Afghanistan

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.

Eight-run cricket win keeps Bangladesh in the running for the next phase, while Afghanistan must beat Sri Lanka to make it.

Bangladesh have kept themselves in contention for the next round of cricket’s Asia Cup 2025 by defeating Afghanistan by eight runs in their Group B encounter in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates.

Afghanistan came close to securing their place in the Super Four stage and knocking out Bangladesh, but fell short in their chase of 155 on Tuesday.

The Bangladeshi pacers kept Afghanistan’s batters in check with regular wickets as Mustafizur Rahman (3-28 in four overs), Nasum Ahmed (2-11 in four overs) and Taskin Ahmed (2-34 in four overs) applied the brakes on Afghanistan’s innings.

Apart from Rahmanullah Gurbaz 35 (31) and Azmatullah Omarzai 30 (16), none of the Afghan batters could move into the 30s.

Captain Rashid Khan’s flurry at the end of the innings – 20 (11) – did look threatening for Bangladesh at one point, but once he was dismissed, Afghanistan’s chances were all but gone.

Despite a couple of late sixes from spinner Noor Ahmad, Afghanistan fell short and were dismissed for 145 in their 20 overs.

Earlier, Tanzid Hasan top-scored for Bangladesh with a half-century (52 off 31) to help set up a challenging target of 154-5 in 20 overs.

Rashid and Noor took two wickets apiece for Afghanistan.

Bangladesh have now played all three of their group games and will await the result of Afghanistan’s all-important match against Sri Lanka on Thursday.

Sri Lanka are at top spot with four points, and Bangladesh move to second place with four points.

The Tigers will hope that Sri Lanka beat Afghanistan to open their path to the Super Fours.

Should Afghanistan win, the net run rate could come into play as a deciding factor.

Follow the build-up, score and live text commentary stream from the Asia Cup match at Zayed Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi.

The reported visit follows one in March 2025 which led to the release of a US citizen held for more than two years in Afghanistan.

United States officials have agreed to a prisoner exchange after a rare talk with the authorities in Kabul, according to the Taliban administration’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Adam Boehler, the Trump administration’s special envoy for hostage response, and Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US special envoy for Afghanistan, met with the Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

“Adam Boehler, referring to the issue of detained citizens between Afghanistan and the United States, said that both countries will exchange prisoners,” deputy prime minister Abdul Ghani Baradar’s office said after their meeting.

There was no immediate statement from Washington regarding the meeting, and Khalilzad did not immediately respond to a phone call from Reuters when asked for comment.

Mahmood Habibi, a naturalised US citizen and businessman who previously worked for a telecommunications company in Kabul, is the highest-profile American detainee, according to Washington. The US is offering a $5 million reward for information to find him, with the Taliban authorities denying any involvement in his 2022 disappearance.

The Taliban has reportedly pressed for the release of Muhammad Rahim, the last Afghan national held at Guantanamo Bay, who has been detained without charge since 2008.

Another American, airline mechanic George Glezmann, was freed after more than two years in detention during a March visit to Kabul by Boehler.

That deal, mediated by Qatar, was described by the Taliban as a “humanitarian” gesture and a “sign of goodwill”.

Before that, in January 2025, the two sides carried out a prisoner exchange in which US citizens Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty were released in exchange for Khan Mohammad, an Afghan national serving two life sentences in the US.

Both sides also agreed to continue discussions regarding nationals imprisoned in each other’s countries, the statement added.

The Taliban administration, which took power in 2021 after 20 years of US military intervention in Afghanistan, is not recognised by Washington.

Khas Kunar, Afghanistan – Stoori was pulled out from under the rubble of his house in Kunar province after it was destroyed by the magnitude 6 earthquake which struck on the night of August 31. But the guilt of not being able to save his wife haunts him.

“I barely had enough time to pull out the body of my dead wife and place her on the rubble of our collapsed home before my children and I were evacuated,” the grief-stricken 40-year-old farmer says.

Authorities say about 2,200 people have been killed and more than 5,000 homes destroyed in eastern Afghanistan, most of them in Kunar province, where houses mostly built from wood and mud bricks crumbled in the shocks of the quake.

Stoori, who only gave one name, is now staying with his children in a sprawling evacuation camp 60km (37 miles) from his village – in Khas Kunar.

“My village has become a graveyard. All 40 families lost their homes. The earthquake killed 12 people in my community and left 22 others badly injured,” he says.

Winter is coming

In all, the UN says half a million people have been affected by the quake.

In this camp, which is lined with tents provided by international NGOs, nearly 5,000 people are sheltering, each with stories of loss and pain.

Thankfully, the camp has access to water and sanitation, and there are two small clinics ready to receive injured newcomers, as well as an ambulance which can be dispatched to collect people.

Right now, workers are digging a trench to install another water pipe, which will divert water to areas in need around the camp.

Just a few hundred metres away, what were once United States military warehouses have been transformed into government offices coordinating the emergency response.

The Taliban, which returned to power after US-led forces withdrew in 2021 after 20 years of occupation, has been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.

Tens of thousands of people are without any shelter at all just weeks before the onset of winter, and the mountainous terrain makes relief and rescue efforts difficult.

Najibullah Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, says the authorities are working through a three-step emergency plan: Evacuate those at risk, provide shelter, food, and medical care in camps, and, eventually, rebuild homes or find permanent housing.

But the situation is becoming more challenging by the day. “Fortunately, we have received support from the government, local businesses, volunteers and international NGOs. They all came and helped with food and money for the displaced people,” he tells Al Jazeera.

‘The smell of dead animals fills the air’

More than 10 days after the tremor, new arrivals join the camp daily, inside the fortified walls of the former US base on the banks of the Kabul River.

Among them is Nurghal, a 52-year-old farmer from Shalatak village who was able to reunite with the surviving members of his family only on Wednesday morning. “From my large extended family, 52 people were killed and almost 70 were left badly injured,” he says. The devastation is “unimaginable”, he adds.

