A military statement said security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in the Khaisoor area of North Waziristan district, where they exchanged fire with militants. It said troops seized weapons and ammunition from the militants’ hideout.

The military said one of the most wanted militant commanders, identified by single name of Ibrahim, was among the dead, all of whom were involved in attacks on security forces and civilians. Troops were carrying out sanitization of the surrounding areas to eliminate any hiding militants, it said.

North Waziristan served for decades as a safe haven for militants until the military carried out a major operation after an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in 2014 killed more than 150 people, mostly schoolchildren.

The army announced after the yearslong operation that it had cleared the region of militants, but attacks continue occasionally, raising concerns that the local Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, found sanctuaries in Afghanistan and are regrouping in the area.

The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but allies of the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as the U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout after 20 years of war.

Nearly 300,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in recent weeks since authorities started arresting and deporting foreign nationals without papers after the Oct. 31 deadline for migrants without legal status to leave the country voluntarily.

The expulsions mostly affect Afghans, who make up the majority of foreigners in Pakistan. It has drawn criticism from the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan as well as from human rights organizations.

The number of border crossings used to deport thousands of Afghans rose to five after the new facilities were opened in southwestern Baluchistan province, said Jan Achakzai, the caretaker provincial information minister.

Currently, about 15,000 Afghans have been crossing the border every day from Pakistan. Before the crackdown, the figure was around 300.

International aid agencies have documented chaotic and desperate scenes among Afghans who have returned from Pakistan.

“Many Afghans in Pakistan are now facing police raids and demolition of their homes without due process. Detainees have been denied the right to a lawyer and communication with family members, leaving loved ones in the dark as to their whereabouts,” Amnesty International wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

It asked Pakistan to immediately halt deportations to prevent further escalation of this crisis.

Achakzai said police in Baluchistan in recent days had arrested more than 1,500 Afghans who had no valid documents.

A prominent Pakistani human rights lawyer, Moniza Kakar, said in the southern port city of Karachi that police had launched midnight raids on homes and detained Afghan families, including women and children.

The head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Hina Jilani, said Pakistan lacks a comprehensive mechanism to handle refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants without papers, despite hosting Afghans for 40 years.

Also Monday, police said officers are investigating whether an Afghan man, Asif Khan, killed his 25-year-old wife, Ameena Bibi, because she refused to go to Afghanistan with him. The incident happened the previous day in the northwestern city of Nowshera, police official Yasir Khan said. He said the suspect left the country with his four children.

Violence against Pakistani security forces and civilians has surged since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan two years ago. Most attacks have been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, a separate militant group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.

Pakistan often accuse the Taliban of harboring militants from groups like the TTP — allegations the Taliban deny — and said Afghans without permanent legal status are responsible for some of the attacks.

Pakistan has long hosted millions of Afghans, most of whom fled during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. More than half a million fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

Security teams had reached the area and more details would be available soon, Kabul police spokesperson Khalid Zadran told Reuters.

A forced return of refugees to Afghanistan could put them at a “grave risk,” Amnesty said in a statement, though Pakistan says its ongoing operations against irregular immigration weren’t specific to Afghans.

“Afghans in Pakistan are fleeing persecution by the Taliban,” said Nadia Rahman, Amnesty’s regional deputy director for research in South Asia. “They are living incredibly precarious lives where they are either having to undergo arduous processes for registering as refugees in Pakistan, or are stuck in lengthy processes waiting to obtain relocation to another country.”

The appeal by Amnesty came two days after Pakistan announced a major crackdown on migrants who are in the country illegally — many of whom are from Afghanistan — and said it would expel them starting next month.

The Taliban government’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, has also opposed Pakistan’s announcement about the migrants, saying it was “unacceptable” and that Islamabad should reconsider the decision.

Pakistan has been hosting Afghan refugees since they fled Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.

India does not recognise Afghanistan’s Taliban government though has allowed the ambassador and mission staff, who were appointed by the government of ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, to issue visas and handle trade matters.

The embassy had announced last week that it would cease operations in India from Oct. 1, listing a series of allegations including that it received no support from the Indian government.

Rejecting the claims, Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, “I don’t think they are factually correct”.

