The Taliban are taking steps to halt Afghanistan's opium trade even as the country's economy crumbles. It is unclear how the Taliban government plans to replace this illicit source of income for millions of farmers.

A group of children was playing in a field in Herat when two bombs went off. In a separate incident in southern Afghanistan, at least five children were killed when they found an unexploded shell.

Islamabad has issued a warning to Afghanistan's Taliban leadership, accusing it of giving shelter to militants. In turn, the Taliban claim Pakistani bombings recently killed dozens of civilians on Afghan soil.

Police say scores were injured when a bomb ripped through a mosque in Kunduz during Friday prayers. The attack came as an "Islamic State" affiliate claimed responsibility for several earlier bomb attacks.

The hard-line Islamist group has told Afghan women to cover their faces in public — the latest backslide on promises to retain women's rights after the Taliban seized power last August.

The Taliban have further curbed women's rights with their latest veil compulsion decree. Afghanistan's civil society faces an uphill task to challenge the group without adequate support from the international community.

The "Maghreb-Orient des livres" book festival takes place in Paris this weekend, focusing on literature from north Africa and the Middle East. One of those taking part is Jérémie Dres, the author of the graphic novel "The day I met bin Laden". It features the story of two young French men who travelled from France to Afghanistan in the spring of 2001, just months before the 9/11 terror attacks. The pair then found themselves trapped in Afghanistan and were later sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The author joined us for Perspective to tell us more.

Bombs and weapons used in Afghanistan by militants and US forces are making their way into India-administered Kashmir, raising fears that they could bolster an Islamist insurgency in the area.

The Taliban has made face veils mandatory for all Afghan women appearing in public, including those on television. This edict was ignored by presenters on Saturday, but they relented a day later.

Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan last year, international aid for the country has dried up. The pandemic and the ongoing food crisis have complicated an already dire economic situation. Unicef says that as more families are pushed deeper into poverty, they are forced to make desperate choices, such as putting children to work and marrying girls off at a young age. Our France 2 colleagues report.

The ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims suffer severe persecution in Myanmar. Following a deadly crackdown by the Burmese army in 2017, some 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they were settled in the southern town of Cox’s Bazar. Five years on, the town is home to the world’s largest and most dangerous refugee camp, with frequent floods, fires and gang wars. In December 2020, the Bangladeshi government decided to relocate some of the Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. Our reporters Alban Alvarez and Mathilde Cusin managed to gain access to it.

Afghanistan is heading back to the pre-2001 dark days of the Taliban, and Western powers were naive if they ever thought this wouldn't be the case. That's the view of Heather Barr, associate women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. As women are told to cover their faces in public again and female television presenters are told to do the same, she spoke to us on Perspective about the how the Taliban are rolling back women's rights and what, if anything, the West can do about it. "Life has become a prison for most women and girls," she told us.