AFGHANISTAN WEEKLY UPDATE (24th Feb – 2nd Mar)

24 February 2025

1. Documents obtained by Afghanistan International show that Mohammad Yousuf Wafa, the Taliban governor in Balkh, has filed a complaint with the Taliban Supreme Court against Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister for politics, for criticizing Haibatullah Akhundzada, the group’s leader.  
2. The Taliban Supreme Court announced on Monday that the group’s primary court in Khost province had publicly flogged 18 people, including four women, on various charges.  
3. The Taliban announced the holding of an “International Water Meeting” in the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul. The Taliban Ministry of Higher Education, led by Nida Mohammad Nadeem, which is hosting the meeting, only provided audio coverage, but the office of Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, released images of it.      
4. Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, warned at the Herat Security Conference in Madrid, Spain, about the global threats posed by the Taliban government.      
5. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan says that the request for an arrest warrant for the Taliban leader and judge by the prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal has given morale to Afghan women and girls.  
6. Sources within the Taliban have provided Afghanistan International with a list showing that Mullah Mohammad Khan Dawat, the group’s governor in Kunduz, has at least 115 bodyguards. The list includes the full names and descriptions of the Taliban governor’s bodyguards.  
7. A letter obtained by Afghanistan International shows that Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has appointed Mullah Nik Mohammad Malang as Badakhshan police chief.  
8. The United Front of Afghanistan, led by General Sami Sadat, welcomed the US President’s statements about the need to withdraw the country’s weapons from the Taliban and announced that it was ready to cooperate in disarming the Taliban.  
9. Former Pakistani envoy to Afghanistan Asif Durrani said on Monday that the Taliban is not the permanent reality in Afghanistan. He said the Taliban is refusing to talk about vital and serious issues.  
10.  The findings of the Afghanistan Security Observatory show that 22 security incidents were recorded in Afghanistan in January of this year. Of these incidents, about 9 were carried out by anti-Taliban fronts and 3 by ISIS.  
11. Saudi Arabia announced on Monday at the Fourth International Humanitarian Forum in Riyadh that it would contribute $500 million to eradicate polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  
12. The Taliban Ministry of Energy and Water says that three domestic and foreign companies have announced their readiness to produce solar energy in Afghanistan.  
13. The 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council has begun. According to Mr. Andisheh, Afghanistan will be among the important topics of this meeting.

25 February 2025

1. John Sopko, former US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said on Tuesday at the Herat Security Conference in Madrid that the US has spent more than $21 billion on Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power.  
2. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Japan have signed a $6 million agreement to support livelihood programs in Afghanistan. The Japanese contribution will benefit Afghan returnees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their supporting communities.  
3. A former Afghan intelligence officer who served with U.S. forces in Afghanistan for 13 years has been detained under the Trump administration’s new immigration policies.  
4. The Organization to Protect Journalists says that Radio Begum has resumed its broadcasts, but its arrested employees are still in custody.  
5. Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, warned during the 12th round of Herat Security Talks in Madrid that.  
6. Sources say that Pakistani police have arrested several people in Islamabad as they continue to detain asylum seekers.  
7. The Torkham crossing has remained closed for the fourth consecutive day. This crossing remains closed to freight, commercial, and transit vehicles.  
8. The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has claimed to have killed a Taliban fighter in Herat province. According to this front, no one in its forces was harmed in this attack.  
9. Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front, has said that after the failure of the Doha process, the only process that has managed to gain the trust and attention of the Afghan people is the Vienna process.  
10. The Taliban Clearance Commission in southeastern Afghanistan, known as the Haqqani Network’s stronghold, has begun a reassessment of the group’s clearance procedures following an escalation of ISIS attacks in Kabul and other provinces.

