Global Security Review: Afghanistan, under Taliban control, is a powder keg ready to erupt with consequences that will ripple throughout the region and the world. The driving forces of this impending disaster are deeply rooted in the Taliban’s ideological, strategic, and operational maneuvers, which intensified after the American exit. The brainwashing of youths, monopoly over illicit drug production, sheltering and supporting global terrorist groups, weaponization of poverty, and recruitment of refugees has brought Afghanistan to the verge of an imminent explosion, with consequences that may prove more consequential than those of September 11, 2001. Understanding what the Taliban is doing deserves further explanation.      Full news...

The Guardian: Afghanistan is at risk of a polio outbreak, health officials have warned, after the Taliban suspended the vaccination campaign over security fears and restrictions on women. The Taliban had “temporarily suspended” polio vaccinations in Afghanistan, a health official involved with the campaign confirmed to the Guardian, because of security concerns and women’s involvement in administering vaccines. A highly infectious viral disease, polio can cause paralysis and death, particularly in infants and young children.      Full news...

ABC News: About 6.5 million children in Afghanistan were forecast to experience crisis levels of hunger in 2024, a nongovernmental organization said. Nearly three out of 10 Afghan children will face crisis or emergency levels of hunger this year as the country feels the immediate impacts of floods, the long-term effects of drought, and the return of Afghans from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, according to a report released late Tuesday by Save The Children.      Full news...

Feminist Majority: In times of conflict, political instability, and social unrest, women and children have always been the ones who face the most dire consequences compared to the rest of the population. It is nearly three years since the Taliban returned to power and their extremist views and restricting edicts against Afghan women has been one of the major human rights crises. Afghan women’s rights are under constant attack by the Taliban. However, the silent struggle that Afghan women are facing on top of the restrictions on their rights and existence is food insecurity and malnutrition.      Full news...

BBC News: Teenage Afghan girls have told the BBC they feel “mentally dead” as the Taliban’s ban on their education prevents them from returning to school once again.More than 900 days have now passed since girls over 12 were first banned. The Taliban have repeatedly promised they would be readmitted once a number of issues were resolved - including ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”. But they have made little comment as a third new school year started without teenage girls in class this week.      Full news...

UN News: Kanni Wignaraja, Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, who recently visited the country, told correspondents in New York that 69 per cent of Afghans are “subsistence insecure” – meaning they do not have enough basic resources. “Something that really hit me … was the harsh impact of continuous natural disasters,” she said, adding that many parts of Afghanistan are facing “dramatic” scarcity of water further setting back development efforts.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Their names are Khoshbakht, Saliha, Fawzia, Benazir, Farzana and Nazia — Afghan girls ages 6 to 10 who have been sold into marriage. Desperation forced their parents to thrust them into brutal adulthood. In Shahrak-e-Sabz, a settlement of makeshift mud-brick homes and tents for the displaced in Herat province that we visited last month, our researchers counted 118 girls who had been sold as child brides, and 116 families with girls waiting for buyers. This amounts to 40 percent of families surveyed, even though the Taliban decreed in late 2021...      Full news...

Arab News: KHOST, Afghanistan: Zubaida traveled from the rural outskirts of Khost in eastern Afghanistan to give birth at a maternity hospital specializing in complicated cases, fearing a fate all too common among pregnant Afghan women — her death or her child’s.She lay dazed, surrounded by the unfamiliar bustle of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run hospital, exhausted from delivery the day before, but relieved.Her still-weak newborn slept nearby in an iron crib with peeling paint, the child’s eyes lined with khol to ward off evil.      Full news...

The Hill: Abandoned by the world, Afghanistan’s youth are trapped in a nightmare. They grew up under two decades of American influence, dreaming of a future where they could pursue their education. But the Taliban have snatched away their dreams, turning education into a joke.Education is like a window to the world, as my grandfather used to say. A window that lets you breathe in the wisdom of others and exhale yours to them. It sets you free.      Full news...

