标签： Asia

On August 4, a routine commercial flight from Phuket to New Delhi operated by Air India took an unexpected turn when the Airbus A320 suddenly dropped around 300 feet (91 meters) in altitude mid-flight. The sudden plunge left 13 passengers and four crew members injured, though the aircraft ultimately landed safely at its destination with all 137 passengers and eight crew members on board. What began as a standard incident investigation quickly erupted into a national discussion across India about aviation safety protocols and the complexities of drug testing for pilots, after unconfirmed media reports claimed the flight’s captain tested positive for cannabis in a follow-up laboratory analysis.

India’s aviation ministry confirmed that both pilots on board completed mandatory post-incident screening for psychoactive substances following the landing. The initial test result for the captain triggered the need for additional confirmatory testing, and both pilots have been suspended from active flight duties pending the outcome of the full investigation. Multiple outlets have cited anonymous sources claiming the confirmatory test returned a positive result for marijuana, but neither Air India nor Indian aviation regulators have issued an official confirmation of this finding to date.

Most critically, no official link has been drawn between the alleged positive test result and the sudden altitude loss that sparked the incident. Investigators are conducting a broad review of all contributing factors, including technical aircraft performance, operational protocols, medical conditions and human performance variables, leaving the root cause of the plunge undetermined.

While the public has focused immediately on whether cannabis use caused the incident, aviation researchers and toxicology experts point to a much more nuanced question that does not have a clear answer: what can a positive cannabis test actually reveal about a pilot’s level of impairment at the time the incident occurred, hours before the test was administered?

Decades of small-scale research on cannabis and pilot performance has established that the drug can interfere with the core skills required for safe flight. In a 1976 simulator study, 10 pilots who consumed a moderate dose of cannabis showed measurable performance declines in altitude control, heading maintenance and radio navigation, with impairment lasting at least two hours and fading within four to six hours. Follow-up research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s found even more concerning results: pilots tested on flight simulators 24 hours after cannabis consumption still showed significant performance declines in critical functions including aircraft control, landing accuracy and approach deviation. Most alarmingly, the vast majority of participating pilots had no awareness that their performance had been compromised.

A 2000s review conducted by aviation medicine specialist David Newman for Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau echoed these conclusions, noting that cannabis affects cognition, behavior and psychomotor function in a dose-dependent relationship, with complex, high-concentration tasks such as commercial flight particularly vulnerable to impairment. The review also confirmed evidence of residual performance effects that can last up to 24 hours after consumption.

But as cannabis use has become more widespread globally and product potency has increased significantly in recent decades, the science linking test results to real-time impairment has grown far more complicated. A 2022 randomized clinical trial led by researcher Thomas Marcotte at the University of California San Diego tested 191 regular cannabis users on simulated driving tasks. The study found that while users who smoked THC showed initial performance declines, impairment could not be predicted by the THC content of the product, the user’s prior experience with cannabis, or even blood THC concentration. By roughly four and a half hours after consumption, performance for most test participants was comparable to that of participants who did not receive active THC.

This finding upends simplistic assumptions about positive cannabis tests, experts say. A positive test only confirms that THC or its metabolites are present in the body, not when the cannabis was consumed or whether the person was impaired at the time of the incident. The relationship between test results and impairment varies widely based on dose, method of consumption, frequency of use and individual biological differences, creating a challenge that regulators do not face with alcohol.

“Unlike with alcohol where there’s a more robust relationship between alcohol concentrations in blood and impairment, the association is much more complex with THC. THC rapidly leaves the bloodstream after smoking, and there is limited to no correlation between blood THC concentrations and impairment,” Marcotte explained. “In people who use at least occasionally, THC can be detectable in blood for days and sometimes weeks after last use, particularly in more frequent users. This is long after any acute impairment has subsided.”

Impairment timelines also vary by consumption method: after smoking cannabis, acute impairment typically lasts between three and five hours, while impairment from edible cannabis products lasts longer, generally between six and eight hours. For edible consumption, the metabolite 11-OH-THC is often more closely tied to cognitive impairment than THC itself, which may be present at low detectable concentrations.

To date, no widely accepted standardized test exists that can definitively confirm whether a person is currently impaired by cannabis to the point that they are unfit to fly. Regulators have responded to this uncertainty with a range of policy approaches. Canada, which legalized recreational cannabis in 2018, implemented a strict rule requiring all flight crew and air traffic controllers to abstain from cannabis for a minimum of 28 days before beginning duty, with individual airlines permitted to enact even stricter rules. The policy is explicitly designed to account for the ongoing uncertainties around impairment detection.

