As America continues to reel from a fentanyl crisis killing tens of thousands, Britain could face its own dangerous opioid crisis, former government advisors and drug experts have warned. The deadly fentanyl family of opioids are 50 times more potent than heroin. But nitazenes, which are flooding into the UK, can reach up to 2,000…
An American woman detained in Afghanistan has been released by the Taliban, according to a social media post on Saturday by a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, just days after the United States removed multimillion-dollar bounties from the heads of three senior Taliban officials. Faye Hall, the released American citizen, was pictured sitting…
An American woman was freed by the Taliban after she, two British nationals and their Afghan translator were detained in Afghanistan earlier this year, according to a source with knowledge of the matter and a former U.S. envoy to Kabul. “American citizen Faye Hall, just released by the Taliban, is now in the care of…
The United States has lifted multimillion-dollar bounties on three senior Taliban officials, according to Afghan authorities and a senior American official, a significant shift by the Trump administration toward some of the most blood-soaked jihadists from the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The move comes days after a U.S. hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, made the first…
Young, urban women in Afghanistan are increasingly ditching the all-enveloping blue burqa with a face mesh that has become a symbol of the Taliban’s oppression of women. New generation of Afghan women shift from burqa Since their return to power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed an ultra-strict vision of Islamic law, modelled on their…
He is the Taxman of Kabul, a bearded, black-turbaned Talib with a genial manner and the calculating mind of a computer-savvy accountant. As director of the Taliban’s Taxpayers Services Directorate, Abdul Qahar Ghorbandi has the unenviable task of raising revenue for the government of a wretchedly poor, isolated nation. From his perch behind an enormous…
A British couple who spent almost two decades running education programs in Afghanistan were detained by the Taliban earlier this month, their children said in interviews with a number of British news outlets. The couple, Peter Reynolds and Barbie Reynolds, were arrested on Feb. 1 when returning to their home in the country’s Bamiyan province,…
The US and China are facing off at the United Nations over control of Afghanistan policy and aid, with the outcome likely to set the tone for relations between the two giants at the global body, analysts said. “An obscure diplomatic dispute over who should draft United Nations Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan is turning…
Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have congregated in Pakistan’s capital region to seek resettlement in other countries are being ordered to move elsewhere in Pakistan by March 31. The refugees have arrived in large numbers in the capital, Islamabad, and in neighboring Rawalpindi because of the embassies and refugee agencies based there. Forcing…
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Thursday he had requested arrest warrants for the supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban government and the country’s chief justice for their “unprecedented” persecution of Afghan women and girls. The prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a statement that the Taliban’s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the…