Since returning to power in August 2021, Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban rulers have showcased ambitious infrastructure and natural-resource development projects as part of a quest for self-sufficiency.

The Taliban government is now digging one of the largest irrigation canals in Asia, a project that aims to revitalize long-parched plains in northern Afghanistan. It claims to have attracted billions of dollars in mining investments in an effort to finally capitalize on the country's untapped wealth of natural resources. And the Taliban propaganda machine is in overdrive to paint its economic initiatives as a rapid advance toward self-reliance.

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But experts see the hard-line Islamist group facing numerous challenges in its attempts to transform one of the world's most aid-dependent countries into a self-reliant state.

Two years into its second stint in power, the Taliban government remains unrecognized globally and continues to be under crippling political and economic sanctions imposed over its dismal human rights record, terrorism connections, and failure to live up to promises to reverse course.

Experts also point to the Taliban's reluctance to share verifiable and transparent data as reason to question its claims that it is on the road to economic independence that would shield it somewhat from international sanctions.

Hameed Hakimi, an Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, says that self-sufficiency will remain a distant dream even if all the Taliban's infrastructure projects come to fruition. "At best, their income will cover the security costs of maintaining the regime and pay for members who are now working for the Taliban interim government," he said.

Hakimi stressed the need to distinguish between the self-sufficiency the Taliban is seeking for its government and the type of connected economy the isolated country needs. It's impossible to imagine Afghanistan becoming self-reliant "before sanctions are fully removed, the economy is reconnected to the international system, and foreign development aid restarts flowing," he said.

When the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan lost almost all the international aid that accounted for 75 percent of the government's budget. Western and UN sanctions against the group cut Afghanistan off from the global financial system, which prompted fears that Afghan banks and even the state itself might collapse.

Despite the formidable obstacles, the country's economy has somewhat stabilized. The national currency, the afghani, has been boosted by exemptions to certain economic and banking sanctions by the United States that allowed the weekly influx of millions of dollars. This, in turn, has kept the prices of essential commodities stable or even lower than neighbors struggling with high inflation.

Export and government revenues have also recovered due to aggressive taxation, and the Taliban has taken steps to tackle the administrative corruption that plagued the pro-Western government it ousted.

Since the spring of 2022, the Taliban has been digging the 285-kilometer-long Qosh Tepa Irrigation Canal. It aims to boost agricultural output by irrigating 550,000 hectares of desiccated land in three northern Afghan provinces with water from the Amu Darya, which forms parts of Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

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In another step touted by the Taliban, a Chinese oil company has boosted production in Afghanistan to about 5,000 barrels a day, part of a broader effort to entice Beijing into helping the country extract its vast hydrocarbon and mineral reserves.

Graeme Smith, a senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, says that evaluating the success of such projects from afar is difficult. "We don't know exactly how the Taliban are funding these projects, and we have not seen any published evaluations of their progress," he said.

The Taliban has kept all national budgets a closely held secret. "We do not know exactly how much is incoming or outgoing from the treasury," Smith said.

Nevertheless, he says that the Taliban appears to be fully committed to establishing self-sufficiency. "They want freedom from the whims of foreign donors for greater independence and the pursuit of their heterodox vision for Afghan society," he said.

William Byrd, a development economist at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, agrees. He says that the Taliban recognizes that foreign assistance will be much less than in the past. "The realism of this [self-sufficiency] quest can be questioned," he said, but notes that Afghanistan under the Taliban has some scope to be less aid-dependent than it was in the past.

He says that by focusing on the development of agriculture and hydrocarbon extraction and mining, the Taliban can see positive gains, "both for import substitution and for export growth, thereby reducing the trade deficit."

The landlocked country is still inhibited in its ability to establish export routes, however, according to Hakimi of the Atlantic Council, who says trade will depend heavily on good relations with neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Kabul's trade with Islamabad has rapidly plummeted in recent months after tensions over the Taliban's support for the Pakistani Taliban boiled over. Both Tehran and Islamabad are now rapidly expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghans, which is placing additional stresses on the Taliban government.

"The humanitarian situation is worsening amid the risks from climate change and potentially millions of forced returnees arriving from Pakistan and Iran," Hakimi said.

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The Taliban's pursuit of self-reliance is also clouded by governance failures and continuing Western sanctions, which don't appear to be going anywhere until the Taliban moves to alleviate concerns about its human rights practices.

Since returning to power, the Taliban has recreated an even harsher version of its Islamic emirate from the 1990s. It has imposed severe corporal punishment and banned women from work, education, and public life. Its government has imprisoned, tortured, killed, and exiled critics, journalists, former officials, and soldiers.

