Sources told Afghanistan International that Afghanistan’s embassy in Kuwait was handed over to a Taliban diplomat this week, replacing the ambassador appointed by the former Afghan government.
According to the sources, Mawlawi Mohammad Shafiq Khatib has begun work as the Taliban’s ambassador to Kuwait. He previously served as head of consular affairs and head of border affairs at the Taliban Foreign Ministry.
Earlier, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said the group maintains diplomatic relations with around 20 countries and that Taliban diplomats are serving at several Afghan embassies and diplomatic missions abroad.
The transfer of Afghanistan’s embassy in Kuwait to Taliban control comes amid growing criticism in recent months of efforts to normalise relations with the group.
Critics argue that normalisation risks granting legitimacy to the Taliban without addressing the human rights situation in Afghanistan and the extensive restrictions imposed on the rights and freedoms of Afghan citizens.
Pakistani security officials say the military agreement between Russia and the Taliban does not concern Islamabad and will not prevent Pakistan from carrying out potential air strikes against militant targets inside Afghanistan.
Russia and the Taliban signed a military-technical cooperation agreement in Moscow on May 27. The document was signed in the presence of Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu and Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid.
According to reports, the agreement is primarily focused on the repair and maintenance of ageing Russian-made military equipment in Afghanistan. Much of the equipment dates back to the Soviet-Afghan war between 1979 and 1989 and now requires spare parts and refurbishment.
Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, recently said the agreement centres on repairing and restoring existing equipment and does not involve major technology transfers or the sale of new weapons systems.
Pakistani security officials, speaking to Nikkei Asia on condition of anonymity, said the agreement would not affect Islamabad’s ability to conduct potential air operations against militant positions inside Afghanistan.
The deal was signed at a time when relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have reached one of their lowest points since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Pakistani air strikes against alleged Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) positions inside Afghanistan, along with Taliban responses, have further heightened tensions.
After returning from Moscow, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob claimed that once the agreement is implemented, Pakistan would no longer be dared to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan. Pakistani officials, however, have rejected that assertion.
At 4:00 am in Mazar-i-Sharif, the city is still wrapped in darkness. Sixteen-year-old Behzad wakes before dawn, performs his morning prayers, folds away his prayer mat and prepares for school.
Today he has six subjects scheduled, but he places only three books in his bag because there are no teachers for half of the classes.
By 5:00am, Behzad has gone back to sleep.
When he wakes again at 7:30am, a simple breakfast is ready: dry bread, tea and sugar. He puts on the required school uniform, a traditional white tunic and cap, and heads towards school.
His 17-year-old sister Maryam stays home and clears the breakfast table. It has been 1,719 days since she was last allowed to attend school.
“No Cap & Traditional Cloth, No Entry”
Behzad’s school is officially open. Outside the gate, students stand in line waiting for permission to enter.
He is a seventh-grade pupil at Hazrat Noman High School in the Karte Khorasan area of Mazar-i-Sharif city and attends classes daily from 8:00am until noon.
In previous years, his official uniform consisted of a blue shirt and black trousers. But in the new academic year, beginning in March, the Taliban Education Ministry ordered that primary and middle-school boys wear white traditional clothing and caps, while high-school students must also wear turbans.
At the entrance stands the discipline officer, a male teacher with a turban, traditional clothing and a long beard, monitoring compliance with the rules, especially the dress code.
Behzad, dressed in the required white outfit and cap, is allowed inside. Students who fail to follow the dress code are denied entry and left standing outside the school gate.
The Absence of Female Teachers
The first lesson begins, but no teacher arrives. Students wander around the schoolyard; some lie across benches trying to catch up on sleep, others rest their heads on desks, while groups chat and play.
The shortage of teachers is one of the school’s biggest problems.
At Hazrat Noman School, seventh-grade classes have teachers for only four subjects. On days when three teachers attend, students describe it as a “busy day”, though even then at least three teaching hours pass without instruction.
After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, female teachers were removed from boys’ secondary schools, a decision students and staff say created a major gap in the education system. Nearly five years later, that gap remains unfilled.
