BBC: Afghanistan has pulled out of an upcoming cricket series after three players in a local tournament were killed in an air strike it blamed Pakistan for. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) said it would withdraw from November’s tri-nation T20 series out of respect for the dead. The three did not play for the national team.The strike hit a home in Urgon district in Paktika province, where the players were eating dinner after a match, witnesses and local officials told the BBC. Eight people were killed, the ACB said. Pakistan said the strike hit militants and denied targeting civilians.      Full news...

IANS: According to the United Nations, more than nine million people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity with deteriorating malnutrition threatening children and vulnerable families around the country, the local media reported on Thursday. The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the recent earthquake has deteriorated an already dire food security and nutrition crisis in Afghanistan.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan’s internet and mobile telephone services were down nationwide on Tuesday, and while the Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation, in recent weeks it has voiced concern about pornography online. The Taliban’s restrictions on women and freedom of expression have drawn criticism from rights groups and foreign governments since the former insurgents resumed control of Afghanistan in 2021. Here are some other actions the Taliban has taken this year.      Full news...

Reuters: services reported no connectivity and disruption to flights and financial services. The Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation for the outage and could not be reached for comment. The UN called on authorities to fully restore connections. In the past, the Taliban have voiced concern about online pornography, and authorities cut fibre-optic links to some provinces in recent weeks, with officials citing morality concerns.      Full news...

Amu TV: Sources have confirmed that Taliban members in western Afghanistan shot a man dead and hanged his body in public on Friday, August 22. The incident has drawn condemnation from rights activists who described the act as a summary execution and a violation of human dignity.Witnesses told Amu that the man was hanged from an old tank at the busy Kandahar Gate area of Herat, where a large crowd gathered to watch. Videos circulating on social media showed Taliban members kicking the body in the head and face as bystanders filmed the scene.      Full news...

CNN: Afghanistan is seeing its sharpest-ever surge of child malnutrition, the World Food Programme said Monday, adding it needed $539 million to help the country’s most vulnerable families. Almost 10 million people, a quarter of Afghanistan’s population, face acute food insecurity. One in three children is stunted. The WFP said the rise in child malnutrition was linked to a drop in emergency food assistance over the past two years because of dwindling donor support.      Full news...

IFJ: Afghan journalists endured ongoing harassment and intimidation from Taliban authorities in July, with the jailing of at least seven media workers. The International Federation of Journalists joins its affiliate, the Afghan Independent Journalists Union (AIJU), in calling for the immediate release of all media workers and an end to the arbitrary detention of media workers. The arrests were recorded in IFJ monitoring between July 6 to 30. In one incident, three journalists were arrested on July 24 by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.      Full news...

RAWA News: In a renewed and intensified assault on women’s freedoms, the Taliban has launched a wave of arbitrary arrests across Afghanistan, targeting women and girls accused of violating the group’s extreme interpretation of hijab rules. Over the past week alone, dozens of women have been detained in Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, under vague and ever-changing standards of “modesty,” with no due process or legal justification. These arrests are taking place in public spaces — streets, shopping malls, cafes, and university campuses — where women are simply trying to go about their daily lives.      Full news...

The Telegraph: More than 200 Afghan soldiers and police murdered by the Taliban since a “kill list” was leaked by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have been named in a dossier. Their names were compiled by independent caseworkers highlighting the plight of Afghans who worked with British and US forces. But a court order imposed by a senior judge prevents The Telegraph from reporting whether the dead had first appeared on the MoD list, which was accidentally made public in February 2022.      Full news...

The Guardian: Afghan refugees, many of them lone women, at the Islam Qala border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran after their deportation in June. Women forced back to living under the Taliban’s increasingly repressive regime have spoken of their desperation as Iran accelerates the deportation of an estimated 4 million Afghans who had fled to the country. In the past month alone, more than 250,000 people, including thousands of lone women, have returned to Afghanistan from Iran      Full news...

