Afghan

Nov. 6 (UPI) — Opium production has dropped sharply in Afghanistan, but trafficking in the region is on the rise, according to a Thursday report by the United Nations.

The report, by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said a little over 25,000 acres are being cultivated now, down from almost 31,000 acres in 2024.

The report said production has fallen by a third to 296 tons, and farmers’ income from opium production has dropped almost in half over the same period.

The report stressed the need to continue to eradicate efforts with support for alternative livelihoods and demand-reduction methods.

“While many growers have switched to cereals and other crops, worsening drought and low rainfall have left over 40% of farmland barren,” the report said.

Effects from the climate have been exacerbated by an influx of 4 million Afghans returning from other countries, which has created increased competition for jobs and put pressure on other sectors of the economy.

The report said these factors have made opium production an attractive alternative.

While cultivation has fallen, optimum trafficking is on the rise as the demand for synthetic drugs made from the plant continues to increase.

Seizures in and around Afghanistan are up 50% compared to 2024, driven largely by an uptick in methamphetamine use, the report said.

Synthetic opium-based drugs are relatively easy to produce and harder to detect than pure opium, which has also contributed to the increase in demand.

“The dynamics of supply and trafficking involve both Afghan and international actors,” said Georgette Gagnon, Deputy Special Representative in charge of the UN political mission in the country.

“Addressing this challenge requires collaboration among key stakeholders,” Gangnon added.

The report calls for counternarcotics strategies that extend beyond opium, including synthetic drug manufacturing and transportation, as well as prevention methods.

Fighting comes as Taliban submits proposal at Pakistan-Afghanistan talks in Turkiye, while Islamabad warns of ‘open war’ if deal fails.

Fresh clashes near the border with Afghanistan have killed at least five Pakistani soldiers and 25 fighters, Pakistan’s army says, even as the two countries hold peace talks in Istanbul.

The Pakistani military said armed men attempted to cross from Afghanistan into Kurram and North Waziristan on Friday and Saturday, accusing the Taliban authorities of failing to act against armed groups operating from Afghan territory.

It said on Sunday that the attempted infiltrations raised questions over Kabul’s commitment to tackling “terrorism emanating from its soil”.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has not commented on the latest clashes, but has repeatedly rejected accusations of harbouring armed fighters and instead accuses Pakistan of violating Afghan sovereignty with air strikes.

Delegations from both countries arrived in Istanbul, Turkiye on Saturday for talks aimed at preventing a return to full-scale conflict. The meeting comes days after Qatar and Turkiye brokered a ceasefire in Doha to halt the most serious border fighting since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021.

The violence earlier this month killed dozens and wounded hundreds.

‘Open war’

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said the ceasefire remains intact and that Kabul appears interested in peace, but warned that failure in Istanbul would leave Islamabad with “open war” as an option.

Pakistan’s military described those involved in the weekend infiltrations as members of what it calls “Fitna al-Khwarij”, a term it uses for ideologically motivated armed groups allegedly backed by foreign sponsors.

United States President Donald Trump also weighed in on Sunday, saying he would “solve the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis very quickly”, telling reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia that he had been briefed on the ongoing talks.

Separately, Taliban-controlled broadcaster RTA said on Sunday that Kabul’s delegation in Turkiye had submitted a proposal after more than 15 hours of discussions, calling for Pakistan to end cross-border strikes and block any “anti-Afghan group” from using its territory.

The Afghan side also signalled openness to a four-party monitoring mechanism to supervise the ceasefire and investigate violations.

Afghanistan’s delegation is led by Deputy Interior Minister Haji Najib. Pakistan has not publicly disclosed its representatives.

Analysts expect the core of the talks to revolve around intelligence-sharing, allowing Islamabad to hand over coordinates of suspected Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters for the Taliban to take direct action, instead of Pakistan launching its own strikes.

FIFA confirms change of name to Afghan Women United, dropping ‘refugee’ from the team name ahead of the tournament.

A FIFA-organised tournament involving the Afghanistan women’s refugee team has been moved from the United Arab Emirates to Morocco, the world football governing body said, with the four-team friendly competition set to begin on Sunday.

The “FIFA Unites: Women’s Series” tournament, originally scheduled to run from October 23-29 in Dubai, also features the national women’s teams of the UAE, Chad and Libya.

The Afghanistan women’s refugee team’s creation stems from the Taliban’s ban on women’s sports following their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, prompting players to flee the country, fearing persecution.

“FIFA would like to thank the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FMRF) and looks forward to working together to host a successful tournament,” FIFA said in a statement.

