Entrenched, Embattled and Defiant, the Taliban Celebrate 5 Years in Power

August 16, 2026

Elian Peltier is The Times’s Afghanistan bureau chief.

The New York Times

The Taliban have Afghanistan in a chokehold that spares no one. But threats are starting to crack their veneer of stability and control.

The black and white flags of the Taliban were flying high along the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, as the group celebrated five years in power on Saturday.

Shiny Mercedes-Benzes drove casually in front of graffiti praising the Taliban fighters’ “sacrifice,” the word painted in crimson, with depictions of drops of blood. Young Afghans chanted independence songs below posters hailing how “the carpet of democracy” had been removed for Islamic rule.

But the triumphant tone is only half the story. The Taliban may be boisterous in Kabul and have a tight grip on power, yet elsewhere they find themselves targeted and face crises both at home and abroad.

They face a conflict just short of open war with neighboring Pakistan. They’re dealing with new waves of attacks from armed groups that want to topple them. Add to that mass unemployment, international isolation and growing domestic discontent, and the Taliban face their most serious threats since their return to power in 2021.

It is too early to tell whether all those challenges will escalate and threaten their survival as a governing force. And as the scenes of celebration on Saturday showed, the Taliban are popular among many.

Still, the threats they face have cracked the veneer of security and stability that the Taliban have heralded as their primary achievement — and their main selling point to the world.

As workers were preparing Kabul for celebrations on Thursday, a resistance group claimed responsibility for the killing of the Taliban mayor of a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. Two weeks earlier, another Taliban official had been assassinated in the same province.

The Taliban are holding Afghan society in a chokehold that spares no one. Girls and women face restrictions to a degree unseen anywhere else in the world. Religious minorities are witnessing the forced closure of their places of worship. Anyone who voices criticism is repressed. United Nations staff members face arrests; journalists and rights workers suffer forced disappearances.

The Taliban are collecting taxes and building roads, dams and canals. European countries have welcomed them in Brussels to facilitate the deportation of Afghan migrants and asylum seekers. They have expanded trade ties with Central Asian states and want the Trump administration to come back to Afghanistan.

Sporadic sounds of gunfire reverberated across the remote mountains of northeastern Afghanistan on a recent evening. Weary Taliban fighters peppered drivers with questions at checkpoints dotting the main road snaking through the province of Badakhshan.

On the same road, two attackers had killed a senior provincial Talib official a week earlier. A small group of anti-Taliban fighters had briefly seized control of a police headquarters in a nearby district.

Now fighting between the Taliban and another group opposing their rule was continuing in another district of Badakhshan. The province, bordering China, Pakistan and Tajikistan, is emerging as a hot spot.

On a trip to the province this month, we talked to residents ready to support anti-Taliban groups because they said they were fed up with the Taliban’s iron grip, the lack of job opportunities and the government’s confiscation of natural resources.

We drove through dozens of checkpoints and witnessed the heavy presence of intelligence officers in the isolated village where anti-Taliban fighters had stormed police headquarters.

The clashes and the attacks have so far been scattered. The leader of one of the anti-Taliban groups described them as “opportunity targets” aimed at challenging the Taliban’s sense of control. But the leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s strategy, said the number of attacks would only increase in coming months.

An underequipped Afghan Army waits nervously at the border with Pakistan. Once a sponsor of the Taliban, Pakistan has launched dozens of airstrikes on Afghanistan, killing 500 civilians since October, according to the United Nations, and has threatened to use even more force if the Taliban don’t rein in militants who are staging attacks on Pakistani territory.

The mistrust goes both ways: The Taliban have accused Pakistan of supporting the armed groups that have attacked Taliban outposts in Badakhshan.

Whether, or to what extent, Pakistan is actively supporting anti-Taliban groups is not clear, but suspicions are running high.

“The Pakistanis are happy to be portrayed now as a potential patron for the armed opposition to the Taliban, because that increases their leverage over the group,” said Fabrizio Foschini, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

The picture on the domestic front is also grim. Extreme hunger has been spreading fast from one province to another after aid cuts last year plunged millions into deeper food insecurity. The Taliban’s ban on secondary and university education for women and girls is stifling development, experts say.

The Taliban have deprived 2.4 million Afghan girls of an education, according to UNESCO — the equivalent of all school-age girls in New York, Mexico City and Moscow combined — forced to stay home indefinitely.

Some scattered signs of discontent have popped up. At a rare protest in June, demonstrators chanted “Work, education, freedom,” similar to what their Iranian neighbors chanted in 2022. And the leader of a large religious minority warned the Taliban in May: Don’t squeeze Afghan society too much, or it will explode.

The Taliban know the world wants a stable Afghanistan — one that isn’t a source of refugees, drugs or terrorism.

They assert that the country no longer poses a security threat to the region or the West. They say that they have cracked down on the Islamic State, and that they want peaceful relations, based on trade and diplomacy, including with the U.S.

Since the Taliban no longer carry out suicide attacks, bomb schools or target the security forces they now represent, their main argument may hold.

They don’t want their various crises to spiral either.

All the ingredients for things to get out of control in Afghanistan again are here, analysts say: A vast population of unemployed young Afghans are fertile ground for radicalization, especially as economic opportunities are nearly nonexistent. And with animosity growing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is unclear who might come to the Taliban’s aid: Afghanistan is, once again, a pariah state, with barely any allies.

The past five years have brought some predictability and an end to almost two decades of fighting, which many Afghans have welcomed, despite the immense hardship and repression. But the country remains shattered, and the fragile peace is already at risk.

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

Entrenched, Embattled and Defiant, the Taliban Celebrate 5 Years in Power
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Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan

August 16, 2026

The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.

Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare.

Campaigners fear that the individual contacts by different countries risk undermining “coherent, consistent” demands for an improvement in human rights in return for any diplomatic concessions.

The United Nations described a recent “cascade of [Taliban] edicts and laws” that have banned women from universities and most employment, denied teenage girls education and imposed strict dress codes. Minorities have been persecuted, while activists and journalists face repression. Afghanistan has become a “graveyard for human rights,” the UN said in March.

India, Qatar, China, Iran and several central Asian states all recently welcomed Taliban officials or opened new channels of communication. Russia, which recognised the Taliban government in Kabul just over a year ago, signed a military cooperation agreement last month. In June, the European Union held talks with Taliban officials in Brussels about returning failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan. Individual European countries have also deepened their own contacts with Kabul.

“There is no doubt there has been an evolution. The Islamic emirate is now in a confident position. They have realised they are indispensable for regional countries right now and even with Europe and the US they have identified how to engage,” said Shivam Shekhawat, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.4:33

“The Taliban see any kind of contact as a diplomatic win and they have been able to capitalise on that as a sign granting legitimacy to the regime.”

A strict policy of isolation imposed after the Taliban seized power in 2021 towards informal or “de facto” recognition is now fragmenting. Some western commentators have suggested more countries recognise the regime. Others want intensified “back channel” engagement.