A 2026 study from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) underscores the risk of overinterpreting positive tests. The NTSB analyzed pilots killed in U.S. civil aviation accidents between 2018 and 2022, finding that 52.8% had at least one drug detected in their system, with THC driving most of the increase in positive illicit drug results. However, the NTSB emphasized that the study only measured drug presence, not impairment at the time of the crash.

Past accident investigations have reflected this nuance. In a 2011 small plane crash in Canada, investigators concluded that 50.1 ng/ml of THC in the pilot’s blood was sufficient to cause cognitive impairment that contributed to the crash. By contrast, after a 2017 helicopter crash in New Zealand, THC was detected in the pilot’s blood from consumption two days prior, but forensic experts ruled he was almost certainly not impaired at the time of the accident, and investigators concluded cannabis did not contribute to the crash.

The core takeaway from these cases is that a positive cannabis test does not inherently prove the drug caused an incident, nor is it meaningless. Its significance depends on concentration, timing of consumption, context of use and supporting evidence, experts say.

In the Air India case, this means investigators need to answer far more than whether the captain’s confirmatory test was positive. They will need to confirm what type of sample was tested, whether the test detected THC itself or a breakdown metabolite, what concentration of the substance was present, and what that reveals about when the cannabis was consumed.

In response to the public controversy sparked by the reports, Air India has announced it will immediately implement mandatory drug testing for all of its pilots, expanding on existing regulations that only require random testing of at least 10% of pilots annually. Toxicology experts note that even with expanded testing, common testing methods using urine, blood or saliva can only confirm exposure to THC, not reliably pin down the timing of use or confirm impairment at the time of the flight hours earlier. While saliva testing is more closely linked to recent use, it can still detect THC up to a day or more after consumption.

For investigators, the question is not a simple yes or no on whether the pilot used cannabis. Three distinct questions need to be answered: was cannabis consumed, was the pilot impaired during the flight, and did that impairment contribute to the sudden altitude drop? While the first question may be answered soon, the second and third will require far more rigorous analysis to resolve.

Early Saturday morning, a powerful 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake shook coastal regions of Indonesia’s Flores island, leaving at least two people dead, two others injured, and a swath of collapsed infrastructure across the seismically active archipelago. As of the latest official updates, emergency response teams are still conducting preliminary damage assessments across the most hard-hit areas.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake striking at 5:58 a.m. local time, with a relatively shallow depth of just 10 kilometers. Its epicenter was placed roughly 68 kilometers (42 miles) north-northwest of Ende, a major city in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province. The initial seismic event was followed by multiple smaller aftershocks that complicated immediate response efforts.

Immediately after the quake was detected, Indonesian disaster authorities issued a broad tsunami warning covering coastal areas of four provinces: East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi. The warning urged all coastal residents to evacuate to higher ground and avoid low-lying areas including beaches and riverbanks. However, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency later canceled the alert after continuous monitoring confirmed no significant sea level shifts that would threaten coastal communities, easing widespread public panic.

Local eyewitness accounts paint a picture of chaotic panic as the quake hit. Yohanna Embu, a resident of Sikka regency in East Nusa Tenggara, told reporters that strong shaking damaged dozens of structures across the area, including a total collapse of the waiting room at Maumere’s port terminal. Panicked residents flooded roads heading for higher ground immediately after the shaking began.

At St. Peter Major Seminary, locally known as Ritapiret Seminary, dozens of students were gathered for morning Mass when the roof of the campus assembly hall caved in. Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga, the seminary’s rector, said students and on-site nuns fled the collapsing structure in immediate panic. At least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from the second floor of a damaged campus building to escape.

As a safety precaution, multiple hospitals across the affected region evacuated all patients from their main buildings. Local television footage showed medical staff moving critical equipment including patient beds, IV stands and oxygen cylinders outside, where they set up temporary triage and treatment areas to continue care amid the risk of aftershocks damaging weakened structures.

Indonesia’s position along the Pacific Basin’s “Ring of Fire” – a vast network of active volcanoes and tectonic fault lines – leaves the 17,000-island archipelago chronically prone to major seismic and volcanic events. This region of Flores is no exception: a devastating 1992 earthquake in the same area triggered a tsunami that killed an estimated 2,500 people, leaving a lasting memory of seismic risk among local communities.