“The weather is cold in our area, and we don’t sleep outside this time of the year. That is why many people were trapped in their houses when the earthquake hit, and they were killed. Everything is destroyed back home, and all our animals are buried in debris. The smell of dead animals fills the air in my village.”

Life before the quake, he says, was stable. “Before the earthquake, we had everything we wanted: A home, livestock, our crops, and land. Now life is in the hospital and tents.”

Women face particular challenges in the aftermath of this disaster, as Taliban laws prevent them from travelling without male guardians – meaning it is hard for them to either get medical assistance or, in the case of female medical workers, to provide it.

The World Health Organization (WHO) asked Taliban authorities last week to lift travel restrictions for Afghan female aid workers, at least, to allow them to travel to help women in difficulties following the earthquake.

“A very big issue now is the increasing paucity of female staff in these places,” Dr Mukta Sharma, the deputy representative of WHO’s Afghanistan office, told the Reuters news agency.

Furthermore, since women have been banned from higher education by the Taliban, the number of qualified female medical staff is dwindling.

Despite these difficulties, the Taliban leadership says it is committed to ensuring that women will be properly treated, by male health workers if necessary.

Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, tells Al Jazeera: “During the emergency situation, the military and volunteers evacuated and cared for everyone. On the second day, UNICEF set up a medical clinic in Nurghal district and they had female doctors as well. We took as many injured people as the clinic could handle there and they were treating everyone, male and female. In any emergency situation, there is no gender-based discrimination; any doctor available will treat any patients coming in. The priority is life saving.”

At a field hospital which has been set up inside the old US barracks by the displacement camp at Khas Kunar, six male doctors and one female doctor, 16 male nurses and 12 female nurses are tending to the injured. Currently, there are 34 patients here, 24 of whom are women and children – most of them were taken to Gamberi from their remote villages by Taliban military helicopters and then transferred the last 50km (30 miles) to the hospital by car.

The hospital’s director, Dr Shahid, who only gave one name, says male doctors and nurses are permitted to treat women and have been doing so without any issue.

‘A curse from the sky’

From his bed in the field hospital, Azim, a farmer in his mid-40s from Sohail Tangy village, 60km (37 miles) away, is recovering from fractures to his spine and right shoulder.

He fears returning to the devastation at home.

“The earthquake was like a curse from the sky. I don’t want to move back to that hell,” he tells Al Jazeera. “The government should give us land to rebuild our lives. My village has become the centre of destruction. My only request is to give us land somewhere else.”

Azim is still coming to terms with the loss of his loved ones. “Yesterday, my son told me that three of my brothers are dead. Some of my family members are in the Kabul and Jalalabad hospitals. And my wife is in Kabul military hospital,” he says.

Back in the evacuation camp, Stoori says he is holding onto hope, but only just.

“If God blesses us, maybe we can go back to our village before the winter comes,” he says.

“We have nothing left except our trust in God, and we ask the international community and authorities for help.”

The Asia Cup cricket tournament starts on Tuesday, but for tournament organisers, sponsors and cricket fans from India and Pakistan, it won’t be before Sunday, when the two regional superpowers face each other, that the event will spring into action.

Any India vs Pakistan match is considered a marquee event, but the recent conflict between the two countries has brought extra heat to the encounter in Dubai.

After all, it will be their first meeting since the South Asian archrivals returned from the brink of an all-out war in May, when both countries clashed at their shared border before an internationally-brokered ceasefire.

It has been almost 18 years since India and Pakistan last met in a Test match – the five-day version of cricket widely regarded as the pinnacle of the sport – and almost 13 years since either side crossed the border to play a bilateral series.

But between September 14 and 21, if results go the way the organisers hope for, Pakistan and India could end up playing three times.

A decades-old political rift between the two nuclear-armed countries is blamed for the frosty sporting ties, but the same differences are set aside when a regional or global cricket event comes around.

Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947, resulting in a bloody division of the subcontinent by the colonial British. Over the past 78 years, the nations have fought four wars, exchanged countless skirmishes and remained at odds primarily over the disputed Kashmir region that both claim in entirety but administer parts of.

The Asia Cup is no stranger to political influence and has faced the repercussions of strained ties between the two.

When India hosted the tournament in 1990-91 amid an uprising in India-administered Kashmir, Pakistan pulled out. The following edition, in 1993, was called off amid heightened tensions between the two sides.

But despite the strained relations on a political level and the current cricket impasse, which began in 2013, India and Pakistan have regularly faced each other at tournaments for the International Cricket Council (ICC) and for the Asian Cricket Council’s (ACC) Asia Cup.

‘Maximising eyeballs and revenue’

Why, then, is it impossible for both sides to separate politics from sport for bilateral exchanges if they can agree to share a cricket field potentially three times in two weeks?

“It’s all about maximising eyeballs and tournament revenue,” Sami Ul Hasan, former head of the ICC’s media and communication departments, told Al Jazeera.

“When the ICC plans a global event, organisers do not consider rankings or any other factors. It’s all about making sure India and Pakistan play against each other at least once.

“Over the last two decades, the ICC has changed the format of its tournaments multiple times in order to ensure that happens.”

The ICC has, in the past, admitted to fixing tournament draws to ensure Pakistan and India end up in the same group.

Post-tournament viewership figures confirm the high ratings for India-Pakistan matches.

According to the ICC, the India vs Pakistan fixture at the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 was one of the most-watched one-day international matches in India.

It generated over 26 billion minutes of watch time on TV, surpassing the India-Pakistan match from the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023, which had recorded 19.5 billion viewing minutes.

Tournament organisers, such as the ICC and the ACC, typically sell broadcasting rights and sponsorships to the highest bidders.

The ICC and ACC distribute the revenue generated at these tournaments amongst their member nations, who stand to benefit from a higher number of India-Pakistan matches as well.

