Five Years of Taliban Rule Bring Stability – and Misery – to Afghanistan

August 22, 2026 Analytical articles

The Miami Herald

August 21, 2026

For a young Afghan girl preparing for her sixth-grade exams, the fifth anniversary of Taliban rule this weekend was also a countdown to the day her formal education ends.

Under the hardline government, girls can’t study past the sixth grade.

“I am 12 years old, preparing for my sixth-grade exams – the last I will be allowed to take,” the unidentified girl told the Guardian. “What future am I studying for, when that path no longer exists?”

Her predicament embodies how profoundly life has changed since the Taliban took over the country five years ago and the growing anger in the country because of it.

The Taliban swept back to power on Aug. 15, 2021, when the United States and its NATO allies ended their 20-year operation in the country, leading the Western-backed government to collapse. Five years later, Afghanistan is safer but poorer.

For example, violence has sharply fallen under its rule: The government has successfully beaten back its main enemy, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, the militant group’s local affiliate behind repeated bombings over the past five years. As a result, roadside bombings and terror attacks in Kabul are rarer now.

“Afghans can travel to parts of the country that were once effectively inaccessible without fearing for their lives,” Al Jazeera said. “For a country where even movement within the capital was dangerous, this is a significant achievement.”

Yet greater security within Afghanistan has not brought prosperity. While the economy is growing again – 4.3 percent in 2025 – a rapidly expanding population, aid cuts, weak investment and severe restrictions on women have left millions in dire poverty.

Almost one-quarter of young Afghans remain unemployed. Meanwhile, about 21.9 million people – 45 percent of the population – are expected to need humanitarian assistance this year. At the same time, Afghans complain about poor wages that make it impossible to afford the basics, much less plan for the future.

The Taliban’s successful enforcement of its 2022 ban on poppy cultivation has also intensified rural poverty. “The cash crop’s sudden disappearance has wreaked havoc on farmers,” World Politics Review reported. “A year after the ban, in 2023, agricultural income fell more than 92 percent, from an estimated $1.36 billion to $110 million.

Still, the most profound damage may emerge decades from now. Some 2.4 million girls have been shut out of secondary school, while women are barred from higher education, most jobs and even from leaving their homes without a male relative. The bans could cost Afghanistan $9.6 billion in lost economic activity by 2066.

“The greatest danger facing Afghanistan today is not only that 20 million women and girls are being systematically erased from public life,” wrote human rights lawyer Belquis Ahmadi for Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security. “It is that the world is slowly learning to live with it.”

For years after the Taliban’s takeover, the West shunned the country, demanding that it honor its promises to protect women’s rights and freedoms. However, more recently, foreign governments have been increasingly engaging with the Afghan government, putting practical interests ahead of isolation. While Russia remains the only country formally to recognize the Taliban government, India, China, Iran and Central Asian states have expanded diplomatic and business contacts in pursuit of trade, influence and security.

The West has also re-engaged amid fears of an Islamic State resurgence, with US officials meeting Taliban counterparts and European governments discussing the return of rejected Afghan asylum-seekers in meetings in Brussels that the Taliban portrayed as a coup, Le Monde reported.

Moreover, the Lowy Institute noted that in the US and Europe there are increasing restrictions on demonstrations against the Taliban and other forms of protest: “Major democracies and Western-aligned states increasingly behave as if the Taliban were a durable reality.”

That’s quite a switch from the first time Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban – from 1996 to 2001 – when “the world largely forgot about the country,” noted Comfort Ero of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

Still, the major exception is Afghanistan’s continuing conflict with Pakistan, once the Taliban’s chief foreign backer.

Pakistan declared an “open war” on Afghanistan earlier this year following a surge in militant attacks by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which it says operates from Afghan territory. That has resulted in air and ground strikes by Pakistan and retaliatory hits from the Taliban in the border regions.

Still, analysts say that predictions that either the Taliban wouldn’t last even five years because it would likely succumb to infighting under the strains of governing or would moderate in pursuit of international recognition have been proved wrong. But that doesn’t mean the government is secure, they add.

“What has emerged … is a government that is administratively more capable than its critics expected and politically more brittle than its own propaganda suggests,” wrote the London-based news site Afghanistan International.

Supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada continues to hold ultimate authority and surrounds himself with other hardliners. Meanwhile, neither more moderate Taliban figures nor divided opposition groups appear capable of forcing change.

Still, analysts believe that despite the violence subsiding, the population has been alienated because of a lack of rights for both men and women, the economic crisis and deteriorating living conditions, persecutions, executions and forced disappearances of those deemed enemies and a lack of opportunities for anyone not connected to the rulers: They are ethnic Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan and make up about 42 percent of the population.

They add that they believe change is coming from within, possibly leading to another period of deep insecurity and violence for the country. At least three groups have recently announced armed resistance against the Taliban in Badakhshan, a resource-rich northeastern province.

“The Taliban are using medieval ideas of governance to rule a country which faces complex 21st century challenges,” said Michael Semple of Queen’s University Belfast in an interview with RFE/RL.

“Armed resistance is growing,” he added. “The main thing prolonging the Taliban rule is the absence of an effective resistance able to mobilize people on the ground. I think that there is every chance that the Taliban emirate will be overthrown, but I suspect that the force that will overthrow it is not yet in the field.”

