Afghanistan

Abdul Wasi Safi, 27, is one of tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who fled to the U.S. following the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan in August 2021.

After two years in power, the Taliban are entrenched as rulers of Afghanistan, facing no significant opposition that could topple them.

An explosion at a political rally on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan killed at least 44 people and wounded nearly 200 in a Sunday attack that a senior leader called aimed at weakening the Islamist party.

Those fleeing Afghanistan as the Taliban swept back into power two years ago included university students. They worried the only way they’d be able to continue their education would be to leave their homeland. Their fears were justified when the Taliban returned to a harsh Islamic rule banning women from universities and most employment. As Kabul fell in August 2021,...

The Taliban says beauty salons have been banned in Afghanistan because they offered services forbidden by Islam and caused economic hardships for grooms’ families.

The United Nations says it has documented a significant level of civilian casualties from attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

Less than two years after fleeing Afghanistan with her family before Kabul fell to the Taliban, a young woman credits the plight of girls in her home country for motivating her to graduate high school in Loudoun County, Virginia.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a memorial service in northeast Afghanistan that killed at least 13 people and wounded 30 others.

A U.N. resolution that calls on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to swiftly reverse their increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls and condemns their ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations is set to be voted on Thursday by the Security Council.

President Joe Biden’s administration is laying the blame on his predecessor, President Donald Trump, for the deadly and chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that brought about some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency. The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of government reviews, taking little responsibility for its own actions and asserting...

Active-service members and veterans have provided first-hand testimony in the House of Representatives about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, describing in harrowing detail the carnage and death they witnessed on the ground. The initial hearing Wednesday of a long-promised investigation by House Republicans displayed the open wounds from the end of America’s longest war in August 2021, with witnesses...

Pakistani officials say the death toll from a suicide bombing at a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar has risen to 88.

The Taliban have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.

The execution was carried out with an assault rifle by the father of a murder victim.

A U.N. team of experts says the Taliban treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law.

A U.N. resolution expresses deep concern at human rights abuses against women and girls, and calls on the Taliban to promote ‘full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society.’

U.S. Marine Joshua Mast helped the family flee Afghanistan during the chaotic troop withdrawal. Then, once on U.S. soil, he abducted the child, court records say.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says it is committing $1.2 billion to efforts aimed at ending polio worldwide.

A Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief says a suicide bomber has killed 19 people and wounded 27 at an education center in a Shiite area of the Afghan capital.

An American contractor held hostage in Afghanistan for more than two years by the Taliban has been released. The White House and family members said Monday his release came in an exchange for a convicted Taliban drug lord jailed in the United States. Mark Frerichs, a Navy veteran who spent more than a decade in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor,...