clinic.

But all that was taken away when the Taliban swept into power in 2021. They banned girls over the age of 12 from getting an education, severely restricted job options for women and recently removed books written by women from universities.

For Fahima, the internet was her last lifeline to the outside world.

“I recently enrolled in an online university [and] I had hoped to finish my studies and find an online job,” she said.

On Tuesday, that lifeline was cut off when the Taliban imposed a nationwide internet shutdown that is set to last indefinitely.

“Our last hope was online learning. Now [even] that dream has been destroyed,” said Fahima.

Her real name has been changed to protect her identity, as have the names of all others interviewed for this article.

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Taliban Rejects Trump’s Call to Return Afghan Air Base to US Control

The Taliban regime on Sept. 21 rejected President Donald Trump’s call for the United States to regain control of the Bagram Air Base, the main base for U.S. forces in Afghanistan before their 2021 withdrawal.

In a statement, the Taliban emphasized that “Afghanistan’s independence and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance” and urged the United States to abide by the pledge it made under the 2020 Doha Agreement.

“It should be recalled that, under the Doha Agreement, the United States pledged that ‘it will not use or threaten force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, nor interfere in its internal affairs.’ Therefore, it is necessary that they remain faithful to their commitments,” the Afghan ruler stated.

The regime also expressed its intention to have “constructive relations” with the United States “on the basis of mutual and shared interests.”

“Accordingly, it is once again underscored that, rather than repeating past failed approaches, a policy of realism and rationality should be adopted,” it stated.

In response, Trump warned on the Truth Social platform that “bad things are going to happen” if the Taliban regime refuses to return control of the major air base to the United States.

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Trump Says ‘Bad Things Are Going to Happen’ If Afghanistan Doesn’t Hand Over Bagram Air Base

President Trump on Saturday warned that “bad things would happen” if Afghanistan didn’t agree to hand over the Bagram Air Base back to the US military, an idea that’s been rejected by the Taliban-led government in Kabul.

“If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

While Trump claims the US built Bagram, the airfield was first constructed by the Soviet Union. Bagram became the largest US military base in Afghanistan during the 20-year US war in the country, and US forces pulled out of the airfield during the withdrawal in 2021.

Trump said during his visit to the UK last week that one of the reasons he wants Bagram is because it’s “an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.” The president made similar comments while he was on the campaign trail in 2024, saying that if he were still president during the withdrawal, he was going to “keep Bagram” and leave 4,000 troops at the facility.

In response to Trump’s latest comments, the Taliban-led government, known officially as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, called on the US president to uphold the Doha agreement, referring to the deal that was negotiated by the first Trump administration and led to President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Under the Doha agreement, the United States pledged that it will not use or threaten force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, nor interfere in its internal affairs. Therefore, it is necessary that they remain faithful to their commitments,” said Afghan government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat, according to TOLO News.

Trump had suggested that the US may be working on a diplomatic deal with Afghanistan on Bagram, but that was rejected by Fasihuddin Fitrat, the chief of staff of Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry.

“Recently, some voices claim that we are in talks with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to negotiate the return of Bagram Airfield, or that we are seeking a political settlement after failing to take it by force. We assure the people of Afghanistan that no agreement over even an inch of our soil is possible,” Fitrat said.

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Trump Says He Is Trying to Get Bagram Air Base Back from the Taliban

President Donald Trump said he was working to reestablish America’s largest military base in Afghanistan. While Trump negotiated an agreement with the Taliban to end the Afghan War, he has argued that President Joe Biden made a mistake by withdrawing from the Bagram Air Base. 

While discussing Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump explained that the US made a mistake by withdrawing from the Bagram Air Base, and he had planned to keep the facility. However, Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban to end the Afghan War and withdraw from the country. 

Trump says he is now working to establish the military facility. “We gave it to them for nothing. We’re trying to get it back, by the way. That could be a little breaking news, we’re trying to get it back because they need things from us,” The President said Thursday.