The governing body also confirmed that the Afghanistan women’s refugee team has chosen a new official name, “Afghan Women United,” following consultation with FIFA.

Prior to the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan had 25 women players under contract, most of whom now live in Australia. Afghanistan’s men’s team continues as normal.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Allah Meer’s parents were among the millions of Afghans who fled their country after the then-Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

His family settled in a refugee village in Kohat in northwestern Pakistan. That’s where Meer, now 45, was born. Meer says that more than 200 members of his extended family made the journey from Afghanistan to Pakistan, which has been their home ever since.

Over the past two years, as Pakistan has moved to send back hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, the family has feared for its future, but managed to evade Islamabad’s dragnet.

Last week, the threat of expulsion hit home: Pakistan announced it would close all 54 Afghan refugee villages across the country as part of the campaign it began in 2023 to push out what it calls “illegal foreigners”. These include the villages in Kohat, where Meer and his family live.

“In my life, I visited Afghanistan only once, for two weeks in 2013. Apart from that, none of my family have ever gone back,” Meer told Al Jazeera. “How can I uproot everything when we were born here, lived here, married here, and buried our loved ones here?”

Amid heightened tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban, which returned to governing Afghanistan in 2021, families like Meer’s are caught in a vortex of uncertainty.

Fighting erupted between Afghan and Pakistani forces along the border earlier in October, pushing already strained relations into open hostility. On Sunday, officials from both sides met in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and signed a ceasefire agreement, with the next round of talks scheduled in Istanbul on October 25.

Yet, tensions remain high. And families like Meer’s fear that they could become diplomatic pawns in a border war between the neighbours.

From welcome to expulsion

Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As civil war gripped Afghanistan and the Taliban first rose to power in 1996, successive waves of Afghans fled across the border.

After the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the US, the Taliban’s fall prompted thousands of Afghans to return home. But their return was short-lived.

The Taliban’s stunning comeback in August 2021 triggered yet another exodus, when another 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan.

However, as relations between Kabul and Islamabad soured during the past four years, Pakistan – which was once the Taliban’s principal patron  – accused Afghanistan of harbouring armed groups responsible for the cross-border attacks. The government’s stance hardened towards Afghan refugees, even those who have lived in the country for decades – like Meer.

A father of 10, Meer earned a degree in education from a university in Peshawar, and now runs a vocational training project for Afghan refugee children backed by the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.

Since 2006, the UNHCR has issued what are known as Proof of Registration (PoR) cards to document Afghan citizens living in Pakistan. These cards have allowed them to stay in Pakistan legally, giving them some freedom of movement, although this is restricted, as well as access to some public services, including bank accounts.

But from June 30 this year, the Pakistani government has stopped renewing PoR cards and has invalidated existing ones.

“We all possess the UNHCR-issued Proof of Residence cards, but now, with this current drive, I don’t know what will happen,” Meer said.

In 2017, Pakistan also started issuing Afghan Citizenship Cards (ACC) to undocumented Afghan nationals living in the country, giving them identification credentials to provide them with a temporary legal status.

But the ACC is not a protection against deportation any more.

According to the UNHCR, more than 1.5 million Afghans left Pakistan – voluntarily or forcibly – between the start of the campaign in 2023 and mid-October, 2025.

‘Illegal in our home’

About 1.2 million PoR cardholders, 737,000 ACC holders and 115,000 asylum seekers  remain in Pakistan, Qaiser Khan Afridi, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Pakistan, told Al Jazeera.

Pakistan’s tensions with the Taliban have added new precarity to their status.

“For over 45 years, Pakistan has shown extraordinary generosity by hosting millions of Afghan refugees,” Afridi said. “But we are deeply concerned by the government’s decision to de-notify refugee villages all over Pakistan and to push for returns [to Afghanistan].”

“Many of those affected have lived here for years, and now fear for their future. We urge that any return should be voluntary, gradual, and carried out with dignity and safety.”

Meer, who has volunteered for the UNHCR over the years, said that seven refugee villages in Kohat alone house more than 100,000 people. He accused both Pakistan and Afghanistan of using the refugee issue as political leverage.

“With the latest situation, our family elders have sat together to discuss options. We thought about sending some of our young men to Afghanistan to look for houses and means to do business, but the problem is, we have no connections there at all,” he said.

With his PoR card now invalidated by the Pakistani government, he has no recognised identity card, making it hard for him to access even medical facilities when his children need treatment for any illness.

“We are, for all practical purposes, considered illegal in a country that I and my children call home,” he said.