The Taliban have built a system for enslaving women in Afghanistan

August 21, 2026 Analytical articles

Amanda Abou Abdallah

The Guardian

Fri 21 Aug 2026

Five years on, the regime’s chokehold has left Afghan women with almost nothing, but many are still bravely fighting for their freedom

The Taliban did not just ban women from schools, impose the burqa and outlaw smartphones. The Taliban built a system that enslaves nearly half the country’s population, or according to outdated statistics: 21,701,532 women and girls.

In general, the Taliban’s system runs on laws that get changed, forgotten or scrapped as needed to oppress women, such as the abolition of the minimum marriage-age law, which made the only “legitimate” criterion for a girl’s marriage that she has reached puberty or in other words, that she is “fit for consummation”.

And so, the state/group encourages economically crushed families, impoverished by the Taliban, to sell their young daughters in exchange for a dowry that lets them support the rest of the family.

Or the law that legitimises domestic violence under the label of “corrective beating”, which gives a husband the right to beat his wife, as long as he does not cause fractures or serious injuries.

The Taliban also made sure to restrict the right to request divorce and shut down most shelters for abused women. If a girl or woman tries to escape this tragedy, the “morality police” pursue her.

This tightening chokehold has made Afghanistan one of the few countries in the world where women’s suicide rates exceed men’s (globally, they are almost twice as common among males), with 75% to 80% of recorded suicide cases and attempts being women and girls.

And if a woman survives an attempt to end her life, she usually cannot find treatment, because women are forbidden from being treated by male doctors.

At the same time, the number of female doctors keeps shrinking through emigration or retirement, and because girls are banned from studying.

So the only option left for many women is to wait for death in silence, because of course their voices are considered shameful to be heard. So what could a system like this be called, other than enslavement?

Despite all this, Afghan women are fighting for their freedom, opening secret schools for girls, documenting violations and publishing them online under pseudonyms, and even protesting.

In June, a very rare public demonstration took place, one of the few since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, after the Americans withdrew. Women and men took to the streets of Herat demanding education, work and freedom, in the face of violent security crackdowns, arrests and a media blackout.

But despite the blackout, the problem was never that the “civilised” world does not know what is happening. It knows very well what happened and what was done in Afghanistan, but as usual, it chose to just watch.

Amanda Abou Abdallah, is the founder of Khateera, a women-led platform covering the Arab region

Resistance to Taliban rule persists in Afghanistan

August 20, 2026 Analytical articles

Will Selber

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Long War Journal

August 20, 2026

Logos of anti-Taliban resistance groups in Afghanistan. From top left: Afghan Liberation Movement, National Mobilization Front, Homeland Soldiers Front, and Afghan United Front; bottom row: Afghanistan Green Trend, Afghanistan Freedom Front, and National Resistance Front.

As the Taliban’s reign over Afghanistan enters its sixth year, the Taliban remains stronger, more unified, and better equipped than it was before September 11, 2001. Today, its flag flies across all 34 provinces and roughly 400 districts. Yet beneath an appearance of uncontested control, the Taliban faces its most serious combination of challenges since Kabul fell.

Relations with Pakistan have worsened, producing intermittent cross-border clashes and military operations. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which is waging an escalating insurgency inside Pakistan. The Taliban also continues to battle the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province, which has survived more than a decade of sustained pressure from the Taliban, the former Afghan government, and the United States.

At the same time, a persistent anti-Taliban resistance has expanded. The resistance began early, after the fall of Kabul, as forces aligned with the previous government tried but failed to hold territory in Panjshir province. After their initial defeat in September 2021, forces that would become the National Resistance Front (NRF), a major anti-Taliban resistance group, began guerrilla attacks. Now, dozens of organizations have announced their opposition to Taliban rule, while a smaller number regularly claim attacks. These groups have endured despite lacking territorial sanctuary or overt state sponsorship, two advantages previously enjoyed by the Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and many of the mujahideen factions that fought the Soviet Union.

“Our greatest achievement is that the resistance survived and expanded,” Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the NRF, told FDD’s Long War Journal. “The resistance is indigenous. The NRF is not an army sitting somewhere outside the country waiting to cross the border.”

As the anti-Taliban resistance enters its sixth year, the NRF, led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, and former Chief of General Staff Yasin Zia’s Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) remain the two most active groups on the battlefield.

“The NRF has conducted more than 2,000 military operations against Taliban forces since the resistance began in 2021,” Nazary told Long War Journal.

This NRF attack claim is substantially higher than the 300-plus attacks the group has claimed on X. According to their posts, the NRF has focused most of its operations in Kabul, Herat province, and northern Afghanistan. In early August, the group claimed an attack in Herat, killing two Taliban fighters, followed by a claimed rocket attack on Taliban forces in Kunduz.

“We have increasingly emphasized intelligence, mobility, survivability, and the ability to strike Taliban security where they believe they are secure,” Nazary told Long War Journal.

As the NRF’s commander, Massoud is likely the most internationally recognized face of the anti-Taliban resistance. He travels frequently throughout Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, most recently attending the Iranian state funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Massoud’s travels are likely not only an attempt to garner resources, but also to remind the world that there is an alternative to the Taliban.