While Trump did not elaborate on what he may offer the Taliban, the US maintains crippling economic sanctions on Afghanistan, and the country faces intense poverty. 

The President went on to say that the base will give the US a military position near China’s nuclear weapons facility. “We want that base back but one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons,” he added.

It’s unclear how the Taliban will respond to Trump’s proposal to reoccupy part of Afghanistan. Last week, Washington made a prisoner exchange deal with the Taliban that is part of a larger effort to normalize US-Afghan relations. 

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World Health Organization Begs Taliban to Accept Female Aid Workers for Earthquake Victims

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) pleaded Monday with the Taliban junta in Afghanistan to lift its Islamist restrictions against female workers, so that women would be allowed to travel without male guardians and provide humanitarian relief for victims of the devastating September 1 earthquake.

“A very big issue now is the increasing paucity of female staff in these places,” noted the deputy W.H.O. representative to Afghanistan, Dr. Mukta Sharma.

Sharma told Reuters that 90% of the medical staff in the area affected by the earthquake are male, and few of the female staffers were fully qualified doctors. She felt more female doctors would help women in the quake area who were afraid to deal with male physicians. 

Sharma also said the Taliban’s religious edicts against women traveling without male escorts were making it difficult for women to leave the quake area to receive hospital care.

India Today reported on Friday that “Taliban-imposed gender restrictions” are “compounding the tragedy for Afghan women” in other ways as well. 

For example, under the Taliban’s version of Islamic law, women can only make physical contact with their husbands or close male relatives — which means a large number of women are still buried under rubble in villages collapsed by the earthquake, because male rescue workers cannot touch them, and females are not allowed to travel to the disaster area to help.

According to India Today, badly injured female survivors have been left trapped in the debris of collapsed buildings while dead bodies were recovered around them. 

The New York Times (NYT) quoted women who said they were “pushed aside” and “forgotten” while men and boys received treatment for their injuries.

“It felt like women were invisible. The men and children were treated first, but the women were sitting apart, waiting for care,” a male rescue volunteer said.

There are not many qualified female rescue workers to go around, as the Taliban banned women from receiving education in medicine and other advanced fields in 2023. Foreign visitors have observed that hospitals in Afghanistan are almost entirely devoid of female staffers. The NYT said its reporters saw no women among the medical teams treating earthquake survivors.

Maternity care is particularly difficult to come by thanks to the Taliban’s restrictions, and the U.N. estimates there were at least 11,600 pregnant women in the earthquake zone.

The Taliban also banned women from working for foreign humanitarian groups and non-governmental organizations. Even female employees of the United Nations have been harassed and intimidated out of their workplaces.

“The restrictions are huge, the mahram issue continues, and no formal exemption has been provided by the de facto authorities,” Sharma told Reuters. Mahram is the name of the law that requires women to have male escorts when they travel.

“That’s why we felt we had to advocate with (authorities) to say, this is the time you really need to have more female health workers present, let us bring them in, and let us search from other places where they’re available,” she said.

The death toll from the September 1 earthquakes is now over 2,200, plus 3,600 injured. Countless homes were destroyed, leaving survivors to huddle in tents and other temporary structures. Many of the refugees are refusing to return home, now that they have seen how poorly the Taliban junta deals with earthquakes and landslides.

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Suffering in Afghanistan the Fault of Taliban, Not U.S. Aid Cuts

A devastating earthquake underscores how the Taliban has subjected the people of Afghanistan to suffering, while the muted international response shows that even globalists, Muslim-majority nations, and authoritarian regimes are steering clear of the Taliban and its support for transnational terrorism.

Prior to the earthquake, the only government extending significant economic support to the Taliban was the Biden administration. In 2021, it left behind over $7 billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, and over its four-year term (2021–2025) provided an estimated $2.5–3 billion in direct aid. However, the real total is much higher. Testimony before the House Oversight Committee revealed that between 2021 and 2023 alone, the Biden administration gave Afghanistan $8 billion.

