Kamal Afzali is a staff writer at The New Arab who specialises in Muslim affairs, and has a keen interest in the politics and society of Arabic and Persian-language speaking countries.
With no drastic changes to their embassy operations, it is believed that Russia, China and Iran will be among the first countries to recognise a Taliban government.
In-depth: The New Arab speaks with Haroun Rahimi, a law professor at the American University of Afghanistan, who offers his expert analysis on the new status quo.
With little government help for the 17,000 families who now sleep in makeshift tents in Kabul’s park, Wafi T. Latifi, a businessman who owns cafes and shopping centres in the capital, said he has undertaken a campaign to deliver urgent help.
The loss of Mazar-i-Sharif would be a signal that Afghanistan's north - the former heartland of the anti-Taliban resistance - has fallen out of government control and into the hands of the insurgents.
Analysis: As the Taliban have consolidated sweeping gains across the country, their pressure on eastern Afghanistan - an area otherwise a long-time domain for militant groups - appears minimal. Kamal Afzali explores why this is the case.
Prominent Afghan journalists, academics and diplomats have strongly disapproved of the main argument of a Foreign Policy article published on Thursday, seeing it as disingenuous and failing to correspond with a number of facts on the ground.
Afghanistan's Ministry of Education backtracked on a decision to impose a nationwide singing ban on schoolgirls, following an outcry, as women in the country powerfully reclaimed their right to sing.
The GCC’s chief unannounced visit to Baghdad, where pro-Tehran factions dominate, came amid a report that Saudi Arabia and arch-rival Iran have been in backchannel negotiations for months.