“Much of the world is exhausted by Afghanistan,” Nazary said. “This is an international political challenge.”

Yasin Zia’s AFF, while not as well-known internationally as the NRF, has actively fought the Taliban since 2022. It has focused its attacks in Kabul and the provinces of Baghlan, Parwan, Kapisa, Takhar, Kunduz, and, most recently, Badakhshan, where it has engaged in sustained fighting with Taliban forces in Zebak district.

“The AFF has now reached a stage where it is capable of organizing larger, front-line military operations against the Taliban,” Dawood Naji, head of the AFF’s political committee, told LWJ.

The AFF has also publicly claimed at least 20 operations in Kandahar province since 2022, underscoring its geographic reach. Kandahar, the spiritual homeland of the Taliban, is in southern Afghanistan and is majority Pashtun, which is not a natural base of support for a group led by a Tajik.

“The AFF is active in several parts of the country,” Naji said. “In the coming weeks and months, you will see our presence expanded into additional areas.”

Although the AFF and NRF have been the most active resistance groups over the past five years, two former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan officials of the previous regime have recently entered the battlefield. Former Vice President Amrullah Saleh’s Afghan Green Trend, which spent much of the past four years releasing sensitive Afghan government documents, began publicly claiming attacks against the Taliban this year. It most recently claimed attacks against Taliban oil tankers in the Salang Valley.

Former 215th Corps commander Lieutenant General Sami Sadat’s Afghan United Front (AUF) also commenced operations this year, launching its first attack on August 1 in Kandahar province. Since then, the AUF has claimed nearly 20 attacks across the country, focusing largely on Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

“Our preparation over the past three years has had only one purpose,” Sadat told LWJ. “So that when we start, we do not stop until Afghanistan is free.”

Other smaller anti-Taliban resistance groups have also been active across the battlefield. In mid-July, Sepahiyan-e Mihan, or the Homeland Soldiers Front, led by former Afghan commando Qayum Malang, commenced operations by briefly capturing the Yaftali Sufla district center in Badakhshan. Other groups, including the National Mobilization Front, the Freedom and Justice Movement, and the Afghan Liberation Movement, have also publicly claimed attacks across Afghanistan.

“Since beginning operations in September 2022, the ALM has conducted 59 operations,” Naser Waziri, an advisor to the Afghan Liberation Movement, told LWJ. “Countering the narcotics trade has been one of our principal focuses.”

With new groups claiming attacks more frequently, some analysts have expressed concern that the resistance could fragment further, leaving the battlefield crowded with organizations but lacking an overarching political or military strategy. However, resistance leaders contend that while they are not working under the same organizations, they are all working for the same goal: the removal of the Taliban regime.

“We regard the Afghanistan Freedom Front, or any resistance movement seeking to liberate Afghanistan, as partners in a common struggle rather than competitors,” Nazary said.

Afghanistan has a grim history of armed factions uniting against a common enemy but dividing over what should follow. After the collapse of Mohammad Najibullah’s Soviet-backed government in 1992, rival mujahideen factions fought for control of Kabul, devastating the capital and helping create the conditions for the Taliban’s rise. Nevertheless, resistance leaders say that they can succeed despite Afghanistan’s bloody history.

“We are united by the purpose of freeing Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny,” Sadat said. “We see no issues operating with different organizations, since we are all fighting under the tricolor flag and for a united Afghanistan.”

Shared opposition to the Taliban, however, does not by itself constitute a unified strategy. If the resistance is to become more than a persistent security challenge, its factions will need to improve operational coordination, expand the frequency and sophistication of their attacks, develop sustainable logistical networks, and articulate a credible political order to replace Taliban rule. The eventual ability to contest and hold territory would represent a far more consequential stage, but one that remains difficult without sanctuary, sustained resources, or meaningful outside support.

“Our ultimate objective is not simply the defeat of one group,” Nazary said. “It is the establishment of a legitimate political order based on the consent of the people.”

For now, the resistance remains far from an existential threat to Taliban rule. But its continued survival is significant. Despite lacking territorial sanctuary and receiving little overt foreign assistance, armed groups continue to strike a Taliban regime that is pursuing greater international recognition while denying Afghans meaningful political participation.

“People should know that there is another Afghanistan,” Nazary said. “There are men and women resisting the Taliban inside the country despite receiving almost no international assistance.”

The War Room newsletter: America’s defeat in Afghanistan, five years on

August 17, 2026 Analytical articles

The Economist

17 August 2026

Steve Coll, our senior editor, asks what the anniversary means in Kabul and Washington

This is the introduction to The War Room, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter bringing exclusive insights into defence and security.

In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, August 15th is “Victory Day”, a national holiday. It commemorates the date five years ago when the former president, Ashraf Ghani, fled Kabul in an Mi-17 helicopter, sealing the collapse of the Islamic Republic, the democracy built up by America and NATO after 9/11. During this year’s celebrations, pick-up trucks packed with Talibs waving white and black flags paraded near the shuttered American embassy. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister, delivered a video address, attributing the Taliban’s triumph to “divine assistance” and “moral courage”, while acknowledging that “issues and problems…may still exist”.