The 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Konar province near the Pakistan border late on August 31, 2025, killing more than 2,200 people and injuring thousands. The shallow quake collapsed fragile mud-and-brick homes, wiping out entire villages and leaving over half a million people without shelter.

This tragedy comes amid one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Four years of Taliban rule have left Afghanistan isolated, foreign aid has dried up, and nearly half the population, about 23 million, depend on assistance. While the Taliban has appealed for help, its alignment with authoritarian powers, support for terrorism, and gross human rights violations have discouraged broader aid and recognition.

The Taliban maintain close ties with al-Qaeda and provide safe haven for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which continues to operate from Afghan territory and carry out cross-border attacks. A UN report noted, “The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant.” Other designated terror groups have pledged allegiance to the Taliban, including al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah, Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya.

Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, only Russia has formally recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government. Moscow lifted its “terrorist” designation in April 2025 and formally recognized the regime that July. China has not granted formal recognition but accepted Taliban credentials in 2024, and Iran has also moved closer, handing over the Afghan embassy in 2023 and sending its foreign minister to Kabul in 2025. Yet both Iran and Pakistan have worsened the crisis by deporting 1.9 million Afghan refugees, many forced to live in tents near the borders.

Under Taliban rule, human rights and quality of life, especially for women, have collapsed. Nearly 23 million Afghans require aid: 21 million lack safe water, 14.8 million face acute food insecurity, 14.3 million have limited healthcare access, and 7.8 million women and children need nutrition support. The World Food Program warns 3.1 million Afghans are on the brink of starvation, with 2.9 million already at emergency levels.

Healthcare is collapsing. By April 2025, 439 facilities had closed due to U.S. funding cuts, leaving three million people without care. More than 200 others have shut from severe shortfalls, affecting two million more. In 2023, reports warned that over 90 percent of facilities were at risk, leading to an estimated 4.8 million unattended pregnancies and 51,000 maternal deaths between 2021 and 2025. Infant mortality was 43 per 1,000 in 2021, and maternal mortality 620 per 100,000 in 2020. Between mid-2024 and mid-2025, 3.5 million children and 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are projected to suffer acute malnutrition.

The economy has collapsed. Nearly half of Afghans live below the poverty line. Before the Taliban takeover, foreign aid made up 40 percent of GDP, funded more than half the government’s $6 billion budget, and covered up to 80 percent of public expenditures. Since then, this support has vanished, leaving more than 14 million food insecure and nearly five million women and children acutely malnourished.

Repression is systematic. In the first half of 2024, UN monitors recorded nearly 100 arbitrary detentions and at least 20 cases of torture, targeting former officials, deportees, and LGBT Afghans. Corporal punishments are common, with at least 147 men, 28 women, and four boys flogged in 2024, and more than 180 people publicly punished for adultery or homosexuality in early 2025.

Freedom of expression has disappeared. Between 2021 and 2024, UNAMA documented 336 cases of arbitrary arrest, torture, and intimidation of journalists. The Taliban banned live political broadcasts, censored images, and detained reporters, often without legal or family access. Civil society critics also face harassment, including the detention of analyst Jawed Kohistani.

Women and girls have been erased from public life. They are banned from secondary school from age 13, excluded from universities, and denied healthcare without a male guardian. Nearly 80 percent of young women between 18 and 29 are neither in education, employment, nor training. Only one in four women is working or seeking work, compared to nearly 90 percent of men, creating one of the world’s largest workforce gender gaps. The Taliban suspended women’s medical education in 2024, and UNDP estimates these restrictions cost the economy up to $1 billion annually.