According to Hasan, the first question posed by broadcasters and sponsors is on India-Pakistan matches.

“It’s tricky to pull off multiple India-Pakistan games at global events, but easier to achieve this outcome in smaller tournaments such as the Asia Cup,” he said.

“Even at the Asia Cup, the most they’ve got so far is two matches per tournament. They have been trying for a third [in the final] but it hasn’t materialised yet.”

In the tournament’s 16 iterations since its inception in 1984, India and Pakistan have never met in a final.

‘Don’t care about India vs Pakistan’

Although India versus Pakistan is always the biggest draw at any cricket tournament, fans from other participating nations are not bothered by the lack of attention and respect shown to their teams.

“I only care about Sri Lanka and not about what happens in an India-Pakistan match as long as Sri Lanka walks away with the cup,” Mohammad Akram, a Sri Lankan, said.

“For us, it’s about our team and the same goes for fans of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and other countries.

“Sri Lanka has always been sidelined. It has always been about India and Pakistan, but we don’t mind because our team has played the most finals.”

Sri Lanka are the second most successful team in the Asia Cup and have qualified for a record 13 finals, lifting the trophy six times. Another win in the final would tie them with the reigning champions India.

Bending the rules

The focus on this rivalry can sometimes lead to unprecedented decision-making and bending of the rules.

At the last Asia Cup held in Sri Lanka two years ago, the India-Pakistan group-stage game was abandoned due to rain. As both teams reached the next round, and with more rain expected, organisers set aside a reserve day to their Super Four fixture, the only match in that round to benefit from the allocation.

That decision was taken in the middle of the tournament, raising eyebrows and attracting criticism from cricket experts and fans of other participating countries.

“Rules must not be bent for anyone. What happened then did not set a good example for the game,” Hasan said. “Playing conditions and rules are signed off prior to the tournament and are not tinkered with.

“Changing them to accommodate certain fixtures gives out a message that everything is about money and commercialisation of that single fixture.”

India’s sporting ambitions

Despite the ongoing political rift between India and Pakistan, both sets of cricket boards and governments have given these fixtures a green light.

In August, India announced a new sports policy whereby its teams and athletes will not be allowed to engage in bilateral sports events with Pakistan, but can face them in international tournaments.

It also prohibited Indian athletes from travelling to Pakistan and refused to host teams and individuals from Pakistan.

The move, according to former ICC official Hasan, is to ensure that India’s ambitions of bidding for the 2036 Olympics and the 2030 Commonwealth Games are not affected.

“For India to say it doesn’t want to play against Pakistan due to political reasons would weaken its case as a potential global sporting hub,” he said.

Rescuers are desperately searching for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened by an earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 1,100 people.

The magnitude 6.0 earthquake, followed by at least five aftershocks, hit remote areas in mountainous provinces near the border with Pakistan about midnight on Sunday.

The head of the Kunar Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said on Tuesday that “operations continued throughout the night.”

He said there were “still injured people left in the distant villages” in need of evacuation to hospitals.

Villagers joined the rescue efforts, using their bare hands to clear debris from simple mud and stone homes built into steep valleys.

Some of the hardest-hit villages remain inaccessible due to blocked roads, said the UN migration agency.

The earthquake epicentre was about 27km (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the USGS, which said it struck at a shallow 8km (5 miles) below the Earth’s surface.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that the organisation was working with authorities to “swiftly assess needs, provide emergency assistance and stand ready to mobilise additional support”, while announcing an initial $5m in aid.

The death toll in the earthquake has risen to 1,124, the Afghan Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian group working in the region, said on Tuesday. At least 3,251 people have been injured and more than 8,000 houses have been destroyed in the disaster, the group said

Laghman province also has dozens of injured, according to government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially since the majority of Afghans live in low-rise, mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.

In a post shared by the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened by the significant loss of life” caused by the quake.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.

In October 2023, western Herat province was devastated by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake, which killed more than 2,000 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.

A magnitude 5.9 quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Thamindri de Silva, the National Director for World Vision Afghanistan, explains why it’s difficult for response teams to reach the area affected by the earthquake in Afghanistan.

AT least 250 people have been killed and hundreds more injured after multiple earthquakes struck eastern Afghanistan.

A 6.0 quake, the strongest, struck the the Jalalabad area at around midnight local time, with tremors felt as far as Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, nearly 200 miles away.

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Towns in the province of Kunar, near Jalalabad, were near the epicentre.

The Kunar Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that at least 250 people were killed and 500 others injured in the districts of Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapadare.

Rescuers are working in several districts of the mountainous province where the quake hit.

Officials have said the terrain is making it tricky to reach survivors – and they expect the death toll to rise.

The 6.0 magnitude quake struck at 11:47pm, 17 miles northeast of Jalalabad, according to the US Geological Survey,

Its epicentre was 5 miles below ground.

There was a second earthquake in the same province about 20 minutes later, with a magnitude of 4.5 and a depth of 6.2 miles.

This was later followed by a 5.2 earthquake at the same depth.

More to follow… For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos.

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Revolutionary guards say suspects apprehended in northeastern Iran as materials for making weapons are also seized.

Iran has arrested eight people suspected of attempting to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures during the country’s 12-day war with Israel and the United States to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, according to its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC released a statement on Saturday alleging that the suspects had received specialised training from Mossad via online platforms.

It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.

The news comes as state media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the June conflict, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.

Following an Israeli military bombardment that began on June 13, killing top military officials and scientists as well as hundreds of civilians, Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities.

The US also carried out extensive strikes on Israel’s behalf on Iranian nuclear sites during the conflict, the worst blow to the Islamic republic since its 1980s war with Iraq.

During the 12-day war, Iranian security forces began a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints and “public reports”.

Iranian citizens were called upon to report on any individuals they thought were acting suspiciously during the war that ended in a US and Qatar-brokered ceasefire.

Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist who was killed in Israeli air strikes.

Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.

The Israel-US-Iran conflict has also led to an accelerated rate of deportations for Afghan refugees and migrants believed to be illegally in Iran, with aid agencies reporting that local authorities have also accused some Afghan nationals of spying for Israel.

“Law enforcement rounded up 2,774 illegal migrants and discovered 30 special security cases by examining their phones. [A total of] 261 suspects of espionage and 172 people accused of unauthorised filming were also arrested,” police spokesperson Saeed Montazerolmahdi said earlier this month.

Montazerolmahdi did not specify how many of those arrested had since been released.

He added that Iran’s police handled more than 5,700 cases of cybercrimes such as online fraud and unauthorised withdrawals during the war, which he said had turned “cyberspace into an important battlefront”.

We’ve read quite a bit about President Trump’s “hot mic” comment, during a meeting with European leaders about the Russian war against Ukraine, that Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal for me, as crazy as it sounds.”

Pundits debated whether this was an embarrassment for Trump; they wondered why he would say such an important thing in a whisper to French President Emmanuel Macron — as if Trump’s verbal goulash were something new. Headlines were full of the word “deal” for a while, including three days later, when they were reporting that Trump said Putin might not want “to make a deal.” And, of course, there is no deal.

The press coverage of the meeting in Alaska said there were lots of “constructive” conversations. Putin spoke about “neighborly” talks and the “constructive atmosphere of mutual respect” in his conversations with Trump. There were reports about agreements “in principle” on various things under discussion, although there were no details about what they might be.

I covered more than a few superpower summits, first as a reporter for the Associated Press and later for the New York Times. Although that was more than 30 years ago, the smoke and mirrors nonsense usually produced by meetings like these has not changed. Verbal gas is abundant and facts almost nonexistent. Trump’s comments were worth about as much as anything else he has said on the subject, which is almost nothing. And yet, they were reported and parsed endlessly as if they had the same meaning as other presidents’ words had in the past.

I had a powerful sense of deja vu from a five-day trip to Afghanistan in January 1987. The Kremlin had finally agreed to let a group of Western journalists visit Kabul and Jalalabad to witness the “cease-fire” that had been announced a few days before we arrived. The visit was billed as an Afghan government tour, which nobody — especially the Afghan government — believed.

We saw no fighting, although we could see artillery fire in the hills at night. Some of the “specials,” as we wire service correspondents called the major media then, reported that we were fired on. We were not.

Mostly, we shopped for rugs and drank cold Heinekens, which were unavailable in Moscow but mysteriously well stocked at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. We were ushered to various peace and unity events between the Afghan and Russian peoples and toured the huge Soviet military camps just outside Kabul with a U.S. official (allegedly a diplomat from the Embassy, but we knew from experience that this person was from the Central Intelligence Agency).

On Jan. 19, we were taken (each reporter in an individual government car with a minder) to a news conference by Mohammad Najib, the Afghan leader whose name had been Najibullah until he changed it to make it sound less religious for his Bolshevik friends. Najib said that Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had agreed “in principle” on a “timetable for withdrawal” of Soviet occupation forces.

At that point, the Reuters correspondent, who was fairly new to Moscow still, bolted from the room and raced back to our hotel, where there was one Telex machine for us all to send our stories back to Moscow. He filed a bulletin on the announcement. When the rest of us made our leisurely return, we were greeted with messages from our home offices demanding to know about the big deal to end the war in Afghanistan.

We wrote our stories, which were about a business-as-usual press conference that yielded no real news. We each appended a message to explain why the Reuters report was just plain wrong. Talk of Soviet withdrawal was common, and always wrong. The very idea that the puppet government in Kabul had something to say about it or was a party to any serious discussions about ending the war was absurd. The most pithy comment came from the Agence France-Presse reporter, who told her editors that the Reuters story was “merde.” The Soviet military did not withdraw until February 1989, more than two years later, following its own schedule.

Much of the recent coverage about Russia and Ukraine reminds me of that Afghan news flash in 1987. The Kremlin has never been, was not then and is not now interested in negotiation or compromise. Under Soviet communism and under Putin, diplomacy is a zero-sum game whose only goal is to restore Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. And yet, for some reason, the American media and the country’s diplomats seem as oblivious today as they always were. After the summit, they announced breathlessly that there was no peace deal out of the summit, although they all knew going in that there was no deal on the table and there never was going to be one.

But of course Putin wants a “deal” on Ukraine. It’s the same deal he has wanted since he violated international law (not for the first time) and invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He wants to redraw the boundaries of Ukraine to give him even more territory than he has already seized, and he wants to be sure Ukraine remains out of NATO and under Moscow’s military thumb as he has done with other former Soviet regions, like Georgia, which he invaded in 2008 as soon as the country dared to suggest it might be interested in NATO membership. His latest nonsense was to demand that Russia be part of any postwar security arrangements. He wants the NATO allies to stop treating him like the war criminal that he is and to be seen as an equal actor on the international stage with NATO and especially the United States.

That he got, in abundance, from Trump in Alaska, starting with the location. Trump invited Putin to the United States during a period of travel bans to and from Russia, immediately giving the Russian dictator a huge PR win. It also, conveniently, put him in the only NATO country where he is not wanted on charges of crimes against humanity.

As for peace talks, check the headlines from Ukraine before, during and after the Alaska summit: The Russians have stepped up their killing and destruction in Ukraine with new ferocity and have been grabbing as much land in eastern Ukraine as they can. Every square inch of that land — and more the Kremlin has not yet occupied — will be part of any “deal” that Putin will accept. Trump himself has been talking about “land swaps” (as he has from the start of the war, by the way) — a nonsensical idea when you consider the land Ukraine holds is its sovereign territory and the land Russian holds was stolen.

The brilliant M. Gessen, perhaps the leading authority on dictatorship, published an essay in the New York Review, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” shortly after the 2016 election. “Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality,” they wrote.

