Yogita Limaye
Reporting from Kabul

Image source, Reuters

Alibek, 27, in Afghanistan, asks: Why other countries aren't stepping in to prevent a humanitarian crisis given Afghanistan has become much safer. He asks if the economy is the only issue?

The international community is caught in a tricky situation. The economy is among the biggest issues in Afghanistan, but certainly not the only one.

The Taliban have not delivered on commitments they made on women’s rights and human rights in public statements during the talks with the US in Doha in 2020.

There is also no guarantee that the country will not once again become a breeding ground for extremist outfits which threaten security in other parts of the world.

Withholding Afghanistan’s central bank reserves gives the international community some leverage to negotiate with the Taliban. But there’s another side.

The money could help kickstart the economy again, and that in turn could save millions from the brink of poverty and hunger.

In short, giving the Taliban money is a dangerous option without guarantees on human rights and how it will be spent.

But not giving it is deepening the already acute humanitarian crisis. There are no good answers to this question.

How much foreign aid is reaching people in Afghanistan?published at 13:16 British Summer Time 15 August 2022

13:16 BST 15 August 2022

Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent, in Kabul

Image source, Reuters

Christine Weightman in Ascot in southern England asks: What aid people in Afghanistan are receiving from outside the country, and what relations the Taliban have with other countries:

Aid is still flowing to Afghanistan through the United Nations and other aid agencies.

Because key Taliban leaders are still under terrorism-linked sanctions, and there’s concern about Taliban governance and accountability, no funds are going directly to the government.

That’s a stark contrast to the last government – about 80 percent of its budget was funded through foreign aid.

The US also froze the assets of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, which are held in New York. Discussions to establish independent monitoring mechanisms to keep the bank working have so far failed.

No country has recognised the Taliban yet but Taliban leaders still receive delegations from countries around the world, including Western governments.

And a UN travel ban waiver allows them to frequently travel to capitals in the region. Embassies like those of Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have never shut.

But most western missions won’t reopen until they see more progress on issues like the rights of women and girls, including the re-opening of all secondary schools for girls.

Image source, .

What's it like to be back in Afghanistan, a year after covering the fall of Kabul?published at 13:09 British Summer Time 15 August 2022

13:09 BST 15 August 2022

Secunder Kermani
Reporting from Kandahar

First up is a question for Secunder, our Afghanistan correspondent, who was in Kabul around this time last year. He has recently been reporting in Kandahar, in the south, a city that is the spiritual home of the Taliban.

We asked him: How has the country changed, and how distant does the drama of that time feel?

The chaos of the last year, when thousands of people were frantically gathering at the airport, feels a long time ago.

To be fair, even back then the chaos was contained in a few specific places. Elsewhere in Kabul – and the rest of the country - there was a sense of uneasy calm as Afghans waited to see what the Taliban’s new government would mean for their lives.

In the early days, the Taliban adopted a more pragmatic attitude than many expected, refraining from issuing new laws on what women should wear, for example.

But over the past few months their stance has been hardening. Enforcement of requirements to wear the all-encompassing burqa, in major cities at least, is still lax, but the Taliban’s trajectory, and particularly the continued closure of most girls' secondary schools, has left many Afghans deeply despondent.

This is also, however, a country that has been ravaged by more than 40 years of conflict, and so some Afghans, particularly those who lived along the rural frontlines of the war, have greeted the Taliban victory – and the end of their insurgency - with a sense of relief. What unites everyone in the country is concern about the deep economic crisis.

Postpublished at 13:07 British Summer Time 15 August 2022

13:07 BST 15 August 2022

For the next few hours our correspondents will be answering your questions about how life has changed for people living in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban seized control of Kabul and toppled the Western-backed government.

As we've been reporting, to mark the occasion the Taliban have declared a national holiday in the country.

Taliban members and supporters have been parading the streets and hanging black and white flags.

But the anniversary comes during a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, with many men unable to find work and most girls' secondary schools still closed.

Stay with us as we try to answer as many of your questions as we can - and we'll bring you all the latest news lines as we get them.

Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent

“You’re a woman and you can travel anywhere you want, but I feel like a prisoner, unable to leave my home,” Mashal suddenly declares to me, anger lining her weathered face.