CNN: Arzo is so weak she spends most of her day lying on a thin mattress in a dimly lit room under a ceiling fan that steadily circulates the polluted air of Pakistan’s largest city.To pass the time, she watches makeup videos on her cellphone, the glow of the screen illuminating the faded freckles of a teenager whose skin now rarely sees the sun. Arzo is a long way from her home in Afghanistan, where she lived with her parents before being smuggled across the border for medical treatment. Her older brother and sister, Ahamad and Mahsa, now care for her in a rented room in Karachi, their temporary refuge from life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.      Full news...

Save the children: Almost 8 million children in Afghanistan – or one in three - will enter the new year facing crisis levels of hunger as increasingly freezing conditions threaten communities already reeling from drought, earthquakes, and economic hardship, said Save the Children. New figures[i] released today by the IPC, the global hunger monitoring system, predict an increase in the number of people experiencing crisis or emergency levels of hunger in Afghanistan during the winter months, although the situation has improved compared with the same period last year.      Full news...

CBS News: The U.S. Treasury announced new sanctions over the weekend against two Taliban regime officials in Afghanistan, accusing the men of roles in the systemic “repression of women and girls."”p The Treasury specifically noted the Taliban’s ban on girls attending school beyond the sixth grade as “severe and pervasive discrimination”. ut while the impact on Afghan women and girls of the Taliban’s draconian crackdown on education has been well documented, a report from the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch warns that the Islamic fundamentalists’ approach to schooling is “causing irreversible damage to the Afghan education system for boys as well as girls.”      Full news...

VOA News: The Taliban’s “abusive” educational policies are harming boys as well as girls in Afghanistan, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Wednesday. The Taliban have been globally condemned for banning girls and women from secondary school and university, but the rights group says there has been less attention to the deep harm inflicted on boys’ education. The departure of qualified teachers including women, regressive curriculum changes and the increase in corporal punishment have led to greater fear of going to school and falling attendance.      Full news...

Sky News: The Taliban regime forced women to choose between abiding by the law or surviving - and so many died in fear. Weeks on from one of the most destructive earthquakes in Afghanistan's history, thousands of people in Herat are living in tents next to what remains of their homes.The 6.3-magnitude quake hit on 11 October, destroying entire villages and leaving more than 2,400 people dead.Women and children have been disproportionately affected by the disaster, the UN has said, and make up more than 90% of the dead.      Full news...

Associated Press: Afghan women and children were disproportionately killed by the earthquake across Herat province this last weekend because they were more likely to be at home when buildings fell. Many are now concerned about who will raise the children left without mothers. The Afghanistan representative for the U.N. Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no “gender dimension” to the death toll if the quake had happened at night.      Full news...

Hasht-E Subh: The Earthquake in Herat province has claimed the lives of more than two thousand people and injured thousands more. As a result of this earthquake, approximately 13 villages have been destroyed, and hundreds are still trapped under the rubble.On the other hand, sources report that on the first day of the earthquake, the Taliban prevented women who had left their homes for safety from venturing outside. These sources alleged that the Taliban told women they had no right to leave their homes without a male escort. Additionally, the Taliban’s office in Herat had arranged transportation for male journalists to go to the disaster site on the previous day but did not provide the same facilities for female journalists.      Full news...

Reuters: The U.N.’s humanitarian office has announced $5 million worth of assistance for the quake response, but immediate material support has come from a limited few countries. Afghanistan's healthcare system, largely reliant on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance, forming the backbone of the economy, was halted.      Full news...

ABC News: The death toll from strong earthquakes that shook western Afghanistan has risen to over 2,000, a Taliban government spokesman said Sunday. It’s one of the deadliest earthquakes to strike the country in two decades. A powerful magnitude-6.3 earthquake followed by strong aftershocks killed dozens of people in western Afghanistan on Saturday, the country's national disaster authority said.      Full news...

UNICEF: An estimated 3.7 million children are out-of-school in Afghanistan. 60 per cent of girls and 46 per cent of boys of primary school age are currently not attending any level of education in Afghanistan. Even when children are enrolled in school, they are not always learning. Years of previous conflict, coupled with poor infrastructure, have made some schools unsafe for children. Many public schools lack adequate classrooms, qualified teachers, school supplies, and places where children can wash their hands.      Full news...