By decisively ending its fight against the previous government, the Taliban has also been able to impose security around most of the country that could work to its advantage. "With violent conflict having abated and the regime controlling the entirety of the geography, Afghanistan can well be on its path to self-sufficiency," Hakimi said.

Forming a functional and inclusive Afghan government, would help it get there, he adds.

In the meantime, Smith of the International Crisis Group says, Western pressures like sanctions and banking restrictions will continue to stand in the way. But he does not discount the possibility that the Taliban could meet the challenge.

"It's too early to say whether their campaign for economic self-sufficiency will be successful, but I would not bet against it," he said.

Hundreds of thousands of sixth-grade girls in Afghanistan attended the last day of the school year, many with tears in their eyes as they face an uncertain future because of Taliban policies that forbid them from further schooling and restrict their basic human rights.

"These last few days of our studies are very stressful and difficult,” Kainat, a sixth-grader in Kabul, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi on December 8, the last day of the current school year before the winter break. "We all cried because none of us will be able to study further. Our teachers tried to console us by saying that school doors might reopen for us some day.”

But for Kainat and the rest of the war-torn country's females, that day may not come for some time.

Despite pledges of a less-authoritarian rule than in their previous time in power, Taliban militants have sharply restricted the rights and freedoms of Afghan girls and women since taking over the government as international troops withdrew following two decades of intervention.

The ultra-fundamentalist Islamist Taliban rulers have since banned girls from attending school from grade seven onward. They have severely curtailed their employment prospects, mobility, and any public role in society, defying international pressure, domestic protests, and efforts to persuade the militants from rescinding their brutal policies.

The ban on education was prompted by the religious views of the Taliban Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and endorsed by the group's supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Fatima Siddiq, a primary school teacher in Kabul, told Radio Azadi that the hopelessness felt by girls as they leave the school is haunting.

“I am also a mother of three daughters who will no longer be able to continue their education,” she said. “How is it possible that the [Taliban] government is unable to fulfill its promise of reopening schools?”

The Taliban's policies are deeply unpopular among most Afghans. Even though dissent is often met with a harsh response by authorities, some people are still willing to criticize the government because the policies are seen as destructive.

In the Muslim nation of some 40 million people, activists and rights advocates accuse the Taliban of implementing "gender apartheid" by denying women education, work, freedom of movement, and deciding how they can appear in public.

But it's not only females who are bearing the brunt of the government's policies.

In a new report released on December 6, the global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that education for boys in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule is at risk, too.

The report, titled Schools Are Failing Boys Too, says curriculum changes, the firing of female teachers, corporal punishment, and other practices risk their education over the longer term as well.

Sahar Fetrat, a women’s rights researcher at HRW and the author of the report, says the Taliban has caused “irreversible damage” to the education of both Afghan boys and girls.

“By harming the whole school system in the country, they risk creating a lost generation deprived of a quality education,” she said.

The United States has imposed sanctions on dozens of people in several countries, including in Afghanistan, China, and Iran, cracking down on human rights abuses ahead of Human Rights Day on December 10. The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement on December 8 said it had imposed sanctions on 20 people over human rights abuses in nine countries. The actions include sanctions on members of the Taliban over their links to the repression of women and girls and on two Iranian intelligence officials who allegedly recruited people for operations in the United States.

Pakistan is turning over every stone as it continues its push to deport over 1 million undocumented Afghan migrants, and in the process expelling those who have been flagged for protection.

Several migrants in Pakistan have reported cases to RFE/RL's Radio Azadi in which they or other Afghans who possess referrals by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) documenting their vulnerable situation or are in the U.S. refugee admissions program are nevertheless being harassed or deported.

Some have said that they were in possession of letters from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad identifying them as individuals who are being considered for resettlement in the United States. The letters, given to thousands of Afghans, were intended to shield them from deportation while their priority U.S. visa cases were pending. But they say that Pakistani authorities are refusing to recognize the letters as valid.

The development is an extension of the dire situation that hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have found themselves in as Islamabad makes good on its promise to rid the country of an estimated 1.7 million undocumented Afghan migrants and refugees.

'Police Arrested Him'

In the case of those possessing the U.S. letters, Afghans have been referred for a priority U.S. immigration program due to the assistance they provided during the nearly 20-year U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that ended in 2021.

Already left in limbo more than two years after the Taliban's return to power due to a lengthy and complicated bureaucratic process for resettlement, they are now exposed to possible retribution should they be forced to return to their homeland.

