Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Wednesday it will suspend the processing of immigrant visas for citizens of 75 countries whose nationals are deemed likely to require public assistance while living in the United States.

The State Department, led by Secretary Marco Rubio, said it had instructed consular officers to halt immigrant visa applications from the countries affected in accordance with a broader order issued in November that tightened rules around potential immigrants who might become “public charges” in the U.S.

The suspension, which will begin Jan. 21, will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant visas, or temporary tourist or business visas.

“The Trump administration is bringing an end to the abuse of America’s immigration system by those who would extract wealth from the American people,” the department said in a statement. “Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassess immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits.”

The statement did not identify which countries would be affected by the pause, but President Donald Trump’s administration has already severely restricted immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing for citizens of dozens of countries, many of them in Africa.

A U.S. official said the list included Russia, Iran and Somalia as well as Afghanistan, Brazil and Egypt, among others. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the list had not been made public yet.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

Horsemen from across Afghanistan converged for the dramatic final match of the nation’s prestigious annual buzkashi tournament on Kabul’s outskirts, attracting crowds that included high-ranking Taliban officials witnessing this centuries-old sporting tradition.

Buzkashi, Afghanistan’s national equestrian competition, showcases elite riders who must carry a leather-wrapped bundle – historically a goat carcass but now a weighted facsimile – across a designated goal line to earn points.

Amid swirling dust clouds kicked up by galloping horses, a victor ultimately prevailed. The winning team took a celebratory circuit around the field, proudly displaying their flag in triumph.

Afghanistan’s cherished buzkashi tournament maintains its status as a traditional sport characterised by limited formal rules and fierce physical competition.

In its classic format, two teams compete to score using what was traditionally a goat carcass, though contemporary matches utilise a leather-and-rope substitute filled with straw to replicate the weight of an animal.

Competitors – with 12 riders on each side – demonstrate extraordinary horsemanship, stretching dangerously from their mounts to retrieve the bundle from the ground before racing towards the goal while pursued by opposing riders.

Though prohibited during the Taliban’s earlier governance in the 1990s, buzkashi experienced a revival following their removal and has continued since their return to power in 2021, with government officials now attending competitions.

In this week’s championship, northern Sar-e-Pul province overwhelmed northeastern Badakhshan with a commanding 7-0 victory, concluding the 11-day national tournament. Baghlan claimed third place, while Kunduz finished fourth among the 11 provincial teams competing.

The competition featured eight international participants from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, according to Atal Mashwani, spokesman for Afghanistan’s General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports.

Corporate sponsorship from a petrol company funded the tournament, providing automobiles as prizes for the top four teams, alongside trophies, medals, and certificates.

Thousands of male spectators filled the stands at the central Kabul venue, with enthusiastic fans even climbing nearby trees and electricity pylons to gain better vantage points of the action.

Tensions are flaring along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in Central Asia with the Tajik government reporting multiple armed incursions this month, straining its fragile relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.

More than a dozen people have been killed in attacks by men whom Tajik authorities call “terrorists” and the resulting clashes with Tajik forces, officials in Dushanbe and Beijing said. Victims include Chinese nationals working in remote areas of the mountainous former Soviet republic.

In the latest fighting this week, at least five people were killed in Tajikistan‘s Shamsiddin Shokhin district, including “three terrorists”, officials said.

Tajikistan has long opposed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country it shares a largely unsecured 1,340km (830-mile) border with.

Despite cautious diplomatic engagement between the two countries to adjust to new regional realities, analysts said, the frequency of the recent border clashes risks eroding the Taliban’s credibility and raises questions about its capacity to enforce order and security.

Here is all we know about the clashes along the Tajik-Afghan border and why they matter:

What’s happening on the Tajik-Afghan border?

The border runs along the Panj river through the remote, mountainous terrain of southern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that “three members of a terrorist organisation” crossed into Tajik territory on Tuesday. The committee added that the men were located the following morning and exchanged fire with Tajik border guards. Five people, including the three intruders, were killed, it said.

Tajik officials did not name the armed men or specify which group they belonged to. The officials, however, said they seized three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, 10 hand grenades, a night-vision scope and explosives at the scene.

Dushanbe said this was the third attack originating from Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in the past month that has resulted in the deaths of its personnel.

These attacks, Tajik officials said on Thursday, “prove that the Taliban government is demonstrating serious and repeated irresponsibility and non-commitment in fulfilling its international obligations and consistent promises to ensure security … and to combat members of terrorist organisations”.

The Tajik statement called on the Taliban to “apologise to the people of Tajikistan and take effective measures to ensure security along the shared border”.

Tajikistan has not suggested what the motive for the attacks may be, but the assaults have appeared to target Chinese companies and nationals working in the area.