How a government marks a war anniversary suggests something about the past’s meaning in the present. The Taliban’s defeat of America and the peace that has followed provide the movement’s main claims to domestic legitimacy. Loudly celebrating victory over foreign apostates each August reprises the Taliban’s story of itself. It also offers a distraction at a time when daily life in Afghanistan is bleak and getting worse, as my colleague Tom Sasse describes in his brilliant reportage from a recent 1,000-km drive across the country.

Mr Haqqani leads a powerful network of Taliban in eastern Afghanistan and presides over national police forces through his ministry. He is perceived to be restive about the hardline policies of the movement’s emir, Haibatullah Akhundzada, a cleric who resides in Kandahar. Mr Akhundzada is singularly responsible for the Taliban’s ban on education for girls and women after age 12, a policy that has made it all but impossible for the Taliban to persuade America or European governments to unwind sanctions or repatriate frozen assets from abroad. Yet Mr Akhundzada’s grip on power has only tightened during the past five years, and while there clearly is grumbling about his obscurantism within the Taliban’s ranks, the emir has thus far marginalised and contained dissenters.

In America, the Afghan war remains undigested and contentious. Sean Parnell, the public-affairs man for Pete Hegseth, secretary of war, looks set to release a new “accountability” report this month, tied to the five-year anniversary of the evacuation. A former US Army captain who served with valour in Afghanistan, Mr Parnell is a Trump-aligned partisan, but he has suggested he will publish classified documents from 2021 that could provide fresh insight into what went wrong in the lead-up to August.

The report may also impugn or even seek to discipline some of the generals and admirals who oversaw the withdrawal while serving under Joe Biden. Mr Hegseth, a retired major with a chip on his shoulder, has censured, forcibly retired or passed over a number of general and flag officers, usually in the name of battling wokeness, but occasionally to advance Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against former officers who have criticised him. Among them is Mark Milley, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the target of a Hegseth-instigated investigation. Mr Milley was chairman during the Afghanistan retrograde. It would be a shame—but hardly a surprise—if Mr Parnell’s panel piles on.

America’s failure in Afghanistan unfolded across two decades, shaped by four American presidents and the decisions of countless diplomats, spies and military commanders. The actions of the generals and admirals called to duty at the dismal end deserve scrutiny, but scapegoating will only ensure that many more anniversaries must pass before an honest national reckoning with defeat is possible.

Do you have any questions about life in Afghanistan—or what the country’s future might be like? Please send them to thewarroom@economist.com. For more on this topic, I’d encourage you to watch the latest episode of The Insider. A panel of editors discuss whether it’s time to engage with the Taliban—despite the regime’s repression. And if you’re looking for reporting on defence and international security from elsewhere, you will find more stories below.■

25 Years in Afghanistan review – the extraordinary life of an optimist

August 17, 2026 Analytical articles

Phil Harrison

Mir Hussain remembers the first time he saw a video camera: “I looked at it and it looked straight back at me.” His relationship with this all-seeing eye has broadened and deepened in the years that followed. Since 2002, when Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi first started documenting his story, Mir has lived an extraordinary life: grinding poverty and impossibly hard work, eking out a living in the mountainous Bamiyan province and then in urban Afghanistan, but combined with a remarkable level of exposure to the world, via modern media.

Mir and his family first appeared on our screens in 2021, in the Bafta-winning film My Childhood, My Country – 20 Years in Afghanistan. This updated reversioning of that film contains plenty of the same footage but also, in a telling update, hits very differently in the light of what happened that year. In April 2021, US president Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of American soldiers from Afghanistan. Essentially, the US (and their allies, including Britain) abandoned the country to the Taliban extremists. The knowledge of this incipient horror looms unavoidably large; the whole film now feels like foreshadowing.

“This is the story of my country,” says Mir. “A country that, despite everything, I love.” As even casual students of modern history will know, the word “everything” is doing a lot of work in that sentence – Afghanistan’s recent history has included invasions and occupations by Russia and America, and military engagements with other countries in the region, too. Afghanistan has gained a reputation for being unconquerable, but it’s tragic that every decade or so, someone still feels the need to test this.

This documentary offers an insight into life at the sharp end. Mir is a bright kid, but he often misses school because he has to plough the fields, or drive his family’s donkeys or work down a coalmine. He’s remarkably ebullient as a child: “We lived in a cave. It was quite good fun.” All the time, American planes fly overhead and the family gaze at them, hoping they might represent salvation and progress. The grim, hardscrabble details of their lives are interspersed with the airy pledges of politicians including George W Bush, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In this new film, every public proclamation by a foreign leader feels like pitch-rolling for the betrayal we know is coming. Meanwhile, the poverty gets worse. “I never thought I’d end up eating grass,” says Mir’s mother, Murwarid. The footage is extraordinary – as intimate a depiction of a family in extremis as you can imagine.

Eventually, Mir marries a woman called Shukria, starts a family and moves to Mazar-i-Sharif – and, when he can’t find work there, on to Kabul. Nothing doing there either. Then, in what should be the film’s central twist, he has a brainwave. “I grew up being filmed,” he says. “So I asked the film-makers if they could help me.” There’s a subtle, entirely understandable bending of the rules of documentary making here. Should the directors be altering the trajectory of the story they are telling? But if they have the ability to help, how could refusing be morally justified? And in any case, doesn’t their constant presence in Mir’s life mean they are influencing it anyway?