Sara, who spoke to Radio Azadi on condition that only her first name be used, said she and her husband's temporary visas to live in Pakistan have expired, but that they hold documents showing they have been registered as refugees by the UNHCR and are being considered for immigration to the United States under its Priority-2 program.

The P-2 program, one of a handful of routes available to Afghans who seek to immigrate to the United States, was set up just before the Taliban takeover to accommodate those of special concern to the U.S. government due to their circumstances and need for resettlement.

Among those eligible for referral to the P-2 program are interpreters and translators for the U.S. military, Afghans who worked for U.S. government-funded or supported projects, and Afghans who worked with U.S.-based media organizations following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Sara's husband, she told Radio Azadi, was arrested in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar as the government made good on its promises to round up undocumented Afghans beginning at the start of November, and she and her husband were told they would be deported.

"He has both a passport and case number [with the UNHCR], only his visa has expired," Sara said. "He was arrested by the police while at work in the Peshawar region and told that this American letter and refugee status were not acceptable."

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Ahmad Wali, another Afghan living in Peshawar who said he is in the P-2 program, told Radio Azadi that he fears deportation after seeing his document-holding neighbor arrested and sent back to Afghanistan.

"Our neighbor, whose name is Abdul Hamid, had a P-2 file, a letter from the [U.S.] Embassy with him, and a passport, but since his [Pakistani] visa had expired, the police arrested him," Wali said.

Similar stories have been documented by lawyers representing Afghans in Pakistan and by other U.S.-letter bearing individuals who spoke to Radio Azadi.

Arduous Path To Resettlement

The issue has raised concerns in Washington, which as of November 20 had accepted more than 19,000 Afghan P-2 referrals for processing, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told RFE/RL in written comments.

The spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. government had sent letters to "individuals with an immigration pathway to the United States that they can share with local authorities to help identify them as individuals in a U.S. pipeline."

In addition, the spokesperson said, Washington "shared a list with the government of Pakistan of Afghan individuals in U.S. resettlement pipelines."

That list is reportedly a bone of contention in Islamabad, a senior Interior Ministry official told the Dawn newspaper last month, shortly after the authorities in Pakistan began rounding up undocumented Afghans who had not heeded the country's previous warning to leave by November 1.

The official told Dawn that that the two sides had no official agreement or understanding regarding the U.S. Embassy letters, and that the list had no legal value.

Pakistan's Interior Ministry did not respond to queries from RFE/RL asking for official comment on its position regarding the U.S. Embassy letters, or whether local authorities might be going against Islamabad's position by refusing to accept them as valid.

'Temporary' Life In Limbo

After the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled the country, many out of fear of retribution for their ethnicity, religious beliefs, or work with foreigners. Pakistan, which over decades of war and political upheaval in Afghanistan has become a refuge for millions of Afghans, was an obvious immediate destination.

An estimated 700,000 crossed the border into Pakistan, pushing the number of Afghans living there legally or illegally to some 3.7 million people, according to the United Nations. Pakistan has estimated that number to be as high as 4.4 million.

WATCH: Thousands of Afghans forced to return to Afghanistan after a crackdown in neighboring Pakistan say they now face life in makeshift camps without proper sanitation or water.

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Most of the new arrivals saw their stay in Pakistan as a temporary measure as they made their way to their desired third-country destinations. But many were caught in limbo.

The new arrivals often lacked official documents that they had no chance of obtaining, with Afghanistan in chaos and no official representative offices in Pakistan. That, in turn, hindered their ability to navigate the red tape needed to gain official refugee status, obtain visas to live legally in Pakistan, or to apply for resettlement in third countries.

Pakistani officials have said that only about 1.4 million Afghans hold the necessary documentation allowing them to remain in Pakistan legally.

Since Islamabad issued its warning in October that undocumented individuals leave voluntarily by November 1 or face arrest and deportation, more than 400,000 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan, where about 90 percent are now homeless.

While the Pakistani government has said it would not deport Afghans being processed for U.S. visas, Washington has expressed its desire to ensure the safety of individuals in its visa pipeline and has called on Islamabad to ensure its obligations in the treatment of all refugees and asylum seekers.

On December 4, a delegation led by Julieta Valls Noyes, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, arrived in Islamabad to discuss ways of supporting and resettling vulnerable Afghans with senior Pakistani government officials and international organizations.

Following the meetings, a Pakistani official close to the talks told Voice of America on condition of anonymity on December 5 that the Pakistani side expressed concerns over the lengthy resettlement process Washington has adopted, while the U.S. delegation requested that Islamabad slow its roundup and deportation of undocumented migrants during the harsh winter months.