How is China involved in all this?

Beijing is Tajikistan’s largest creditor and one of its most influential economic partners with a significant footprint in infrastructure, mining and other border-region projects.

China and Tajikistan also share a 477km (296-mile) border running through the high-altitude Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, adjacent to China’s Xinjiang region.

Two attacks were launched against Chinese companies and nationals in the last week of November. On November 26, a drone equipped with an explosive device attacked a compound belonging to Shohin SM, a private Chinese gold-mining company, in the remote Khatlon region on the Tajik-Afghan border, killing three Chinese citizens.

In a second attack on November 30, a group of men armed with guns opened fire on workers employed by the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, killing at least two people in Tajikistan’s Darvoz district.

Tajik officials said those attacks had originated from villages in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province but did not disclose any affiliation or motive behind the attacks.

Chinese nationals have also come under attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

China’s embassy in Dushanbe advised Chinese companies and personnel to evacuate the border area. Chinese officials demanded “that Tajikistan take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Chinese enterprises and citizens in Tajikistan”.

Who is carrying out these attacks?

While the attackers have not been identified, analysts and observers believe the attacks carry the hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which, they said, aims to discredit Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.

“The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside Afghanistan and carried out attacks on foreigners inside Afghanistan as a key pillar of their strategy,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a Kabul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.

“The aim is to shatter the Taliban’s image as a security provider with whom the regional governments should engage,” Bahiss told Al Jazeera.

How has the Taliban reacted to these attacks?

Kabul expressed its “deep sorrow” over the killings of Chinese workers on November 28.

The Taliban blamed the violence on an unnamed armed group which, it said, is “striving to create chaos and instability in the region and to sow distrust among countries”, and it assured Tajikistan of its full cooperation.

After this week’s clashes, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister, said Kabul remains committed to the 2020 Doha Agreement, its deal with the United States for a phased foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for attacking other countries.

Addressing a police cadet graduation ceremony at the National Police Academy in Kabul on Thursday, Haqqani said Afghanistan posed no threat to other countries and the door to dialogue remains open.

“We want to address problems, distrust or misunderstandings through dialogue. We have passed the test of confrontation. We may be weak in resources, but our faith and will are strong,” he said, adding that security had improved to the extent that Taliban officials now travel across the country without weapons.

The Taliban insists that no “terrorist groups” are operating from Afghanistan. However, in a recent report, the United Nations sanctions-monitoring committee cited the presence of multiple armed groups, including ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansarullah and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.

Jamaat Ansarullah is a Tajik group linked to al-Qaeda-aligned networks and active primarily in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border.

How are relations between Tajikistan and the Taliban?

For decades, the relationship between Tajikistan and the Taliban has been defined by deep ideological hostility and ethnic mistrust with Dushanbe one of the group’s fiercest critics in Central Asia.

In the 1990s, Tajikistan aligned with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, led by Afghan military commander and former Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud.

After the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Tajikistan stood as the lone holdout among its neighbours in refusing to officially recognise the new government.

However, pragmatic diplomatic engagement quietly began about 2023, driven by economic necessity and shared security fears over the presence of ISKP. Stepping up the restoration of relations, a high-level Tajik delegation visited Kabul in November, the first such visit since the Taliban’s return to power.

But the two governments continue to trade accusations that the other is harbouring “terrorists”, the major thorn remaining in their bilateral relationship, and that drug smuggling is occurring across their border.

The Tajik-Afghan border has long been a major trafficking route for Afghan heroin and methamphetamine into Central Asia and onwards to Russia and Europe, exploiting the area’s rugged terrain and weak policing.

“The rising frequency [of the clashes] is new and interesting and raises a point: whether we might be seeing a new threat emerging,” Bahiss said.

Badakshan province, from which Tajik authorities said the attacks on Chinese nationals originate, presents a complex security situation for the Taliban as it has struggled to stem the threat from armed opposition groups, Bahiss added.

This security issue has been further complicated by the Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in the province, he said. The Taliban has faced resistance to this policy from farmers in the north. This is largely because the terrain of Badakshan means poppies are the only viable cash crop.

How is the Taliban faring with other neighbours?

Since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, some of its neighbours have maintained a pragmatic transactional relationship while others have not.

Relations with Pakistan, previously its patron, have particularly deteriorated. Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistan Taliban. Tensions over this issue boiled over in November when Pakistan launched air strikes in Kabul, Khost and other provinces, prompting retaliatory Taliban attacks on border posts.

Dozens of people were killed before a ceasefire was brokered by Qatar and Turkiye. However, both sides have engaged in fighting since, blaming each other for breaking the fragile truce.