Four and a half years ago, Farida Arefi was the headmistress of Hazrat Noman High School. After the changes, she was replaced by a cleric named Mawlawi Saifuddin.
Behzad says no female teachers now teach their classes. Many women teachers have either remained at home or been reassigned to primary schools.
Teacher by Morning, Driver by Afternoon
During the second lesson, a teacher finally enters the classroom, a middle-aged man with a dusty turban, long beard and traditional clothes more suited to manual labour than teaching. Students rise reluctantly. Some take books from their bags; others have brought none at all.
In one corner of the room, empty desks stand lined up, not only for absent students, but for a generation slowly drifting away from education.
Behzad says school discipline no longer resembles the past.
“Teachers are not motivated. Some older students disrespect teachers, and no one can stop them,” he says.
He points to a classroom that once held more than 40 pupils. Now attendance rarely exceeds 25. Many students, he says, no longer believe school can secure their future.
The shortages extend beyond students. Old wooden desks are covered with incomplete and second-hand textbooks. The school administration distributed only part of the required materials, forcing families to buy the rest from markets where black-and-white copies cost 40 afghanis and colour editions up to 100, in a country where many families struggle even to buy bread.
Lessons end sooner than the timetable suggests. Teachers read a few pages in a monotone voice, sign attendance registers and leave. For many, school is only part of the working day.
Behzad says he often wonders whether attending school is worth it. His father repeatedly tells him he could learn a labour work instead and help support the family.
Many teachers, he says, go directly to second jobs after classes end. Some work as labourers, some push handcarts, and others drive rickshaws through the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif city.
“Our teachers drive rickshaws in the afternoons,” he says.
In today’s Afghanistan, being a teacher no longer necessarily means teaching; sometimes it is simply the first shift in a long struggle for survival.
Erased Lessons
Behzad flips through his Dari (Persian) textbook and suddenly pauses. Several pages have been torn out. The missing sections are chapters no longer permitted to be taught.
In Afghanistan’s classrooms today, censorship is not only visible in words, but it can also be physically touched.
In mid 2025, the Taliban Education Ministry removed at least 51 topics from school curricula, including “women’s rights”, “human rights”, “Mother’s Day”, the Red Flower Festival, folk songs and sections about Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. Taliban officials said the material was incompatible with “religious teachings” and the “policies of the Islamic Emirate”.
As a result, some subjects have disappeared entirely, while others remain only as books with torn pages.
Behzad says they now study fewer subjects than before. Civic education, art and patriotism classes are no longer taught.
“Sometimes when we open the books, we realise several pages are simply missing,” he says.
Yet the greatest contradiction lies elsewhere.
Hazrat Noman High School is physically one of the city’s best-equipped schools, a newly built facility with computer labs, a library and renovated classrooms. The project began under the previous government with German support and was completed after the Taliban returned to power.
From the outside, it resembles a modern school.
Inside, however, students face incomplete textbooks, too few teachers and subjects stripped from the curriculum.
“The school building is very well equipped,” Behzad says quietly. “The facilities are good, but proper education does not exist.”
In Afghanistan today, the problem is not only the absence of schools. Sometimes schools exist, but education itself is missing.
“My Classmates No Longer Dream of University”
For previous generations of Afghan students, finishing secondary school usually came with a shared ambition: university entrance exams, higher education and perhaps a career that could transform their family’s future.
But Ahmad Ali says that dream is fading in Mazar-i-Sharif city.
The 18-year-old studies at Abdul Ali Mazari High School No. 2. When he speaks about the future, he sounds less like someone discussing a possibility and more like someone mourning something already lost.
“Before, when students reached Year 10, they enthusiastically enrolled in university preparation courses. We believed we would go to university, study our chosen subjects and eventually find jobs. But now that hope has become very faint.”
In Afghanistan today, university is no longer the natural continuation of school for many teenagers; it feels more like a distant privilege beyond reach.
The cost of entrance-exam courses, widespread poverty and the lack of employment prospects have forced many families to choose between education and survival.
Ahmad Ali now attends school only two days a week. On the remaining days, he works in a car repair workshop.
“I told the teachers I have to work so they don’t mark me absent,” he says.