A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said that in the course of the delegation's visit, which ended on December 6, Noyes met directly with Afghan refugees to hear their concerns and in her meetings with Pakistani officials "discussed how both countries can work together to accelerate the processing of Afghan nationals eligible for relocation or resettlement in the United States."

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai decried Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in a speech on December 5 and called on the international community to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity.

In a speech marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela, Yousafzai told the audience in Johannesburg, South Africa, that since returning to power in August 2021, Taliban militants have made "girlhood illegal," causing many to despair over a lack of freedoms.

"Just two years ago, women in Afghanistan were working, serving in leadership positions, running ministries, traveling freely. Girls of all ages were playing soccer and cricket and learning in schools. Though all was not perfect, there was progress," she said of the almost two decades between Taliban rule, when international forces provided security to allow governments to rule.

But, she added, that since the U.S.-led troops pulled out in August 2021, the Taliban rulers who seized power "quickly began the systematic oppression of girls and women" by enacting more than 80 decrees and edicts restricting women's rights -- including barring girls from pursuing a high-school education -- in the name of their "false visions."

"In effect, the Taliban have made girlhood illegal, and it is taking a toll," Yousafzai said.

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Afghan Activist And Daughters Who Fled To Pakistan Fear Return To Life Under The Taliban

Eleven years ago, Yousafzai, then 15, was shot in the head on her school bus by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, though the two groups have separate operation and command structures.

The attack on Yousafzai, who had become a target for her campaign for girls' education, sent shock waves across the predominately Muslim country and provoked international outrage.

At 17, she became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize when she won the award in 2014 along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

In her speech honoring Mandela's legacy, Yousafzai said that while the Taliban's restrictions of the lives of girls and women made global headlines at first, "the world has turned its back" since and it is "imperative to call the regime in Afghanistan what it really is: a gender apartheid."

She said world leaders have an opportunity to make a stand on the issue by including gender apartheid in a new UN crimes against humanity treaty that is currently being debated at the United Nations.

"I call on every government in every country to make gender apartheid a crime against humanity," she said.

Iran has banned millions of Afghan refugees and migrants in the country from living in, traveling to, or seeking employment in just over half of the country's 31 provinces.

On December 3, Hamzeh Soleimani, the director-general of citizenship and foreign nationals affairs of the western Kermanshah Province, confirmed the ban was in place in 16 provinces nationwide.

"Numerous construction projects, greenhouses and livestock farms underwent inspection under the plan. [This led] to the arrest and expulsion of Afghan workers from the province," he said.

Iranian media have identified 15 of the 16 provinces, including Kermanshah, East Azarbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Kurdistan, Hamedan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Sistan-Baluchistan, Ilam, Lorestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kahgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad, and Hormozgan.

In October, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi reiterated that Tehran would deport all "illegal" migrants, most of whom are Afghan nationals who fled war, persecution, and poverty.

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Iran Repeats Threat To Expel Undocumented Afghans

Tehran estimates that more than 5 million Afghans currently live in the country. Iranian officials now want to deport at least half of them because they do not have the documents to remain in the country.

During the past few months, the rate of Afghans deported from Iran has steadily increased despite efforts by Afghanistan's Taliban-run government to persuade Tehran to give the Afghans more time before embarking on a mass expulsion campaign like Pakistan.

Islamabad is currently deporting thousands of impoverished Afghans daily as part of its campaign to expel more than 1.7 million "undocumented foreigners."

In Iran, Afghans say their life is becoming more complicated with each passing day.

"The situation of Afghan refugees across Iran is very worrying," Sharif Mateen, an Afghan refugee, told RFE/RL's Azadi Radio.

"Police are arresting everyone irrespective of whether they have documents or not. They are then taken to repatriation camps," he added.

WATCH: Despite risks to their safety, thousands of Afghans -- often undocumented -- flock into Iran to find work.

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Iran has hosted millions of Afghans for more than four decades, but Tehran has often complained of the lack of international aid for hosting them.

More than 70 percent of the 3.6 million Afghans who left their country after the Taliban seized back power in August 2021 fled to Iran.

Data show most are educated, middle-class Afghans who served in the fallen pro-Western Afghan republic's security forces or civil bureaucracy.

Afghanistan's Taliban-led government announced punishments handed out to 417 people under Shari’a law during a recent 12-month period, according to a report issued this week by Afghan Witness, an organization that monitors human rights abuses in Afghanistan.

Afghan Witness collected the data by reviewing the announcements of Shari’a punishments posted on the website of the Taliban-led Supreme Court. The announcements, which were also were published on X, formerly Twitter, have been made public since the Taliban’s Supreme Leader Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada announced the return of Shari’a punishments in mid-November 2022.