UN News: This year, some 2.3 million Afghan boys and girls are expected to face acute malnutrition. Of this number, 875,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. Furthermore, around 840,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers are likely to experience acute malnutrition, jeopardising their ability to give their babies the best start in life.      Full news...

Afghanistan International: The Taliban’s Ministry of Education has introduced new uniforms for male and female schoolchildren in Afghanistan. According to the Taliban’s "Uniform Bill", boys should wear Shalwar Kameez and girls should wear skirts, scarves, and face masks. The Taliban has declared that wearing the new uniform is mandatory in public and private schools. The Taliban has introduced these uniforms for female students even though girls’ schools have been closed and millions of female students are deprived of education.      Full news...

Zan Times: Shazia is seven years old, the age when Afghan children start school. But an education isn’t an option for Shazia, who lives in Kandahar city, the spiritual home of the Taliban. A month ago, her father forced her to marry a 22-year-old member of the Taliban, a relative tells Zan Times. “One day after the wedding, Shazia was whimpering and wanted to go back to her father’s house, but her in-laws did not allow her,” says the relation. The mullah imam who performed the wedding of this child says, “This marriage was done with the consent of the agents of both parties.”      Full news...

The Guardian: Last week, a suicide bomber killed at least 53 people – mostly girls from the minority Hazara ethnic group – outside an education centre in Kabul. Here, relatives and friends of four young women who died remember their loved ones.      Full news...

Al Jazeera : Herat, Afghanistan – The last time Aalam Gul Jamshidi saw her daughter was the night the 16 year old was married off to a man more than twice her age. Aziz Gul looked radiant in a sequinned, white wedding dress and a bright yellow headscarf, but there was fear in her otherwise solemn expressions. “If I go there, I’ll be sacrificed,” her mother remembers her daughter pleading that night last October.      Full news...

Washington Examiner: Desperation among Afghans from all walks of life is again on the rise. Prices continue to spike, donor fatigue has hit nongovernmental organizations hard, and Taliban rulings affect economic participation. Leslie Merriman has been distributing food packages to Afghan special immigrant visa applicants since September. At her latest food drop, delivery personnel were swarmed by hordes of hungry Afghans.      Full news...

BBC: Hidden away in a residential neighbourhood is one of Afghanistan’s new “secret” schools - a small but powerful act of defiance against the Taliban.Around a dozen teenage girls are attending a maths class. “We know about the threats and we worry about them,” the sole teacher tells us, but she adds, girls’ education is worth “any risk”.      Full news...

Save the Children: KABUL, 9 May 2022 – 9.6 million children in Afghanistan are going hungry every day due to a dire combination of economic collapse, the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the ongoing drought, new figures released today show. Immediate food assistance is needed to save lives in the short-term, but aid alone is not enough to tackle the country’s worst hunger crisis on record, Save the Children said.      Full news...

VOA: For several months Pashtana kept rejecting marriage proposals made for her 14-year-old daughter, Zarghona, until she had to make a final decision. “I had to choose between the survival of my four little children and giving Zarghona to marriage,” Pashtana told VOA over the phone from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, where last year her husband, an army soldier, was killed in clashes with then Taliban insurgents.The young widow made every effort to provide for her children, but there was no job for her under a Taliban regime that has banned work for women.      Full news...

Etlaat-e-Rooz: A family in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, claims that Taliban forces killed a teenage boy and wounded two others. Salahuddin, a member of the family, said that the incident took place last night (Saturday, April 24) in the seventh district of Jalalabad. According to him, a 15-year-old boy, his name was Adel, was killed in a Taliban shooting.      Full news...

The Washington Post: KABUL — At least six people were killed and 11 injured by two explosions Tuesday morning outside a large public school in western Kabul, police and school officials said. The death toll was expected to climb, as witnesses and survivors said scores of people had been injured and taken to nearby hospitals. The back-to-back blasts struck at the heart of the capital’s minority Shiite Hazara community, just outside the prominent Abdul Rahman Shahid school, where dozens of students were leaving after morning classes.      Full news...