“Our understanding is that the embassy in New Delhi is functioning,” Bagchi told reporters. He added that the foreign ministry had been informed of the embassy’s decision to halt operations and was in touch with Afghan diplomats at the embassy and consulates in Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

“We are also aware that there has been a prolonged absence of the ambassador, and that a large number of Afghan diplomats have left India in the recent past,” Bagchi said.

Zabihullah Mujahid also said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that the refugees should be “tolerated” by Pakistan as long as they did not leave voluntarily.

Pakistan on Tuesday gave the illegal immigrants a deadline to leave by Nov. 1 or face forcible expulsion.

The instrument used to record these moments is a kamra-e-faoree, or instant camera.

The odd device draws curious onlookers everywhere. From the outside, it resembles little more than a large black box on a tripod. Inside lies its magic: a hand-made wooden camera and darkroom in one.

As a small crowd gathers around the box camera, images of beauty and of hardship ripple to life from its dark interior: a family enjoying an outing in a swan boat on a lake; child laborers toiling in brick factories; women erased by all-covering veils; armed young men with fire in their eyes.

Sitting for a portrait in a war-scarred Afghan village, a Taliban fighter remarks: “Life is much more joyful now.” For a young woman in the Afghan capital, forced out of education because of her gender, the opposite is true: “My life is like a prisoner, like a bird in a cage.”

The instrument used to record these moments is a kamra-e-faoree, or instant camera. They were a common sight on Afghan city streets in the last century — a fast and easy way to make portraits, especially for identity documents. Simple, cheap and portable, they endured amid half a century of dramatic changes in this country — from a monarchy to a communist takeover, from foreign invasions to insurgencies — until 21st-century digital technology rendered them obsolete.

Using this nearly disappeared homegrown art form to document life in post-war Afghanistan, from Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south to Kabul in the east and Bamiyan in the center, produced hundreds of black-and-white prints that reveal a complex, sometimes contradictory narrative.

Made over the course of a month, the images underscore how in the two years since U.S. troops pulled out and the Taliban returned to power, life has changed dramatically for many Afghans — whereas for others, little has changed over the decades, regardless of who was in power.

A tool of a bygone era, the box camera imparts a vintage, timeless quality to the images, as if the country’s past is superimposed over its present, which in some respects, it is.

In the years after the 2001 U.S. invasion and the ouster of the Taliban regime, Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd spent months on assignment in Afghanistan and learned how to use a traditional Afghan “box camera,” a handmade camera and darkroom in one. Abd returned this year with an idea: to employ the nearly disappeared Afghan art form to document how life has changed in peacetime, for better and worse, two years after U.S. troops left and the Taliban returned to power. (Sept. 22) (AP video: Bram Janssen)

At first glance the faded black-and-white, sometimes slightly out-of-focus images convey an Afghanistan frozen in time. But that aesthetic is deceiving. These are reflections of the country very much as it is now.

An Uneasy Relationship With The Camera

During their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned photography of humans and animals as contrary to the teachings of Islam. Many box cameras were smashed, though some were quietly tolerated, Afghan photographers say. But it was the advent of the digital age that sounded the device’s death knell.

“These things are gone,” said Lutfullah Habibzadeh, 72, a former kamra-e-faoree photographer in Kabul. “Digital cameras are on the market, and (the old ones) are out of use.” Habibzadeh still has his old box camera, a relic of the last century passed down to him by his photographer father. It no longer works, but he has lovingly preserved its red leather coating, decorated with sample photos.

On Afghan city streets today, billboard advertisements have faces spray-painted out, and clothing store windows display mannequins with their heads wrapped in black plastic bags, to adhere to the renewed ban on the depictions of faces.

But the advent of the internet age and of smartphones have made a ban on photography impossible to impose. The novel sight of an old box camera elicits excitement and curiosity – even among those who police the new rules. From foot soldiers to high-ranking officials, many Taliban were happy to pose for box camera portraits.

Outside a warehouse in Kabul, a group of men watch intently as the camera is set up. At first, they seem shy. But as the first portraits emerge, curiosity overtakes their reservations. Soon, they’re smiling and joking as they wait to have their photos taken, pitching in to help when a black cloth backdrop slips off the wall. As each man steps forward for his portrait, set jaws replace tentative smiles. Adjusting their grip on their assault rifles, they look straight into the camera’s tiny lens and hold their poses.