Associated Press journalists Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan contributed reporting from Jakarta for this story.

On a sweltering Thursday morning in mid-August 2026, central London’s streets hit an unprecedented 30 degrees Celsius by 10 a.m., marking what climate officials confirm will be the United Kingdom’s hottest summer ever recorded. Just steps from Oxford Street’s iconic Selfridges department store, discarded newspapers carry headlines of spreading wildfires across the British countryside, while a unhoused man calls out for spare change under the unforgiving sun. Inside the cool, air-conditioned building, a Saudi Arabian coffee stand promotes the kingdom, a nod to the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s 40 percent controlling stake in the century-old luxury retailer.

It was here just one week earlier that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, faced a rare public confrontation during a walk through nearby North Audley Street. A Sudanese protester, shouting across the road at the delegation, called out “UAE is killing people in my country, stop killing my people” over the UAE’s widely reported involvement in Sudan’s ongoing civil conflict. A member of the Sheikh’s large entourage responded by hurling a racial slur at the protester, calling him a “Black bitch”.

As of mid-August, Sheikh Mohammed has remained in London, where he has held closed-door meetings with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and been photographed visiting the upscale west London neighborhood of Chelsea. For Gulf’s wealthiest citizens, however, London’s Mayfair district—home to North Audley Street, one of the most expensive addresses in the world, lined with Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury supercar showrooms and five-star hotels—has long functioned as a home away from home.

For Gulf visitors, the annual August pilgrimage to central London blends business, leisure, and familiarity, shaped by decades of historical and financial ties between Gulf states and the UK. Inside Selfridges, 15-year-old Khaled and his 53-year-old uncle Mohammed, visiting from Dubai, framed their regular trip as a natural extension of Gulf investments in the UK. “We come to London because we have a lot of investments here and we like to help them out,” Khaled told Middle East Eye, when asked about the confrontation with Sheikh Mohammed. Dismissing the Sudanese protester as “ignorant,” he added, “We are helping Sudan. We are sending humanitarian aid. It was disrespectful.”

His uncle, who grew up in Dubai before the oil boom transformed the emirate into a global luxury hub, echoed the sentiment. “Yes, you can have freedom of speech, but you can’t say that to a leader; it’s not respectful,” he said, noting that today’s Emirates offer instant access to any service imaginable: “you can get whatever you want within minutes. Someone will bring it to you. You don’t even have to get up.”

The pair are part of a decades-long pattern of Gulf leadership and elite families sending young people to the UK for education, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and many other senior Gulf leaders all having attended British universities or received military training in the country. Khaled, who plans to enroll at a London university, says he prefers the British capital’s relatively cool summer temperatures to Dubai’s habitual 40-degree August heat, where even daily life is confined to air-conditioned spaces. Like many young Gulf visitors, he keeps his time in London limited almost exclusively to the capital’s most affluent central neighborhoods, avoiding working-class and migrant-heavy outer areas. “We don’t go to the areas where there are roadmen and lots of migrants and stabbings,” he explained, pulling up a phone map marked with what he calls “prime khaleeji hangouts”—all clustered within Mayfair, including high-end restaurants Cipriani, Ivy Asia, Sexy Fish, Supernova and Nobu.

Khaled’s wariness of London outside its elite core is shared by many other young Gulf visitors. A Saudi woman, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled the reaction of a 15-year-old Saudi student attending a residential summer school in the capital: the teen insists on hiring a personal bodyguard, claiming “people here are so poor they will try to stab me for my Hermes” bag. Even for middle-class Gulf families, London’s central luxury districts function as a self-contained enclave where visitors can easily encounter fellow Gulf citizens. Two teenage sisters from Bahrain, shopping in Selfridges, said they had unexpectedly run into multiple school friends during their trip, a common occurrence in Mayfair. “When we go to Harrods we see people from the Gulf, we see friends and family… It’s not hot, it’s nothing compared to back home where we spend all the time with the AC on,” the 17-year-old sister explained. Still, some aspects of London life remain unfamiliar: “We don’t really have or use public transport in Bahrain. The underground here is very crowded and chaotic. The architecture is different here too.”

