Matiullah Wesa is the founder and president of Pen Path — a local nongovernmental group that travels across Afghanistan with a mobile school and library. He was reportedly detained on Monday.
An explosion near the Afghan foreign ministry killed five people and wounded several others, a Taliban police spokesman said. It was the second prominent attack in the capital so far in 2023.
Since the return of the Taliban, Afghanistan's coal exports have increased — and so has child labor. At a coal mine in Baghlan province, boys earn between $3 and $8 for a day's work.
Early this week, the leaders of Afghanistan declared that women could not attend university. Now there are fears the any education for girls is in jeopardy as some female teachers are sent home.
Teachers report security forces barging into classrooms and shouting at girls to go home, while the international community swiftly condems the Taliban's move.
On Tuesday, the Taliban announced the women could no longer attend university. One educator in Afghanistan called it "gender apartheid." The highest grade girls will be able to attain now is grade 6.
Women are banned from private and public universities until further notice, a Taliban government spokesman said, the latest edict cracking down on their rights and freedoms.
Those who put their lives on the line in the Afghan National Army and can't find a way out of Afghanistan are working menial jobs, sometimes moving locations every few days in fear for their safety.
At World Food Programme distribution sites, "Everybody tells us, 'Last winter was difficult, but we have no idea how we will get through the coming winter,'" says a WFP spokesperson in Kabul.
Pierre Kattar edited the pictures for an NPR story about two of the teenagers killed in the Sept. 30 attack. On Oct. 10, he went to a demonstration in Rome and made an unexpected connection.
We asked refugees around the world to tell us of a memento they brought to connect them to their old life even as they embarked on a new and uncertain future.
A year after the U.S. withdrawal, tens of thousands of applicants remain stuck in the backlog of the Special Immigrant Visa program, designed to help those who served the U.S. overseas.
As the economy unravels, "everyone is getting a bike," says one young resident. It's the cheapest way to get around. But the Taliban's conservative culture means women cyclists are not welcome.
As international charities pulled out or faced funding issues after the Taliban takeover, Aseel, an online business that sells local crafts, wondered: Could it help ease the rising wave of hunger?
