Afghanistan Archives - South Asia Times

Herat tragedy claims 30 lives, exposing Afghanistan’s governance failures, unsafe migration, and escalating humanitarian crisis.

Herat Border Tragedy: The Deadly Consequences of Afghanistan’s Governance Failures

SAT Commentary December 20, 2025

The Herat border tragedy, is a stark illustration of the human cost of Afghanistan’s governance failures. With limited economic opportunities, widespread poverty, and insufficient social support, families are forced to undertake life-threatening journeys across freezing mountains. The incident underscores the urgent need for the Afghan government to provide stable livelihoods, establish safe migration routes, and strengthen healthcare and social services, as humanitarian risks continue to escalate across the country.

Afghanistan’s Taliban uses pharmaceutical policy to assert autonomy, decouple from Pakistan, and expand strategic ties with India.

Afghan Taliban’s Biopolitics

SAT Commentary December 18, 2025

The Taliban’s health diplomacy is reshaping Afghanistan’s geopolitical landscape. By phasing out Pakistani pharmaceuticals and inviting Indian partnerships, Kabul securitizes its healthcare infrastructure as a tool of strategic realignment. The shift highlights the intersection of sovereignty, economic statecraft, and regional influence, with Afghan patients bearing the immediate consequences.

The Taliban’s madrassa expansion indoctrinates Afghan youth, undermining education and fueling regional instability through global jihadist ideology.

The Growing Taliban Madrassa System: An Ideological Weapon Threatening Regional Stability

SAT Commentary December 17, 2025

The Taliban’s rapid madrassa expansion is transforming Afghanistan’s education system into a tool for extremist indoctrination, fostering a new generation aligned with global jihadist ideology and threatening regional stability.

Before and After Panjshir: How Anti-Taliban Forces Are Adapting to a Long Insurgency

SAT Editorial Desk December 15, 2025

December 2025 marked a turning point in Afghanistan’s post-2021 resistance. Coordinated, intelligence-driven attacks across Kunduz and Badakhshan signaled that anti-Taliban forces have moved beyond symbolic defiance into a sustained campaign of urban-centric insurgency. Deprived of territory, external patrons, and conventional warfare options, groups like the NRF and AFF are adapting through mobility, information warfare, and selective strikes, pointing toward a long war defined by endurance rather than frontlines.

The Acceleration of Insurgency in Northern Afghanistan

SAT Commentary December 14, 2025

A seventy-two-hour surge of intelligence-driven attacks in Kunduz and Fayzabad has shattered the Taliban’s claim of total control, signaling a shift toward coordinated urban insurgency in the north.

Afghanistan’s Trade Boycott: Strategic Miscalculation With Fiscal Consequences

Semavia Ishtiaq December 11, 2025

Afghanistan’s 2025 trade boycott of Pakistan exposes a strategic miscalculation. Despite efforts to shift toward Iran and Central Asia, Kabul remains structurally dependent on Pakistan’s mature trade corridors, customs revenue, labour mobility, and logistical efficiency. Alternative routes carry higher costs, sanctions risks, and operational delays, leaving the Taliban with mounting fiscal losses and regional constraints.

$The Taliban’s new fatwa banning foreign militancy signals a shift in doctrine, but rising regional attacks and ideological fractures raise questions about its enforceability.$

Doctrine vs Reality: Can the Taliban Enforce Their Ban on Foreign Militants?

SAT Editorial Desk December 11, 2025

The Taliban’s new fatwa banning foreign militants has been hailed by officials in Kabul as a decisive theological shift. But rising attacks in the north, continued TTP operations, and mounting pressure from Washington expose a widening gap between doctrine and reality. As regional powers demand proof of enforcement, the decree risks becoming another symbolic gesture unless it translates into measurable action on the ground.

The Taliban’s Gamble with Afghan Healthcare

SAT Commentary December 10, 2025

The Taliban’s ban on Pakistani pharmaceutical imports is pushing Afghanistan toward a severe drug shortage. Driven by ideological ties to the TTP and escalating border tensions with Pakistan, this political maneuver threatens public health, inflates medicine costs, and leaves ordinary Afghans to bear the consequences of a crisis rooted in strategic posturing rather than market forces or natural disaster.

An analysis of how the Taliban’s promised 2021 amnesty has collapsed into widespread arrests, killings, and repression, echoing historical patterns of Taliban rule.

A New Afghanistan, Old Methods

SAT Editorial Desk December 9, 2025

The Taliban’s 2021 promise of a general amnesty has collapsed into systematic arrests, disappearances, and killings—especially in Panjshir. Despite assurances of moderation, evidence from 2021–2025 shows a deliberate campaign to eliminate former officials, suppress dissent, and rule through fear, mirroring the Taliban’s historical patterns of coercion and violence.

A sharp critique of Zabihullah Mujahid’s recent evasive remarks on the TTP, exposing Taliban hypocrisy and Afghan complicity in cross-border militancy.

Zabihullah Mujahid’s Bizarre Statement on TTP: A Lesson in Hypocrisy and Evasion

Ibrahim Khalil December 6, 2025

Zabihullah Mujahid’s recent statement dismissing the TTP as Pakistan’s “internal issue” and claiming Pashto lacks the word “terrorist” is a glaring act of evasion. By downplaying a UN-listed militant group hosted on Afghan soil, the Taliban spokesperson attempts to deflect responsibility, despite overwhelming evidence of TTP sanctuaries, leadership, and operations in Afghanistan. His remarks reveal not linguistic nuance, but calculated hypocrisy and political convenience.