Her surprising outburst provokes a ripple of laughter around the circle of tribal elders who’ve gathered in the village of Shenia in the central highlands of Afghanistan.

When I ask the men what kind of changes they’d like to see, including more rights for women, their answers are just as surprising.

“We see how Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, and our neighbours Pakistan and Iran are progressing, and we want to see changes here too.”

When it comes to opening secondary schools for girls, most of which are now shut by the Taliban, both men and women in this mud brick room call for them to be reopened.

“Mohem” – which means "important" - is the word they all use. Have they mentioned this to the Taliban? "Yes we are asking them to help us.”

Stay with us, at 13:00 BST we'll be joined by:

• Chief International correspondent, Lyse Doucet
• Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent, Secunder Kermani
• South Asia correspondent, Yogita Limaye
• Security correspondent, Frank Gardner
• Afghan service correspondent, Yama Bariz
• Persian service correspondent, Kasra Naji

They will answer some of your questions on where things stand one year since the Taliban captured Kabul.

Image source, Reuters

On the first anniversary of the Taliban takeover, Sweden's Foreign Minister says the group have made life "terrible" for women and girls in Afghanistan.

Ann Linde, part of Sweden's "feminist government", says any pledges that the Taliban regime would bring greater rights for women have not been fulfilled.

"The situation for women and girls now in Afghanistan is a nightmare," Linde tells the BBC.

"They have lied about their intentions, they have made life so terrible for women and girls."

She says we must continue to demand human rights and democracy from the Taliban and to support organisations like the UN to avoid giving the regime legitimacy.

Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent

Image source, Jack Garland/BBC

In a remote corner of Afghanistan, in Ghor province, in a land of wheat farmers, we saw how drought is on everyone’s mind.

“Kushk” is the word we heard everywhere we went – “dry".

The grain is dry, the fields are dry, the once-mighty Harirud river is now just an elongated puddle.

Three years of devastating drought have stolen a third, sometimes as much as half of farmers’ crops.

Earlier this year famine conditions were detected in two of Ghor’s most distant districts. Its startling to see how, even here, in this poorest province of Afghanistan, the world’s worst crises are hitting hard.

Climate change is taking its toll even here; the faraway war in Ukraine has meant fertiliser is scarce and prices are pushing ever higher on everything from farm inputs to food.

“The battle against poverty and famine is even bigger fight than gunfights,” farm labourer 18-year-old Noor Mohammad tells me in a wheat field he and a friend have cleared. Each of them make the equivalent of two dollars a day.

Secunder Kermani
Reporting from Kandahar

As the Taliban advanced across Afghanistan last summer, capturing territory from the Afghan government as foreign forces prepared to withdraw, we met Ainudeen, a hardened Taliban fighter, in the northern district of Balkh.

Our conversation was short, the war was still raging and there was a constant threat of Afghan government airstrikes.

A few months later, with the Taliban government freshly established, sitting over a meal of fried fish by the Amu Darya river dividing Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, Ainudeen told me he had been a Taliban sniper.

He had killed dozens of members of the Afghan security forces, he estimated, and had been injured on 10 different occasions.

After the Taliban takeover, however, he was appointed Director of Land and Urban Development in Balkh province.

When I met him in the early days of the new regime, I asked him whether he missed the "jihad" he had fought in for so long.

"Yes," he replied bluntly.

Now, a year later, sitting behind a wooden desk with the large white and black flag of the Islamic Emirate beside it, he still seems to be adjusting to his new life.

"We were fighting against our enemies with our guns, thanks to God we defeated them, and now we are trying to serve our people with our pens."

Ainudeen says he was happy while fighting, but also happy now.

Read more here.

A refugee has described the hardship he and his family endured while trying to escape from Afghanistan last August.

Muhammad Nasir fled to Britain with his wife and two children after waiting at Kabul airport for a flight to safety.

"It was a very bad experience in Afghanistan last August, especially 15 August," he told the BBC.

He was working in his office when he saw people running down the street looking for a safe place as the Taliban staged its takeover.

Nasir said it was a "very hard" two days with his family as they awaited a flight out of Kabul with gunfire going off around them.