Caught between borders

Pakistan’s plan to expel Afghan residents began in late 2023, amid a rise in rebe attacks. Since then, violence has surged, with 2025 shaping up to be the most violent year in a decade.

Pakistani authorities argue Afghan refugees pose a security risk, accusing the Taliban government of sheltering armed groups, a charge Kabul denies.

Two years ago, Pakistan’s then interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, alleged that 14 out of 24 suicide bombings in the country in 2023 were carried out by Afghan nationals. He did not provide any evidence to back his claim, and he did not clarify if the individuals were refugees living in Pakistan, or Afghan nationals who had crossed the porous border between the two countries.

But Meer fears that Afghan refugees in Pakistan will be distrusted back in Afghanistan, too, given the climate of animosity between the neighbours.

“We will be seen as Pakistanis, as enemies there, too,” he said.

Afridi, the UNHCR spokesperson, urged Pakistan to reconsider its repatriation drive.

“UNHCR calls on the government to apply measures to exempt Afghans with international protection needs from involuntary return,” he said.

“Pakistan has a proud history of hospitality, and it’s important to continue that tradition at this critical time,” he said.

Banned from playing football at home, they’re now back on the world stage. For the first time since the Taliban regained power in 2021, Afghanistan’s women’s football team will compete in an official tournament, albeit under a different name. Samantha Johnson looks at the remarkable journey of a team seeking recognition

Pakistan Taliban claims responsibility for attack on military convoy, leading to a deadly gunfight.

Eleven military personnel have been killed in a gunfight with armed fighters in the country’s northwest, according to the Pakistani army.

The gun battle erupted early on Wednesday during an intelligence operation in the Orakzai district near the Afghan border, the army said in a news release.

During the intelligence raid, the military said, an “intense” exchange of fire broke out with “Khawarij”, a term it uses for banned groups such as the Pakistan Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the dead were Lieutenant Colonel Junaid Arif and his deputy, Major Tayyab Rahat, along with nine other soldiers. The army said 19 fighters were also killed.

The Reuters news agency, citing Pakistani security officials, reported that the fighters ambushed a military convoy with a roadside bomb before opening fire.

In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif lauded security forces for their service and paid tribute to the troops who lost their lives.

In recent months, the Pakistan Taliban, which wants to overthrow the government and replace it with their hardline brand of Islamic governance, has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces.

Islamabad says the group uses neighbouring Afghanistan to train and plan attacks against Pakistan, while archrival India funds and backs them, charges denied by both countries.

A few metres away from the piles of stones that were once the first homes as you entered their small village, three men sat on a traditional woven bed.

One of them was Hayat’s cousin, Mehboob.

“When the earthquake happened, my 13-year-old son Nasib Ullah was sleeping next to me. I woke up, got out of bed, and started looking for the torch. Then, suddenly, the whole room moved from the falling rocks. When I tried to reach my son, the wall and the floor slid down, and I couldn’t catch him,” the 36-year-old explained.

“[It was] worse than the day of judgement.”

“Houses collapsed, boulders from the mountain came crumbling down; you couldn’t see anything, we couldn’t see each other.”

Everyone was injured, he explained. Some had broken ribs and broken legs.

“In the dark, we took our kids who were still alive to the farmland below, where it was safer from the boulders.”

That night, he counted more than 250 tremors, he said: aftershocks that continue to shake the valley even weeks after the earthquake.

When daylight came, he tried to dig through the rubble to find his loved ones. “But my body didn’t want to work,” he said.

“I could see my son’s foot, but the rest of his body had disappeared under the rubble.”

His 10-year-old daughter, Aisha, had also been killed.

“It was the worst moment of my life,” he said.

It took two days for villagers and volunteers to recover the bodies.

When Hayat’s brother, Rahmat Gul, received a message from his brother telling him that the entire village was gone, he immediately rushed there from his home in Parwan province, some 300km (185 miles) away.

When he finally reached Aurak Dandila, the surviving villagers asked him to wrap Mehboob’s dead son in a blanket.

“Mehboob asked me to show him the face of his son, but I could not do it,” Rahmat Gul explained as Mehboob, sitting beside him, looked out over the farmland in the valley below.

Nearby, Hayat stood up and began pacing.

“God has taken my sons from me, and now I feel like I have left this world as well,” he said.

In Aurak Dandila, a small cornfield has become a graveyard. “Here is where we buried our loved ones,” Hayat said. The graves are marked by stones.

He remembers how he had urged Abdul Haq to stay in the village. “The next day, everything was gone, and he lost his life.”

Now, Hayat believes, “there is nothing left to live here for”.

“How can I continue living here?” he asked, pointing at the debris of what was once his home.