“We are not against any engagement … There is a need for engagement even if just for aid agencies to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis but we are worried about the end goal of these contacts and the discussions that are taking place,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“There should be a consistent and coherent message from the international community to the Taliban that they will not have any friends if they do not show real progress in terms of the women’s rights and human rights situation … and that is not happening.”

The new contacts stem from a combination of regional security concerns, pressure in the west to reduce illegal immigration and a general recognition that the Taliban are unlikely to be forced from power in the foreseeable future.

The meeting prompted outrage.

“You cannot condemn Taliban abuses in one breath and then announce talks on immigration in the next … The Taliban are telling their constituency back home that they are now accepted by the international community,” said Abbasi.

This year officials from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have all visited Kabul or other Afghan cities, seeking trade routes and pipeline deals that would allow their landlocked countries access to seaports or third countries beyond.

India too has moved to reinforce relationships that were frosty after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, in part to exploit new tensions between the movement and the Islamist movement’s historic sponsors, Pakistan.

New Delhi secured a sanctions waiver last year so that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister and a veteran official who has spent decades at the heart of the movement, could travel there.

In June, India’s UN envoy suggested a rethink was necessary on sanctions, such as travel bans, asset freezes and arms embargoes, that target dozens of Taliban members.

“The political reality of Afghanistan has changed in the last five years, and the current UN sanctions regime must take that into account,” said Harish Parvathaneni.

Afghan authorities’ diplomatic strategy has involved hosting envoys in Kabul, including those from China, Japan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Last year, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, made the first visit by an Iranian foreign minister to Kabul for almost a decade.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “seeks relations with all countries”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, though “the countries of the region and our neighbouring states have particular importance, because our economic ties and interests are closely linked”.

Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute focusing on Russia’s policy towards the Middle East, said Moscow had multiple reasons for recognising the Taliban regime and seeking closer relations.

“One likely objective is simply having allies … Afghanistan is also very significant for Russia geographically and Russia just wants influence in that part of the world. There was an opening and they were able to take it,” Borshchevskaya said.

“It’s a very cold, cynical calculation. It’s part of a very simple zero-sum view that for Russia to win the US has to lose. From the Kremlin perspective, this is a global battle and whether you are looking at Europe or Afghanistan or wherever, it’s one geopolitical chessboard.”

Britain has said it pursues a policy of “limited and pragmatic” engagement with Taliban officials, largely through the UK Mission to Afghanistan based at the British embassy in Qatar. Discreet meetings with the Taliban have also repeatedly been held by other western countries in Qatar. In Germany and at least four other western European capitals, key consulates are now controlled by the Taliban, not representatives of the former Afghan government.

Taliban officials have also sought cross-border infrastructure projects to boost the country’s fragile economy and diplomacy. Natural resources are another lure for overseas powers. Kabul has expanded the mining sector, attracting firms from neighbouring China and elsewhere.

China, which is worried about Islamic militancy on and around its south-western borders, has welcomed Taliban officials in recent years, and hosted talks when Afghanistan and Pakistan went to war earlier this year.

The Taliban are split, with deep disagreements on the ban on women’s education among other issues, but remain dominated by the most conservative factions. Recent laws have further reinforced repression, designating many religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, as heretics and imposing strict punishments to silence dissent.

Other new laws recognise only “excessive” beating as domestic violence against women and facilitate the marriage of girls without their consent.

Analysts do not believe the Taliban are likely to moderate their position in the near future and point to the continuing authority of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive and authoritarian cleric leader.

Ramin Mansoori, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Endowment who studies Afghan politics, said the Taliban’s priority was its domestic agenda.

“They are not going to make any significant concessions. Most of them don’t have an international perspective,” Mansoori said.

Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan
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Everyone Loves an Anniversary; None more so than the media; This time it’s the Taliban’s 5-year rule

August 16, 2026

Kathy Gannon

Substack

August 16, 2025 

Another Afghan carpet telling its tragic history. This one with the date of the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021. It shows the Afghans falling from a departing U.S. plane so overwhelmed with fear that even as the American pilots knew Afghans were hanging on to the plane they took off. . Its not clear why they were so afraid the pane was secure so Afghans could enter but also the airport was swarming with soldiers. Why not just turn off its engines and wait for the army to restore order?

Everybody loves an anniversary and none more so than the media.
Yet the anniversary cannot be told without exploring the impact on today’s Afghanistan of the U.S and NATO defeat, its failed 20-year experiment with civil society and its failed isolation policy

After mostly ignoring Afghanistan for much of the last five years, most media outlets these days are competing to tell the story of this devastated nation and offer a glimpse of the 42 million Afghans abandoned five years ago. Why? Because it is an anniversary __ five years of Taliban rule. Yup, five years since the Taliban handed the U.S. and NATO a humiliating defeat and returned to power in Kabul, almost 20 years after being thrown out in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

The attention won’t last, but still there is much that is interesting in the telling of the anniversary.

It is not surprising, yet interesting how most media outlets are framing their anniversary stories as five years since the Taliban’s return to power, rather than the more accurate framing which is: Five years since the Taliban handed the U.S. and NATO a humiliating defeat, returning to power in Kabul nearly 20 years after being thrown out.

Regardless, Afghanistan is at least being remembered.

The anniversary stories will rightly remind us of the Taliban’s outrageous ban on girls from school and women from work, the result of the ludicrous interpretation of Islam by the most powerful in the Talban’s leadership, an interpretation shared by no other Muslim nation.

Some stories might elude to the kaleidoscope of militants that have found or retained space in Afghanistan. There will be some that explore the impacts of sanctions, even some with a more nuanced approach looking at what might be working. Some might even give a mention to the increased safety many Afghans feel since the Taliban’s return, even as they pay a heavy price in lost freedoms for that safety.

Others might explore the amazingly brave work being done by Afghans who stayed in Afghanistan, even as they had the opportunity to flee in 2021. It’s unlikely, however, that those stories will explore the failed 20-year experiment at building an Afghan civil society, most of whom were among the tens of thousands of Afghans evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021.

Their desperate departure and evacuation gave the Taliban the opportunity to brand them Western puppets, and that branding hurt those left behind, those who sought to fight for a better future, regardless of the rulers.

In those early days following the Taliban’s return it was the women who found the courage to speak out, demand change through street protests, but they were leaderless. Still they persisted, coming out on the street, braving threats and attacks, occasionally encouraged by leaders from afar. But eventually as the Taliban crackdown tightened and with only distant support to sustain them, they stopped their protests and Taliban edicts became increasingly harsh.

Those August 2021 evacuation flights that followed the Taliban’s return to power robbed Afghanistan’s 42 million people of some of the country’s most educated, its health professionals, teachers, many of its most promising minds. More than 124,000 Afghans were evacuated by the U.S. while tens of thousands fled through alternative routes. Left behind were 42 million Afghans, half of whom are women and girls, left to rely on support and help from afar.

