Since the takeover around two years ago in August 2021, the Taleban have sought to overhaul and reinvent Afghanistan’s higher education. They have put their affiliates in charge at the ministry and many public universities, created new bodies to promote religious institutions and incorporate them into the higher education system and reshaped curricula with a focus on religious studies. They have undertaken to monitor conduct and imposed strict rules on appearance and behaviour on both male and female students, before banning women from higher education altogether in December 2022. This report, based on research by guest author Said Reza Kazemi* details this steady process of Talebanisation, theocratisation and instrumentalisation, fuelled by the Taleban concept of the fekri jagra, or ‘war of thoughts’, and explores its wide-ranging impact on students, lecturers and staff. It concludes that the Taleban-defined university, where reorientation is enforced from the top and unquestioning obedience is required, has already emerged, but questions about its (near) future are far from settled.