Violence compounds repression. ISKP has carried out deadly attacks on Hazara communities, mosques, buses, and Taliban offices. Pakistani cross-border fire and airstrikes have added civilian casualties. Meanwhile, the Taliban’s Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law enforces strict dress and behavior codes, backed by raids and checkpoints, mirroring their 1996–2001 rule. UN experts describe this as “institutionalized persecution” that may amount to crimes against humanity.

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U.S. generals ran cover for Taliban, despite violent attacks during bungled withdrawal

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CENTCOM Commander Frank McKenzie repeatedly ran cover for the Taliban’s behavior in 2021, denying that the Taliban had carried out attacks against U.S. and NATO bases during the withdrawal and defending the Taliban’s behavior during the evacuation.

In the weeks after the fall of Kabul, U.S. military brass such as Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would repeatedly testify that the Taliban had broken every provision of the Doha Agreement but one — its vow not to attack U.S. and NATO forces.

In fact, the Taliban had also violated that provision, because the Taliban attacked U.S. and NATO bases in Afghanistan multiple times, both before and after President Joe Biden’s “Go-to-Zero” order, including attacks on Bagram Air Base when U.S. troops were still there. The Taliban’s official spokespeople would often take credit for the attacks too.

The GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) final report from last year had a section about how “Taliban Attacks on U.S. Bases Continue[d]” during the U.S. military withdrawal in the spring and summer of 2021, but nowhere in that section nor anywhere else in the report did it include the key fact that Milley and McKenzie repeatedly and falsely claimed that these attacks hadn’t happened.

Multiple key Biden Administration officials also repeatedly praised the “businesslike” character of the Taliban during the non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), despite clear evidence that the Taliban was beating up some Americans and blocking some U.S. citizens from escaping Afghanistan, and in spite of overwhelming evidence that the Taliban was beating up and even executing some Afghans who wanted to flee Taliban rule. McKenzie played an especially key role in establishing this narrative, although Milley played his part too.

HFAC’s September report also made no mention of McKenzie’s insistence that the Taliban had been “very businesslike” and “very pragmatic” and made no mention of Milley’s claims that the Taliban was not interfering with the U.S. evacuation, nor did the report make any reference to other Biden Administration officials repeating this false “businesslike” mantra about the Taliban.

Biden issued a pardon to Milley on his last full day in office in January 2025. McKenzie and other military leaders were not pardoned. McKenzie is currently listed as the Executive Director for the Global and National Security Institute at the University of Southern Florida. 

McKenzie did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through his email at the school. Nor did he respond to prior Just the News reporting about him.

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Milley crafted Biden Admin’s fiction that Afghanistan fell in just ‘eleven days’

Among the litany of mistakes and falsehoods pushed by U.S. military commanders and President Biden in 2021 was the fiction that Afghanistan fell in only “eleven days” in mid-August 2021. In reality, the Taliban takeover unfolded over multiple months following then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal “Go-to-Zero” order on April 14, 2021. The architect responsible for that house of cards was then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley. 

Many in the Biden Administration — President Biden himself, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and others — joined Milley in pushing the “eleven days” claim, although General Austin “Scottie” Miller, the final commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, was among those who later admitted that Afghanistan had not collapsed in just eleven days, but rather over months.

Just the News previously laid out how Milley also wrongly dismissed the comparison between the fall of Saigon and the impending fall of Kabul, massively inflated the size of the Afghan military and police by falsely claiming that they numbered 325,000 to 350,000 strong, and demonstrated he was not tracking the reality on the ground when he underestimated the speed and scope of Taliban district control in the summer of 2021.

Milley then ran cover for the Biden Administration once the situation went sideways by misleading about how quickly the collapse of Afghanistan had occurred. Biden pardoned him on his last full day in office in January 2025.

Milley did not respond to requests for comment sent to him through Princeton University, where he was named a visiting professor last year, and through JPMorgan Chase, where he has been a senior adviser since 2024, nor to Just the News‘ previous reporting.