Soon, Mir is a camera operator. The film-makers find him work in Kabul and the story gains a dimension. Now, Mir is its subject and, in another context, a professional observer himself. He turns out to be brave and resourceful, specialising in recording the aftermath of suicide bombings. He also diversifies into filming live sport. In a less turbulent country than Afghanistan, we’d be glancing tentatively in the direction of a happy ending.

But no – in 2021, the western forces rolled out and the Taliban rolled back in. For women in particular, life became brutally circumscribed by religious dogma. Fittingly, therefore, in the parts of the documentary recorded in 2026, Shukria is given more space to speak for herself. The couple have had a fourth child, a girl. Shukria regrets this. Mir’s television work has dried up and he’s been forced to return to manual labour. Her husband “doesn’t think that deeply” about anything much, she says. “Mir has gone backwards. He has no plans.” As postscripts go, it’s incredibly sad. Even in their moments of greatest adversity, Mir and Shukria always kept a twinkle in their eyes. But now, the couple seem hesitant and lost. “We are all stuck in this backwardness,” says Shukria.

Right from the start, when it was documenting a small, instinctively cheerful boy and his embattled family, this film managed to sidestep grinding misery. It was geopolitics writ cleverly small, but love and laughter were able to find their place alongside struggle. Throughout, there’s something undeniable about Mir: he has a remarkable capacity for optimism. For that reason, this 25th anniversary update casts a darker shadow altogether. From the moment Mir Hussain first looked at a video camera, he’s been central to a remarkable story. Let’s hope it’s not quite over yet – and that any future instalments might have a happier tale to tell.

When You Can’t Afford to Be Sick: From hakims and shrines to the operating table

August 16, 2026 Analytical articles

Roxanna Shapour

Afghanistan Analysts Network

16 Aug 2026 print sharing button

What happens when the medical treatment you need costs more money than you have? For many Afghans, illness comes with an impossible calculation. Paying for healthcare places a heavy burden on households, with patients and their families usually forced to cover costs out of their own pockets. For those faced with medical bills they cannot afford, this can mean delaying treatment or searching out less expensive alternatives. In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, Roxanna Shapour hears from a 40-year-old man who spent months searching for relief from debilitating back pain. He turned to traditional healers, herbal remedies and a shrine famous for healing back problems before worsening pain drove him, finally, to undergo surgery, which cost him nearly all the money he had. His story shows how the high cost of healthcare can push people to seek more affordable alternatives, including from traditional healers, and the lengths they are willing to go to when the medical treatment they need is beyond their means.

It started as a dull pain that I could manage with exercises and painkillers. Then, about a year ago, the pain began to travel down my left leg until, on some days, I could hardly sit in a chair.

I’m 40 years old and live in Kabul with my family. I am the sole breadwinner in my household, supporting my wife, our three children, my father and his new wife, as well as my two brothers and a sister-in-law. I also send money every month to relatives in our village in Paktia. I have an office job that requires long hours sitting behind a desk. I can’t really afford to get sick because the entire family depends on the money I bring home each month. A back pain that kept me from doing my job was something I could ill afford.

Finally, my wife insisted I see a doctor. He examined me and sent me for an MRI, which cost 4,000 afghanis [USD 57], on top of his 2,000 afghani [USD 29] consultation fee. The scan showed that I had a slipped disc in my lower back, which the doctor said was causing my pain. He ordered bed rest and ten days of physiotherapy, which cost 5,000 afghanis [USD 71]. But instead of getting better, the pain got worse. So I went to a second doctor, this time a specialist. He looked at the same scan and told me I needed an operation. This was not what I wanted to hear.

Until my back started hurting, I hadn’t really thought much about what an illness that could affect my work or a major medical expense could mean for me and my family. Because I have a job, my family could manage [healthcare] expenses if we tightened our belts for a month. But the surgeon had told me I needed an operation that would cost 150,000 afghanis [USD 2,150], not including the hospital stay, medicines and other visits. That was more money than I had.

I was already scared of surgery and everyone I knew seemed to have a story about someone who’d had a back operation and hadn’t got better. Before spending that much money, or going into debt to find it, I wanted to exhaust every other possibility. So I started looking for less expensive ways to cure my back.

Everyone knows a hakim

Here in Afghanistan, we have many hakims [traditional healers] and they are very popular. Everyone seems to know a hakim they swear by. One friend will tell you about someone who cured a relative and another will recommend someone who treated a neighbour.

I decided to go to a particular hakim that one of my friends said had a reputation for treating back pain. The hakim told me that the problem was a blockage in my rag-e nasa [the traditional word for sciatica] and that he would have to bleed me to drain the thick, dark blood, which was causing my pain. Several people wholeheartedly endorsed this method and told me they knew someone who had been cured of their back pain this way, so it seemed worth trying. The hakim made a cut with a razor – the kind you use for shaving – and dark blood came pouring out along with some clots. He told me to go home and rest, promising that the pain would disappear after a few days.

It didn’t.

So I went to another hakim who was also recommended by a friend. This one made his own tinctures from herbs and other ingredients that he said came from Pakistan. He gave me drops to take but they didn’t help either.