“The stones are coming from above; how can anyone live in this village?”

“We will settle somewhere else, and we will look for the mercy of God. If he has no mercy on us, then we will also die.”

Donald Trump has pushed to regain Bagram, citing proximity to China’s nuclear facilities.

The Taliban has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s demand that it hand over the Bagram airbase that Washington ran during its 20-year war in Afghanistan, dismissing Trump’s threat that “bad things” will happen if this does not come to pass.

The Taliban said on Sunday that “Afghanistan’s independence and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance” and called on the US to uphold prior agreements that it would not resort to force.

“Accordingly, it is once again underscored that, rather than repeating past failed approaches, a policy of realism and rationality should be adopted,” Afghanistan’s rulers said.

Bagram, which was the US’s largest military site in Afghanistan, is a large airbase located 50km (31 miles) north of Kabul that served as one of the US’s key military hubs during its two-decade war against the Taliban. The war, which followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington by al-Qaeda, ended in 2021 with Washington’s abrupt and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Thousands of people were imprisoned at the site for years without charge or trial by US forces during its so-called “war on terror”, and many of them were abused or tortured.

The Taliban retook the facility in 2021 following the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government.

Over the last week, Trump has expressed a keen interest in reacquiring the airbase.

“We’re talking now to Afghanistan and we want it back and we want it back soon, right away. And if they don’t do it, if they don’t do it, you’re going to find out what I’m gonna do,” Trump said to reporters at the White House on Saturday.

Trump first announced that he was working to take the base back during a state visit to the United Kingdom in a press conference alongside the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump delivered a message that caught the attention of policymakers in Beijing, saying, “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back. But one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”

The nuclear weapons Trump referred to are likely at China’s testing range at Lop Nur in the western Xinjiang province.

“The airfield has an 11,800-foot [3,597m] runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft,” the US Air Force says of Bagram on its website.

Trump, who has harshly criticised his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan — which Trump himself had initiated during his first term — said the US gave the Taliban “Bagram for nothing”.

Afghan officials have expressed staunch opposition to a renewed US presence in the country. Zakir Jalaly, a Foreign Ministry official, said “Afghans have never accepted foreign military presence in their land throughout history”, but added that the two countries need to engage in “economic and political relations based on bilateral respect and common interests”.

Fasihuddin Fitrat, a senior Ministry of Defence official, said a “deal over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is not possible. We don’t need it.”

Bagram was built during the Cold War by the Soviet Union, which initially started construction when the Afghan government at the time turned to Moscow for support in the early 1950s. The airbase served Soviet operations in the country for decades until they withdrew in the late 1980s.

The US revamped the facility following its own occupation of Afghanistan decades later, turning the base into a sprawling mini village with retail facilities that served US soldiers there.

Noorgal, Kunar, Afghanistan – Four months ago, Nawab Din returned to his home village of Wadir, high in the mountains of Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, after eight years as a refugee in Pakistan.

Today, he lives in a tent on his own farmland. His house was destroyed nearly three weeks ago by the earthquake that has shattered the lives of thousands of others in this region.

“We are living in tent camps now,” the 55-year-old farmer said, speaking at his cousin’s shop in the nearby village of Noorgal. “Our houses were old, and none were left standing … They were all destroyed by big boulders falling from the mountain during the earthquake.”

Din’s struggle captures the double disaster facing a huge number of Afghans. He is among more than four million people who have returned from Iran and Pakistan since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The August 31 earthquake killed about 2,200 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes, compounding a widespread economic crisis.

“We lost everything we have worked for in Pakistan, and now we lost everything here,” Din adds.

Until four months ago, he had been living in Daska, a city in Pakistan’s Sialkot District, for eight years after fleeing his village in Afghanistan when ISIL (ISIS) fighters told him to join them or leave.

“I refused to join ISIL and I was forced to migrate to Pakistan,” he explains.

His exile ended abruptly this year as the Pakistani government continues its nationwide crackdown on undocumented foreign nationals.

He describes how Pakistani police raided his house, taking him and his family to a camp to be processed for deportation. “I returned from Pakistan as we were told our time there was finished and we had to leave,” he says.

“We had to spend two nights at Torkham border crossing until we were registered by Afghan authorities, before we could return to our village.”

This struggle is echoed across Kunar. Some 12km from Noorgal, in the village of Barabat, 58-year-old Sadat Khan sits next to the rubble of the home he had been renting until the earthquake struck.

Khan returned from Pakistan willingly as his health was failing and he could no longer find work to support his wife and seven children. Now, the earthquake has taken what little he had left.