The most devastating blow, however, has been the international community’s abandonment of Afghanistan. After spending 20 years promising Afghans a brighter future and insisting they would not be left behind, many of those same countries retreated to Doha, a costly, yet comfortable retreat, leaving behind a trail of broken promises.

On April 15, 2021, months before America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan, the then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met Abdullah Abdullah, who was then chair of Afghanistan High Commission for National Reconciliation.

In that meeting Blinken promised that America would “use our full diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian toolkit to support the future the Afghan people want, including the gains made by Afghan women,” according to a U.S. State Department spokesman.

Then America left.

Dr, Abdullah is still in Afghanistan, refusing to leave and even returning to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after a visit with his family in India, while America is nowhere to be found, unless you look in Doha, the comfortable, yet costly capital of the middle Eastern State of Qatar.

On May 12, 2021, less than a month after President Joe Biden announced the troop withdrawal, another broken promise was made, this time at the House Armed Services Committee hearing entitled “An Update in Afghanistan..”

At that hearing, David F. Helvey, then Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs also made a similar promise to Afghans on behalf of the U.S. administration saying:

“But the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan. We will maintain a diplomatic presence there, maintain an embassy there and the Department of Defense will continue doing what we can do, you know, through an embassy presence to be able to support our partners and, as I’ve indicated, address the terrorist threats that, you know, if and as they emerge,” Helvey said.

They terrorists threat has emerged and the U.S. is long gone from Afghanistan, safe and secure in Doha.

The singularly most important story and the one most often ignored about the Taliban’s past five years in power is the devastating impact of the U.S.-led decision not to return to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, but instead choosing to isolate the country and its new rulers—the same approach Washington used during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001.

That approach was a spectacular failure. It gave Al Qaeda room to plan the September 11 attacks, did not change Taliban rule, and failed to persuade or pressure then-leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to alter Taliban policy by opening schools for girls or allowing women to work in exchange for international recognition.

Yet Western governments have doubled down on this failed policy, and as a result have empowered the Taliban’s most hardline leaders, who benefit from isolation, sustaining it with escalating restrictions on women and girls.

For Hibatullah, international isolation provided the ammunition he needed to convince rank-and-file members that the West sought only to destroy Islam and Islamic rule in Afghanistan. Hibatullah also used the isolation to weaken those Taliban leaders, who favored engagement with the international community, casting them as weak and willing to betray Afghanistan’s commitment to Islamic rule for international recognition.

A look at the gradual timing and impact of some of the Taliban’s harshest edicts against women and girls suggest that Hibatullah first tested his authority, then as time passed broadened the restrictions by framing Afghanistan’s continued isolation as against Islam allowing him to consolidate his power and weaken internal dissent.

The initial edicts were ambiguous. The wordings suggested they were temporary, seemingly to reassure Afghans and the international community that it was a changed movement and for some within the movement it was. They would quickly be silenced..

The first edict issued on Aug. 24, 2021 ordering women off the job was presented as temporary until arrangements could be made to ensure their safety. It was permanent, except for health workers, who have since been allowed back to work.

On Sept. 11, 2021 finance ministry workers were ordered home and again it was suggested it was temporary until arrangements could be made for their return, but for most it was permanent,

On Sept, 17, 2021 the Taliban abolished the Women’s Affairs ministry and in its wake resurrected the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, tasked with implementing the Taliban’s edicts, particularly those targeting women and girls.

In September 2021 high school girls were not allowed to return to school, and again the edict presented it as temporary. It wasn’t.

In November 2021 Taliban restricted the appearance of women on television dramas and other programs. In December an edict was issued telling women they could travel only a short distance without the accompaniment of a male relative.

By the time 2022 rolled around the restrictions became more frequent, more harsh and the ambiguity was gone. Hibatullah clearly felt more confident, more entrenched, showing less regard for dissenting voices within the movement’s leadership.

In March, 2022 just hours before schools were to reopen for all girls in all grades, the Taliban leader, Hibatullah, rescinded the Taliban’s promise to open the schools and ordered them closed.

This move was particularly telling because had the school opening proceeded as promised, it is almost certain the U.S. and other Western countries would have returned to Afghanistan. They might even have given the Taliban rulers recognition.

Clearly Hibatullah neither cared about recognition nor wanted their return.

Additional restrictions in 2022 included an edict ordering airlines to refuse to board women passengers without a male companion. Other edicts demanded women wear the full hijab, preferably the burqa, but not required.

And the edicts continued: Women TV presenters were required to cover their faces, flight attendants were removed from their jobs, and women were barred from parks and gyms and provided only limited acces to amusement parks.

In August 2022 female university students were ordered to cover their faces in the classroom and by December 2022 they were no longer allowed to attend university classes.

The outcries and threats from the international community did nothing to change a single edict, nor did the promise of international recognition move Hibatullah.

Quite the opposite.

As 2023 began so did more edicts from the Taliban leader.

In early April 2023, the Taliban banned women from working in any United Nations office, a clear indication that Hibatullah was unmoved by the sanctions that had been imposed on Afghanistan and uninterested in international recognition. Instead, the ban appeared to be a deliberate effort to push the international community further away.

To his advantage—and to the detriment of Afghans, especially women and girls—the international community obliged the Taliban leader by staying their futile course

The U.N. ban which was issued in April 2023 was distinct from the earlier December 2022 edict barring women from working at all NGOs, underscoring how Hibatullah gradually escalated his campaign against women and girls.

By the time 2023 ended the Taliban ordered all women’s beauty salons closed, eliminating a rare source of income for women as well as issuing an edict banning girls access to private education courses.

In many ways, 2024 was worse. The Vice and Virtue Ministry codified sweeping restrictions on women’s dress, movement, and public participation. By December, 2024, the Taliban had barred women from medical education, including nursing and midwifery.

In March 2024 the Taliban announced that public flogging and stoning to death would be enforced for women violating the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia or Islamic law. Since then there have been numerous instances of such punishments reported against women.

In 2025 a new decree on marriages and women’s rights in marriages was a rare offering of protection for women, reaffirming women’s rights in marriage, including prohibiting forced marriage and stating that a woman’s dowry belonged to her. It also provided a mechanism for girls/women to complain to a court if male guardians violated their marriage rights. It did not ban underage marriage.

In January 2026 the Taliban issued a new Criminal Procedure Code for Courts instituting sweeping laws to formalize everything from criminal punishment to gender discrimination, according to a March 2026 Amnesty International report.

The new code “institutionalizes torture and other ill-treatment through corporal punishment and allows the death penalty for a wide range of offences. Additionally, the regulation entrenches discrimination based on gender, religion, belief, and social status,” said Amnesty International.