26 February 2025

1. Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for the Taliban, has claimed that 466 media outlets under the control of the group are operating in Afghanistan.  
2. Following Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s visit to Tashkent and the two countries commitment to expanding trade relations to $2 billion, the Express Tribune, close to the Pakistani military, wrote that without ending instability in Afghanistan, Islamabad’s regional economic plans would not be possible.  
3. Representative Tim Burchit, criticizing the weekly $40 million aid packages to Afghanistan, says that most of the time foreign aid goes to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.  
4. Pakistani border officials say the Torkham border crossing has remained closed for the fifth consecutive day. Pakistan’s Geo News network, citing customs officials in Torkham, reported that the loss due to the closure of this important crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan for the past four days is about $12 million.  
5. Authorities at Noor Prison in Iran’s Mazandaran province executed an Afghan prisoner on Wednesday morning, February 28, on charges of premeditated murder.  
6. The leaders of Afghanistan’s two neighbouring countries, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif emphasized coordinating efforts to combat terrorism, radicalism, and security challenges.  
7. Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts to restore ties with the Taliban have hit a deadlock, the Pakistani media outlet The Express Tribune reported, citing internal divisions among Taliban leaders that have made it difficult for Islamabad to engage meaningfully with Kabul  
8. The UK-based investigative news outlet Unheard has revealed in an investigative report that the BBC and its Media Action arm are paying large sums of money to the Taliban.  
9. The Chinese ambassador to Kabul announced on Wednesday during a meeting with the Taliban’s refugee minister that his country is ready to build shelters and residential settlements for Afghan refugees.

27 February 2025

1. Local sources in Herat say that Mohammad Asif Faizyar, the editor-in-chief of the “Nada Baloch” media outlet, has been arrested for failing to publish a condolence message from Noor Ahmad Islamjar, the Taliban governor in Herat.      
2. The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has claimed that it killed two Taliban fighters and wounded four others following an attack on them in Panjshir province.  
3. Cipher Brief Center wrote in an article by Abdul Matin Bek, the former chief of staff of the Afghan president, that the Taliban has been divided into different factions, multiple centres of power, and each faction is trying to consolidate its positions.  
4. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that in the past three years, natural disasters such as floods and droughts have become the main drivers of internal displacement in Afghanistan.  
5. More than 2,000 Afghan asylum applications were rejected in the UK in the last quarter of 2024. Human rights activists have warned of a “hostile environment” for Afghan asylum seekers in the country.  
6. The Taliban Ministry of Public Works announced that it has signed three memorandums of understanding with Turkmenistan for the development of a railway line worth a total of seven million dollars.      
7. The BBC English Service reported that the Taliban has installed 90,000 CCTV cameras in Kabul to monitor people’s lives. The BBC wrote that it was the first international media outlet to be allowed to inspect the Taliban’s camera system.  
8. The 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council began in Geneva on Thursday, March 29. Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, said that the situation in Afghanistan is worsening dramatically with each passing day, especially for women.  
9. The British newspaper Daily Mail wrote in a report that with the Taliban regaining control over Afghanistan, the phenomenon of “bachebazi” and bachabazi circles have flourished among local powerful people.  
10. The Afghan National Resistance Front began its activities in 2021, coinciding with the rapid fall of the Ashraf Ghani government, and the Freedom Front shortly thereafter.

28 February 2025

1. The research unit of the prestigious Economist magazine announced in its annual report on the Democracy Index in 2024 that Afghanistan scored 0.25 points out of 167 countries in the world, placing it at the bottom of the table.  
2. On the third anniversary of its political and military activity, the Afghan Liberation Front reported that it had carried out 87 targeted attacks against the Taliban last year.  
3. The Resistance Front announced that two Taliban were killed and at least four others were wounded in an operation in the Jangalak area in the centre of Panjshir province. The front said that the Taliban were trying to make the situation appear “calm” by holding gatherings and Buzkashi competitions.  
4. A German court sentenced two Afghan men to a combined total of more than nine years in prison on Thursday after finding them members of the Islamic State group guilty of plotting to attack the Swedish parliament and kill lawmakers in retaliation for the burning of copies of the Quran in the country.  
5. The Afghan Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for last night’s explosion in Kunduz, claiming that four Taliban fighters were killed as a result of the incident.  
6. Roza Otunbayeva, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), has emphasized the organization’s priority for the country, saying that the most important thing in Afghanistan right now is feeding the people.  
7. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says that the Doha agreement was for one stage and the group’s regime will not proceed based on it.  
8. Richard Bennett, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, says that the people of this country deserve support and the world should not forget them.  
9. Continuing the Taliban’s field trials, the group has publicly flogged 13 people, including five women, in Jawzjan.  
10. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that recent flooding in the country has killed 22 people.  
11. Shafqat Ali Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, says they are concerned about the weapons left behind by the United States, which have remained with the Taliban after the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