Akhundzada had previously ordered a return to Islamic retribution and corporal punishments shortly after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Afghan Witness said in a statement on November 29 that it looked at punishments meted out between October 26, 2022 and October 26, 2023, and found 71 announcements handed down to 417 individuals.

It said this included nine “Qisas punishments” during the period, including two that resulted in the execution of alleged murderers, while the remaining seven were pardoned.

Qisas punishments are for offenses seen as violations of the boundaries set by God such as murder, theft, and adultery. Convicts can be executed, flogged, stoned to death, or have limbs amputated.

Afghan Witness said it has yet to record any stonings or amputations, but it said its sources in Afghanistan say there are stoning punishments awaiting approval by Akhundzada.

The most common punishment was flogging under a category of Shari’a law that includes discretionary punishments not specified in religious texts.

The report said the punishments occurred in 22 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces from October 2022 through September 2023. A gender breakdown of the punished indicates that 220 men were punished compared with 57 women.

The organization also noted that while the sentences are often referred to as “public punishments,” their public nature is often limited.

“Although these punishments are carried out with an audience, including Taliban officials and citizens, they are often fulfilled behind closed doors, or under significant publication restrictions,” Afghan Witness said, adding that this leaves little visual evidence of the punishments being carried out.

The Taliban has framed its implementation of Shari’a punishments as “fair, righteous and desired by Afghanistan’s citizens” and claimed that the punishments act as a deterrent, Afghan Witness said.

After seizing power in August 2021 as U.S-led international forces withdrew from the country, the Taliban dismantled Afghanistan’s judicial system, suspended or scrapped all laws, and replaced judges, prosecutors, and lawyers.

Afghan Witness is a project to independently collect, preserve, and verify information on the human rights, security, and political situation in Afghanistan, according to its website.

The organization aims to provide a reliable source of information for international organizations, policymakers, and the media, and to “raise awareness of the reality of everyday life for Afghans living in the country.”

Iran remained the leading state sponsor of global terrorism last year, involved in backing terrorist recruitment, financing, and plotting across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the U.S. State Department said in its 2022 Country Reports On Terrorism released on December 1.

In the Middle East, Iran continued to back Hizballah, designated a terrorist group by Washington in 1997, the report said, adding that it also provided weapons systems to Hamas and other U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

"These groups were behind numerous deadly attacks originating in Gaza and the West Bank," the report said.

Tehran also provided support to extremist groups in Bahrain, Iraq, and Syria, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to provide support to terrorist organizations with the aim to create instability in the region, the report said.

Iran increasingly encouraged and plotted attacks against the United States, including against former U.S. officials, in retaliation for the death of Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2022 that it had disrupted an IRGC-QF-led plot to assassinate former national-security adviser John Bolton and arrested an Iranian accused of planning the killing.

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In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the report says that members of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group, and regional terrorist groups remained active in 2022, despite the Taliban committing to prevent extremists from using the country to conduct attacks against the United States and its allies after the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in August 2021.

The Taliban's capacity to stop elements from Al-Qaeda, Islamic State-Khorasan -- an IS splinter -- or Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from mounting external operations from the Afghan territory "remained unclear," the report said.

Islamic State-Khorasan in 2022 continued to conduct terrorist attacks against the Taliban and Afghan civilians, in particular against members of the Shi'ite community as well as cross-border attacks in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The report mentions that "the United States has not yet decided whether to recognize the Taliban or any other entity as the government of Afghanistan," and says the Taliban hosted and sheltered Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Kabul before his death in a U.S. air strike in July last year.

Afghan women's rights activists are demanding the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute Afghanistan's Taliban rulers for systemic violations of human rights.

In an open letter sent to the ICC on November 27, they accused the Taliban, who seized power in August 2021 as international troops withdrew from the country, of consistently violating the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

"They must be prosecuted," said one activist who requested anonymity because of security fears.

"The Taliban has imposed a gender apartheid in Afghanistan by excluding women from the society through employment and education bans while also persecuting rights activists," she added.

She is one of dozens of signatories to the letter.

The letter argues that the treatment of Afghan women under the Taliban constitutes a gender apartheid because "they are systematically deprived of basic freedoms and human and citizenship rights."

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Afghan Women, Girls Face Grim Future After Expulsion From Pakistan

The letter also highlights the persecution of Afghan women's rights activists.

Since the Taliban returned to power, the Taliban has put down, often violently, protests by Afghan women over their lack of rights. Hundreds of women have been imprisoned after their protests were declared illegal.

