Afghanistan

A cleric aligned with the Taliban urged supporters to wage “jihad” in Pakistan and several Central Asian countries during a funeral ceremony near Kabul, according to remarks made at the event.

Afghan nationals filed the highest number of asylum applications in France in 2025, with 13,800 claims, and had one of the highest approval rates among major nationalities, according to figures from France’s refugee agency.

Mohammad Shah Amiri, an Ismaili resident of Badakhshan province, was returning home from work on the evening of January 1 when he was ambushed in an alley by an armed man who opened fire from behind a garden hedge at a distance of two to three metres.

The number of women prisoners in Afghanistan has risen by 435 percent to 1,825, with women now held in 34 prisons, according to figures released by the Taliban’s Interior Ministry.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Justice said Wednesday that all legislative documents issued by the group are based on Islamic law and warned that objections to those laws would be considered a crime.

A Taliban official has suggested that US President Donald Trump is an “economic warlord” who has helped undermine the international order, accusing him of acting solely in his own interests.

Continued rain and snowfall in eastern Afghanistan have worsened conditions for families who rely on agriculture for food and were already affected by recent earthquakes, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the “law of the jungle” is increasingly replacing the rule of law, pointing to the unlawful use of force, attacks on civilian infrastructure, human rights violations and the obstruction of humanitarian aid around the world.

Elon Musk has criticised what he described as a lack of international protest over the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan.

Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former vice president, has claimed the United States paid the Taliban $45 million in cash on January 13 and has pledged to provide a further $90 million later this month.

Some child labourers detained by Taliban authorities have been subjected to sexual harassment and abuse while in custody, according to a report by Afghan broadcaster Amu TV, which cited accounts from several children.

The Taliban administration spent about 96.9 billion afghanis on security in the first nine months of the 2025 fiscal year, according to a new World Bank report.

The Taliban’s prison administration said a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross met a senior official in Kabul, where the authorities requested assistance for prisoners, particularly women.

A Taliban spokesperson in Khost province said three people have been arrested on charges of killing a former member of Afghanistan’s security forces.

Tajmir Jawad, described as a deputy intelligence chief and a key architect of Taliban suicide attacks, on Sunday praised the group’s cultural and media activists during a ceremony.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture said Monday it has revoked the operating licences of nearly all media support organisations in Afghanistan, renewing permits for only three groups.

At least seven people have been killed in separate incidents in western city of Herat over the past week, according to information obtained by Afghanistan International.

Austria has deported an Afghan man to Kabul after he completed a prison sentence, the Interior Ministry said, marking the third such removal of an Afghan national in recent months.