1 March 2025

1. The Torkham crossing has remained closed to traffic, trade, and transit for the eighth consecutive day.      
2. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the reduction in US financial assistance will have widespread impacts on the people of Afghanistan.  
3. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced that recent floods in Kandahar and Farah have claimed at least 29 lives.  
4. The Telegraph has reported that girls in Afghanistan are being denied access to essential surgeries due to discriminatory Taliban restrictions.  
5. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan (OCHA) has announced that recent floods in Afghanistan have left 22 dead and 16 injured.  
6. Some refugee advocacy organizations in the United States say that a federal court has blocked Trump’s attempt to indefinitely suspend the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).  
7. In a press conference, Shafqat Ali Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, in response to a question about the closure of the Torkham crossing, said that the Taliban were trying to establish a checkpoint on the Pakistani side.  
8. Ali Abdul Razaq Nejad, Director of the Medical Accident and Emergency Center at Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, said that a vehicle carrying illegal Afghan immigrants overturned on the Saravan highway.  
9. The Afghan Freedom Front has announced that, in honour of the month of Ramadan, it will unilaterally suspend its military operations from the beginning of this month until the end of Eid al-Fitr, as long as it is not attacked.  
10. The Afghan Journalists Center says that Arezo TV has obtained permission to operate in Kabul and has reopened after about three months.  
11. The Taliban Ministry of Industry and Commerce says that Pakistan’s closure of the Torkham crossing is against all international trade laws and will harm traders and people of both countries.

2 March 2025

1. Local sources in Kunduz say that a Taliban fighter shot and killed a young man in the province.  
2. Informed sources say that following a clash between the Taliban in Kunduz province, the group’s security commander and several other fighters were injured.  
3. The Taliban Ministry of Industry and Trade announced that Uzbekistan is implementing several economic projects worth $200 million in Balkh, Samangan, and Kunduz provinces.  
4. The European Union Delegation to Afghanistan, while announcing the visit of Pieters Ostobs, Head of the Asian Relations Department, and Paula Pamploni, Deputy Director of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Office for Asia and the Pacific, to Kabul, emphasized the EU’s continued support for the Afghan people.  
5. Ali Amin Gandapur, Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, discussed the problems caused by the closure of the Torkham crossing with Mohibullah Shakir, the Taliban Consul General in Peshawar.      
6. Sources confirmed to Afghanistan International that at least one civilian was killed in a clash between Pakistani border forces and the Taliban at the Torkham border crossing.  
7. The director of Iran’s Dogharun customs has announced that the number of transit goods imported into Afghanistan through this border in the first ten months of this year has increased by 70 per cent compared to the same period last year.  
8. Hossein Mousavi, head of the Engineering Department of the Iranian Armed Forces, has announced that the country’s 1,000-kilometer border with Afghanistan should be closed to prevent the entry of “terrorists” and drug trafficking.  
9. Local sources in Takhar say that this group searched the homes of residents of Taloqan City on Friday last week and Saturday this week, and this process is still ongoing.  
10. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a special interview with the group’s national television, said that the equipment left behind by the United States is war booty and that the group has secret interactions with some countries.  
11. Human rights organizations have written a letter to the Pakistani government, calling the forced deportation of Afghan refugees a violation of international law and the country’s obligations and calling for it to be stopped.  
12. Local Taliban officials in Nangarhar say that Azizullah Mustafa, the deputy governor of the province, has discussed the reopening of the Torkham crossing with Pakistani representatives.      
13. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that the month of Ramadan has arrived while millions of Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from.      
14. Barrister Saif, the intelligence advisor for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has asked the Pakistani government to approve permission for a delegation to travel to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.