Stars and Stripes: My sister Malala called me from Afghanistan: “Mom is in the final days of her life and wishes to see you and the rest of the family.” The call abruptly ended. I couldn’t shake the feeling that both the U.S. and the Taliban were monitoring incoming and outgoing calls. “Are you going to throw yourself to the wolves?” my daughter Shabnam said, referring to the Taliban. We have lived safely in the United States for many years now. Sandwiched between my children and my dying mom, I made the decision.      Full news...

Khaama Press: According to the report published on Tuesday, January 30th, al-Qaeda has managed to maintain a “holding” position under the rule of the Taliban, leading to tensions between the Taliban and some al-Qaeda leaders due to the Taliban’s efforts to restrict the group’s activities in Afghanistan.The United Nations Security Council had previously expressed concerns about the presence of terrorist groups and their activities in Afghanistan. The latest report from the council indicates that al-Qaeda lacks the operational capacity to organize large-scale attacks with its remaining members.      Full news...

UNHCR: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are returning to their country from Pakistan with no work or shelter. Pakistan is host to 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees while another 840,000 hold Citizenship Cards that give them some protection. A further 1.5 million Afghans are estimated to be living in Pakistan without any documentation, including some 600,000 who arrived in the country following Afghanistan’s takeover by the de facto authorities in August 2021.      Full news...

The Express Tribune: Amidst the deportation drive initiated by the Government of Pakistan against illegal immigrants, including Afghan nationals, Amnesty International on Friday urged Islamabad to “halt the continued detentions, deportations, and [alleged] widespread harassment of Afghan refugees”. In a statement, Livia Saccardi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Campaigns for South Asia, accused Pakistan of using Afghan refugees as “political pawns”, emphasising the risk they face upon return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan amidst a crackdown on human rights.      Full news...

Bayan News: The body of Sang Ali, a 60-year-old Afghan migrant who lived in the city of Mashhad, Iran, was found in a ruined four-walled structure after 20 days of being missing.Approximately 17 days ago, Sang Ali’s family informed the police and spread the word through social networks that he had left home and had not returned. According to the Iranian newspaper, the police have arrested a suspect in the murder of this Afghan migrant based on their investigations.      Full news...

RAWA News: The woman (name protected) shown in the photo is in her 40s and belongs to Chahrdara village of Kunduz province in the northern Afghanistan. Four years ago (2017) when heavy infighting was going on between Ghani government and Taliban rebels in Kunduz, the family escaped the area hoping to build a safer and better life for their children in the capital. Like thousands of other miserable Afghans who became victims of insecurity in Kabul, this family also faced a deep tragedy: she lost her husband in a suicide attack and due to nervous breakdown and a stroke, she became paralyzed in both legs.      Full news...

A team of RAWA surveyed displaced people in Herat Terminal Street. Around 5000 people from Ghor and Badghis provinces have been displaced here due to poverty, unemployment, insecurity and drought. In the cold weather, the condition of children is disastrous. They beg in the streets and have no facilities for sanitation, let alone education and playing. Very little aid has been provided to them by some Afghan businessmen but Taliban gunmen get a portion of aid saying they also face food shortage.      Full news...

RAWA team surveyed a camp of displaced people in Nahre-Shahi district of Balkh province in Northern Afghanistan. Lack of security, poverty, unemployment and pressure of Taliban forced around one million people across Afghanistan to leave their villages and gather in suburbs of big cities under deplorable conditions. While most non-governmental and international aid organization have stopped their operations in Afghanistan, starvation threatens the life of millions in the coming winter. Children and women are in higher risk.      Full news...

Counter Punch: One of the doctrinal principles behind U.S. corporate-imperial news coverage and commentary and mainstream US politics is that the United States is a fundamentally benevolent force for good facing difficulties created by evil others and challenging situations not of Washington’s own making. Debate is permissible on immediate strategy and tactics but is not allowed on these core American Exceptionalist positions.      Full news...

The Guardian: Tens of thousands of Afghans have protested on social media against the mistreatment of the refugees. Dozens more have protested on the streets in Kabul and in eastern Nangarhar province, with more demonstrations planned for major cities like London, Washington DC and Toronto in mid-June. A further four people were injured in the incident, and a video later emerged showing one of the passengers in the car pleading for water, saying “I am burning.”      Full news...

Etilaat Roz (Translated by RAWA): The sound of crying from a poor hut in the Tanke Maulawi area of Herat has not been silenced for several days. They lost their only breadwinner in an accident. Iranian border guards allegedly threw Afghan refugees into a river after torturing them. Abdul Baari was 19-years-old and gathered his courage to smuggle himself into Iran to find work. Little did he know that he was not to return and his trip would bring back his dead body for his loved ones and a world of grief for his mother.      Full news...

RFE/RL: To escape war and poverty, Shah Wali left his village in northwestern Afghanistan in search of a better life in neighboring Iran. As the 28-year-old set off on his journey, he was gripped by fear. Iranian border guards beat, shot at, and even killed Afghan migrants who illegally crossed the border. And even if he reached Iran, he would be subjected to the violence and injustice suffered by many members of Iran’s sizable Afghan community.      Full news...

