Solar year 1400 was a painful year for Afghans who faced many challenges and dealt with many changes.

The first five months of 1400 were scarred by serious insecurity while the level of corruption reached its peak. Former president Ashraf Ghani was in that time named the world’s most corrupt leader.

With plummeting government revenue, Afghanistan was also named the saddest country in the world on the global happiness index.

Peace talks between an Afghan delegation of 21 members and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) got underway in spring but did not amount to much.

Despite spending months in Doha for talks, all negotiations ground to a halt within a few weeks and the ongoing war escalated – leaving thousands of families displaced.

On August 15, Ghani fled the country, sparking a chaotic evacuation of foreign troops, foreign diplomats, foreign nationals and thousands of Afghans.

The IEA immediately took control of a country whose economy was in freefall.

All education institutions were closed at the time, due to COVID-19, while hospitals ran short of supplies, food became scarce and hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost.

These major changes had a direct impact on the Afghan people, of which at least 23 million now live below the poverty line and face severe food insecurity, the UN has stated.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also warned that the country’s health system is collapsing. Most hospitals treating COVID-19 patients in the country have closed while medical supplies and medicine have become extremely scarce.

One sector that paid an extremely high price through all the changes in 1400 was the media.

Following developments in the country, 186 media outlets out of a total of 476 closed their doors in 1400, leaving thousands of workers without jobs.

While the IEA is committed to improving the situation in the country, officials have warned that 1401 will continue to mete out challenges. They have said poverty levels could worsen and that the unemployment rate could increase.

However, while they put a stop to the education of girls above Grade 7, officials have indicated that this will change in the coming year and that all girls will be allowed to return to school and women will be allowed to work.