The Taliban denies Islamabad’s allegations and has blamed Pakistan for its “own security failures”.

Meanwhile, the Taliban is now invested in developing a new relationship with Pakistan’s archrival, India, with delegations visiting Indian cities for trade and security discussions. New Delhi was earlier part of the anti-Taliban alliance. However, that approach has changed with the deteriorating ties between Pakistan and the Taliban.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement summoned Afghans residing in the U.S. to present their documents during the holiday season, marking the latest effort by the Trump administration to crack down on migrants from the Asian nation.

ICE is seeking appointments for a “scheduled report check-in,” with one requesting such a meeting on Christmas Day and another asking for one on New Year’s Day, according to copies of letters sent to different people seen by Bloomberg News. Other notices were for check-ins around the holidays on Dec. 27 and Dec. 30.

The immigration agency has arrested migrants who appear at its offices in response to such formal requests, including those attending interviews for their green cards. Recipients of the letters had previously gained legal protection and were deemed “Afghan allies” as part of a program started by former President Joe Biden in August 2021 to protect those who fled to the U.S. after the American military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover of the war-torn country.

“ICE is using federal and religious holidays to detain Afghans when access to legal counsel, courts, and advocates is at its lowest,” Shawn VanDiver, founder of the nonprofit group AfghanEvac that supports Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort, said in a statement criticizing the call-ins and their timing. “This is not routine administrative scheduling.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, however, called the check-ins “routine” and “long-standing” without elaborating on how many letters were sent out. The spokesperson added that ICE continues its standard operations during the holidays.

Christmas and New Year’s Day are federal holidays when most government offices are closed.

The call-ins follow substantial changes to the U.S. immigration policy under President Donald Trump targeting Afghans in the wake of the November shooting of two National Guard troops by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with U.S. forces and the CIA in Afghanistan before arriving in the US in 2021. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Lakanwal, who has been charged with murder, came to the U.S. through the Biden program known as Operation Allies Welcome.

Since the November shooting, the Trump administration has announced it will re-review the cases of all refugees resettled under the Biden administration and freeze their green card applications, and will consider among “significant negative factors” a country’s inclusion on the president’s vast travel ban.

In another blow to Afghans, the administration’s refugee cap for fiscal year 2026 was vastly lowered to 7,500 from 125,000. The presidential determination indicated it will favor White South Afrikaners and did not mention Afghans.

The administration also removed an exemption for Afghan nationals with Special Immigration Visas — which offers those who provided services to the US government or military in Afghanistan — when it expanded its entry ban list to nationals of more than 30 countries from 19 previously. Afghan nationals were already on the entry ban list prior to the expansion.

The State Department earlier this year shuttered the office that helped resettle Afghan refugees who assisted the American war effort. An effort on Capitol Hill to compel the administration to restart the operations failed to make it into the defense policy bill that Trump signed this month.

With assistance from Alicia A. Caldwell. Lowenkron writes for Bloomberg.

The incident is the third of its kind in recent weeks in which Tajik border guards and civilians have been killed.

Five people have been killed in a firefight between border guards and intruders on Tajikistan‘s border with Afghanistan, the Tajik border protection agency says.

Heavily armed raiders from Afghanistan crossed into Tajikistan at the village of Kavo in the Shamsiddin Shokhin district on Tuesday and were located on Wednesday, according to a statement by the border agency published by Tajik news agency Khovar.

The border agency said the men attacked a guard post, killing two border guards, and three of the intruders died in the ensuing gun battle.

The agency said the incident was the third of its kind in recent weeks in which Tajik border guards and civilians were killed.

The border guards secured the weapons and ammunition used by the intruders, including grenades, three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, 10 hand grenades, a night-vision scope, explosives and other ammunition at the scene, the agency said.

“The terrorists refused to obey orders from Tajik border guards to surrender and offered armed resistance. They intended to carry out an armed attack on one of the border posts of the Border Troops of the State Committee for National Security of the Republic of Tajikistan,” the statement said.

Chinese citizens working for a mining company in the region have also been among those killed.

The latest incident demonstrated “the Taliban government’s failure to fulfil their international obligations and repeated commitments to ensuring security and stability along the state border with the Republic of Tajikistan and to combating members of terrorist organisations, reflecting serious and recurring irresponsibility”, the statement added.

It agency said that it expected an apology from the Afghan leadership.

Tajikistan will defend its territorial integrity against “terrorists and smugglers” by all means, it added.

Afghanistan has not yet commented on the incident.

Drugs from Afghanistan are smuggled into Central Asia across the largely unsecured 1,340km (830-mile) border. Russian forces are stationed in Tajikistan and have in the past participated in joint exercises with Tajik forces to help secure the border.

