Shapoor Saber is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan.
Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban has changed the names of streets, universities, airports, and even a city, often with Arabic ones. The move is an "ultimate act of victory," one analyst told RFE/RL.
The Taliban is intensifying a ban on music. In the western city of Herat, residents say that members of the Taliban's morality police have searched cars and confiscated MP3 players and USBs containing music. Others say the militants are seizing musical instruments, which they then burn publicly.
The son of a respected scholar of ancient Islamic works who was denied Iranian citizenship for a half century set himself alight to protest the plight of his father and other Afghans living there.
Iranian border guards have been accused of torturing and then forcing a group of Afghan migrants to jump into a river, where some of them reportedly drowned.
Afghanistan has so far reported seven confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. But the war-torn country is bracing for more as thousands of Afghans return home from Iran each day.
Some Afghans impoverished by a devastating drought face a life-or-death decision: either sell a child, or let the whole family starve.