A U.S. president and a Russian leader sitting down to talk and emerging with bluster about progress seems normal enough, perhaps encouraging when American-Russian relations have been at a historic low. Just remember that coming from these two men, the comments signify nothing — or, worse, make us wonder what Trump has given away to Putin with his talk of land swaps.

Andrew Rosenthal, a former reporter, editor and columnist, was Moscow bureau chief for the Associated Press and Washington editor and later editorial page editor for the New York Times.

It was no normal day in Kabul on the 20th of August 2025. The city, once ravaged by war and suspicion, welcomed an event that could redraw the region’s map, the sixth Pakistan-Afghanistan-China trilateral meeting. For decades, Afghanistan has been considered a theater of disorder, characterized by foreign interference, militancy, and sanctions.

 In this groundbreaking round, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s attendance sent a message far beyond the confines of the conference room: Beijing stands ready to bet on Afghanistan’s revival from a battleground to a bridge economy. The Kabul session was no rerun of tired diplomatic protocol.

It was Afghanistan joining the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) officially, something that drastically alters the nation’s future along with the region’s geopolitics. By including Afghanistan in this paradigm, Pakistan and China have given the Taliban regime a once-in-a-lifetime chance to come out of seclusion, accrue legitimacy, and tap the economic potential. For a nation strangled by sanctions and bothered by unemployment, CPEC has the promise of something more than roads and pipelines; it has the promise of employment, commerce, and the chance to be an indispensable linkage between Central and South Asia.

Pakistan’s diplomacy has been at the center of making this day possible. For Islamabad, the addition of Afghanistan isn’t so much an act of goodwill and cooperation but also a hard security calculus. By adding Kabul to CPEC, Pakistan is minimizing the leeway for external actors, mainly India, to use the territory of Afghanistan for destabilization. It is also solidifying its own geo-economics hub, framing itself as a bridge state in a position to offer stability as well as connectivity. Primarily, Pakistan has shifted the instability of Afghanistan from a burden to a collective responsibility, with China’s financial influence footing the bill.

China has thus come to Kabul in a dual role: to mediate and to manage risk. Beijing knows that until stability arrives in Afghanistan, the projects under the Belt and Road Initiative stand to be jeopardized. The risks are genuine. Terror entities such as the TTP, ISKP, Al-Qaeda, and ETIM pose direct threats to the lives of citizens in China, CPEC projects, and internal stability in Xinjiang.

Wang Yi’s visit signalled Beijing’s intent to secure its investment commitments in the form of security measures as ironclad as its pecuniary commitments. The formation of a joint counter-terror operations center, real-time sharing of Intel, and procedures in the event of border incidents mirror that this isn’t about cutting ribbons but tough, enforceable systems of cooperation.

The structured pipeline laid out in Kabul is equally ambitious. Within the first year, digitized customs, fast-track trade facilities, and joint border security posts will become operational. Within three years, upgraded highways, cargo railways, energy corridors, and fiber optic networks will knit Afghanistan into regional supply chains. Within five years, industrial zones and logistics hubs in Afghan cities will enable the country to export more than raw materials; it will begin to manufacture, employ, and sustain itself. For the first time in decades, Afghanistan is being offered a pathway toward sustainable economic participation rather than mere aid dependency.

This vision, however, hinges on a simple but formidable formula: security plus connectivity equals peace. Without security, no corridor will be safe. Without connectivity, no economy will flourish. The Kabul session recognized this by embedding measurable accountability, KPIs that range from reducing terrorism by 30 percent annually to ensuring Afghan citizens fill 40 percent of CPEC-linked jobs. These are not rhetorical targets; they are promises with timelines, offering Afghans tangible evidence that their sacrifices in peace will translate into bread and dignity.

Critics will argue that this is overly ambitious, that the Taliban cannot reform, and that external spoilers will derail the process. But history often turns on moments when risks are embraced as opportunities. The Kabul round was one such pivot point. It declared that Afghanistan’s future need not be a repetition of its past. Instead, with Pakistan’s guarantees, China’s investments, and Kabul’s participation, the region has chosen to gamble on cooperation over conflict.

Wang Yi’s presence in Kabul symbolized more than China’s financial clout. It was a message that Beijing sees Afghanistan not as a pariah but as a partner, not as a sinkhole of instability but as a potential bridge across Asia. For Pakistan, it was proof that responsible diplomacy pays dividends. For Afghanistan, it was a first step out of isolation. If the commitments made in Kabul are honored, this day will be remembered as the moment when a war-torn land began its journey toward becoming a regional connector. The stakes are high, the risks are real, but the opportunity is historic. Sometimes, the future is written not in battlefields but in conference halls, and Kabul may have just rewritten its fate.

The instability of Afghanistan has again become the focus of the international discourse not as the local issue but as a global crisis on the rise. In fact, the Afghan Taliban regained power in 2021. Since then, the nation has steadily fallen into unrestrained anarchy that provides a breeding ground for extremist organizations, drug dealers, and systematic violators of human rights. It is not a plunge into Kabul or Kandahar alone, but it pours beyond borders and influences regional games and even surpasses continent. It is now time that the world recognizes that the crisis that plagues Afghanistan is a security issue of a global nature. Since all the aspects of the crisis are interdependent and all together connected in a network of terror groups, drug trafficking systems and humanitarian catastrophes.

The most imminent of them all would be the unabated revival of the terrorist groups in Afghanistan. The lawless borders have been used by such groups as Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which took advantage of Taliban weaknesses. Such networks do not remain limited to the territory of Afghanistan.

Indeed, they plan cross-border strikes that undermine stability in Pakistan, menace the Xinjiang province of China and even spark individuals in wolf attacks in Europe. A danger of such strategic mistakes is the likelihood of Afghanistan being the breeding ground again as it used to be in the pre-9/11 era when extremists trained and operated freely. In absence of control this revival would further spread terror once more all over the world.