I kept thinking about the operation and the 150,000 afghanis it would cost. I wasn’t going to spend that kind of money unless I had no other options, especially when people kept telling me about other treatments that might work.

I decided to ask the hakims’ union if they could recommend someone. They told me about a rish sefid [an older, respected man] in Kot-e Sangi, who specialised in treating back pain. This sounded promising. He wasn’t just some person claiming to have cures; other hakims were vouching for him. They said he was very busy, but that they’d try to get me an appointment.

After a few days, I got a call from the union saying I could see the hakim that afternoon. He looked at my MRI and told me I didn’t need surgery. He said he could heal me without an operation. This hakim also bled me, this time along four or five veins. Then he gave me two concoctions he had made himself, from herbs he had gathered in the mountains, which he ground into the powders he gave me. He said he had even cured his own wife with them and that people from all over Afghanistan and even from Pakistan came to see him for a cure.

I had to mix one powder with water and drink it every morning. The other I had to mix with the yolks of three eggs from Afghan chickens to make a paste. The hakim stressed that the eggs had to be watani [local], not imported from Iran or Pakistan. I spread the paste on my back like a plaster and left it there for a full day, every day for ten days. But when nothing changed, I went back.

“You’ve had this pain for a long time,” he told me. “It will take time for it to leave you.”

He gave me more powder to use and this time he also gave me exercises and told me not to eat beef, beans or other foods that caused gas or bloating. What he said made sense to me, so I kept at it for another month. But after a month, the pain had eased only slightly. I had spent 8,000 afghanis [USD 115] on his visits and medicines and while it was still far less than the 150,000 afghanis for surgery, it wasn’t working.

A friend recommended that I see a hakim in Ghazni. This involved a long car journey and by then, even a brief trip was unbearable. Still, I held on to the hope that this hakim might be the one to cure me. When I arrived at his office, he told me to get some raw lamb fat, rub it onto my back, bind it there overnight and return the next day, when he would perform a ‘procedure’ that he said would heal me. He wouldn’t say exactly what he planned to do.

I had been willing to be cut with a razor twice, to take drops, drink powders and wear an egg yolk concoction on my back for days, but whatever this man was planning to do to my back felt dangerous and a step too far. This time, I didn’t go back.

By then, the costs were also mounting. I had paid for an MRI and physiotherapy, the bleedings, the drops, the powders, the eggs and the journey to Ghazni. Each expense was small compared with 150,000 afghanis, but together I had spent a little over 30,000 afghanis [USD 430] and I was still in pain. Every time I tried a new treatment, I told myself that if this one didn’t work, it would be the last.

The Shrine of the Lame

Then one of my relatives mentioned a ziarat [saints’ shrine] near our village in Paktia – the Shrine of the Lame [da godano ziarat]. This shrine is well known in our area for healing back pain.

In our area, it’s very common to go to ziarats for a cure. There are many shrines, each known for curing a specific ailment. For example, there’s a shrine where a stream flows from beneath a grave. People bathe in its water because they believe it cures skin conditions. Another shrine is said to cure toothaches by pressing a nail against the aching tooth, while women who have trouble getting pregnant go to yet another shrine.

This is something we grow up with. From the time a child is born, families may take the baby to a ziarat and ask the mullah for a tawiz [an amulet containing religious writings, worn for protection or healing] to keep the child safe from illness, harm or the evil eye. The mullahs who write tawiz have learned from their fathers, who learned from their fathers before them. The shrines themselves also have longstanding reputations and many of them have been there for generations.

So when my relative suggested the Shrine of the Lame, I went. After all, it was a shrine people specifically visited for back pain. At the shrine, the mullah wrote me a tawiz and tied it to my left arm – the same side as the pain. He also told me not to eat beef and to walk slowly. On the way back to Kabul, however, the pain became worse than it had been in weeks. I kept asking my brother to pull over so I could get out and lie beside the road until it eased, then climb back into the car, only to ask him to stop again a little further on.

We had to stop several times because I couldn’t sit in the car for long. Finally, we stopped at a meadow we knew well because my family sometimes picnicked there. It was a hot day and I was sweating from both the pain and the heat. I sat down, took off my shoes and socks and dipped my feet into the stream that ran through the meadow. I let my feet dangle in the cold water for a few minutes before we left. As we drove towards Kabul, the pain in my back started to ease and, by the time we reached home, I felt much better.

A cure, or so I thought

The next morning, I woke up without pain. I went back to the doctor and told him about the tawiz and the stream. I told him I was cured. He sent me for another MRI and said the slipped disc was still there. Whatever had happened to the pain, he told me, the underlying problem hadn’t disappeared. He insisted that I should still have the surgery.

But that day, I didn’t want to hear it. It had been months since I’d had a pain-free day. I felt as if I had been given my life back and I wasn’t going to let him ruin the moment.

For six months, I had no pain. As time passed, I became increasingly convinced that the doctor had been wrong and that I had escaped the operation after all.

Then, one day in April, I was working in the garden. I bent down to pick something up and, when I tried to straighten up, a sharp pain shot through my back. Suddenly, I could hardly stand. The pain was back, as bad as it had ever been.

I went back to the doctor. This time, he told me that if I continued to delay the operation, things would keep getting worse and that eventually they might have to put a rod in my back.

