Fair Observer: The question of drugs is one that will determine Afghanistan’s future. While the talks between the United States and the Taliban continue, one key factor contributing to Afghanistan’s instability is not discussed — opium cultivation and drug trafficking. Afghanistan is the top producer of opium in the world, generating more than 90% of the world’s supply.      Full news...

The New York Times: One of the investigators of the American University in Afghanistan summed things up this way: If the United States government had paid to send every Afghan graduate to college in the United States, it would have spent less money than it did on financing a troubled, English-language university for them in the Afghan capital. The university graduated 1,281 Afghan degree students over the past decade, at a cost of 126,000 USD each to American taxpayers, or a total of 162 million USD.      Full news...

The Defense Post: Taliban fighters have stormed several security posts providing protection to Afghanistan’s historic minaret of Jam, cutting access to the UNESCO World Heritage Site and killing 18 security forces, officials said Wednesday, May 29. The attack comes less than a week after the revered 12th-century minaret, located in a remote part of the western province of Ghor, was threatened by surging floodwaters.      Full news...

UN News: The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that much greater protection for educational facilities was needed across Afghanistan where attacks against schools have increased three-fold in just one year. The call coincides with the third International Conference on Safe Schools, taking place this week in Mallorca, Spain.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Khal Bibi is a 23-year-old widow. Her family has been destroyed by the 18-year war that afflicts Afghanistan. Bibi’s husband and one of her three children were killed in an airstrike during clashes between government forces and the Taliban. She, with her remaining two children, is among the 550,000 internally displaced people who have been forced to flee their villages.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: The respiratory ward of Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, built with Indian aid, is filled with children gasping for breath. Some scream as they’re treated, their cries echoing off the concrete walls. Amid the shrieks, doctors, parents, and patients struggle to heal, soothe, and breathe. The ward follows a seasonal rhythm—in the summers, it’s used to treat gastric issues, but during the winter, doctors treat Afghanistan’s vulnerable population for chronic respiratory illnesses that they attribute to pollution in the air, a mix of heating from homes and pollution from industrial sources.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: In a recent address to Afghanistan’s healthcare providers, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said, “With what we spend on a single day of war, we could build a state-of-the-art hospital.” With that statement, Abdullah - a medical doctor himself - summed up the state of healthcare in the country plagued by limited resources and an ongoing war.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Air raids in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand and eastern Kunar provinces have killed at least 14 civilians, the UN said on Thursday. Seven children were among those killed in the attacks that took place in Helmand’s Gereshk and Kunar’s Chawki districts on Monday and Wednesday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.      Full news...

VOA: The collapse of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq is doing little to slow down the terror group’s branch in Afghanistan. Newly unclassified intelligence suggests IS-Khorasan, as the group is known, is growing both in numbers and ambition, now boasting as many as 5,000 fighters — nearly five times as many as estimates from last year — while turning its focus to bigger and more spectacular attacks.      Full news...

TRT World: US president’s decision to pardon US soldiers who carried out murders in Afghanistan and Iraq is just one way in which Washington avoids accountability for its actions. Donald Trump is preparing to pardon several US military members this Memorial Day, including a soldier who admitted to murder in Afghanistan in 2010, according to the New York Times.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Five children were killed when an explosive device attached to a motorbike went off in a market in Afghanistan’s western province, an official said. Another 20 people were wounded in the incident on Saturday, which took place in Herat province's Oba district, according to provincial governor spokesman Jelani Farhad.      Full news...

The Washington Post: U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan killed as many as 18 Afghan police officers late Thursday during heavy ground fighting with Taliban forces near the capital of Helmand province, Afghan officials and provincial leaders said Friday. U.S. military officials here said the airstrikes, in what they described as a “tragic accident,” killed members of the Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters, but they did not say how many from each side died.      Full news...

The New York Times: Murtaza Ahmadi was one of those Afghans who somehow never seemed to suffer from the long war. No one in his family perished on the front lines with the army or the police, or disappeared for years with the Taliban only to come back in a plywood coffin. No one close to him had the bad luck to be where a bomb went off or to get caught in crossfire, relatives said.      Full news...

The New York Times: It’s easy to reach for metaphors to describe the war in Afghanistan — quagmire, money pit, a boulder that must be rolled up the Hindu Kush for eternity. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told The Times this month that a recent decision by the Trump administration to stop releasing important metrics about the war...      Full news...

The Guardian: A prominent Afghan journalist and political adviser has been gunned down in Kabul, just days after she warned on social media that she feared for her life. Mena Mangal was shot dead on Saturday morning in south-east Kabul. The attack, in broad daylight in a public place, prompted an outpouring of grief and anger from women’s rights activists, directed at authorities who had left her unprotected in the face of threats.      Full news...