"I remember I was standing in a queue with my daughter on my shoulder, and my kids were shouting, 'please don't shoot', because they were scared of the chaos," he said.

The family eventually met with British soldiers who gave them food until they were transported by military plane to London's Heathrow airport and received a "warm welcome", Nasir added.

Lucy Manning
BBC News Special Correspondent

Image source, .

We have more on the refugees welcomed by the UK, but still stuck in hotel rooms a year after they arrived.

Many of the Afghans who came here - while grateful for their rescue - feel defeated by the bureaucracy.

Marwa Koofi was living with her brothers and sister and their families in a hotel in Yorkshire after they fled Afghanistan because their mother was a politician targeted by the Taliban.

However, they had to leave that temporary home of nearly a year.

Marwa says she asked to come to London because she will study at King's College from next month, and she asked for her family to remain together.

But while she was sent to a hotel in West Sussex with one brother, her other brothers are now in a Manchester hotel and her sister is living in a hotel in Leeds.

"It's very hard for me to be away from my family. It was upsetting for us. To be honest, I couldn't stop my tears."

The Home Office says: "The housing of Afghan individuals and families can be a complex process and we are supporting people with many different needs. We... have moved - or are in the process of moving - over 7,000 people into homes since June 2021."

Read more on this here.

Image source, Reuters

US President Joe Biden was widely criticised for withdrawing every US soldier from Afghanistan last August - a move which led to Taliban militants returning to power.

A former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and described the US led pull-out as a mistake at the time, says the full negative consequences are yet to come.

He says in two years, Afghanistan will "look worse than it does now" and says the country is in "a pre 9/11 scenario".

"The incremental steps the Taliban are taking to further restrict the role in society for Afghan women and girls. that’s the roadmap the Taliban have laid out," he tells the BBC.

"After another year I don’t think you’re going to see many Afghan girls in primary school or young women in university, I expect that trend will continue."

He predicts there will be an escalation of "harassment and worse" against those who assisted the Nato effort in Afghanistan.

"I’m afraid we’ll see in two years from our final withdrawal, a progressive tightening up and implementation of the Taliban agenda which really hasn’t changed since the 1990s."

Image source, Getty Images

As we've been reporting, a spokesperson for the Taliban has given an interview to the BBC's South Asian Correspondent Yogita Limaye.

In the discussion he denies that the Taliban has any ties with the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, and says the group "doesn’t have any members here as they left Afghanistan long ago."

He says the Taliban were unaware of the presence of the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Afghanistan after he was killed in a US counter-terrorism operation in Kabul earlier this month. He says the Taliban had "no relationship" with Zawahiri.

The Taliban has formed a committee to investigate the incident in which al-Zawahiri was killed, he says. "If some people personally had a relationship with him, we will find out."

"Afghan soil has not as yet been used against the US or any other country. [Zawahiri] staying hidden here is a separate story - the group was not run from here.

"If there was any activity - we would have known about it."

Hameed Shuja
BBC Afghan Service

As with their previous reign in power in the late 1990s, the Taliban have so far ruled with a single central authority that works around their supreme leader, Hebatullah Akhundzada, who is said to be based in the southern province of Kandahar.

From there he issues decrees on pretty much everything, from girls’ education to the appointment of officials, to the dress code for women. There have been constant reports of internal rifts but the group has so far managed to maintain a united front.

What life under the Taliban is like depends on who you ask. Many Afghans who live in districts that were for years the battleground between the Taliban and the Afghan Army would tell you they can finally sleep at night.

Heavy fighting, ambushes, bombings and night raids have ceased. But there is also another ugly reality - hunger and poverty. It's not like everyone had a job before the Taliban but now even the ones who had are struggling to feed their families.

And of course, life for women and girls in many areas has changed enormously.

Lucy Manning
BBC News Special Correspondent

When the UK launched its resettlement scheme for Afghans last year, it offered safety but not stability.

There are nearly 10,000 still in hotels. More than £1m a day is being spent on rooms.

Unlike Ukrainian refugees, they have no official sponsors to help integrate them into communities. And also unlike Ukrainians, they can't bring over other family members.

Abdul Wali Shelgari has been living with his six children in a hotel in West Sussex.

The children go to school but, each day, return to their temporary accommodation. It's not how they envisaged family life.