RFE/RL: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have left Iran over the past weeks since Tehran gave more than four million undocumented Afghan migrants until July 6 to leave the country, the United Nations said, raising alarm over a dire shortage of funding to assist the returnees. More than 256,000 Afghans returned to their country from Iran in June alone, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).      Full news...

RAWANews: Fresh violence has broken out in Khash district of Badakhshan province, where armed clashes between Taliban forces and local residents have resulted in at least seven deaths and more than 40 injuries over the past two days, local sources report. The unrest began after Taliban fighters intervened in a funeral ceremony for victims of earlier violence in the area. Residents opposed their presence, triggering violent confrontations. Some news outlets have reported that up to 15 people were killed by the Taliban during the crackdown.      Full news...

RAWANews: Local sources in Helmand say that a 45-year-old man, who already has two other wives, has married a 6-year-old girl. According to the sources, the girl’s father gave her in marriage to this older man “in exchange for money.” Child marriage, particularly the marriage of young girls to elderly or middle-aged men, is considered one of the widespread cultural forms of violence across Afghanistan, which has significantly increased since the Taliban’s return to power.      Full news...

WePresent: Over the course of six months, photographer Kiana Hayeri and researcher Melissa Cornet created a portrait of the lives of Afghan women under the strict regime of the Taliban. In a country facing one of the most severe women’s rights crises in the world, “No Woman’s Land” captures their struggles, but also shines a light on the subtle yet powerful ways they are resisting. from secret classrooms to moments of quiet togetherness at home. Here, Hayeri tells Phoebe West how the pair approached the project despite the limited access under the Taliban regime, and why resistance is a necessity for the women of Afghanistan.      Full news...

UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News: The body of an 8-year-old girl who had been missing for three days was recovered in the Bhana Mari area here, police informed on Monday. Police said, the girl’s body was discovered at the home of a neighbor in Lundi Arbab locality, which falls within the jurisdiction of Bhana Mari police station. The suspect, identified as Altaf, son of Mamoor, has been arrested in connection with the case.      Full news...

RAWANews: Zalala Hashimi, a well-known Pashto singer and finalist in Season 12 of Afghan Star, has been missing for over two weeks in Kabul. Her husband reported that she left home to visit a friend but never returned. Efforts to locate her have failed, and both her friend and family claim no knowledge of her whereabouts.      Full news...

RAWANews: Kobra Rezaee, just 26 years old and an Afghan refugee struggling to survive in Iran, vanished nearly two months ago after leaving for work—and what was found shattered any sense of humanity. In early June, her dismembered body was horrifically dumped like trash in the Pishva area of Varamin, near Tehran. Her limbs were severed, and parts of her—along with her phone and ID—are still missing, erased as if she never existed. DNA tests painfully confirmed the unbearable truth: this young woman’s life was ended in the cruelest way imaginable.      Full news...

TOLO News: These retirees are calling on officials to pay their pensions, which they say they have not received for nearly four years.Abdul Raoof Amin, a retiree, said: “We are demanding our pension payments. Look at what has become of this society. Today, people in need and the elderly receive financial aid from many sources. We are entering the fifth year without receiving any assistance from the Islamic Emirate, and we still have not received our pensions.”      Full news...

Deutsche Welle: In 2001, the Taliban destroyed two giant statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan valley, erasing traces of a pre-Islamic past. Amid many other global crises, the human rights situation in Afghanistan has been overshadowed in the international media. Millions of people continue to suffer from systemic rights violations under the Taliban-run government, a UN report has found.      Full news...

BBC: The Taliban government in Afghanistan has banned chess until further notice due to fears the game is a source of gambling. Officials said the game has been prohibited indefinitely until its compatibility with Islamic law can be determined. Chess is the latest sport to be restricted by the Taliban. Women are essentially barred from participating in sport at all.      Full news...