The aspect of the crisis that could not be overlooked is narcotics production. Among them is Afghanistan whose establishment as the largest producer of opium in the world is now giving place to its emergence as a new source of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine. UNODC reports this growth puts an intimidating twist. In contrast to classic opiates which have predominated in Afghanistan drug markets over the past decades, methamphetamine is simple to manufacture, transport and even more addictive.

Drug use has increased by 23 percent in the last 10 years with 296 million new users on a global scale. The situation which worsened is the incidence of individuals with drug use disorders increased to 39.5 million with a 45 percent increase (UNODC). These numbers prove that the Afghan instability is not a localized problem, and they are contributing to a growing global narcotics industry one that emboldens organized crime and funds terrorism.

Amid the overarching reality of terrorism and drugs the population in Afghanistan particularly women and minorities are confronted by a crisis too. After the Taliban seized power they deprived women of education, did not allow them to go to workplaces, and deprived them of such fundamental rights as freedom of movement. The systematic undermining of purity and prospects has gone on to create a humanitarian disaster. There is targeted discrimination and violence against minority communities that deteriorate the social fabric of Afghanistan. The human rights groups fear that such policies will drive generations of Afghans into despair, poverty and enforced migration. Such a lack of opportunity will just expose vulnerable groups to the recruitment of extremist recruiters and traffickers.

The insecurity that emanates out of Afghanistan is not geographically localizable. Pakistan on its other side is dealing with an empowered TTP which carries out attacks across the border and Central Asian countries fear infiltration by militants. China is faced with risks to its Belt and Road Initiative investments, and Iran works against more refugee flows and trafficking routes. Europe has already reported the threat of so-called narcoterrorism seeping west putting whole regions of the world in turmoil and ultimately onto European streets and European markets. Resigning these red flags can result in recurring the historical mistakes, i.e., making Afghanistan a global insecurity centre in the 1990s.

No complacency can be afforded by the international community. Afghanistan is a poisonous cocktail of extremism, drug trafficking and gross human rights violations that is a direct threat to international security. There should be a global response an integrated approach to counterterrorism, sanctions against drug traffickers, the humanitarian assistance to the Afghan civilians and the pressure on the Taliban to respect the basic rights. The regional stakeholders Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and Central Asia will have to come on board with the Western powers and international organizations and design a strategy forms. Turning a blind eye to Afghanistan is no longer an option the consequences of inaction will be felt in South Asia and in Europe and beyond.

The chaos that Afghanistan is going through is not a far-fetched war but a definite threat to international peace and security. Everyday challenges to counteract this crisis remain unacted, terrorist networks prosper, and narcotics industries seize new land and human suffering grows. Unless the world is willing to open its eyes Afghanistan is in grave danger of becoming an international permanent source of destabilization and of a bad form between terror, drugs and repression that will become a lasting worldwide crisis. It is much cheaper and better to prevent action today than to pay the cost of regret tomorrow. 

Islamabad, Pakistan – With clasped hands and half-smiles, the foreign ministers of Pakistan, China and Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban posed as they gathered in Kabul on Wednesday for a trilateral meeting.

It was the second such meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Pakistan’s Ishaq Dar and their Afghan counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi in 12 weeks, after they huddled together in Beijing in May.

That May meeting had led to the resumption of diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan after a period of high tension between them. It also set the stage for talks on extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – into Afghanistan. The BRI is a network of ports, railroads and highways aimed at connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.

But as China plans to expand its footprint in the region, its attempts to forge peace between Pakistan and Afghanistan reflect its unease over the security of its interests even along the existing CPEC, say analysts.

And while Beijing is a vital partner to both Islamabad and Kabul, experts believe its influence over both remains untested, as does China’s willingness to take on the risks that it might confront if it seeks to bring Pakistan and the Taliban, once thick allies but now embittered neighbours, back into a trusted embrace, they say.

The Sixth Trilateral Foreign Ministers Dialogue was held on 20 August 2025 in Kabul between Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister of Pakistan @MIshaqDar50, Foreign Minister of China @MFA_China, and Acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan @mfa_afghanistan, focusing on political,… pic.twitter.com/i6n8I2oYgr

— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan (@ForeignOfficePk) August 20, 2025

Shifting regional dynamics

The Beijing conclave took place under the shadow of a four-day conflict between Pakistan and India, but much has changed since then on the regional chessboard.

In recent months, Pakistan – long seen as China’s closest ally and reliant on its northeastern neighbour for military and economic support – has strengthened ties with the United States, Beijing’s main global rival.

China, for its part, has resumed engagement with India, Pakistan’s arch adversary and its key competitor for regional influence. India has also continued to deepen ties with the Afghan Taliban, who have ruled Afghanistan since August 2021, following the withdrawal of US forces.

Pakistan and Afghanistan, meanwhile, remain at odds. Islamabad was once the Taliban’s chief patron. Now, it accuses the group of providing a safe haven to groups carrying out cross-border violence, while Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of human rights violations by expelling Afghan refugees.

Amid this, China has positioned itself as mediator, a role driven largely by the CPEC, the $62bn infrastructure project running from the Pakistan-China border in the north to Gwadar Port in Balochistan.

A senior Pakistani diplomat with direct knowledge of the recent Pakistani interactions with their Chinese and Afghan counterparts said China, as a common neighbour, places a premium on neighbourhood diplomacy. For China, he added, a peaceful neighbourhood is essential.

“China has attached high importance to stability and security to pursue and expand its larger BRI project, so expansion of westward connectivity and development can only succeed when, among others, these two countries are stabilised,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

“Development and connectivity cannot be achieved in the absence of security. Hence its efforts to bring the two neighbours together,” he added.

CPEC under strain

CPEC, launched in 2015 under then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, elder brother of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, has been hailed by many in Pakistan as a “game-changer” for the country – a giant investment with the potential to create jobs and build the economy.