The New York Times: One Wednesday in March, 11,627 people crossed the Iranian border into the Afghan province of Herat. A sea of young men formed outside an immigration center that could accommodate only 300 people at a time. Some carried backpacks, others large sacks overstuffed with their belongings. One carried a child’s bicycle, another a string instrument. One had just two blankets folded under his arm, another a canary in a cage.      Full news...

ReliefWeb: One year after the worst drought on record forced nearly half a million Afghans to leave their homes, many families remain in tents on the outskirts of Herat city. Unable to return home due to ongoing conflict, they struggle to survive as support is cut back.      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...

Associated Press: Wheat and opium farmer Murad Khan Ishaqzai, 80, has never seen a drought as bad as the one ravaging western Afghanistan where more than 250,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes. After his crops dried up in Gormach district of Badghis province earlier this year, Ishaqzai rented a truck and drove his family hundreds of kilometres through Taliban-infested areas to the neighbouring province of Herat.      Full news...

Reuters: Thousands of members of Afghanistan’s mainly Shi’ite Hazara ethnic minority have fled their homes in the central province of Ghazni as the Taliban have pressed into two previously safe districts, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday. In heavy fighting over recent days, hundreds of Taliban fighters have seized large areas of Jaghori and Malistan districts, both heavily populated by Hazaras, a group that has long faced discrimination in Afghanistan.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday that the situation in Jaghori and Malistan in Ghazni province is “chaotic” and that thousands of families are fleeing the area due to ongoing clashes. In a news brief on the situation in the two provinces, OCHA said that heavy fighting broke out between the Taliban, supported by some local Pashtun communities, against pro-government Hazara militias in Khas Uruzgan district in Uruzgan province in early November.      Full news...

IRIN: The Turkish city of Erzurum sits on an expansive green plain, ringed on all sides by towering mountains. Best known as a destination for winter sports enthusiasts, who flock here when snow blankets the nearby slopes, it is also a gateway for another set of visitors – Afghans uprooted by their country’s long and brutal war.      Full news...

IRIN: Thirty-year-old Mohammad isn’t sure who shelled his home in eastern Afghanistan’s Khogyani District: Taliban insurgents, or fighters aligned with the so-called Islamic State. But when a rocket-propelled grenade struck three months ago, killing some of his livestock, he knew he could no longer stay. “We had to leave that night. The battle had reached our doorsteps,” Mohammad said, standing outside his family’s new home: a bare, single room in a compound set amid tents and shanty homes near Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern province of Nangarhar.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Confronted with a seemingly innocuous question about what he remembers of his deceased father, 14-year-old Khudai Nazar flinched as tears began to stream down his face, betraying his otherwise calm demeanour. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Startled by his own reaction, the teenager tried to shield his grief by lowering his head onto his forearms.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: Humanitarian Response on Monday issued the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) weekly report and stated that between 1 January and 31 August this year, 223,874 people fled their homes due to conflict in Afghanistan – an 11,000 increase against the same period last year. The report stated that the provinces sheltering the highest number of displaced people are Kunduz with 28,261 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Nangarhar with 27,401 IDPs and Uruzgan with 17,062.      Full news...

IRIN: Afghan refugees pressured by Pakistan to return to their volatile homeland where they face hunger and homelessness should be “patient”, according to an official who said his government plans to eventually offer more support. The UN says more than 600,000 Afghans returned last year from Pakistan, where rights groups documented a campaign of harassment by the authorities.      Full news...

IRIN: Bibi Mariam was milking her cow when it suddenly let out a wild howl and collapsed in a pool of blood. The so-called Islamic State and the Taliban were fighting near her village in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province. The stray bullet that killed her cow finally convinced Mariam to flee – joining a record number of Afghans displaced by conflict.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: Reiterating calls for humanitarian assistance, the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) said on Sunday that out of 550,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) registered in the country, only 72,000 of them have been resettled in their regions. This comes amid a harsh winter, with temperatures expected to continue to drop.      Full news...

Pulse.ng: Ongoing conflict across different parts of Afghanistan forced over 623,000 people to leave their homes in 2016, according to a UN report published on Tuesday, January 10. At the beginning of 2016, the UN had only expected 250,000 people to be internally displaced in the war-torn country.      Full news...

The Diplomat: The world annually celebrates Refugee Day in late June, an event that helps raise awareness about the plight, courage, and resilience of the world’s refugees. By contrast, internally displaced persons have no day of their own. It is time for this discrepancy to change.      Full news...

DW Dari (Translated by RAWA): The police of Sheraz city, Iran, put a number of Afghan refugees on public display inside steel cages as part of the police’s achievements. This action drew strong reactions from everywhere. Afghan parliamentarians protested the action calling it against human rights, human dignity, and international law.      Full news...

TOLOnews.com: Latifa Rahmani, a 12-year-old Afghan immigrant died in an Iranian hospital on Friday afternoon after being denied the opportunity to undergo liver transplant surgery. Latifa died in the Namazi Hospital in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz from liver failure, Iran media reported.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: Syria’s refugee crisis dominates the headlines, but the crisis of Afghan refugees is significant—and has the potential to undermine the future of a country in which the U.S. has invested so much. Here are four things about a crisis that gets relatively little attention in the West.      Full news...