Rukhshana: A young woman has died after setting herself on fire in Taywara district of Ghor province in an alleged attempt to escape a forced marriage, local sources told Rukhshana Media. The self-immolation occurred Sunday on the same day that the woman was allegedly to be taken to the brother of local Taliban commander in Ghor, sources said.      Full news...

Daily 8am: This article was written by Behnia for Hasht-e Subh Daily and published on March 27, 2025. An edited version of the article is published on Global Voices under a media partnership agreement. Following the Taliban’s imposition of restrictions on women’s education, academic pursuits, and employment, many women and girls have turned to various addictive substances in Afghanistan. Hasht-e Subh Daily’s investigative report revealed that girls and women use tobacco products as well as sedative and anti-anxiety medications to escape psychological pressures, mental strain, and depression.      Full news...

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: Since Taliban forces effectively overthrew the Afghan government in August 2021, the Taliban and various armed groups, including the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K), have committed widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses throughout the country. The Taliban de facto authorities have implemented restrictive policies and practices that deny women and girls their human rights, perpetuating extreme forms of gender-based discrimination and flagrantly violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).      Full news...

The Guardian: When the Taliban began marching towards cities across Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Alia, a 22-year-old Afghan journalist, found herself doing some of the most important work of her short life and career.In the weeks leading up to the Taliban takeover in August, Alia’s voice on the radio became familiar to many in northern Afghanistan. She reported on the withdrawal of foreign troops, the siege of government offices and on the detention of former officials in her province.      Full news...

Reuters: Since seizing power in 2021, Afghanistan's Taliban administration has rolled back hard-fought rights won by Afghan women and girls during two decades of rule by American-backed governments.The International Criminal Court prosecutor on Thursday said he had applied for arrest warrants for Taliban leaders, including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of crimes against humanity for widespread discrimination against women and girls.      Full news...

RASC News Agency: On Saturday, the first day of Ramadan, Whitney Wright, an American adult film actress, released new images documenting her travels across various Afghanistan cities. In one particularly striking photograph, she is seen carrying a Kalashnikov rifle over her shoulder, raising questions about the nature of her visit. It appears that Wright is moving freely across the country under Taliban protection. Previously, she had shared footage of herself at Band-e Amir, Afghanistan’s renowned national park.      Full news...

UnHerd: Taliban. The word is synonymous with religious fundamentalism — vividly clear since the militants swept back into Kabul in August 2021. Amid public executions and gender apartheid, there has been an intensifying war on free speech. Since the Taliban returned to power, media have been censored and radio stations in particular forced off the air. Yet, curiously, one foreign broadcaster endures: the BBC. On 1 December 2022, the Taliban issued a decree closing down the two local stations run by the BBC’s rivals: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.      Full news...

National Post: She was 20 years old, dreaming of a fulfilled life. The smart, ambitious young woman was among 20 Afghan women and girls enrolled in a secret school, seeking knowledge and a future.But the Taliban were back in charge after Western forces withdrew from Afghanistan in September 2021, and they had different plans, as did her authoritarian, ultra-conservative father; she would marry an Afghan man of his choosing living in Turkey, a man she did not love.      Full news...

CNN: The Taliban suspended the operation of Afghanistan’s only women’s radio station after raiding its premises on Tuesday, deepening the exclusion of women from public life and society since the group took power in 2021. Kabul-based Radio Begum – a station run by women with content aimed at women’s education – said officers from the Taliban’s information and culture ministry restrained the station’s staff as it searched its premises in the nation’s capital.      Full news...

Times Now News: Ever since retaking power in 2021, the Taliban have ordered the most brutal reversal of women's rights. Women and girls have lost access to education, jobs, public spaces, and even basic rights—many of which most of us would take for granted. Women around the world have been fighting for their rights, and this has dealt a grievous blow to all those efforts. Upon their return, the Taliban have established the most regressive government. Actor Meryl Streep, who attended an event in September last year as part of the UN General Assembly in New York, spoke about the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan.      Full news...