Across North Audley Street from Selfridges, at the historic Marlborough pub, temperatures continue to climb through the afternoon. Apart from a small group of regulars drinking pints, the street is dominated by Gulf visitors. Two Kuwaiti fashion and lifestyle influencers, Sarra and Elaf, pose for photos against the street’s Georgian townhouse facades, as a Bugatti supercar roars past. “We mainly spend our time here in Mayfair,” Sarra said. “We come for the weather, the people, the shopping. In our country we can’t find a lot of the brands you have here… For us, it’s good weather. We also come in November because we love the cold, and we love the Christmas vibes.”

For local Mayfair businesses, the annual August influx of wealthy Gulf visitors is not just a seasonal trend—it is the backbone of their annual revenue. At Grays Antique Market, a historic covered market housing more than 80 independent luxury dealers, one senior jeweller says he never takes holiday in August, relying on Gulf shoppers to make his year. “They are an integral part of the business, especially in August; I can’t go away now,” he explained, noting that members of the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE are all regular customers. “Mayfair is the mecca of the Arab world in a way. They love fine things. The men come here to buy silver jewellery, the women come here because they know they can get brands like Cartier, Tiffany and Bulgari at a steep discount.” He added that young Gulf shoppers regularly spend four-figure sums on small luxury items, and one customer recently purchased an £18,500 piece without hesitation—half the price she would have paid back home.

The jeweller also noted a dramatic shift in the source of luxury capital in London over the past four years. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the city was widely nicknamed “Londongrad” for the massive flow of Russian oligarch money into its luxury sector. “I used to deal with a lot of Russians, but they’ve all left like rats from a sinking ship,” he said. “The Russians still here don’t have any money.” Today, that void has been filled by capital from Gulf states, which now own major London landmarks including Selfridges and Harrods, the rival Knightsbridge department store purchased by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2010.

At the heart of Mayfair sits Grosvenor Square, which housed the United States’ diplomatic mission to the UK from 1785 until 2018. The former embassy building has since been converted into a luxury hotel, home to the Qatari-owned Qinwan Cafe, another popular gathering spot for Gulf visitors, where three small chicken sandwiches sell for £20 and authentic Palestinian dates—familiar to Gulf visitors—are on offer. On a recent afternoon, women in abayas and men in designer polo shirts sat at outdoor tables, scrolling through social media and posting photos of their coffee to Instagram.

For London’s working-class residents, however, Mayfair’s wealth is a distant, often stark contrast to their own economic struggles. Sitting in his delivery van outside the square, Hash, a delivery driver from south London, waited for his next job amid the 30-degree heat. “Mayfair means money,” he said, reflecting on how his own earnings have fallen over the past six years. “There was a time six years ago, when he could make £500 a day driving a delivery to Scotland and back. Now he says he is lucky to earn more than £100 a day.”

A short walk away, long queues of Gulf tourists wait outside Marchesi, the historic 19th-century patisserie, while a Ferrari dealership glints in the midday sun on Berkeley Square. Deep underground at Green Park Underground station, temperatures climb close to 40 degrees Celsius, as station announcements warn passengers of partial line closures and severe delays across the London Underground network—an inconvenience most Gulf visitors never encounter, confined as they are to the air-conditioned comfort of Mayfair’s luxury spaces.

For six straight days, three Palestinian families have been trapped under a settler siege in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra, near Nablus, in a standoff that has exposed alarming gaps between Israeli military announcements and on-the-ground action, even as settler violence across the occupied territories surges to record levels.

The blockade began last Sunday, when a group of Israeli settlers surrounded three residential properties on Qusra’s Ras al-Ain hilltop, erecting tents directly outside the homes in what local residents describe as a deliberate campaign to seize Palestinian-owned land by forcing the families to abandon their properties. Settlers quickly cut off access to running water and electricity for the besieged homes, leaving children and adults trapped inside without reliable access to basic supplies including food and critical medicine.

When the trapped families called on the Israeli army for intervention, arriving troops were captured on online footage socializing with the settlers—drinking and praying alongside them—rather than executing orders to remove the interlopers. After the incident gained widespread international attention, the Israeli military officially announced it had launched an operation to evict the settlers and designated Qusra a closed military zone. To date, however, no settlers have been removed from the area, and no arrests have been issued in connection with the illegal blockade.