Many classmates, he explains, also combine school with hard labour, some in markets, some in garages and others in daily wage jobs.
Four years ago, when Ahmad Ali was in Year 8, most teachers at his school were women.
“In our class we had 10 teachers and eight of them were women. Now none remain.”
Teacher shortages, he says, have become normal.
“Some days, out of six subjects only two or three teachers show up.”
Even specialist subjects are sometimes taught by unqualified staff.
“Last year we had no physics teacher until the end of the year. This year they appointed a cleric to teach physics, but he knows nothing about physics,” he says with a bitter laugh.
In such an environment, university is no longer the next destination for many students; it is an increasingly distant concept slowly disappearing from young minds.
“Today many students feel that even if they study, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever achieve their dreams,” Ahmad Ali says.
In a country where the younger generation once viewed education as the only path to salvation, perhaps the most dangerous change is the loss of belief in the future itself.
In October 2025, United Nations International Children Emergency Funds (UNICEF) reported that more than two million children in Afghanistan were out of school and that over 90 percent of 10-year-olds could not read simple texts. According to the agency, children are “going to school but not learning anything”.
UNICEF said the situation is the result of weak and restrictive Taliban education policies.
Private Schools Face Similar Problems
For 14-year-old Rawzatullah, moving from a public school to a private one was supposed to improve his education. Instead, he found more similarities than differences.
Until recently he attended Khorasan Township Public School in Kabul. Now he studies at a private school where his family hoped teaching standards would be better.
But his experience in both systems has been strikingly similar.
“We used to have more teachers, but now there are fewer. Many female teachers have either been transferred to girls’ primary schools or removed entirely,” he says.
The change is personal for him. His mother taught for years at the same public school but lost her job after changes to the education system. She now works at a private school.
“My mother used to teach there, but after the Taliban returned to power, she was no longer allowed to continue,” he says quietly.
His family moved him to a private school in search of better opportunities.
“My mother thought education might be better there, so she transferred me.”
Even so, he says the differences are limited.
“Private schools also have problems. The difference isn’t huge; there are only slightly more teachers and lessons are somewhat better organised.”
Both systems suffer from the same issue: a shortage of experienced teachers and qualified staff.
“When there aren’t enough teachers, naturally classes don’t receive proper attention. We feel this directly in our lessons,” he says.
Behind these changes lies a growing uncertainty about the future.
“Students no longer speak confidently about university and the future like they used to. Many don’t know what will happen after school.”
In late 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that while the Taliban faced international condemnation for restricting girls’ and women’s education, far less attention had been paid to the damage inflicted on boys’ education.
The organisation said the quality of boys’ schooling under Taliban rule had sharply deteriorated.
Human Rights Watch added that the Taliban barred female teachers from teaching boys and replaced them with “unqualified” male staff, negatively affecting educational standards.
The organisation also said punishment of boys in Afghan schools had increased under Taliban rule.
Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle, chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Afghanistan, criticised the possibility of inviting Taliban representatives to Brussels.
She described the group’s policies towards women as gender apartheid and a crime against humanity.
She said Taliban members should face arrest and be transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague rather than being welcomed in the European Union.
Speaking to Afghanistan International, Hermida-van der Walle stressed that the European Union does not recognise the Taliban as a legitimate government and that there is currently no basis for formal engagement with the group.
She said the EU applies five fundamental criteria in its relations with countries, none of which, in her view, are being met in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. She also expressed concern over contacts between some EU member states and the Taliban, arguing that a distinction should be made between official EU policy and the independent approaches of individual governments.
In recent months, Germany has received Taliban representatives in Berlin and Bonn and has cooperated with the group on the deportation of Afghan migrants. Norway has also previously hosted Taliban delegations in Oslo.
Warning Against Taliban Normalisation
The Spanish-Dutch politician described the prospect of inviting Taliban representatives to Brussels as very dangerous.
She argued that such an invitation would send a message that the group’s actions are acceptable and would amount to normalising the Taliban, a move she said the European Parliament would oppose.