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NO LESSONS LEARNED FROM AFGHANISTAN FOUR YEARS LATER

Four years ago this month, the US ended its longest war in a most embarrassing fashion. The Taliban efficiently retook the entire country in a matter of months, culminating in the surrender of Kabul. The world watched as Afghans chose to fall to their deaths from departing aircraft than to become captives of the Taliban. Newly released terrorists killed even more Americans at the airport gate and the US amateurishly responded by bombing an innocent contractor’s water truck. Amidst all of this, CNN reporter Clarissa Ward famously proclaimed:

“If this isn’t failure, what does failure look like exactly.”

In August 2021, SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) released a report called “What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction.” While focused on the reconstruction debacle, the beginning of the report makes a troubling point that can be generalized to other parts of America’s failure.

“What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction is the 11th lessons learned report issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The report examines the past two decades of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. It details how the U.S. government struggled to develop a coherent strategy, understand how long the reconstruction mission would take, ensure its projects were sustainable, staff the mission with trained professionals, account for the challenges posed by insecurity, tailor efforts to the Afghan context, and understand the impact of programs. There have been bright spots—such as lower child mortality rates, increases in per capita GDP, and increased literacy rates. But after spending 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has many lessons it needs to learn. Implementing these critical lessons will save lives and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, and in future reconstruction missions elsewhere around the world.”1

The truly shocking part of the SIGAR report and the seemingly for show bipartisan government testimonies after the war was that the knowledge of why the US failed in 2021 had been there for over a decade. For just shy of two decades, the US military and political leadership had at best a flat learning curve and no real desire to win. Analyses of failure written before 2010 were extremely similar to the ‘smart’ generals and politicians’ admissions after the last US troops had left the country. So, what has the US military and government done about it?

The failure in Afghanistan spanned 20 years and almost an equal number of red and blue presidents. No one side can take the blame. Both parties failed America.

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Iran Deporting Millions Of Afghan Migrants After Capturing Alleged Israeli Spies

It would seem that mass deportations in the name of national security is not an issue limited to western countries.  Over the past few weeks Iran has drawn the attention of the UN and a number of humanitarian NGOs after initiated a nationwide program to remove all Afghan migrants without proper legal documentation from their borders, relocating them back to Afghanistan. 

Nearly 1 million migrants have been deported in the past month alone according to estimates by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni.  That’s around half of the 2 million Afghans currently residing in the country.  Iran’s government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani stated at the beginning of the relocation effort:

“We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority.” 

The deportations are a response to detrimental intelligence leaks and acts of sabotage within Iran during recent conflict with Israel.  Iranian authorities report the capture of a number of Afghan refugees involved in the transportation and piloting of drones, the gathering of sensitive intelligence and the planting of bombs.  They assert that migrants are easier for the Israelis to bribe.

In a well-publicized case, Iranian authorities in the city of Rey arrested an Afghan university student accusing him of links to the Mossad and alleging he was caught in possession of sensitive material on bomb-making, drone mechanics and surveillance operations. 

State television aired reports of arrested Afghan citizens “confessing” to being Israeli agents.  In one such report, broadcast on June 26, showed the questioning of several suspects, mostly Afghans, being accused of plotting to bomb a power station in southeast Tehran.

It is possible that the mass deportations represent nothing more than an effort to divert blame for Iranian intelligence failures onto a convenient scapegoat.  However, migrant groups have historically been easy targets for manipulation and conversion by foreign enemies and Iran’s caution is a logical response.  Open borders have long been used by intelligence agencies as a means to plant “sleeper agents” within nations they plan to go to war with.

For example, several Iranians have been recently apprehended trying to sneak across the US border, some of them with national security ties.  

The Taliban government has urged Iran to stop the exodus, calling for a gradual process instead.  Taliban officials say the dignity of the migrants must be respected, though, it is likely that the Afghan economy could be crippled by a surge of a million or more refugees in such a short span of time and the Taliban have limited means of humanitarian support.

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