As Afghanistan reevaluates its economic geography in light of the deteriorating relations with Pakistan, India has become a major option for Kabul in its quest for diverse trade routes. The recent top-level meetings between the Taliban and the Indian government indicate a desire on the part of the former to diminish their reliance on the Pakistani transit corridors and to gain more strategic independence. However, India’s role is more a matter of political calculation than of geographical convenience. Afghanistan has no direct land route to India, and therefore its trade with India is expensive routes via Iran with limited air corridors, making it very difficult for a sanctions-hit and cash-strapped economy to scale up. Although the engagement with New Delhi gives the Afghan government the chance to send diplomatic signals and obtain very limited economic relief, it also poses the question of whether India is going to be a long-term trading partner or merely a geopolitical counterweight in Kabul’s broader regional strategy.

Taliban officials have begun signalling a recalibration of economic policy. Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar publicly urged Afghan traders to explore alternative transit corridors, accusing Pakistan of using border closures as a tool of political pressure. Shortly thereafter, Nooruddin Azizi, Minister of Industry and Commerce of Afghanistan, had an official visit to New Delhi on 19 November 2025 for official discussions aimed at increasing bilateral trade, enhancing the mechanisms for import and export and finding out different ways for Afghan businesses to trade. This visit comes after the Afghanistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi’s trip to India in October that lasted for eight days, which was his first trip to India, for which he was granted a temporary UN sanctions exemption, even though India has not yet recognized the Taliban government.

Over the past two decades, the Taliban’s propaganda has been persistently depicting India as a Hindu “kafir” state that is supporting the “anti-Islam” forces in Kabul, making Indian diplomats look like enemies and Indian consulates like secret intelligence stations working against Afghanistan and Pakistan. The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was declared as a holy war against the “un-Islamic idols” and the whole Buddhist-Hindu civilization, which was a clear indication of the Emirate’s hardline ideological approach. However, this narrative has changed for political and economic reasons.

Moreover, the Taliban, having once described the Indian state as their ideological enemy, are now actively courting India, even sending their foreign minister and commerce minister to New Delhi to get access to trade routes and investment in infrastructure. However, the newly established open channels of communication between the two parties are indicative of a major pragmatism shift, wherein the former rhetoric of enmity and ideological purity has been replaced by the language of using one another in business transactions, thus, signaling the willingness of Afghanistan to retrieve economic lifelines and gain a strategic position in a region.

Historically, Taliban’s official communications are filled with references to Islamic unity, historical connections, and the values of Muslim brotherhood in its relationship with Pakistan. However, when relations with Islamabad were strained over the Tehrik-i-Taliban support, as well as border management and refugees; the Emirate quickly turned to engagement with other regional states instead of reconciliation with its closest Muslim neighbor. This selective realism reveals a definite order of priorities; Afghanistan is ignoring Pakistan’s main security issues but is ready to do anything for a state that is Hindu-majority and can offer trade routes, investment, and international legitimacy.

This transactional approach is not only limited to regional politics but also encompasses the global economic system. The Taliban constantly criticized “Western economic slavery“, interest-based financial systems and considering themselves as an ideological alternative to the West. Nowadays, the Taliban are lobbying India who is heavily involved in the Western capital markets and global financial networks positively to get banking access, reconstruction projects, and investments. The ideological rigidity at home is sharply contrasted with the foreign policy flexibility; those states which were once labelled as anti-Islamic are now being courted for material and political gains.

The Taliban’s selective pragmatism is also evident in the territorial and security sensitive issues. On one hand, they keep on challenging the issue of the Durand Line with Pakistan, an internationally recognized border between both states, while on the other hand, they are quite liberal with India. Likewise, in the past, Taliban-associated clerics and militants celebrated jihad in Kashmir, denounced Indian government actions toward Muslims there and such discourse got muted during visits to Delhi. It is very clear that economic and diplomatic goals are prioritized over ideological or sectarian consistency.

Afghanistan’s trade pivot underscores the delicate balance between ambition and structural reality. While the Taliban’s efforts to diversify transit routes reflect a desire for economic autonomy and greater regional leverage, geographic constraints, limited infrastructure, and entrenched economic patterns impose severe limitations. Engagement with India offers symbolic and partial relief, yet Pakistan remains the linchpin of Afghan commerce, providing the fastest and most cost-effective access to global markets. The Emirate’s strategy is as much a political signal-demonstrating flexibility, pragmatism, and a quest for de facto recognition as it is an economic maneuver. Ultimately, Afghanistan’s “strategic heart of Asia” narrative will be tested not by intent but by its capacity to reconcile aspiration with the unyielding realities of terrain, logistics, and regional interdependence.