"I feel hopeless," the businessman says.

"A hotel is not for long-term living. They say that it might be solved within one month or two months. But it's nearly one year."

The hotel serve the family Indian food which, he says, is more spicy than Afghan food and difficult for the children to eat. And he says many people are distressed that this situation has continued for so long.

Read more of Lucy’s reporting here.

Jonathan Beale
BBC defence correspondent

More than 6,000 Afghans and their families who worked with the UK military are still stranded in Afghanistan.

A further 1150 – who are eligible to come to the UK under the Ministry of Defence’s relocation scheme, ARAP - are waiting in neighbouring Pakistan.

In total, 10,300 Afghans have entered the UK under the ARAP scheme - though thousands of those remain in hotel accommodation.

The government says it’s been able to fly out between 400-500 eligible Afghans and their families every month since the UK’s withdrawal last year.

Most have made their way to the UK via Pakistan with the MOD putting on 2 RAF Voyager flights each month.

The 6,200 who are eligible to come to the UK under the ARAP scheme, but who have not yet been able to get out, include 1,200 Afghans who worked for and with British forces and their families.

Officials say the Taliban have shown intent to try to stop some of those leaving, but the UK says its working hard to help relocate them – pointing to their success in flying out several thousand since leaving.

The government says that more than 21,000 Afghan refugees have been resettled in the UK.

Most came as part of Operation Pitting, which was the British military operation starting on 13 August 2021 to evacuate British nationals and Afghans from Kabul.

• About 2,000 came before Operation Pitting
• 15,000 were involved with Operation Pitting
• 5,000 have arrived since then.

They have been resettled under several schemes and we do not have breakdowns of how many were involved with each scheme.

The Home Office said another 1,400 former staff and their families had already been relocated since 2013 under the earlier Ex-Gratia scheme, external.

Find out how many Afghans applied to be evacuated and how the resettlement schemes work here.

A photo showing 823 Afghan citizens - including 183 children - crammed into a US Air Force plane on 15 August was one of the defining images of the fall of Kabul.

The number was a record carried by the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III - the four-engined transport plane that was at the centre of the evacuation from Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Image source, Reuters

It came amid days of chaos at the airport, as Afghans tried desperately to escape as the Taliban returned to power.

Images showed hundreds of people running alongside a US air force plane as it moved down a runway. Some people were seen clinging to its side.

Local media reports later said that at least two people fell to their deaths after it took off. The US air force also confirmed that human remains were found in the landing gear of an aircraft after it arrived in Qatar.

Among the dead was footballer Zaki Anwari, 19, who had played for Afghanistan's national youth team.

A British Army soldier says he is “incredibly proud” to have been part of the operation to evacuate British nationals and eligible Afghans from Afghanistan last year.

Captain Jamie Robson from the 2 Para Battle Group says the biggest challenge was balancing the situation as a humanitarian and security operation.

He says troops needed to get thousands of families to safety in light of the threat posed by the Taliban and Islamic State group in Kabul.

And one year on, Robson says that while the evacuation may now have faded from many people’s memories, it’s important to focus on the positives and the progress still being made.

“I know there's still a huge amount of work that's being done by a whole range of organisations by governmental organisations, charities etc who are continuing to try and get people to safety,” he tells BBC Breakfast.

He adds that while some stories coming out of Afghanistan today, particularly from women and girls, are very hard to hear, he says he’s proud that more than 15,000 people were evacuated over a two-week period this time last year.

The European Union said it was "particularly concerned" about worsening conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan after the country's ruling Taliban violently broke up a women's rally at the weekend.

On Saturday, Taliban fighters fired in the air after women took part what was called a "bread, work and freedom" march in Kabul.

It’s reported some women were chased into nearby shops and hit with rifle butts. The violence underscored the Taliban's increasing restrictions, especially on women, since they seized back control of Afghanistan a year ago.

In a statement, the office of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said: "The EU is particularly concerned by the fate of Afghan women and girls who have seen their freedoms, rights and access to basic services such as education being systematically denied”.

It said Afghanistan must adhere to the international treaties, “including by upholding and protecting economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, and allow for full, equal and meaningful representation and participation of all Afghans in the governing of the country".