Kabul, Afghanistan - Photo: Suliman Sallehi
Afghanistan - Global Development
AF
The US ends all aid to Afghanistan as Pakistan border war and mass deportations deepen a historic humanitarian crisis
Afghanistan entered 2025-26 already carrying the weight of two decades of failed development promises. It leaves this period facing something worse: a total US aid cutoff, a deadly earthquake, open war along its border with Pakistan, and the forced return of nearly five million Afghans from neighbouring countries within a single year. This article covers aid, tax, climate, and trade, the same four threads RYB tracks across every country page, against a humanitarian backdrop few countries on this list can match.
Two Decades of Aid, and a 2021 Collapse
Afghanistan received over $150 billion in international aid since 2001, yet tangible progress remained limited: life expectancy stayed among the world’s lowest, and nearly 60% of adults could not read or write even before the Taliban’s return. Foreign assistance peaked near 100% of GDP in some years, creating urban economic bubbles while rural areas saw minimal improvement, a distortion exposed brutally when international forces withdrew in 2021 and GDP contracted an estimated 30-40% within months.
Aid: From Reduced to Zero
Whatever aid relationship survived the 2021 transition ended entirely in 2025. As of mid-2025, the Trump administration had terminated every remaining US foreign assistance award operating inside Afghanistan, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR itself was then shut down in January 2026, ending 17 years of independent oversight of US spending in the country. Roughly $700 million in assistance vanished overnight.
The humanitarian toll is difficult to overstate. OCHA figures put 22 to 23 million Afghans, more than half the population, in need of humanitarian assistance through 2025 and 2026. Health, nutrition, and food assistance programmes have all contracted under the funding gap, and access constraints from ongoing conflict compound the shortfall further. This is not a reduction from an already-thin baseline; it is the near-total withdrawal of the country’s largest historical donor at the exact moment need has never been higher.
Tax: A Narrow Base, Now Even Harder to Grow
Afghanistan’s tax revenue stood at just 9-10% of GDP before 2021, among the lowest rates globally, hampered by limited government reach beyond urban centres and major highways, a narrow formal tax base concentrated in telecommunications, banking, and large importers, and administrative systems that remained largely paper-based. The Taliban administration has prioritised revenue collection since taking power, with reported gains particularly in customs receipts, though international non-recognition complicates formal financial transactions, and the broader economic contraction limits how much revenue growth is realistically achievable regardless of administrative improvement.
Climate: An Earthquake Exposes a Deeper Vulnerability
Afghanistan ranks among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries despite minimal contributions to global emissions, with forest cover down to just 2% of land area from roughly 5% in the 1970s, and inadequate infrastructure to capture and manage its own water resources. That structural vulnerability collided with acute disaster in late August and early September 2025, when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake, followed by further 5.5 and 6.2-magnitude aftershocks, struck Kunar province along the Pakistani border, killing over 2,200 people by Taliban counts and affecting an estimated 1.3 million, per the International Federation of the Red Cross.
The response exposed the same governance failures shaping every other part of Afghanistan’s crisis. Multiple international outlets documented male rescuers unable or unwilling to assist trapped women under Taliban social restrictions, with contradictory rescue tactics emerging in different areas. The earthquake’s aftermath has since become entangled with the Pakistan border conflict described below, further complicating relief delivery to already-affected communities.
Trade: A Border War That Halted Hundreds of Millions in Commerce
Long-simmering tension between Kabul and Islamabad, over Pakistan’s accusation that the Taliban shelters Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, escalated dramatically through 2025-26. Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory in October 2025 triggered the deadliest clashes since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover; a Qatar- and Turkey-brokered ceasefire collapsed by year’s end, and February 2026 attacks in Pakistan led to further airstrikes and what Pakistan’s own defence minister called “open war.”
The economic cost has been direct and severe. The border has remained closed since October 2025, disrupting hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral trade and delaying 5,500 tonnes of UN humanitarian cargo, worth roughly $25 million, including food and medical supplies. Fighting since late February 2026 alone has killed at least 75 people and displaced 115,000 more in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, layering a new crisis directly on top of communities still recovering from the Kunar earthquake.
Amid this collapse in relations with Pakistan, the Taliban has pursued diplomatic outreach elsewhere: Commerce Minister Nooruddin Azizi visited New Delhi in November 2025 to meet Indian trade officials, part of a broader pattern of the Taliban seeking economic relationships beyond its traditionally dominant Pakistani trade corridor.
Mass Deportation: Nearly Five Million People Forced Home in a Year
Perhaps no single statistic captures 2025-26’s crisis better than this: an estimated 2.9 million Afghans were returned to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2025 alone, more than half of them forcibly, many after detention and harassment in the countries expelling them. Iran alone deported roughly 1.9 million people, driven partly by disinformation campaigns falsely branding Afghans as spies for Israel. Pakistan expelled nearly 900,000 more under its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan, a process that had briefly paused pending US resettlement negotiations before resuming after Washington suspended all refugee resettlement operations in January 2025.
Analysts warn this is creating precisely the conditions extremist groups exploit. Former officials cite Islamic State-Khorasan Province actively recruiting among returnees, particularly younger arrivals facing extreme poverty, social isolation, and fears of Taliban persecution, with more than 16,000 households already displaced across five border provinces by cross-border clashes since early 2026. Humanitarian systems, already stretched by the earthquake and total aid withdrawal, now face what analysts describe as an accelerating breaking point.