An August 2026 United Nations Women’s report on the state of women’s rights since the Taliban’s return to power said the Taliban rulers have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls.

While Afghanistan may have vanished from Washington’s headlines, but every day that Washington clings to isolation, Afghans living under Taliban rule are left to carry the cost of a policy that punishes the vulnerable, more than the powerful.

The five years of Taliban rule shows that Washington’s policy of isolation stands as a spectacularly costly failure: rather than weakening the Taliban government, it has empowered its hardliners and left women and girls to bear the heaviest consequences.

If Washington is serious about standing with Afghans, it must stop mistaking punishment for policy and choose engagement by returning to Afghanistan __ which does not require recognition. As many as 17 embassies are open in Afghanistan, and none, but Russia has recognized the Taliban government.

Everyone Loves an Anniversary; None more so than the media; This time it’s the Taliban’s 5-year rule
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U.S. Policy on Afghanistan Is a Relic of the Past

August 14, 2026

By Obaidullah Baheer

Mr. Baheer, who teaches civic engagement to Afghan students and advocates education for women and girls, wrote from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Opinion article

The New York Times

14 August 2026

On a chilly afternoon in Kabul I pulled up to a small auto repair shop to check warning lights that flashed across my dashboard. The shop’s balding, middle-aged mechanic wiped his hands on an oil-stained rag, strolled over and leaned into my car’s engine.

As we chatted over the clatter of tools, he told me he had fought as a soldier for the U.S.-backed government in some of the bloodiest battles of the long, failed war to prevent the Taliban’s return to power.

Moments later, the mechanic stepped away to inspect another car driven by a Taliban official who wore a military-style jacket over the traditional long Afghan tunic. Five years ago these two men might have tried to kill each other. Now they stood together over an open hood, calmly discussing an engine problem. Neither mentioned the war; neither needed to.

That moment last winter offered a glimpse under the hood of today’s Afghanistan — the war is over now, and Afghans are getting on with the prosaic work of reconciling and building a future for themselves.

Western strategy has not caught up with this reality, and five years after the U.S.-backed government finally collapsed with the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, that strategy has become a relic.

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The United States has frozen billions of dollars in reserves badly needed by the country and sanctions have largely cut off Afghanistan from the international banking system, making it harder for families overseas to send money home. International aid has fallen sharply and U.S. assistance inside Afghanistan ceased altogether in 2025.

Outrage over the Taliban’s authoritarian rule and denial of basic rights for women is justified. Isolating the country only punishes the millions of ordinary Afghans who are trying to put old divisions aside and move forward.

My own family’s history has been bound up in the struggles that have shaped Afghanistan — and in their consequences.

My grandfather, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, led one of the most powerful mujahedeen factions in the war against the Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s. He fought rival forces during the civil war of the 1990s, and he later led an insurgency against the U.S.-backed government before a peace agreement was signed in 2016. My father, Ghairat Baheer, was imprisoned multiple times by the Soviet-backed government and was a top official in my grandfather’s party. He would later spend nearly six years in American detention.

Many in my generation are determined to leave behind the animosities that defined our forebears’ lives.

After being raised overseas, I returned to Afghanistan in 2018. I am among a network of younger Afghans intent on contributing to the future of the country we see as home. Both before and after the Taliban returned to power, I have spoken publicly and written about the need for Afghan reconciliation and for the Taliban and the international community to prioritize the welfare of the Afghan people. Like many others, I have advocated the right of girls to receive an education, and I teach young Afghan women and men about civic engagement.

This is difficult, risky work.

In 2022, I was summoned by the Taliban. I arrived at an office where a table was arranged with printouts of my social media posts, interviews and articles. Taliban officials accused me of poisoning society and told me to sign a confession. I refused, arguing that people like me had only Afghanistan’s best interests at heart. After several hours, I was abruptly released without explanation.

Two years later, a young Talib who followed my work on social media invited me to another meeting. Some of the same officials who had interrogated me previously were there, but the mood was different. Over tea, we spoke candidly about education, governance and the country’s future. Though we still disagreed on many things, I was no longer treated as an enemy. The passage of time, the persistence of those pushing for change and the scale of the country’s challenges seemed to have made them more willing to listen. We were like the mechanic and the car owner, discussing a common problem.

This is something the West does not see — every day, Afghans push against the boundaries imposed upon them.

Despite severe restrictions, privately owned media outlets still operate, employing female journalists and sometimes covering sensitive issues and challenging Taliban officials. At one point, male TV presenters wore masks in solidarity with their female colleagues in protest against mandatory face coverings for women. Female doctors, nurses and midwives continue to provide essential maternal, obstetric and reproductive health care for women. And courageous educators are defying the Taliban ban on girls’ schooling after sixth grade to teach women and girls online and through other informal means.

This is possible partly because the Taliban are not the insular monolith they may appear to be. Like any political movement, there are factions that don’t agree. Some of the most influential figures in the movement are unhappy with the country’s direction, have spoken openly about the need to educate women and girls — many of them have expressed worry about the impact on their own daughters — and favor greater engagement with the United States.

Whether any of this will lead to lasting change anytime soon is unknown. What’s clear is that isolation and shrinking international aid make it harder for Afghans to make use of the limited but meaningful space they have created.

Funding shortages forced more than 440 health care facilities to close or reduce services in 2025. And after the United States terminated aid, United Nations agencies reduced their operations. Such policies are holding back Afghanistan’s economic recovery.

Turning this around doesn’t have to mean officially abandoning Western principles and recognizing the Taliban. Western governments can restore or expand support for health care, education and livelihoods through the U.N. and other independent organizations. The World Bank already does this, funding a range of programs, bypassing the Taliban government.

However painful the U.S. withdrawal remains for Americans, it’s time the United States and other countries turned the page and supported the efforts of ordinary Afghans to rebuild their lives.

Obaidullah Baheer is an adjunct lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, which has operated online since 2021. He is a Ph.D. student at the New School.

U.S. Policy on Afghanistan Is a Relic of the Past
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The Taliban Kicked the U.S. Out of Afghanistan. Now They Want It Back.

August 14, 2026

By Elian Peltier

Elian Peltier, the Times’s Afghanistan bureau chief, interviewed the country’s foreign minister in Kabul.

The New York Times

Aug. 14, 2026

In an interview, Afghanistan’s foreign minister called on the U.S. to reopen its embassy and invest in the country — a near-impossible sell for now, analysts and former diplomats say.

Five years after driving the United States out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are inviting it to come back — with diplomats and cash, but no military.

“We consider the chapter of war to have come to an end, and from now on, we want relations based on mutual respect and a new chapter of positive engagement,” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said in an interview with The New York Times in Kabul.

Mr. Muttaqi said the United States could “reopen its embassy, maintain a diplomatic presence and invest” in Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, dams and roads — projects that three U.S. administrations and their allies spent billions trying to develop, and that the Taliban insurgency spent two decades trying to dismantle.