But the project has slowed down in recent years. Later this month, Prime Minister Sharif is expected to travel to China to formally launch the second phase of the CPEC.

While political upheaval has hampered progress, China’s primary concerns remain the safety of infrastructure and the security of its nationals, who have frequently been targeted.

Separatist groups in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but poorest province, have long attacked Chinese personnel and installations, accusing them of exploiting local resources. Attacks on Chinese citizens have also occurred in Pakistan’s north.

Nearly 20,000 Chinese nationals currently live in Pakistan, according to government figures. Since 2021, at least 20 have been killed in attacks across the country.

Stella Hong Zhang, assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the US, said China has long wanted to bring Afghanistan into the CPEC, to expand the project’s scope and to promote regional integration.

But Zhang, whose research focuses on China’s global development engagement, said it is unclear how convinced Beijing is about investing in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.

“China might promise investments, but even though we are seeing actions on China’s diplomacy front,” she told Al Jazeera, it is uncertain whether officials in the two nations “will be able to convince China’s state-owned enterprises and banks to invest in further projects in both countries, given CPEC’s disappointing track record and the substantial risks in both countries”.

For Muhammad Faisal, a South Asia security researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, improvement in Pakistan’s internal security is paramount for China.

“This concern is what guides Beijing’s push for improvement in Pak-Afghan bilateral ties since the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is operating from the Afghan soil, while Baloch militant groups have also found space in Afghanistan,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Through high-level trilateral talks, Beijing is aiming to narrow Islamabad-Kabul differences and also urge both sides to address each other’s security concerns to avert a breakdown of ties,” he added.

Pakistan Taliban, also known as TTP, founded in 2007, is a group which is ideologically aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan but operates independently both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban has repeatedly rejected allegations that it allows its soil to be used for attacks against Pakistan and has consistently denied any ties with the TTP.

Security challenges

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, Pakistan has faced a sharp rise in violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, both bordering Afghanistan.

Islamabad has repeatedly alleged that Afghan soil is being used by armed groups, especially the TTP, to launch attacks across the porous frontier.

Data from the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) shows that in the first six months of 2025, 502 fighter attacks killed 737 people, including 284 security personnel and 267 civilians.

Compared with the first half of 2024, fighter attacks rose 5 percent, deaths surged 121 percent, and injuries increased 84 percent, according to PICSS.

China, too, has also voiced concern over the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), accusing its fighters of using Afghan territory to launch attacks against China.

Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said that since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, China has emerged as South Asia’s main geopolitical player.

“Without addressing Pakistan’s Afghan-centric security concerns, BRI’s Pakistan component, CPEC, will remain underutilised and underdeveloped. Hence, China has started the trilateral to help Afghanistan and Pakistan resolve their security issues under a holistic policy which tries to isolate economy and diplomacy from security trouble,” he told Al Jazeera.

Faisal, of the University of Technology Sydney, added that China brings political weight, offering both diplomatic backing at multilateral organisations – particularly on counterterrorism – and the promise of economic inducements.

But he was cautious about Beijing’s long-term leverage. “Beyond underlining the importance of stability via enhanced security coordination between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the outcomes of China’s efforts have been limited, partially due to Beijing’s own security anxieties,” he said.

The senior Pakistani diplomat said China’s BRI and related projects have brought it leverage in Southeast Asia and Central Asia, and expressed optimism that Beijing could bring about change between Pakistan and Afghanistan “armed with the political, diplomatic, economic and financial tools”, even if results have so far been limited.

But will China act as mediator and guarantor between Pakistan and Afghanistan? The diplomat was sceptical.

“As for guarantorship, I’m not sure whether China is willing or keen to do so. It certainly can play that role because of a high degree of trust it enjoys, but whether it would do so or not remains to be seen,” he said.

A passenger bus carrying Afghan returnees from Iran struck a motorcycle and a fuel truck, triggering a huge fire.

The death toll from a bus crash in western Afghanistan has risen to 79, after two survivors died from their injuries, an interim Taliban administration official said.

The incident occurred late on Tuesday in Herat province’s Guzara district, when a passenger bus carrying Afghan returnees from Iran struck a motorcycle and a fuel truck, triggering a huge fire.

At least 19 children were among those killed, Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the interim Interior Ministry, told reporters in Kabul on Wednesday.

Mohammad Janan Moqadas, chief physician at the military hospital, said many bodies were too badly burned to be identified.

A journalist with the AFP news agency reported that cleanup crews were working on Wednesday to remove the burned-out bus and the twisted wreckage of the other vehicles.

“There was a lot of fire… There was a lot of screaming, but we couldn’t even get within 50 metres to rescue anyone,” witness Akbar Tawakoli, 34, told AFP. “Only three people were saved from the bus. They were also on fire and their clothes were burned.”

Abdullah, 25, another witness, told AFP, “I was very saddened that most of the passengers on the bus were children and women.”

The bus was transporting Afghans recently expelled from Iran to the capital, Kabul, provincial spokesman Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi said. The central government has ordered an investigation.

“It is with deep sorrow that we mourn the loss of numerous Afghan lives and the injuries sustained in a tragic bus collision and subsequent fire in Herat province last night,” it said in a statement.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan this year alone, according to the United Nations migration agency, as both countries step up deportations after decades of hosting Afghan refugees. Many arrive with little means and face dire conditions in a country battling poverty and mass unemployment.

The state-run Bakhtar News Agency described the incident as one of Afghanistan’s deadliest accidents in recent years.

In December 2023, two separate bus crashes involving tankers killed 52 people, while in March 2024, another 20 died in a collision in Helmand province. In late 2022, a tanker overturned in the Salang Pass, igniting a fire that killed 31.

Afghanistan has marked the anniversary of its independence from British influence with a military display staged by the Taliban’s defence ministry. The event commemorates the signing of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty in 1919.