Most of these men joined the Taliban as teenagers or in their early 20s and have known nothing but war. They were drawn to the fundamentalist movement because of their fervent Muslim faith – and their determination to expel U.S. and NATO troops who invaded their country and propped up two decades of Afghan governments that failed to crack down on rampant corruption and crime.

Bahadur Rahaani, a 52-year-old Taliban member with piercing light blue eyes beneath his black turban, says he’s happy to see the Taliban back in power. With them in government, “Afghanistan will be rebuilt,” he says. “Without them, it is not possible.”

Peace, At A Price

Two years after Taliban militias swept across the country to seize power again, there are strong echoes of life as it was before U.S.-led NATO forces toppled them from government in 2001.

Once more, the country is ruled by a fundamentalist movement that has restored many of the strict rules it imposed in the 1990s. The first Taliban regime was notorious for destroying art and cultural patrimony it deemed un-Islamic, such as the giant ancient buddhas carved into cliffs in Bamiyan. They imposed brutal punishments, chopping off hands of thieves, hanging supposed blasphemers in public squares and stoning women accused of adultery.

Once again, executions and lashings are back. Music, movies, dancing and performances are banned, and women are again excluded from nearly all public life, including education and all but a few professions.

The return to fundamentalist policies has chased away Western donors, aid workers and trade partners. Poverty has spiraled to crisis levels, fueled by the ban on women working, deep cuts in foreign aid and international sanctions. But there is nearly universal relief that the relentless bloodshed of the past four decades of invasions, multiple insurgencies and civil war has largely ceased.

There are still sporadic bombings, most attributed to enemies of the Taliban, the extremist group Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or IS-K. But Afghans interviewed say their country is more peaceful than they’ve known for decades.

The United Nations recorded 1,095 civilians killed in deliberate attacks between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban reclaimed power, through May 30, 2023. That’s a fraction of the annual civilian death toll over two decades of war between U.S.-led NATO forces and insurgents.

Even those who dislike the current regime say banditry, kidnapping and corruption, which were rampant under the previous governments, have been largely reined in.

But less crime and violence does not necessarily translate to prosperity and happiness.

Women, Erased

In a three-story building tucked in a Kabul alleyway, a group of women work silently at a loom. Zamarod’s hands move swiftly, nimble fingers flitting between strands of yarn as she knots colored wool around them, making a carpet. Her movements are rapid, almost brusque, but her voice is soft and sad. “My life is like a prisoner,” she says. “Like a bird in a cage.”

The 20-year-old had been studying computer science, but the Taliban banned women from universities before she could graduate. Now she and her 23-year-old sister work in a carpet factory, falling back on a skill their mother taught them as children. They are among very few women who can earn money outside the home and, like others, asked that only their first names be used for fear of retribution for speaking out.

Women have experienced the starkest changes since the Taliban’s return. They must adhere to a strict dress code, are banned from most jobs and denied simple pleasures such as visiting a park or going to a restaurant. Girls can no longer attend school beyond sixth grade, and women must be escorted by a male relative to travel.

For all intents and purposes, women have been being erased from public life.

Even in this environment, Zamarod hasn’t given up on her dream of graduating. “We have to have hope. We hope that one day we will be free, that freedom is possible,” she says. “That’s why we live and breathe.”

In another room, 50-year-old Hakima is introducing her teenage daughter Freshta to weaving. It is their only way of eking out a living, though she still dreams her 16-year-old daughter will someday become a doctor. “Afghanistan has gone backwards,” she says, donning an all-encompassing burka to pose for a portrait. “People go door to door for a piece of bread and our children are dying.”

While the clock has turned back for women who’ve lost financial independence and a voice in public life and government, in conservative, tribal parts of the country, expectations for women have always been different and have changed little over the years — even during U.S. and NATO military presence.

Even so, education is a priority for many Afghans. In dozens of interviews across the country, nearly everyone — including some members of the Taliban — said they wanted girls and women to be educated. Most said they believed the education ban was temporary, and that older girls would eventually be allowed back into schools. They say keeping girls and women confined at home doesn’t help the country, or its economy.

“We need doctors, teachers,” says Haji Muhibullah Aloko, a 34-year-old teacher in the village of Tabin, west of Kandahar. Women must be educated “so that Afghanistan improves in every sector.”