"Such letters can help the international community to fulfill its obligation toward the Afghan women," Maryam Maarouf Arvin, an Afghan women's rights activist, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Five women's rights activists -- Neda Parwani, Zholya Parsi, Manijeh Sediqi, Bahare Karimi, and Parisa Azadeh -- are currently in Taliban custody.

Since returning to power, the hard-line Islamist Taliban has banned women and teenage girls from education in Afghanistan. It has also banned them from employment in most sectors and discouraged them from leaving their homes.

On November 26, global rights watchdog Amnesty International launched an online petition saying the Taliban has started "a new era of human rights abuse and violations" that has put the country "at the brink of irreversible ruin."

"Not only [have] the Taliban de-facto authorities...broken their promise of protecting Afghan people's rights, especially women's rights, they have resumed the cycle of violence and committed a litany of human rights abuses and violations with full impunity," the petition says.

"Human rights are under attack on all fronts. It must be stopped," it added.

Pakistan has issued an ultimatum to the Afghan Taliban: Expel the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group from Afghanistan or face the consequences.

Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, repeated the warning on November 11, saying that the Afghan extremist group must “choose Pakistan or the TTP.”

The Afghan Taliban denies sheltering the TTP, with which it has close ideological and organizational ties. The TTP has intensified its deadly insurgency against Pakistan since the Afghan militants seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

By refusing to rein in the TTP, Pakistan believes the Afghan Taliban has made its choice. Islamabad has sought to strongarm the Afghan militants by expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, shutting key border crossings, and temporarily blocking Afghan transit goods in recent months.

Experts said the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, which have been close allies for decades, has reached a crisis point. They warn that further escalation could have major security and economic ramifications for both countries.

“Pakistan and the Taliban are on a collision course,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior analyst at the United States Institute of Peace.

“Pakistan's pressure campaign has the potential to be very painful for the Taliban and the Taliban's retaliatory measures, like letting the TTP undertake even more attacks, can impose serious costs on Pakistan as well,” Mir added.

Pressure Tactics

The Afghan Taliban has accused Pakistan of using pressure tactics to make the group bow to Islamabad’s demands.

Last month, Islamabad ordered 1.7 million undocumented Afghan refugees and migrants to leave the South Asian country or face arrest and forced deportation after November 1.

Over 400,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland since then, in a move that has further aggravated the devastating humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the world’s largest.

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Pakistan said its decision was in direct response to the Taliban's alleged refusal to expel the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban.

"After noncooperation by the Afghan interim government, Pakistan has decided to take matters into its own hands, and Pakistan's recent actions are neither unexpected or surprising," Pakistani caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar said on November 8.

Kakar claimed that terrorist attacks inside his country have increased by around 60 percent since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Since then, he said, some 2,300 Pakistanis have been killed in those attacks.

Pakistan also temporarily blocked the transit of thousands of containers filled with imports bound for Afghanistan that were stranded at Pakistan’s port city of Karachi for months.

To open alternative international trade routes for landlocked Afghanistan, the Taliban has sought access to Iran's strategic Chabahar Port, located in the country’s southeast.

Pakistan has also sporadically closed the border with Afghanistan, stranding thousands of mostly Afghan civilians and halting hundreds of vehicles carrying goods between the two countries.

Pledge Of Allegiance

Some experts said Pakistan’s tactics are unlikely to change the Afghan Taliban’s calculations.

Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator who tracks the Taliban, said it was unlikely that the Afghan Taliban would expel the TTP.

In 2001, the Taliban refused to hand over the Al-Qaeda leaders that Washington held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In response, the United States invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban regime from power.

“Today, the TTP is a much closer ally,” said Yousafzai.

Successive TTP chiefs have sworn allegiance to the Taliban’s spiritual leader. Like the Afghan Taliban, many TTP fighters are from the Pashtun ethnic group. The TTP also hosted and fought alongside the Afghan Taliban during its nearly 19-year insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government and international troops in Afghanistan.

“The TTP made many sacrifices to enable the Taliban to return to power,” Yousafzai said. “How can the Taliban abandon them now?”

Yousafzai said the Afghan Taliban’s confrontation with Pakistan has also allowed it to shed its image as a Pakistani proxy. Islamabad has been the Afghan Taliban’s key foreign sponsor since the mid-1990s, when the extremist group first emerged.

“The current tensions give the Taliban a golden opportunity to undo those accusations,” he said.

Military Option

Islamabad could resort to military force to compel the Afghan Taliban to change its behavior, according to some experts.