I knew then that I’d reached the end of the road. I’d tried everything I was willing to try, but the pain was back and I couldn’t go on living like this. I had to stop looking for cures and give in to the operation.

Paying for the operation

But accepting that I needed surgery was one thing; finding the money to pay for it was another.

Most of what I earn goes towards my family’s expenses and helping relatives in our village. Friends and relatives sometimes ask me for loans too, especially since the economy took a bad turn and many people lost their jobs or don’t earn enough to support their families. If you have a steady income, people come to you for help and, when you can, you help them.

Several people owed me money, but I wasn’t going to ask them to repay it because I needed an operation. I knew they had their own problems and asking someone who was struggling to repay a loan would have been shameful. I decided to borrow the money for the operation from one of my relatives who was in a good financial position. He knows I have a job and that I will eventually pay him back.

Then, out of the blue, one of the friends I’d lent money to paid me back. I hadn’t asked him for it. I hadn’t even mentioned that I needed money for an operation. He just stopped by the house one day and gave me the 200,000 afghanis [USD 2,900] that he owed me. This was enough to cover the operation itself and the other costs, including the hospital stay, medication, the post-op MRI and the doctor’s visits.

Two weeks later, I was in hospital having the surgery. Fourteen days after the operation, the surgeon removed my stitches. He told me to come back in a month and said I should have physiotherapy to help with my recovery. But I really didn’t have enough money left to pay for it. So a friend who lives abroad sent me some exercises for people recovering from back surgery. I do them by myself at home every day.

I still have pain, although it is much less than before the operation and every day I feel a little stronger. The surgeon says it will take time for me to recover. Sometimes I think about all the things I tried to avoid the operation. In the end, it cost almost everything I had and I was only able to pay for it because a friend happened to pay me back just when I needed the money. I try not to think about what would’ve happened if he hadn’t.

Edited by Jelena Bjelica

Everyone Loves an Anniversary; None more so than the media; This time it’s the Taliban’s 5-year rule

August 16, 2026 Analytical articles

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.

U.S. Policy on Afghanistan Is a Relic of the Past

August 14, 2026 Analytical articles

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.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

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.

Is it time to talk to the Taliban?

August 12, 2026 Analytical articles

Zanny Minton Beddoes

Editor-in-chief

The Economist

August 12, 2026

Sadly, I’ve never been to Afghanistan. Nor have I ever met a member of the Taliban. The closest I’ve come to it was during a trip to China in 2024, when our Beijing bureau chief enterprisingly asked the Taliban’s representative to the People’s Republic whether he would be willing to meet his editor-in-chief, without spelling out my name (or gender). The response was an enthusiastic yes. Then at the very last minute the meeting was cancelled. My colleague, mischievously, wondered whether the Taliban embassy had done a last-minute internet search on me.

Afghanistan is a country whose haunting, arid beauty captures the imagination of many who have been nowhere near it. Its recent history marks a humiliation for Western liberal interventionism, just as in generations past it was the graveyard of empires. The Taliban’s repression of women and girls, repression that if anything is intensifying, is a shocking moral stain.

This week, to mark the fifth anniversary of America’s embarrassing and chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, we are going to focus The Insider on what is going on inside Afghanistan. Has the strategy of isolating the country’s regime by way of sanctions, frozen assets and withholding diplomatic recognition worked? What is life like today for ordinary Afghans? And, when it comes to the world’s approach to dealing with the Taliban, is it time to try something new?

Tom Sasse, The Economist’s South Asia bureau chief, recently returned from a 1,000km road trip inside Afghanistan. He travelled from Kabul to Herat and Kandahar, meeting Taliban officials, business figures, village elders and school girls. He will join us from Delhi tomorrow to explain what he learnt from his travels. Steve Coll, visiting senior editor, will also join the discussion online from his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He is particularly well versed in the history of America’s campaign in Afghanistan, having written two books on the topic. (The show will also double as an unofficial launch party for his third, which is due to be published next year.) Robert Guest, deputy editor, and Chris Lockwood, Asia editor, will accompany me in the studio. They’re both regional experts, and Robert has fascinating anecdotes to share from a reporting trip he took before the Taliban regained power.

In the first part of tomorrow’s discussion we’ll explore what Afghanistan is like today. I’ll be relying heavily on Tom’s insights. In conversations since his trip, he has described to me a country gripped by a grim calm: heavily armed men patrol the streets, music is banned, poverty and unemployment are rife. We’ll also examine how countries are behaving towards the Taliban regime. Only Russia formally recognises the de facto government, but others are also in contact with it. The European Union, hypocritically, won’t offer recognition, but recently invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss migrant repatriation. I want to hear from you, too. Should Western nations formally recognise the Taliban government? Please tell us by voting in our poll.

In the second half of the show, we’ll ask what needs to change. Is it time to end the policy of isolation? How can we best encourage moderation? What’s in the interests of Western democracies? And, most important, what is most likely to help the Afghan people? I expect it to be a difficult conversation during which we have to confront some hard truths—and that’s precisely why it is worth having.

The show will be available to watch from 6pm London time (1pm in New York) on Thursday. We’ll be reviewing the results of this week’s poll during the discussion, as well as answering some of your questions. Please tell us what you want to know by using the Q&A feature on the episode page. And if you have feedback or suggestions for future episodes, please write to me at insider@economist.com.

