The United Nations last month described Afghanistan as a graveyard for human rights that enforces gender apartheid using torture and corporal punishment. Women and girls aged over 11 are excluded from education and banned from most forms of paid employment.
The new powers would allow the UK government to label state-backed groups as terrorist organisations, creating new criminal offences for people who support or promote groups formally listed as state-supported threats.
The closure of the international humanitarian law cell follows a review by Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office dismissed last week by the prime minister over the Peter Mandelson scandal.
"The problem isn't that the government is trying to trip people up (it isn't), but that inconsistent information surfaced by the AI overview feels that way to users. That perception alone can undermine confidence in government services."