Police in western Afghanistan’s Herat province say the accident was due to the bus’s ‘excessive speed and negligence’. 

At least 71 people, including 17 children, have been killed in western Afghanistan after a passenger bus carrying refugees, recently deported from neighbouring Iran, caught fire after colliding with a truck and motorcycle, according to provincial government spokesman Ahmadullah Muttaqi and local police.

Police in Herat province said on Tuesday that the accident was due to the bus’s “excessive speed and negligence”.

The returnees are part of a massive wave of Afghans deported or forced out of Iran in recent months.

The accident took place a day after Iranian Minister of Interior Eskandar Momeni announced that a further 800,000 people would have to leave the country by next March.

The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran and en route to the capital Kabul, provincial official Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. He added that all the passengers boarded the vehicle in Islam Qala, a border crossing point.

Taliban government chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed to the dpa news agency that the victims had been deported from Iran, but said that further details were not available immediately.

Police in the Guzara district outside Afghanistan’s city of Herat, where the accident occurred, said a motorcycle was also involved.

The majority of those who died were on the bus, but two people travelling in the truck were also killed, as well as another two who were on the motorcycle.

Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of war, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.

Last December, two bus accidents, involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan, killed at least 52 people.

Every year, conflict, persecution, poverty and high unemployment drive large numbers of Afghans to cross the 300km (186-mile) Islam Qala border into Iran without documentation. Many work in low-wage jobs in big cities, including on construction sites, where they are valued as cheap and reliable labour.

Nearly 450,000 Afghans have returned from Iran since early June, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), after Tehran imposed a July 6 deadline for undocumented refugees to leave the country.

The surge compounds Afghanistan’s existing challenges, as the impoverished nation, back under hardline Taliban rule since 2021, struggles to integrate waves of returnees from Pakistan and Iran since 2023, amid one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.

The UNHCR reports that more than 1.4 million people have “returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan” this year alone. Iran’s late May directive potentially affects 4 million undocumented Afghans among the approximately 6 million Afghan residents claimed by Tehran.

Border crossings increased dramatically from mid-June, with some days seeing approximately 40,000 people entering Afghanistan. Between June 1 and July 5, 449,218 Afghans returned from Iran, bringing the 2024 total to 906,326, according to an International Organization for Migration spokesman.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — U.S. veterans of the war in Afghanistan are telling a commission reviewing decisions on the 20-year conflict that their experience was not only hell, but also confounding, demoralizing and at times humiliating.

The bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission aims to reflect such veterans’ experiences in a report due to Congress next year, which will analyze key strategic, diplomatic, military and operational decisions made between June 2001 and the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021.

The group released its second interim report on Tuesday, drawing no conclusions yet but identifying themes emerging from thousands of pages of government documents; some 160 interviews with cabinet-level officials, military commanders, diplomats, Afghan and Pakistani leaders and others; and forums with veterans like one recently held at a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Columbus, Ohio.

“What can we learn from the Afghanistan War?” asked an Aug. 12 discussion session with four of the commission’s 16 members. What they got was two straight hours of dozens of veterans’ personal stories — not one glowingly positive, and most saturated in frustration and disappointment.

“I think the best way to describe that experience was awful,” said Marine veteran Brittany Dymond, who served in Afghanistan in 2012.

Navy veteran Florence Welch said the 2021 withdrawal made her ashamed she ever served there.

“It turned us into a Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us worked for,” she said.

Members of Congress, some driven by having served in the war, created the independent commission several months after the withdrawal, after an assessment by the Democratic administration of then-President Biden faulted the actions of President Trump’s first administration for constraining U.S. options. A Republican review, in turn, blamed Biden. Views of the events remain divided, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered yet another review this spring.

The commission wants to understand the bigger picture of a conflict that spanned four presidential administrations and cost more than 2,400 American lives, said Co-Chair Dr. Colin Jackson.

“So we’re interested in looking hard at the end of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, but we’re equally interested in understanding the beginning, the middle and the end,” he said in an interview in Columbus.

Co-chair Shamila Chaudhary said the panel is also exploring more sweeping questions.

“So our work is not just about what the U.S. did in Afghanistan but what the U.S. should be doing in any country where it deems it has a national security interest,” she said. “And not just should it be there, but how it should behave, what values does it guide itself by, and how does it engage with individuals who are very different from themselves.”

Jackson said one of the commission’s priorities is making sure the final report, due in August 2026, isn’t “unrecognizable to any veteran of the Afghanistan conflict.”

“The nature of the report should be representative of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine experience,” he said.

Dymond told commissioners a big problem was the mission.

“You cannot exert a democratic agenda, which is our foreign policy, you cannot do that on a culture of people who are not bought into your ideology,” she said. “What else do we expect the outcome to be? And so we had two decades of service members lost and maimed because we’re trying to change an ideology that they didn’t ask for.”

The experience left eight-year Army veteran Steve Orf demoralized. He said he didn’t go there “to beat a bad guy.”

“Those of us who served generally wanted to believe that we were helping to improve the world, and we carried with us the hopes, values, and principles of the United States — values and principles that also seem to have been casualties of this war,” he told commissioners. “For many of us, faith with our leaders is broken and trust in our country is broken.”

Tuesday’s report identifies emerging themes of the review to include strategic drift, interagency incoherence, and whether the war inside Afghanistan and the counterterrorism war beyond were pursuing the same aims or at cross purposes.

It also details difficulties the commission has encountered getting key documents. According to the report, the Biden administration initially denied the commission’s requests for White House materials on the implementation of the February 2020 peace agreement Trump signed with the Taliban, called the Doha Agreement, and on the handling of the withdrawal, citing executive confidentiality concerns.

The transition to Trump’s second term brought further delays and complications, but since the commission has pressed the urgency of its mission with the new administration, critical intelligence and documents have now begun to flow, the report says.

Smyth and Aftoora-Orsagos write for the Associated Press.