The public overture, the first by such a high-ranking Taliban official in years, is the Afghan government’s latest push in a long effort to extract the country from isolation, with mixed results.

Over the past year, the Taliban administration has signed a defense partnership with Russia and secured dozens of trade agreements with Central Asian neighbors like Uzbekistan. Some of its officials regularly travel to Gulf countries and have met with Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. It is also cooperating with European countries eager to deport Afghan migrants.

The government would see renewed engagement with the Trump administration, with its appetite for commercial diplomacy and little consideration for human rights, as the crowning achievement of its diplomatic efforts, according to five former U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with Kabul’s approach.

The Taliban argue that they have brought order and security across Afghanistan, cleaned its administration of corruption and created favorable conditions for foreign investment.

But efforts to engage with the United States have stalled.

“There is no appetite in D.C.,” said Hassan Abbas, a U.S.-based scholar and the author of a recent book on the Taliban in power. “No one wants to touch this topic. Everyone wants to forget about Afghanistan.”

In fact, the Trump administration has further distanced itself from the Taliban over the past year.

It has moved closer to one of Afghanistan’s neighbors, Pakistan, which launched dozens of airstrikes on Afghanistan earlier this year. It is embroiled in a conflict with another neighbor, Iran, one of the Taliban’s few steady partners. It has ​also designated the Taliban as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, paused issuing visas for Afghans and barred them from traveling to the United States.

The Taliban have also rebuffed President Trump on the few things he has publicly asked for, including regaining control of Bagram Air Base, which U.S. forces occupied for 20 years; the return of U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan; and the release of a U.S. prisoner whom the Taliban deny holding.

“No Afghan wants or can tolerate the military presence of another country on Afghan soil, as history has demonstrated,” Mr. Muttaqi said at the foreign ministry this week, sitting in a plush armchair with the white flag of the Taliban behind him.

In a written response to questions, the U.S. State Department rejected the prospect of normalization. The response, attributed to “a department spokesperson,” said the Taliban had failed to make Afghanistan more stable and uphold counterterrorism commitments, instead allowing terrorist groups to use Afghanistan as a launchpad for attacks.

It said the United States engages with the Taliban “only when it is in the interest of the American people.”

A veteran member of the Taliban and a central figure in past negotiations between the United States and the group before it swept back to power, Mr. Muttaqi said his administration wanted to reopen diplomatic missions in the United States.

Mr. Muttaqi, 55, also confirmed that Afghanistan was negotiating migration agreements with European countries.

“We have made progress in this area, and we hope to make significant further progress in the future,” Mr. Muttaqi said, without elaborating.

In recent months, the Afghan government held several bilateral meetings on migration with countries like Germany and France. A delegation of five Afghan diplomats also met more than 20 diplomats from 15 E.U. countries in Brussels in June to discuss repatriating rejected asylum seekers and convicted criminals, according to three participants and an official briefed on the discussions.

One of the participants, an Afghan diplomat, said that in Europe, the taboo of talking to the Taliban had been broken and that Afghanistan would now engage in bilateral discussions with all interested countries to finalize agreements.

Still, no European country recognizes the Taliban administration as Afghanistan’s legitimate authority, and the government remains a pariah excluded from international bodies like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

The Taliban’s ultraconservative leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over the persecution of Afghan women and girls. And the United States has frozen billions of dollars from the Afghan Central Bank.

And yet, a growing chorus of analysts and former diplomats in the United States is calling for renewed U.S.-Afghan dialogue beyond counterterrorism cooperation against the Islamic State and prisoner negotiations.

Mr. Trump has the opportunity to do what President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could not, said Robin Raphel, a former U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moving past the current paralysis, Ms. Raphel said, could create new access to minerals, strengthen relations with Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors, and counter China and Russia, which do trade and have diplomats in the country.

“But that requires hands-on engagement through a U.S. presence in Kabul, which remains a hard sell in Washington,” Ms. Raphel said.

In an initial exchange with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Muttaqi highlighted Afghanistan’s mines as a potential starting point for a “new chapter for the two countries.”

“I view President Trump’s deal-making ability, pragmatic approach and decisiveness as factors that can facilitate constructive engagement with his administration,” Mr. Muttaqi said.

Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the D.C.-based Atlantic Council, said minerals were the right pitch to make to the Trump administration. Afghanistan holds vast untapped reserves of lithium, copper and iron ore, as well as rare earth elements that are on the U.S. Geological Survey’s list of critical minerals.

“Values-based considerations like brutality and the Taliban’s horrific treatment of women and girls would not necessarily keep this administration from engaging with the Taliban, particularly if that could help advance U.S. economic interests,” Mr. Kugelman said.

Discussions around Afghanistan’s mineral wealth are not new.

The United States spent nearly $1 billion between 2004 and 2021 to develop Afghanistan’s extractive industry but failed to accomplish any “tangible progress,” according to a 2023 report from SIGAR, the defunct U.S. government oversight agency for Afghanistan. The Taliban administration now holds mining investment deals with companies from China, Iran and Qatar, among others.

Beyond the United States, Mr. Muttaqi called on any country to invest in Afghanistan, where the Taliban administration is in desperate need of foreign capital.

Half of its estimated 45 million people require humanitarian assistance dwindled by U.S. aid cuts last year, according to the United Nations. About four million Afghans have returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran since early 2025, in one of the largest episodes of reverse migration in decades.

Pakistan, which used to be Afghanistan’s primary trade partner, has closed its border over security concerns, sending the Taliban scrambling for alternative avenues of trade with Central Asian states, Iran and India.

During the interview, Mr. Muttaqi brushed aside a question about whether his government’s crackdown on women and girls was a barrier to international recognition. Earlier this year, he declared the government’s move to keep them out of secondary education was “temporary” — an argument the Taliban also used during their first rule, between 1996 and 2001, when Mr. Muttaqi served as education minister, and immediately after their return to power in 2021.

Mr. Abbas, the academic, said he expected the Taliban to remain isolated as long as they refused to move on their most extreme policies — which are largely dictated out of the city of Kandahar, the group’s spiritual heartland and home to Sheikh Akhundzada.

“Without compromising, without changing anything that they stand for, it is a no-starter,” Mr. Abbas said. “Something has to happen, and the Taliban are not offering that.”

Yaqoob Akbary and Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting.

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

The Taliban Kicked the U.S. Out of Afghanistan. Now They Want It Back.
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Islamic Emirate FM: There Is No Need for Dialogue With the Opposition

August 14, 2026
TOLOnews
TV Network
14 August2026

He described the Islamic Emirate government as “inclusive” and said there is no need for dialogue with its opponents.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate, has told the BBC that the people of Afghanistan are satisfied with the current government and that the Islamic Emirate enjoys support across the country.