A Silver Lining in Afghanistan

August 12, 2026 Analytical articles

By Tricia Bacon and Daniel Byman

The Atlantic

August 12, 2026

Five years ago, the United States was completing its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan when the terrorist group known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province carried out one last murderous strike. ISKP’s suicide attack on the Kabul International Airport killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 desperate Afghan civilians trying to flee the Taliban’s oppressive rule.

The carnage was a final reminder of what the American military had been doing in Afghanistan to begin with. An Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, American policy makers feared, would become a haven for terrorists, as it was before the U.S. invasion in 2001. In the 1990s, the Taliban had offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda and like-minded networks, allowing them to train thousands of fighters and plot devastating assaults, including the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11. For 20 years, concerns that such attacks might resume kept the U.S. fighting a war that its officials knew they were losing. In April 2021, William Burns, President Biden’s CIA director, warned that pulling out troops would create a “significant risk” of an al-Qaeda resurgence. When Biden withdrew four months later, experts claimed that he had given terrorists a leg up.

Today these fears look overblown. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan has not become the global terrorist hub it once was. Al-Qaeda, which remains far weaker today than in 2001, hasn’t carried out an attack from Afghanistan on the U.S. or Europe since the withdrawal. Meanwhile, the Taliban has turned into a valuable—though deeply flawed—counterterrorism partner to the U.S., overturning the expectations of analysts who believed the group would revert to being a major sponsor of global terror.

The past five years have confirmed that staying in Afghanistan was folly. But they have also demonstrated a truth that isn’t nearly as accepted: Curbing terrorism often requires working with old enemies.

The Taliban is no friend to the United States. The group brutalizes the Afghan people, particularly women, and it continues to shelter militants such as al-Qaeda, which has begun to train more members in Afghanistan since the withdrawal. But unlike in the 1990s, the Taliban provides far less support to terrorists, and, perhaps more important, al-Qaeda poses a much smaller threat.

Before the withdrawal, the U.S. launched drone strikes that killed many of al-Qaeda’s senior leaders, and orchestrated an intelligence campaign that shut down al-Qaeda cells around the world. The group never fully recovered. In 2022, another American drone strike killed al-Qaeda’s head, Ayman al-Zawahiri, proving that the U.S. can undercut the group even without a presence in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has still not named a replacement for al-Zawahiri, and its de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, is hiding in Iran. The Taliban is reportedly reluctant to allow al-Adel into Afghanistan, an apparent recognition that providing too much support to al-Qaeda could jeopardize its own interests.

The strongest parts of al-Qaeda are no longer in Afghanistan but in Africa, and they present fewer risks: Local branches, such as JNIM in West Africa and al-Shabaab in Somalia, are primarily focused on regional goals instead of global terrorism. Similarly, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, another recipient of Taliban support, has concentrated its attacks on Pakistan rather than on international targets. In 2010, the group attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square; in 2020, it signaled that it wouldn’t attack America again—and no evidence has emerged since then that the organization has changed its mind.

As al-Qaeda has dwindled, ISKP has grown into the biggest terrorist threat in Afghanistan. The group is suspected of carrying out deadly attacks in Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey. It has also plotted campaigns in Europe and inspired plots in the United States. But these have failed or been disrupted, and the Taliban has helped the U.S. thwart ISKP’s ambitions.

ISKP has challenged the Taliban’s religious legitimacy, targeted its leaders, and recruited some of its rank and file. In response, the Taliban has arrested and killed ISKP fighters and leaders. At times, though, the Taliban has taken a more conciliatory approach—for example, persuading ISKP members to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment. Because they now share a common enemy, the U.S. and the Taliban have found opportunities to advance each other’s interests. Indeed, the White House’s counterterrorism chief has described the Taliban as “moderately cooperative counterterrorism partners.” Unlike the collapsed Afghan republic government, the Taliban controls the entire country and has networks everywhere, which Washington has used to its advantage. Thanks to its strong intelligence in the region, America has been able to warn Iran and Russia about the risk of ISKP attacks and to assist European states in disrupting plots.

Afghanistan isn’t the only place where the U.S. has cooperated with former adversaries. In Syria, the jihadist turned head of state Ahmed al-Sharaa works with the U.S. to battle the Islamic State and Hezbollah. America has also cooperated with the Syrian Democratic Forces, even though it has a close relationship with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an internationally designated terrorist group that targets Turkey.

America’s relationships with unsavory actors can backfire: In Somalia, the U.S. supported warlords to fight al-Shabaab, but their abuses only increased support for the terrorist group. The Taliban’s U.S.-assisted campaign against ISKP has also had serious drawbacks. To prevent defections to ISKP, the Taliban has become even more repressive. In addition, the clampdown on ISKP’s operations in Afghanistan seems to have encouraged the group to turn to international terrorism, because it was no longer as effective locally.

Cooperating with repressive regimes or onetime enemies will always incur costs, both moral and strategic. The job of U.S. policy makers is to constantly assess whether the costs outweigh the security gains that these partnerships can offer, not only to the U.S. but to societies around the world. One of the clearest foreign-policy lessons of the past five years is simple, if uncomfortable: The best counterterrorism option is sometimes the least bad one.