Far from targeting the settlers, Israeli forces responded by deploying more than 1,000 troops to Qusra, where they forcibly evicted approximately 20 Palestinian families from their homes and seized eight residential properties to convert into military outposts. Village council head Abdul-Azim Wadi told reporters that military liaison officials informed local leaders the army intended to seize 16 homes, giving residents only immediate eviction orders with no explanation for the seizure. When soldiers later withdrew from some of the seized properties, returning residents found widespread damage: one home had $1,500 stolen and all furniture destroyed, while others had personal property looted. Multiple properties were left with graffiti reading “We will return” scrawled on interior walls by troops.

Qusay Abu Rida, who has been sheltering in one of the three besieged homes to guard the property on behalf of his brother (a U.S. resident who built the home in 2023), said settlers have targeted the land for months. Previous attacks have seen settlers break through the home’s gate, destroy security cameras, and steal outdoor belongings, forcing Abu Rida and his family to move into the property four months ago to defend it from seizure. “They would constantly come into the yard, shouting and vandalising things. Then, on Sunday, they came and erected a tent directly in front of the house, cutting off our electricity and water,” Abu Rida explained to Middle East Eye.

Abu Rida added that Israeli forces have not only failed to remove the settlers, but have actively increased pressure on the trapped families. Soldiers forced Abu Rida and his neighbors out of two homes, confining them to a single smaller property, cut off all remaining access to essential supplies, and banned residents from leaving even to retrieve necessities from their abandoned homes. Though soldiers eventually withdrew from Abu Rida’s home after causing internal damage, and dismantled one settler tent, they also destroyed all security camera footage documenting the siege. Settlers quickly re-erected their tents, restoring the blockade.

Abu Rida noted the pattern of harassment mirrors an incident in nearby Jalud just one month prior, where repeated settler attacks backed by Israeli military inaction forced the al-Tubasi family to abandon their home, which settlers subsequently seized.

Local Qusra activist Hani Odeh described the ongoing crisis as “heartbreaking”, saying settlers and soldiers take turns pressuring Palestinian residents to abandon their land. Three out of four of the village’s expansion zones have already been seized by Israeli forces and settlers, leaving northern Qusra’s Ras al-Ain area as the only space remaining for the village to grow. Odeh explained that settlers have targeted Ras al-Ain for its strategic position overlooking five villages south of Nablus, despite the area being classified as Area B under the 1995 Oslo Accords—an administrative designation that puts the zone under Palestinian civil control, with only security responsibilities shared with Israel. Until recently, the nearest Israeli settlement activity was located 15 kilometers away.

According to Odeh, the encroachment began quietly months ago, when a single settler started grazing livestock in the area. More settlers gradually joined, launching repeated attacks on Palestinian homes to drive residents out. Attempts to deliver aid to the trapped families have been repeatedly blocked by Israeli forces: even Israeli activists who attempted to bring food last Friday were turned away, and an ambulance carrying supplies was also stopped and turned back at checkpoints. “This whole situation is worrying all the residents of Qusra. We don’t know where the settlers will go next after attacking homes in an area classified as Area B. The soldiers do not have the authority to remove the settlers; they only oppress us,” Odeh said.

The ongoing siege in Qusra comes amid a documented sharp spike in deadly settler violence across the occupied West Bank. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that as of July 20, 2026, it has recorded more than 1,330 settler attacks that caused casualties or property damage across 250 Palestinian communities since the start of the year—an average of more than six attacks per day. So far in 2026, settler violence has killed at least 18 Palestinians, wounded 880 more, and displaced more than 2,300 people from their homes.

Currently, approximately 700,000 Israeli settlers reside in roughly 300 settlements and outposts across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice has repeatedly ruled that all Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory violate international law. In recent years, despite the Oslo Accords’ administrative divisions, settlers have increasingly expanded their illegal activity into Area B, a zone previously not targeted for large-scale settlement encroachment.

It has been five full years since the Taliban reclaimed full control of Afghanistan, ending two decades of governance backed by a U.S.-led international military coalition. For the nation’s 22 million women and girls, life under the hard-line Islamist regime has transformed into something barely recognizable from the freedom many knew before 2021, according to first-hand testimonies collected exclusively by the BBC, one of the only international news outlets able to maintain consistent access to the country. The BBC held interviews with women across diverse regions, from bustling Kabul city neighborhoods to isolated rural villages, most of whom requested anonymity to avoid violent retaliation from Taliban authorities.