He described the Islamic Emirate government as “inclusive” and said there is no need for dialogue with its opponents.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate, said: “Over the past five years, there have been no problems across the country’s 34 provinces, 400 districts and thousands of villages. If a problem arises in just one village, that is all. This demonstrates the people’s satisfaction.”

Regarding foreign relations, Muttaqi said Afghanistan currently has more than 40 active embassies and consulates and described Kabul’s relations with countries around the world as good.

He added that the decision not to recognize the Islamic Emirate depends on the policies of other countries.

Amir Khan Muttaqi said: “Do United Nations rules say that a government is recognized if it is inclusive and is not recognized if it is not? Don’t we see governments in the world today that came to power through coups? Aren’t there hereditary governments? Aren’t there governments centered around individuals? If such principles exist in UN rules, then someone should show us that this is a principle and that it must be followed.”

Regarding girls’ education, he said that education beyond the sixth grade has been postponed “until further notice,” while girls continue to receive education in religious schools.

Muttaqi said: “Regarding women, it is not the case that everything has been completely shut down in every sector. We see that more than three million female students are studying in religious schools and regular schools. In religious schools, they can continue their studies to the end, and they also have modern subjects.”

These remarks come as the United Nations said in a statement yesterday that improvements in the security situation have created opportunities for development and economic cooperation. However, restrictions imposed on women and girls, as well as concerns about terrorism, remain among Afghanistan’s challenges.

Islamic Emirate FM: There Is No Need for Dialogue With the Opposition
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Abbas fought the Taliban alongside US and Australian troops. Now exiled in Iran, he feels abandoned

August 14, 2026

As a child, the first iteration of Taliban rule forced his family to flee – with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what food they could carry – for the relative safety of far-distant hills.

War became his profession. Joining republican Afghanistan’s fledgling army, Abbas fought alongside American, Australian and British troops, believing in the foreigners’ ultimately false promise that they could bring peace and prosperity to his homeland.

Conflict is his constant attendant now, over Afghanistan’s border in neighbouring Iran, as the US, the country he fought with, rains bombs on the land of his exile. Back home, the resurgent Taliban – unreformed, unrepentant and firmly in charge – seek him still.

The war – for all its varied complexions, it feels the same war – goes on.

In the five years since Kabul dramatically fell back into the hands of the Taliban, those who served Afghanistan’s republican government have found themselves the targets of violent retribution. Those who took up arms against the Taliban are particular targets.

Abandoned US military databases – containing Afghans’ personal and biometric data such as fingerprints, photographs, and home addresses – are being used to hunt former soldiers who served the “infidel” west.

Social media groups share information of the latest atrocities, videos of former soldiers being whipped in the street, shot in summary executions, or dragged away in night raids to be tortured in Taliban prisons.

Abbas joined the military – initially at least – for the money. For a poor boy from the provinces, the army represented a regular income and a full belly, a reliable way to support his family. That there was a war on was barely a consideration: there was always a war on.

After basic training he passed a selection course to serve in the special forces.

“At first I joined for money but when I entered the commandos everything changed,” Abbas tells the Guardian. “There were foreign forces teaching us … they gave speeches about global terrorism.

“It was not about money any more. I became very committed, I just wanted to serve my country and fight Taliban and destroy the terrorist groups.”

He spent 12 years in the Afghan national army, most of those wearing the distinctive red badge of the special forces, “and we fought many hard battles”.

Abbas served alongside Australian troops in southern Afghanistan, night-time missions by helicopter in late 2011, in the restive and mountainous Khas Uruzgan district.

“There were many forces we served with: Germans in Kunduz, French in Kapisa, and especially we were with Americans. The Australian forces were in Uruzgan, and we went there. We took part in combat alongside them, especially in Khas Uruzgan, we … executed two missions with them by air.”

Abbas said he and his comrades “were always on the frontline”.

“We spent many days and nights with foreign forces. I performed combat duties in [approximately] 20 provinces of Afghanistan.”

Unidentified soldier on a rock.

He was wounded in a firefight in Laghman district, shot twice at close range. His bulletproof vest deflected the bullet that struck the left side of his chest, “but another hit my left arm, breaking the bone”. He was taken by US helicopter to Bagram hospital: “I still have a metal plate in my left arm.”

Abbas remembers the camaraderie of his days serving alongside western troops with fondness: “We risked our lives to help each other on and off the battlefield and to rescue one another. They always called us brothers.”

But he remembers too, the commitments that were made to him.

Soldiers standing beside tank
Abbas served alongside Australian troops in southern Afghanistan, night-time missions by helicopter in late 2011, in the Khas Uruzgan district. Photograph: supplied

“They promised they wouldn’t abandon us. But in the end, when they withdrew, they simply left us. And they did it in such a way that we were left with our hands tied, the entire army was disarmed.

“Those who were high-ranking officials left, while the rest of us, sergeants like me, were left behind. No one even asked about us.”

When Kabul fell, Abbas was forced to burn most of his documents and destroy photographs: incriminating evidence in the eyes of the Taliban.

A bare handful remain secretly in his possession: pictures on patrol with western forces, certificates of appreciation from foreign militaries commending his “outstanding commitment, dedication and support” to their operations.

Life since the fall, with a wife and young son, has been precarious, often dangerous. His has been a shifting, uncertain existence in the shadows.

As the Taliban swept northwards across Afghanistan, expanding and consolidating its control from the major cities to smaller, more distant villages, there were fewer and fewer places to hide.

With his family, Abbas fled over Afghanistan’s arid, inhospitable border into Iran.

There, with no legal rights, he is vulnerable to exploitation and extortion: landlords demand thousands of dollars for tiny apartments that have been condemned as unfit for habitation; he has been forced to take dangerous, illegal work for far less than a living wage.

X-ray of a metal plate in Abbas’s arm
Abbas was wounded in a firefight in Laghman district, shot twice at close range. ‘I still have a metal plate in my left arm.’ Photograph: Supplied

When US bombs started raining down on Tehran, Abbas and his family fled once again for the mountainous countryside.

“Our life in Iran is very difficult, refugees face a lot of problems. Especially for us former military personnel … we are still being threatened by Taliban groups even here. We also fear that we might be deported to Afghanistan.”

Abbas said his family’s future depends on being able to find a safe country, far from the reach of the Taliban, and the American war which has blighted his Iranian exile.

“I am waiting to see what will happen, but I am hopeful … I will build a better life for my family, a better future for my son.”

Many in Afghanistan feel as Abbas does – betrayed by the foreign forces in whom they placed their trust.

On the day of his second inauguration as US president, Donald Trump halted all Afghan refugee resettlement by executive order. The shutdown left more than 1,000 Afghan former interpreters and soldiers stranded in a US-run camp in Qatar, and hundreds of thousands more vetted applicants stuck in neighbouring countries like Pakistan.

In Germany, a new government sought to renege on a commitment to resettling hundreds of Afghan refugees it had identified as being at risk. The country’s highest court ruled it could not arbitrarily cancel hundreds of resettlement places it had already promised.