“I was poor in Pakistan as well. I was the only one working and my entire family was depending on me,” he tells Al Jazeera. “We don’t know where the next meal will come from. There is no work here. And I have problems with my lungs. I have trouble breathing if I do more effort.”

He says his request to local authorities for a tent for his family has so far gone unanswered.

“I went to the authorities to request a tent to install here,” he says. “We haven’t received anything, so I asked someone to give me a room for a while, for my children. My uncle had mercy on me and let me stay in one room in his house, now that the winter is coming.”

One crisis out of many

The earthquake is only the most visible of the crises that returnees from Iran and Pakistan are facing.

“Our land is barren, and we have no stream or river close to the village,” says Din. “Our farming and our life depend entirely on rainfall, and we haven’t seen much of it lately. Other people wonder how can we live there with such severe water shortage.”

Dr Farida Safi, a nutritionist working at a field hospital set up by Islamic Relief in Diwa Gul valley after the quake, says malnutrition is becoming a major problem.

“Most of the people affected by the quake that come to us have food deficiency, mostly due to the poor diet and the lack of proper nutrition they had access to in their village,” she explains. “We have to treat many malnourished children.”

Kunar’s Governor, Mawlawi Qudratullah, told Al Jazeera that the Kunar authorities have started building a new town that will include 382 residential plots, according to the plan.

This initiative in Khas Kunar district is part of the national programmes directed by the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, with an objective of providing permanent housing for Afghan returnees. However, it is unclear how long it will take to build these new homes or if farmland will also be given to returnees.

“It will be for those people who don’t have any land or house in this province,” Qudratullah said. “And this project has already started, separate from the crisis response to the earthquake.”

But for those living in or next to the ruins of their old homes, such promises feel distant. Back in Noorgal, Nawab Din is consumed by the immediate fear of aftershocks from the earthquake and the uncertainty of what comes next.

“I don’t know if the government will relocate us down in the plains or if they will help us rebuild,” he says, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “But I fear we might be forced to continue to live in a camp, even as aftershocks continue to hit, sometimes so powerful that the tents shake.”

AN ELDERLY Brit couple wrongfully jailed by the Taliban for eight months have finally been freed.

Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife Barbie, 76, were snatched by Taliban thugs and tossed into Afghanistan’s most notorious prison.

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The parents-of-four had lived in Afghanistan for 18 years managing training projects – but were kidnapped on February 1 with no explanation.

They were locked up separately at the maximum security Pul-e-Charkhi in Kabul, and later moved to an underground cell beneath the Taliban‘s intelligence HQ.

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Herat, Afghanistan – At the Islam Qala border, the relentless wind carries stinging dust that clings to skin as temperatures soar to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), transforming the ground into a scorching furnace.

Families huddle in narrow strips of shade, children protecting their faces with scarves as they await assistance.

For many, this harsh landscape represents their first glimpse of home after years in exile.

Since September 2023, more than four million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan, almost 1.5 million of them in 2025 alone. Simultaneously, International Organization for Migration (IOM) data reveals nearly 350,000 Afghans were displaced within the first four months of the year, including internal displacement and cross-border migration.

This mass movement stems primarily from deteriorating economic conditions and escalating climate change impacts.

In Iran, Afghans were not merely temporary workers; they were vital to the economy, filling essential roles in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing. Their departure has created significant gaps in Iran’s workforce, while those returning face profound uncertainty in Afghanistan.

“Now I have nothing – no job, no home, and no one to turn to,” says Maryam, a widow with two children, who had lived in Iran for six years.

Despite suffering from kidney problems, her greatest pain comes from watching her 15-year-old son, Sadeq, search for work instead of attending school. He keeps his educational aspirations secret to spare his mother additional worry. For Maryam, this unspoken dream weighs heavier than any physical ailment.

The World Bank’s 2025 Development Update indicates Afghanistan’s economy remains precarious.

The massive influx of returnees has intensified unemployment pressures, with an estimated 1.7 million additional young people expected to enter an already overwhelmed labour market by 2030. Without substantial investment in skills development, entrepreneurship, and job creation, many may be forced to migrate again.

Since 2024, IOM has provided skills training to nearly 3,000 returnees, internally displaced people, and vulnerable host community members. The organisation has also supported more than 2,600 businesses — 22 percent of which are owned by women — helping to generate almost 12,000 jobs, including over 4,200 for women.

While these initiatives bring crucial stability and dignity, they represent only a fraction of what is needed. With increased funding, IOM can provide greater stability, reduce repeat migration risks, and help returnees rebuild dignified lives.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.