The Afghan Taliban has tried to appease Pakistan. In June, the Afghan Taliban relocated TTP fighters and their families away from the border with Pakistan to other areas of Afghanistan, a move intended to placate Islamabad.

Last year, the Afghan Taliban brokered yearlong peace talks between the TTP and Islamabad that broke down.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, an Islamabad-based director at Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that senior Pakistani officials feel they have exhausted all diplomatic and political options.

“Here, the current mindset is that the TTP can only be contained through force,” he said. “One possible option being considered here now is to begin cross-border strikes on suspected TTP bases and hideouts inside Afghanistan.”

In April 2022, Pakistan carried out unprecedented air strikes in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of people. Pakistan said it was targeting the TTP. The air strikes provoked harsh exchanges, with the Taliban issuing threats against Islamabad.

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There have been reports of other Pakistani cross-border attacks that have targeted the TTP over the past year. Some of those incidents have led to the TTP launching retaliatory attacks against Pakistani forces, Mehsud said.

Pakistani attacks inside Afghanistan have raised fears of a direct conflict between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban.

But experts said they expect the sides to reach a compromise that would prevent a worst-case scenario.

Mir of the United States Institute of Peace said that the Afghan Taliban is unlikely to rein in the TTP unless Pakistan offers concessions to the Pakistani militants.

During the failed peace negotiations with Pakistan, the TTP demanded that Islamabad withdraw a large portion of the tens of thousands of Pakistani troops stationed in northwestern Pakistan, the extremist group’s former stronghold.

The TTP’s other demands included the implementation of Islamic Shari'a law in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the reversal of democratic reforms in the same province.

“Pakistan may settle for less than a Taliban crackdown or expulsion of the TTP,” said Mir. “But, at a bare minimum, it will want an end to the TTP violence.”

Pakistan's military said on November 27 that an Afghan national carried out a suicide attack a day earlier on a security forces convoy that killed two civilians and injured several others.

The military said in a statement that "a motorcycle-borne suicide bomber, affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadur and later identified as an Afghan national," carried out the attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in northwestern Pakistan. It added that seven civilians and three soldiers were injured in the attack.

It gave no further details.

Pakistani officials have not provided any other information, and there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction based in North Waziristan.

The security situation in the province in recent months has worsened despite the promises of the government and security authorities. There were multiple deadly incidents last week, including the killing of an employee of the Forestry Department in North Waziristan on November 23.

Two days ago, two soldiers were killed in a landmine explosion and a policeman was killed in an attack on a checkpoint in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while in South Waziristan on November 22, three civilians, including a local leader, were killed and four were injured in a bomb blast in Azam Worsk. No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.

The bombing in Azam Worsk occurred after two soldiers were killed in an armed attack on a post in Sar Rogha in South Waziristan. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for that attack.

The Pakistani government and army say they have continued their operations against the militants.

The army said on November 21 that it had killed three suspected militants in an encounter in North Waziristan. The army added that one of its soldiers was also killed in the clash.

Earlier, the army had claimed the killing of 11 suspected militants in clashes during operations in Peshawar and Tank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on November 16.

Pakistan's caretaker prime minister, Anwar ul-Haq Kakar, on November 20 said terrorist attacks inside his country have increased 60 percent since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Some 2,300 people have been killed in these attacks.

Pakistani troops have shot dead eight suspected Islamist militants during a firefight in the South Waziristan district of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, the military said in a press release on November 27. The statement did not say what group the alleged the militants had belonged to, but members of the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have been active in the area. Islamabad has accused Afghanistan's Taliban rulers of allowing TTP militants to use Afghan territory to launch cross-border attacks. The Taliban has denied the accusation. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, click here.

Many of the Afghan families being driven out of Pakistan have no homes to return to and will struggle to feed themselves through the harsh winter, the UN warned on November 24. UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 370,000 people have returned to Afghanistan since October 3, when Pakistan issued an ultimatum to the 1.7 million Afghans it says are living illegally in the country. "There are no open arms for these families," said Hsiao-Wei Lee, Afghanistan country director for the UN's World Food Program, who recently traveled to a border crossing to observe the distribution of food aid.

Germany on November 24 said four local employees of its government-linked operator GIZ had been detained by Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. "I can confirm that the local employees of GIZ are in custody, although we have not received any official information on why they are detained," a spokeswoman for Germany's Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development said. "We are taking this situation very seriously and are working through all channels available to us to ensure that our colleagues are released," she added. Germany closed its embassy in Afghanistan after the group swept back to power in 2021.