And in Britain, a House of Commons committee report this month reported that a massive data breach from within the UK government’s Afghan relocations and assistance policy exposed thousands of Afghans to potentially life-threatening danger. Afghans still trapped inside the country are being told by the UK government to “self-move” to safe third countries, a policy that “risks excluding people the UK has promised to help,” the committee chair, Tan Dhesi, said.

A spokesperson for Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said five years on from the fall of Kabul: “We stand firm in our pursuit to do all we can to protect the people of Afghanistan from the oppressive acts of the Taliban, particularly women and girls.

“We also remain committed to assisting those who helped Australia’s mission in Afghanistan.”

Until 2023 the Australian government ran a dedicated “locally engaged employee” (LEE) program for Afghans who worked for and with Australia “and are at risk of harm as a result of their work”.

The program certified 2,059 Afghans – but only 1,208 of those have reached Australia, according to the latest government figures (along with 4,493 immediate family members).

But hundreds of Afghans still living in hiding inside the country, or stranded in perilous situations elsewhere, say they were unable to apply before the LEE program closed, or had their applications rejected despite providing evidence of support for Australia, including fighting alongside Australian troops. A government review of the program found it was riven by “delays, double handling and confusion”, and it imposed an unreasonable administrative burden on those fleeing the Taliban seeking safety.

Abbas has family in Australia, and, having fought alongside Australian troops on their missions in Afghanistan, he applied for LEE protection from Australia.

He was rejected, the government ruling he had not been “in a direct employment relationship with defence”.

Zaki Haidari wearing glasses and a green T-shirt
‘Many people who supported Australia’s mission remain at risk and continue to wait for protection’, says former Afghan refugee and Amnesty International advocate Zaki Haidari 

“While the applicant might have worked alongside the coalition forces, including members of the Australian Defence Force in partnership on operations in Afghanistan, it does not appear that the applicant was ‘employed with’ the ADF,” the government decision states.

Wong’s spokesperson said the current government had approved more LEE applications than any before it. “Since the Albanese government took office, Dfat has certified close to 650 applications from Afghan Locally Engaged Employees, more than the total approved under all previous foreign ministers combined since the program began in 2013.”

Australia, too, has provided broader support – more than $310m in humanitarian assistance, through established partners and UN agencies – “to ensure our aid supports those most in need – not the Taliban”.

Zaki Haidari, a former Afghan refugee who is now an Australian citizen, remains in close contact with dozens of former soldiers, interpreters and others who supported western nations in their failed two-decade mission in Afghanistan.

“Almost every conversation I have with people inside Afghanistan is filled with fear, uncertainty and hopelessness. Families tell me they struggle to afford food, many have lost their livelihoods, and parents worry constantly about the future of their children,” Haidari, Amnesty International’s Australian refugee rights advocate, says.

Haidari said women live under constant surveillance, fearing arrest for speaking out or failing to comply with the Taliban’s ever-tightening restrictions. Members of the Hazara ethnic and religious minority – for decades Taliban targets – are forcibly evicted from homes, and face discrimination and violence.

Haidari said Australia’s LEE program “undoubtedly saved lives”, but there were still thousands endangered by their support and assistance for Australia.

Hopes that a Taliban desperate for international legitimacy would temper their more repressive instincts have proven illusory: with global attention shifted to other conflicts, the Taliban has further entrenched their brutality across Afghanistan.

Australia’s obligation to the people of Afghanistan “did not end with the military withdrawal”, Haidari says.

“Many people who supported Australia’s mission remain at risk and continue to wait for protection.

“Many fear for their lives every day.”

*Name/s have been changed

Abbas fought the Taliban alongside US and Australian troops. Now exiled in Iran, he feels abandoned
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Malala Yousafzai Calls for Unconditional Release of Six Women’s Rights Activists in Kabul

August 14, 2026
Khaama Press

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has called for the immediate and unconditional release of six women’s rights activists detained in Kabul, saying that defending women and children should not be treated as a crime.

Yousafzai made the call on Thursday, August 13, 2026, in a post on X, saying the six workers had been detained after Taliban authorities raided the office of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation in Kabul several weeks ago.

She said the activists’ work was not a threat but “a vital lifeline” for women and girls in Afghanistan, and called for their immediate, safe and unconditional release.

Yousafzai said she was joining Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan and others in calling for the release of the six workers.

The detention of the employees has also drawn concern from international rights groups. Human Rights Watch has previously called for the release of six male employees of the organization, saying they had been forcibly disappeared after being taken from the group’s Kabul office.

The organization has worked on humanitarian assistance and programs supporting the rights of women and children, according to the material provided.

The latest call comes amid continued restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan, including limits on education, employment and participation in public life.

The circumstances surrounding the detention of the six workers, including the allegations against them and their current legal status, remain unclear based on the information available.

No further details about the detainees, including whether they have been formally charged or given access to legal representation, were provided in Yousafzai’s statement.

Malala Yousafzai Calls for Unconditional Release of Six Women’s Rights Activists in Kabul
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Afghan Farmers Are Collateral Damage in the Taliban’s War on Drugs

August 14, 2026

BADAKHSHAN, Afghanistan — For the past decade, Asadullah’s poppy fields offered his family something rare in Afghanistan: a reliable income.

That stability came to an abrupt end in May, when Taliban officials walked through his fields here in northeastern Afghanistan, cutting down his opium-producing flowers. It was part of a far-reaching crackdown that has ended the country’s status as the world’s top producer of the narcotic while upending the lives of the hardscrabble farmers who depend on it.

“We cultivated opium because of poverty and necessity,” said Asadullah, who is known only by his given name as is common in rural Afghanistan. “Half a kilo of opium is worth 100 seers (700 kilograms) of wheat. Now, the Taliban came and destroyed it by force.”

Afghanistan was once the world’s largest opium producer and a key cog in the global drug trade. In 2009, an estimated 90 percent of the world’s heroin was sourced from Afghan poppies.

But the situation changed dramatically when Taliban authorities announced a sweeping ban on poppy cultivation in 2022, a year after the group returned to power in Kabul as U.S. forces ended their 20-year occupation. The Taliban said the ban is for religious reasons, part of its strict Islamic worldview that forbids narcotics. But analysts point out that it’s also meant to help gain international legitimacy, unlock foreign aid and win sanctions relief.

A Holdout Province

The Taliban’s anti-drug campaign has been strikingly successful: opium production has collapsed by more than 95 percent. But Badakhshan, a remote and mountainous province that has typically been difficult to control from Kabul, has proven more challenging.

Taliban officials said they have razed 4,000 hectaresof poppy fields across Badakhshan since May. Many farmers in the area not only continue to defy the nationwide ban but have also tried to produce more.

“A very large amount has been cultivated [in Badakhshan]. Compared to previous years, cultivation has increased fivefold,” said Abdullah Habib, a Taliban official tasked with destroying poppy fields in the province.