The international community has withheld recognition of the Taliban and pressed its leadership to roll back their restrictions on women — to no avail.

“That is up to Afghans and not foreigners, they shouldn’t get involved,” Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid says during an interview in Kandahar, the birthplace of the movement in southern Afghanistan and a stronghold of conservative values.

“We are waiting for the right moment regarding the schools. And while the schools are closed now, they won’t be forever,” he says. He won’t give a timeline but insists “the world shouldn’t use this as an excuse” not to recognize the Taliban government.

Victorious Insurgents

The village of Tabin lies deep in the Arghandab River valley, a fertile swath of fruit orchards and irrigation canals cutting through Kandahar Province’s dusty desert.

But around it, the remnants of war are everywhere. The derelict remains of American combat outposts have faded warnings of mines and grenades spraypainted on their wind-blown blast walls. Tangles of abandoned razor wire litter the ground. Bombed-out houses lie in ruins. And there’s the ubiquitous presence of armed young men adjusting from a life of fighting to one of living in peace.

The new jobs — policing streets, guarding buildings, collecting garbage — are the mundane, necessary tasks of governing. It’s less dramatic than waging war, but there is palpable relief to be free of the violence.

Without fear of airstrikes or bullets, children shriek in delight as they splash about in an irrigation canal, leaping into the murky water from a bridge.

“Life is much more joyful now. Before there used to be lots of brutality and aggression,” 28-year-old Abdul Halim Hilal says, sheltering from the blazing sun under a mulberry tree before posing for a portrait. “Innocent people would die. Villages were bombed. We couldn’t bear it.”

He joined the Taliban as a teenager, believing it was his moral duty to fight foreign troops. He lost as many as 20 friends to the war, and more were wounded. He’s stung by the memory of his dead brothers-in-arms when he sees their fatherless children, but he’s comforted by an unshakeable belief that their sacrifice was worth it.

“The ones that were killed were fighting to sacrifice themselves for the country,” he says. “It’s because of the blood they gave that we’re now here, giving interviews freely, and the Muslims here are living in peace.”

A villager walks by, glancing at the gaggle of curious children and adults gathered around the box camera. “It’s so strange,” he mutters. “We used to fight against these foreigners, and now they’re here taking pictures.”

Mujeeburahman Faqer, a 26-year-old Taliban fighter, now mans an uneventful security checkpoint in Kabul. Like many others, he’s struggling to adapt to a peacetime mentality, because all he’s ever known was war. “I had prepared my head for sacrifice,” he says, “and I am still ready.”

A Foundering Economy-And A Strugle To Survive

Security has improved since the end of the insurgency against U.S. forces. But with peace came an economy in freefall.

When the Taliban seized power again in 2021, international donors withdrew funding, froze Afghan assets abroad, isolated its financial sector and imposed sanctions.

That squeeze, combined with the near-total ban on women working, has crippled the economy. Per capita income shrank by an estimated 30 percent last year compared to 2020, according to the United Nations Development Program.

Nearly half of Afghanistan’s 40 million people now face acute food insecurity, the U.N.’s World Food Program says. Malnutrition is above emergency thresholds in 25 of 34 provinces.

Struggling to survive is something Kasnia already knows at age 4. In a brick factory outside Kabul, she scoops out a chunk of mud with her tiny hands, kneading it until it is pliable enough for a brick mold. After countless repetitions, her movements are automatic. She works six days a week from sunrise until sunset, with brief breaks for breakfast and lunch, toiling next to her siblings and her father — one family among many in a sprawling factory where children become laborers at age 3.

“Everyone wishes that their children study and become teachers, doctors, engineers, and benefit the future of the country,” says her father, Wahidullah, 35, who goes by one name, as do his children.

Even with the entire family working, there’s often not enough money for food and they live hand to mouth on credit from shopkeepers. Of his three sons and three daughters, all except the youngest one are brickmakers.

“When I was young, my dream was to have a comfortable life, to have a nice office, to have a nice car, to go to parks, to travel around my country and abroad, to go to Europe,” he recalls. Instead, “I make bricks.” There is no bitterness in his voice, just acceptance of an inevitable fate.

Many Afghans have resorted to selling their belongings — everything from furniture to clothing and shoes — to survive.