Across every sphere of daily life, systemic restrictions have dismantled the progress Afghan women made in 20 years of post-Taliban rule. Afghanistan remains the only country on Earth that enforces a total official ban on girls accessing secondary and higher education. Beyond barring girls over 12 from classroom learning, the regime has imposed mandatory male chaperone requirements for all travel outside the home, and enacted legislation that effectively legitimizes child marriage. Widespread bans on professional employment have left just 7% of Afghan women in the workforce, per United Nations data.

In interviews with BBC Afghan, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi pushed back against descriptions of total restriction for women. Citing Unicef data that 2.6 million Afghan girls are barred from education beyond the sixth grade, Muttaqi argued that claims of a total ban are overstated. “Right now, three million girls are going to schools and madrassas,” he said, adding that only “one small part (of their affairs) is restricted until further notice.” He also claimed the number of female entrepreneurs in the country has grown from 30,000 in 2020–2021 to 120,000 today, asserting that women still work as teachers, civil servants, and business leaders with no total ban on public engagement.

But the women who shared their stories describe devastating, life-altering impacts of the regime’s policies. For Shakiba, a young woman who completed her secondary education through secret online classes, the day the Taliban seized Kabul remains the worst moment of her life. “Every year when this date comes I feel as if an old wound opens again and a new feeling of defeat fills my heart,” she said. Her lifelong dream of becoming a pilot, a goal she nurtured for years imagining herself flying freely across the sky, now feels entirely out of reach.

Zuhal, a former news anchor, lost the job that formed her core identity after Taliban employment bans forced her out of newsroom. “The days when I used to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock and get ready to go to work have now become days when I wake up in the morning knowing that I have to spend the whole day at home,” she shared. Kabul resident Ela explained that widespread poverty has forced most women to set aside their dreams entirely. “People are so overwhelmed by poverty and daily hardships that many have been forced to put their education, dreams, and hopes for the future aside,” she said. “Today, survival has become the priority, and many of us no longer have the time or energy to think about the future.”

Beyond lost opportunity, many women have faced brutal public punishment for violating the regime’s strict social codes. Shaima was publicly flogged 50 times after being accused of collaborating with foreign nationals and speaking to unrelated men, a punishment that left permanent physical scars and deep psychological trauma for her entire family. “They hit me so hard that my head would bend toward the ground,” she recalled, noting that her eldest daughter now wakes screaming from nightmares nearly every night fearing her mother will be killed. Manizha, who was lashed 39 times and jailed after Taliban authorities discovered her planned marriage to a man, said the experience left her suicidal and socially ostracized. “I had become a source of shame for my family and friends… I could no longer think about marriage,” she said.

Restrictions on healthcare have also created a public health crisis, pushing Afghanistan’s maternal mortality rate to one of the highest globally. Rules barring male doctors from treating female patients have left millions of women without access to life-saving care. Marzia, a midwife working in a remote clinic, recounted the death of a 45-year-old mother of six who could not access timely treatment after traveling from a distant district. “We managed to save the baby, but now I keep thinking about the baby’s future and the future of her six other children,” she said. “What will happen to them without their mother? We were all heartbroken.” For Maryam, who is currently expecting a daughter, the lack of access to female healthcare and education creates constant fear for her child’s future. “If things continue like this, what will happen to her? She will not even have the chance to finish school like I did, let alone go to university,” she said. “If one day she gets married, becomes pregnant and needs a female doctor during childbirth, what if there isn’t one? This is a matter of life and death.”

Despite the widespread hardship and oppression, many Afghan women still hold onto hope and continue to carve out spaces for themselves and other women. Noori, a 24-year-old who was unable to finish her law and political science degree after the takeover, refused to abandon her goal of advocating for women’s rights. She took a job at a local jam-making company to achieve financial independence, and three years later has launched her own business that currently employs 10 other women, creating much-needed economic opportunity for those barred from formal work. “I did not lose hope,” she said. “I want them to become independent, strong, and successful women like me and have a better future.” Thirteen-year-old Asma, who dreams of becoming a doctor, says she remains certain her dream will come true one day. “One day, everything will change… but we must continue with patience, and we will not lose hope,” she said.

Many of the women who spoke to the BBC issued a plea to the global community: do not remain silent about their plight. Ela, a dental assistant, urged international leaders and activists to keep the focus on Afghanistan and stand in solidarity with Afghan women. “Speak up for Afghan women, support their right to education and work,” she said. “Keep the world’s attention on their situation. We need solidarity, not silence.”