The Human Development and Gender Crisis Deepens
Women’s rights restrictions continued expanding through 2025-26, including new prohibitions on women entering hospitals in Herat without a burqa and bans on books written by women in Afghan universities, layered atop existing restrictions on secondary education and most employment. Maternal mortality remains among the world’s highest, at roughly one death per 70 pregnancies, and the doctor-to-patient ratio, near 1:3,500, reflects a healthcare system operating far below basic international standards.
What Afghanistan Still Contributes
Afghan civil society, aid workers, and local organisations continue delivering assistance under conditions few humanitarian systems anywhere are designed to withstand, often at direct personal risk. Afghanistan’s substantial mineral wealth, estimated at $1-3 trillion in copper, iron, lithium, and rare earth deposits, remains a genuine long-term development asset, though security, infrastructure, and governance constraints keep it almost entirely unrealised. Regional infrastructure projects like the TAPI gas pipeline and CASA-1000 power transmission project represent potential economic integration opportunities that persist despite the current crisis, if security conditions ever allow construction to proceed.
How This Connects to the SDGs
The total collapse of US aid threatens SDG 2, zero hunger, and SDG 3, good health, directly, removing the funding base that supported food, nutrition, and health programming for a population where over half now needs humanitarian assistance. Women’s rights restrictions represent one of the starkest active reversals of SDG 5, gender equality, anywhere in the world, extending now into healthcare access itself.
The Pakistan border war and mass deportations both undermine SDG 16, peace and strong institutions, and SDG 17, global partnerships, showing how quickly regional stability can deteriorate when humanitarian and security crises compound each other. Afghanistan’s climate vulnerability, sharpened by the Kunar earthquake’s death toll and the gendered failures in its response, connects directly to SDG 13, climate action, and SDG 11, sustainable cities and communities.
Looking Forward
Afghanistan’s trajectory through the rest of 2026 depends on questions with no clear answers yet. Whether the Pakistan border conflict de-escalates through further Qatari, Turkish, or Chinese mediation, or continues toward the sustained “open war” both governments have already described, will shape humanitarian access and displacement for millions.
Whether the pace of forced deportations from Iran and Pakistan slows, or continues adding to an already overwhelmed reception system, will determine how severe the resulting instability and potential extremist recruitment become. RYB will track how Afghanistan’s total loss of US assistance plays out against continuing need, and whether any pathway toward de-escalation with Pakistan emerges. This page will be updated as new data and developments emerge.
Sources and References
- Congress.gov, “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy in Brief,” CRS Report R45122, updated March 10, 2026 — congress.gov
- Lawfare, “The Counterterrorism Challenge in Afghanistan’s Borderlands” — lawfaremedia.org
- Security Council Report, “Afghanistan, December 2025 Monthly Forecast” — securitycouncilreport.org
- U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “Afghanistan’s Earthquake is Man’s Disaster” — refugees.org
- ACAPS, “Afghanistan: conflict, displacement, and humanitarian needs” — acaps.org
- Council on Foreign Relations, Global Conflict Tracker: “War in Afghanistan” — cfr.org
- Wikipedia, “2025 Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict” — en.wikipedia.org
- European Union Agency for Asylum, “Afghanistan Country Focus: Humanitarian situation” — euaa.europa.eu
- RYB, Official Development Assistance (ODA) — redyellowblue.org/finance/oda/
Afghanistan
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوریت (Pashto)
Da Afġānistān Islāmī Jumhoryat
جمهوری اسلامی افغانستان (Dari)
Jomhūrīyyeh Eslāmīyyeh Afġānestān
Population
39,232,003 (2023 est.)
36,643,815 (2020)
34,940,837 (2018)
34,124,811 (2017)
Capital: Kabul
Internet country code: .af
Government
Official website: moi.gov.af
Ministry of Information and Culture: moic.gov.af
Background
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (prior to 15 August 2021); current country name disputed
Ahmad Shah Durrani unified the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian Empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in increased democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 communist countercoup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. Internationally supported anti-communist mujahidin rebels forced the USSR to withdraw in 1989. A series of subsequent civil wars saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, a US and Allied military action toppled the Taliban for sheltering Usama bin Laden.
A UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001 established a process for political reconstruction that included the adoption of a new constitution, a presidential election in 2004, and National Assembly elections in 2005. In 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan, and he was reelected in 2009. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai succeeded him as president in 2014 following a disputed election. The Taliban conducted an insurgency for two decades against the Afghan government and forces from the United States and other countries. In February 2020, the US and the Taliban signed an agreement that led to the withdrawal of international forces in exchange for commitments on counterterrorism and other assurances. The Taliban took over Afghanistan on 15 August 2021.
The Taliban established an all-male interim leadership structure dominated by Pashtun clerics under the leadership of Haibatullah Akhundzada. The Taliban issued numerous edicts that constrained women’s mobility, ability to study and work, and access to education beyond primary school. To date, most countries have not recognised the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, though Russia became the first to formally do so in July 2025, a diplomatic first that has not yet been matched by any Western government or by Pakistan, the neighbour with which Kabul now finds itself at open war.