When the Taliban banned movies, Nabi Attai had nothing to fall back on. In his 70s, the actor appeared in a dozen television series and 76 films, including the Golden Globe-winning 2003 movie “Osama.” Now he is destitute.

His home, tucked in a warren of steep alleys, is now nearly devoid of furniture, which he sold in the bazaar to feed his extended family. Sold, too, is his beloved TV.

After 42 years of acting, Attai has no work. Neither do his two sons, who were also in the movie and music business. Attai is glad the streets are now safe, but he has 13 family members to feed and no way to feed them.

He asked local authorities for any job, even collecting garbage. There was nothing. So he started selling his belongings. “I have no hope right now,” he says. Even begging is now punished by imprisonment under the Taliban.

Over the past year, he has become frail. His cheeks are sunken, his frame thinner. There’s a sadness in his eyes that rarely leaves, even when he recounts his glory days.

“We made good movies before,” he says. “May God have mercy that music and cinema will be allowed again, and the people will rebuild the country hand in hand, and the government will come closer to the people and embrace each other as friends and brothers.”

Pinpricks Of Glitz

The shimmering lights of wedding halls cut through the gloom as night encroaches on Kabul, pinpricks of glitz in the darkness.

Despite the economic slump, wedding halls are doing a brisk trade, buoyed in part by wealthier Afghan emigres returning home for traditional marriage ceremonies now that the security situation has improved.

Weddings are a big part of Afghan culture, and families sometimes bankrupt themselves to ensure a lavish party for hundreds or even thousands of guests.

Construction of the Imperial Continental wedding hall began four years ago but was disrupted by the COVID pandemic and the Taliban takeover. The opulent venue finally opened its doors last year.

Manager Mohammad Wesal Quaoni, 30, cuts a dapper figure in a sharp suit as he sweeps through the glamorous, cavernous halls, juggling four weddings in one night. The former Kabul University lecturer in economics and politics is trying to ensure the business thrives amid the country’s economic woes. It’s not easy.

“Business is weak,” he says, and onerous government rules and regulations don’t help. The Taliban are raising taxes, but he says there isn’t enough commerce to support a healthy tax base.

The ban on music and dancing doesn’t help. Gone are the live musicians and even the DJs who would bring in extra revenue, Quaoni says. Weddings are segregated by gender but, for once, there’s sometimes a bit more fun for the women.

Occasionally women and girls enjoy taped music in the ladies’ section. “If they want, they do it,” restrictions or not, he said. “Women will be women.”

Five hundred miles west of the capital, on the outskirts of the city of Herat, businessman Abdul Khaleq Khodadadi, 39, has an entirely different set of challenges.

Rayan Saffron Company, where he is vice president, exports the prized spice to customers, mainly in Europe and the U.S. But the Taliban takeover and ensuing sanctions left many foreign clients reluctant to do business with an Afghan company – even though it’s one of the few still allowed to employ women, whose hands are deemed more suitable than men’s to extracting and handling the delicate crocus flowers.

The isolation of the banking sector has also left many Afghan companies with no way to trade except through a third country, usually Pakistan, which significantly increases costs. Then there’s drought that has decimated crops, including saffron.

His company had aimed to increase their production this year. Instead, their production fell to half of what it was three years ago, he says.

Khodadadi says he is determined to persevere. For him, successful businesses are the best way to heal Afghanistan’s wounds.

In the chaotic early days of the Taliban takeover, Khodadadi felt intense pressure to join the tens of thousands of people who fled, he says. He had a visa and family and friends urged him to leave, but he refused to go.

“It was very, very hard,” he recalls. “But … if I leave, if all the talented people, educated people leave, who will make this country? When will this country solve the problems?”

One, sent from Afghanistan where women are now banned by the Taliban from participating in sports, consists of about 130 all-male athletes, who will participate in 17 different sports, including volleyball, judo and wrestling, Atel Mashwani, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Afghanistan’s Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press.

Another, competing under the black, red and green flag of the elected government the Taliban toppled in 2021, is drawn from the diaspora of Afghan athletes around the world, and includes 17 women, according to Hafizullah Wali Rahimi, the president of Afghanistan’s National Olympic Committee from before the Taliban took over.