Hermida-van der Walle also rejected the European Commission’s argument that dialogue with the Taliban is necessary to discuss the deportation of Afghan migrants. She said it was unreasonable to negotiate with a group that she described as one of the main drivers of large-scale migration from Afghanistan.
Call for Legal Action Against Taliban Leaders
Hermida-van der Walle described Taliban policies towards women and girls as a clear example of gender apartheid and said efforts are underway to secure international recognition of the concept as a crime against humanity.
She argued that recognising gender apartheid as an international crime could help restrict the travel of Taliban officials and support the issuance of additional international arrest warrants against the group’s leaders.
The chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Afghanistan added that EU member states should arrest Taliban members if they enter European territory and transfer them to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
She concluded by calling for stronger international pressure and sanctions on the Taliban, saying the international community must intensify efforts to bring an end to the current situation in Afghanistan.
The secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) warned at a meeting of the alliance’s defence ministers in Moscow that security risks in Afghanistan are growing amid increasing regional instability.
Taalatbek Masadykov, the CSTO secretary-general, said that against the backdrop of intensifying geopolitical confrontation across Eurasia, the potential for conflict in Afghanistan is expanding and the activities of international terrorist and extremist organisations in the country are increasing.
The meeting was held on Wednesday, June 3, and attended by the defence ministers of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Presenting an assessment of the regional military and political situation, the CSTO secretary-general said the number of security challenges and threats facing member states is rising, reflecting growing geopolitical tensions at both regional and global levels.
He identified the expansion of NATO’s military capabilities in Europe, the continuation of armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the increasing conflict potential in Afghanistan and the growing activity of international terrorist and extremist groups as the main sources of these threats.
Andrei Serdyukov, chief of the CSTO Joint Staff, had previously warned that numerous international extremist and terrorist organisations are active in Afghanistan. He said their presence creates a risk of terrorism spreading into neighbouring countries.
Russia’s Security Council secretary has also previously stated that between 18,000 and 23,000 militants are currently operating in Afghanistan.
Amid these concerns, Russia and the Taliban signed a military-technical cooperation agreement in Moscow on May 27. The document was signed in the presence of Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu and Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid.
Pakistani business newspaper Business Recorder reported that the closure of border crossings with Afghanistan in recent months has dealt a heavy blow to Pakistan’s trade, costing the country nearly $850 million in exports and transit revenues.
The continued closure of Pakistan’s border crossings with Afghanistan, combined with rising regional tensions and the Middle East crisis, has placed growing pressure on Pakistan’s foreign trade sector. Business Recorder described the two developments as major economic shocks that have seriously challenged the country’s trade outlook and external revenues.
According to the newspaper, the combined impact of these developments could inflict losses of around $1.4 billion on Pakistan’s external trade sector.
The publication said the figures were based on an official document from Pakistan’s Commerce Ministry.
The report stated that the border closures have disrupted parts of the regional transport chain and left thousands of transit containers stranded. It also predicted that the situation could reduce Pakistan’s direct exports to Gulf Cooperation Council countries by around $600 million over the next three to six months.
Business Recorder warned that if the situation continues, it could weaken Pakistan’s domestic production stability and reduce the competitiveness of its exports in global markets. At the same time, rising energy prices are expected to increase the country’s import costs.
After tensions escalated between Kabul and Islamabad in October last year, Pakistan closed eight border crossings with Afghanistan, severely disrupting the movement of goods and trade between the two countries.
In response, the Taliban administration gave traders three months in late 2025 to settle their contracts in Pakistan and shift to alternative trade routes.
At the same time, the Taliban has sought to reduce Afghanistan’s commercial dependence on Pakistan and expand trade routes through Iran and Central Asian countries.
Earlier, Pakistan’s central bank reported that trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan had fallen by around 60% over the past seven months.
According to available figures, the value of bilateral trade declined from $2.461 billion in 2024 to $1.766 billion in 2025.
Statistics from the Taliban Commerce Ministry also show that Afghanistan’s exports to Pakistan dropped from $817 million in 2024 to $505 million in 2025.
Afghanistan’s imports from Pakistan also fell during the same period, from $1.644 billion to $1.261 billion, reflecting a significant decline in trade exchanges between the two countries.