Media Coverage

An Afghan prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay for about 15 years without trial has been released from US custody, the Taliban government in Afghanistan and an international human rights group said. Asadullah Haroon Gul’s release was announced on Friday by Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban-appointed deputy...

The Taliban have ordered female Afghan TV presenters and other women on screen to cover their faces while on air. Media outlets were told of the decree on Wednesday, a religious police spokesman told BBC Pashto. The ruling comes two weeks after all women were ordered to wear a face veil in public...

Many women in the Afghan capital are delaying a return to fully covering their faces in public in defiance of orders from Islamist Taliban rulers, others are staying at home, and some have been wearing COVID-19 face masks anyway. The Taliban, who swept back to power as the government collapsed, on...

A series of explosions across Afghanistan on Thursday killed at least 16 people and wounded scores more, according to police and health officials. The Islamic State (IS) group's local affiliate claimed an attack on a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, which killed at least 11...

Referencing the Tigray crisis in Ethiopia and the war in Ukraine, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the world ‘is not treating the human race the same way.’ Tedros, who is from Tigray, said since a truce was declared in the besieged northern region of Ethiopia three weeks ago, about 2,000 trucks...

The United Nations chief said Thursday that nearly all Afghans don’t have enough to eat and some have resorted to “selling their children and their body parts” to get money for food. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement was part of a dramatic appeal Thursday from the world body and several...

Taliban authorities have carried out far-reaching censorship and violence against Afghan media in district and provincial centers, drastically limiting critical reporting in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. The situation facing journalists outside Kabul appears much worse than inside the...

In a tiny classroom in a migrant camp in Greece, 18-year-old Roya Rasuli teaches a bustling group of young girls how to paint. For Rasuli, it's also a lesson in women's empowerment. "What is your message for women, for girls?" Rasuli, who was born in Iran to Afghan refugees, asks her class. "To be...

The executive board of the World Bank has approved a plan to use more than $1bn from a frozen Afghanistan trust fund to finance urgently needed education, agriculture, health and family programmes, the bank has announced. The plan, which will bypass sanctioned Taliban authorities by disbursing the...

The Taliban is creating a “grand army” for Afghanistan that will include officers and troops who served in the old regime, says the official tasked with overseeing the military’s transformation. Latifullah Hakimi, head of the Taliban’s Ranks Clearance Commission, also told a news conference on...