Rahimi, who now works from outside Afghanistan but is still recognized by many countries as its official representative on Olympic matters, told reporters at the team’s official arrival ceremony late Thursday that the athletes are there for the love of sports.

“We want to be keeping the sports completely out of the politics so the athletes can freely, inside and outside their country, do their sports activity and development,” he said.

Rahimi’s contingent at the welcome ceremony was entirely male, but he said the women were on their way, consisting of a volleyball team that have been training in Iran, cyclists from Italy, and a representative for athletics from Australia.

He did not respond to an emailed request on Friday seeking more details.

The games official opening ceremony is on Saturday.

Although the Taliban promised a more moderate rule than during their previous period in power in the 1990s, they have imposed harsh measures since seizing Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out after two decades of war.

They have barred women from most areas of public life such as parks, gyms and work and cracked down on media freedoms. They have banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade, and prohibited Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental organizations. The ban was extended to employees of the United Nations in April.

The measures have triggered a fierce international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed and worsening a humanitarian crisis.

Rahimi said that the previous government had been working hard to increase women’s participation in sport since the previous Taliban regime, and that it had increased to 20%.

“We hope it comes back, of course,” he said. “Not only the sport, we hope that they’ll be back allowed to schools and education, because that’s the basic rights of a human.”

“The surge in methamphetamine trafficking in Afghanistan and the region suggests a significant shift in the illicit drug market and demands our immediate attention,” said Ghada Waly, executive director of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The Taliban, which regained power in August 2021, announced a ban the following April on the production of narcotics in Afghanistan, the world’s main opium producer. Taliban officials say its security forces are clamping down on Afghan poppy farmers and destroying crops.

While heroin trafficking has slowed, the UNODC said in a statement, meth trafficking “has intensified since the ban”.

Meth seizures in and around Afghanistan jumped 12-fold in the five years through 2021. Between 2019 and 2022, nearby countries such as Iran and Pakistan also reported increased seizures. Countries as far away as France and Australia have reported seizing methamphetamine that likely originated in Afghanistan it said.

The UNODC said much of the meth from Afghanistan was made with pre-cursor ingredients such as those found in some cold and flu medication.

Afghanistan is home to the ephedra plant, which can be used to make methamphetamine, but the UNODC said the quantities needed to produce the drug and the risk of unreliable crops meant that Afghanistan’s production did not depend on the plant alone.

“Common cold medications and industrial-grade chemicals are more efficient and cost effective for the manufacture of methamphetamine and thus pose a far bigger threat,” the UNODC said.

Matiullah Wesa, founder and president of Pen Path — a local nongovernmental group that travels across Afghanistan with a mobile school and library — was arrested in the Afghan capital on Monday.

Since their takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed restrictions on women’s and minority rights. Girls are barred from school beyond the sixth grade and last year, the Taliban banned women from going to universities.

Wesa has been outspoken in his demands for girls to have the right to go to school and learn, and has repeatedly called on the Taliban-led government to reverse its bans. His most recent tweets coincided with the start of the new academic year in Afghanistan, with girls remaining shut out of classrooms and campuses.

Late Tuesday, the US charge d’affaires for Afghanistan, Karen Decker, said she was disturbed by “multiple, disturbing reports” of Afghans being detained while peacefully protesting in support of their aspirations.

Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai said he was saddened to hear of Wesa’s arrest.

Local reports said Taliban security forces detained Wesa after his return from a trip to Europe. Taliban authorities have not confirmed his detention, whereabouts or reasons for the arrest.

Abdul Haq Humad, the director of publications at the Ministry of Information and Culture, defended the detention.

“His actions were suspicious and the system has the right to ask such people for an explanation,” he said Tuesday in a tweet. “It is known that the arrest of an individual caused such widespread reaction that a conspiracy was prevented.”

Wesa’s brother said Taliban forces surrounded the family home on Tuesday, saying they beat family members and confiscated the arrested activist’s mobile phone.

Social media activists have created a hashtag to campaign for Wesa’s release. Many posts condemned his detention and demanded immediate freedom for the activist.

Wesa and others from the Pen Path launched a door-to-door campaign to promote girls’ education. “We have been volunteering for 14 years to reach people and convey the message for girls’ education,” Wesa said in recent social media posts. “During the past 18 months we campaigned house-to-house in order to eliminate illiteracy and to end all our miseries.”