Afghanistan's embassy to New Delhi has announced it is closing permanently due to what it said was "pressure from the Indian government" and lack of diplomatic recognition. The embassy said in a statement that the closure entered into force already on November 23 and came after the ceasing of operations from the start of last month. The statement said that emergency consular services will continue to be provided to Afghan citizens. The embassy requested that the Afghan flag remain on the building. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, click here. (CORRECTION: A previous version of this story attributed the embassy's closing to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.)

The family of former prosecutor Mohammad Naqi Taqi, who was forced out when Taliban militants took power in August 2021, has confirmed his death in eastern Afghanistan, saying it appears he was brutally slain by unknown assailants.

Taqi's son told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi on November 22 that his father and aunt were killed in the eastern Nangarhar Province this week after being invited to a celebration in the region.

He said the family doesn't know the identity of the killers and he didn't elaborate on whether the family knew the individuals who had invited his father and aunt to the event.

He added that the family identified their dead bodies after they were first discovered on the side of a road in Nangarhar’s rural Behsud district on November 20.

"They were poisoned first and then tortured because traces of severe torture could be seen on their dead bodies," he told Radio Azadi.

Taqi, a lawyer, had served in the Afghan Attorney General's Office during the fallen pro-Western government and had investigated high-profile cases.

Like hundreds of former prosecutors, he was forced to relinquish his job after hard-line Taliban militants seized power as U.S.-led international forces withdrew from the country.

Instead of fleeing Afghanistan like most other former prosecutors -- who became targets of the criminals they investigated or helped convict -- Taqi stayed in Kabul.

Some of the prosecutors, now living in exile in Pakistan, are resisting being deported back to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Abid Andrabi, a member of the Afghanistan Prosecutors Association, said that before Taqi's killing, some 37 former prosecutors and others working for the Attorney General's Office and the judiciary had been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power.

"The general amnesty the Taliban has touted since returning to power is being completely disregarded," he told Radio Azadi. "Taliban members have been settling personal scores with the military and civilian employees of the previous government."

Afghan human rights activists allege that the killings of former government officials in the country are on the rise.

"These murders are increasing daily, which is deeply worrying," Nargis Sadat, a human rights campaigner, told Radio Azadi.

In a report in August, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said the Taliban militants ruling Afghanistan had carried out more than 200 extrajudicial killings of former government officials and security forces since August 2021.

Cross-border trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan was back to normal on November 22, officials in both countries said, after Islamabad suspended a new visa rule. Commercial traffic ground to a halt on November 21 when Pakistan began requiring the crew of commercial vehicles to have passports and visas to enter, and Afghanistan responded by refusing to allow any trucks to pass. "Last night, officials from the Ministry of Commerce held a meeting with Afghan officials, reaching an agreement to grant another two-week extension for Afghan drivers," a Pakistan customs official told AFP. The governor of Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province confirmed that cross-border trade had resumed.

Female Afghan prosecutors who served the fallen pro-Western Afghan government are concerned about being deported from Pakistan to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan more than two years after they fled the country because of fears of persecution.

The Committee of Afghan Women Prosecutors in Pakistan, meeting in Islamabad on November 21, said it is worried about the fate of hundreds of former prosecutors if they are forced to leave Pakistan as part of an ongoing drive to deport more than 1.7 million “undocumented foreigners” who are predominantly Afghan.

The former prosecutors, who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, have become targets of the criminals they investigated or helped convict.

Maria Safi, a senior member of the committee, said the ongoing forced deportation of thousands of Afghans from Pakistan daily are extremely worrying.

“This situation has forced us to face grave mental and emotional problems,” she said.

Safi said the prosecutors want Western embassies in Islamabad to process their immigration visas swiftly.

Former prosecutors estimate that more than 300 former Afghan prosecutors currently live in Pakistan. At least 30 among them are women.

They are among tens of thousands of Afghans in Islamabad waiting for Western embassies in the city to process their applications.

“We want them to not only process the cases of prosecutors, judges, and lawyers but all refugees,” she added.

Pakistani authorities have said these Afghans are exempt from deportation. But in Islamabad many Afghans pursuing their visa cases have complained of police harassment, bribes, and even forced expulsions.

“Pakistani authorities are not renewing our visas, which is a major headache,” said Muska Amiri, a former Afghan prosecutor.

“I have stopped leaving my house to avoid facing the police,” she added.

Farahnaz Hashimi, another former prosecutor, says returning to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan she fled in late 2021 is not an option.

“I’m afraid that if I’m sent back to Afghanistan, I might be arrested by the Taliban,” she said.

Pakistani and Taliban officials confirmed on November 20 that more than 400,000 people returned to their countries after Islamabad first announced its ongoing crackdown on illegal foreigners on October 3.