The surge is likely being driven by economics as much as defiance. After the Taliban announced the 2022 ban, the average price for one kilogram of opium rose from$100 to more than $700 in some areas.

“We aim to reduce [poppy cultivation] to zero,” Habib said, adding that around 1,500 people have been deployed to oversee their destruction. Indeed, here in Badakhshan, it has become common to see Taliban officials moving through fields of colorful flowers, slashing them down with sickles and heavy sticks.

As Asadullah’s predicament illustrates, thousands of families depend on this crop for everything–daily expenses, healthcare and children’s education. Switching from poppies to any other crop means a sharp fall in income.

Qurban Ali is another small farmer who has spent the past decade cultivating poppies. This year, he cobbled together $2,000 to spend on the plants, expecting a hefty return on his investment—until his crop was destroyed. Now, he fears he will be reduced to a daily wage laborer, a prospect that means scraping by with $5 or $10 a day doing menial jobs like construction work or street vending.

Bashir Ahmed, another farmer, said that the real problem is that the Taliban hasn’t focused on assistance for poppy cultivators to transition to other livelihoods.

“If alternative cultivation and work opportunities are provided for our people, we will definitely stop cultivating poppies,” he said. “Poor farmers have not benefited from this; the biggest profits go to traffickers.”

Prohibition and Profit

Poppy cultivation has a long and tortuous history in Afghanistan. It has been alternately banned and utilized by the Taliban, not to mention other Afghan militias, to fund their war efforts.

The Taliban initially outlawed poppy production in July 2000, during their first stint in power. The measure was effective, but cultivation bounced back after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and the installation of a new government backed by Washington.

Between 2002 and 2021, the United States spent roughly $9 billion on a counternarcotics campaign to fight the Taliban, which was using the proceeds from the illicit trade to finance their years-long insurgency against the U.S.

“We cultivated opium because of poverty and necessity… Now, the Taliban came and destroyed it by force.”

Despite those efforts, poppy farming persisted. According to a report by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, the Taliban made an estimated $61 million to $113 million in 2019 alone by taxing the opium trade.

Then, they banned it once again after returning to power.

The Cost of the Crackdown

The cash crop’s sudden disappearance has wreaked havoc on farmers. A year after the ban, in 2023, agricultural income fell more than 92 percent, from an estimated $1.36 billion to $110 million, according to a U.N. survey.

“Afghanistan’s people need urgent humanitarian assistance to meet their most immediate needs, to absorb the shock of lost income and to save lives,” Ghada Waly, the executive director of the U.N. drugs and crime office, said at the time. “Afghanistan is in dire need of strong investment in sustainable livelihoods, to provide Afghan farmers with opportunities away from opium.”

Still, social activists have championed the Taliban’s strict implementation of the ban, saying it was long overdue. They point to the major health crisis the illicit drug trade had created inside the country. According to a U.N. report from 2010, at the height of opium production, some 1 million Afghans, or 8 percent of the population, suffered from drug addiction, mostly opium and heroin. That figure was twice the global average at the time.

The problem hasn’t entirely gone away. A February 2026 UN report found that opium is still perceived as the second-most used drug in the country after cannabis, suggesting overall drug use remains high.

“In recent years, many young people have turned to using drugs, and the main reason was the increase in poppy cultivation,” said Ahmed Javid, an activist in Badakhshan.

Alongside the fight against illicit narcotics, he emphasized that farmers should be given alternative economic opportunities.

“The government must stop cultivation; however, it should provide alternative cultivation opportunities for farmers, irrigate agricultural lands, and implement more development projects so that job opportunities are created for people,” Javid said.

Taliban officials claim they are creating new sources of income for the farmers.

“We are trying to provide job opportunities in the mining sector for farmers and people so that they do not cultivate narcotics anymore,” said Habib, the official charged with destroying poppy fields.

In February, the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum said that 100,000 people were employed by the mining sector in Badakhshan, working on various projects worth 223 million afghanis ($3.4 million). While those figures are difficult to verify, the World Bank has noted that employment in Afghanistan’s mining sector has grown at an annual rate of 15 percent.

But Asadullah said he had not heard of any job opportunities in the mining sector. His fields are now empty, and he cannot plant other crops without incurring a significant loss.

“The fields where we used to cultivate opium were completely destroyed,” he said. “We were promised that alternative cultivation would be provided for us, but nothing has been done. Regarding job opportunities in the mines, we have no information at all.”

“Where should poor people like us go?” he continued. “This was our only work, and they took it away from us.”

Abdullah Badakhsh is an Afghan journalist based in Badakhshan, northeastern Afghanistan. He covers security, development, social issues and the lives of communities in remote areas. He writes under a pen name due to restrictions on the press in Afghanistan.

This article has been produced in collaboration with Egab.

Afghan Farmers Are Collateral Damage in the Taliban’s War on Drugs
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UNAMA Calls for Global Engagement and Lifting Restrictions on Women

August 14, 2026
Tolo News

13 August 2026

The Islamic Emirate has also repeatedly called for greater engagement between the international community and Afghanistan.

On the fifth anniversary of the Islamic Emirate’s return to power, UNAMA has emphasized the need for continued principled and practical international engagement with Afghanistan, saying the country’s future depends on inclusive progress and sustained global cooperation.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement that Afghanistan has experienced a period of improved security, while calling on the Islamic Emirate to take steps toward ensuring lasting stability for the Afghan people.

Georgette Gagnon, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Officer-in-Charge of UNAMA, said: “Lasting peace and prosperity depend on more than the absence of conflict. Afghanistan’s future depends on building a society where the rights and potential of all Afghans are realized and institutions are accountable and responsible.”

Wahid Faqiri, an international relations analyst, said: “There is no doubt that the world wants to engage with Afghanistan. Pragmatic engagement means not leaving Afghanistan alone and helping it emerge from isolation, but to a large extent, this depends on Afghans themselves.”

UNAMA said restrictions imposed on women and girls, as well as continuing concerns over terrorism, remain among the major challenges to Afghanistan’s stability and development.

The mission added that since 2021, the United Nations has continued engaging with the Islamic Emirate authorities and supporting the Afghan people through humanitarian assistance, the provision of basic services, and political and human rights efforts.

UNAMA once again called on the Islamic Emirate to lift restrictions imposed on women.

Mumtaz Yousafzai, a women’s rights activist, said: “All security-related challenges have been resolved. Our only demand is that girls’ education should resume.”

Gul Mohammad Din Mohammadi, a political analyst, said: “The Islamic Emirate should work to resolve the existing problems, accept the legitimate demands of the people, and take action in the areas of education, health, and reducing unemployment.”

The Islamic Emirate has also repeatedly called for greater engagement between the international community and Afghanistan.

UNAMA Calls for Global Engagement and Lifting Restrictions on Women
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