Five years after the Taliban swept to power, does the West have any influence?

September 1, 2026 Analytical articles

Lyse Doucet

Chief international correspondent

Kabul

BBC News

August 14, 2026

In a whitewashed basement in a village south of Kabul, a dozen young women bustle about, stirring cauldrons of bubbling cherries and plums, and sticking labels on glass jam jars. Ventures like this are one of the rare spaces where women are still able to gain skills and employment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

It is run by Najia, a 47-year-old Afghan entrepreneur and mother of nine children who was married at the age of 14.

If the authorities hadn’t barred girls and young women from secondary schools and universities, many of the women in this workshop, including Naija’s daughters, would be studying for a different kind of future.

A row of women in headscarves and hair nets work at a long table with jam jars on it — *Jam-making workshops are one of vanishingly few ways women can still learn and make money*

But now, even this is being squeezed too. Recent rules say women have to ask men to take their products to market, and only men can sit at their stalls to show their wares at trade fairs. The Taliban gives various reasons for this, including claiming that women aren’t wearing proper hijab or head covering.

“The world has to talk to the Taliban in a different way because it’s just not working,” says Najia. “The lives of Afghan women have to change because we’re losing hope.”

Five years after this ultra-conservative Islamist movement took charge, women are banned from much of the public sphere and girls are prohibited from going to school over the age of 12. Many inside and outside Afghanistan are asking the same pressing question: what’s the best way to engage the Taliban to try to achieve meaningful change?

The issue is deeply divisive. There are fissures between many groups, with a huge array of conflicting issues at stake. These include women’s rights, unpredictable Taliban edicts, international sanctions and aid cuts during a spiralling humanitarian crisis. The international response is split between Western countries often focused on human rights and others more interested in investment opportunities. And the West itself is divided on the best response.

Many now accept that whatever they’re doing, it’s not working.

Engage, not isolate

Few voices call for absolute isolation, not when the United Nations warns that 22 million Afghans – nearly half the of the population – rely on some form of foreign assistance to help them survive.

The country has been battered by multiple shocks: an agonising economic crisis; devastating natural disasters; clashes with neighbouring Pakistan, and the influx of millions of Afghans deported from countries near and far into this impoverished land.

And there’s no avoiding it – the Taliban are in charge now.

In the years since their fighters swept into Kabul on 15 August 2021, they’ve grown in confidence and consolidated control despite intermittent attacks by armed opposition groups based abroad, as well as Islamic State fighters.

The Taliban are collecting tax revenues and signing deals in mining, energy and more with Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, and Tashkent, along with other neighbours

But they’re still strangled by international sanctions linked to terrorism and human rights. Russia is the only country to formally recognise their rule, and they haven’t been allowed to take up what they see as their rightful seat at the UN in New York.

But formal diplomatic recognition is no longer the focal point.

“The West is losing the argument over recognition,” says a former senior UN official who requested anonymity because they continue to work in Afghanistan. They point to the growing number of countries which have conferred de facto recognition by clinching deals, accrediting diplomats, operating embassies, and more.

“There’s no doubt the Taliban would like to be recognised at the UN but it’s no longer as potent a bargaining chip as it was at the beginning,” they assess.

Behind the soaring blast walls of the foreign ministry in Kabul, in the sprawling compound of manicured lawns and graceful historic buildings, Taliban diplomats keep adding names and flags to the growing collection of Afghan embassies worldwide which are now under their control, rather than the last holdouts of the government they ousted. The current tally is more than 40.

“We need to come closer diplomatically rather than talking from a distance if we want to make progress in our relationship,” says Zabihullah Mujahid, the main Taliban spokesman.

We meet in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the real seat of power. This is where the Taliban’s reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has been steadily building his political and military base and issuing hundreds of edicts, many of them focused on erasing women and girls from public life – what he portrays as an Islamic obligation to protect them.

This five-year mark is widely seen as an inflection point.

“An unstable and potentially dangerous equilibrium,” is how the situation was described in closed-door remarks by a senior UN official at a recent international gathering.

And, yet, Afghanistan has fallen far under the world’s radar. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East absorb international attention, and Europe’s burning issue is how to stop so many Afghans fleeing towards their shores. It’s a startling reversal.

“It’s extraordinary given the scale of Western effort from 2001-2021 how ignored Afghanistan is now,” remarks a Western diplomat who recently served as an envoy to the country. They did not want to be named because they’re still in the diplomatic service.

“The real diplomatic gap is the US,” they added, in reference to the current US administration’s decision to eliminate their special envoy position and dismantle many agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which once led the world’s approach on almost every Afghan issue.

Even within Taliban ranks, especially among those known to differ with some of the strictest edicts handed down by their emir, there is frustration that the world doesn’t seem willing or able to forge a different kind of relationship.

“We want to be part of the international community,” emphasises Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban who now runs a madrasa for boys and girls on the outskirts of Kabul. Unlike mainstream schools, madrasas take girls of all ages and some, especially those run privately, are teaching more than religious classes.

“Just putting pressure won’t work,” he tells us. He takes the long view of Afghanistan’s history of resisting foreign invaders. “We didn’t surrender to the Russians, to the Americans, so why would the Taliban surrender now?”

Open dialogue

UN officials believe their presence in Afghanistan makes a difference, however limited. They point to progress on issues such as the treatment of prisoners, their detailed discussions on the harsh implementation of the morality code known as the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as well as efforts to improve humanitarian access.

“Engagement is slow, progress is incremental, and reversals are frequent,” is the UN’s sober summary of the past five years of on-off dialogue.

But it still insists it needs to stay the course.

“A stalled process is better than no process,” emphasises Georgette Gagnon, a deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, who is now the acting head of the UN mission in Kabul.

The UN has been criticised for not pushing back enough against the Taliban, including for holding forums such as the so-called Doha Process, in which a Taliban delegation travelled to the Qatari capital in 2024 to discuss a range of issues, on condition that no Afghan women’s representatives were at the table. UN officials insist all issues were discussed, and that subsequent meetings included their participation.

A new process called Mosaic approaches negotiations in a more structured format, on six core issues. On one side there are human rights including women’s rights, inclusive governance, and counterterrorism. On the other, there are Taliban demands – sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, diplomatic representation.

“Confidence and reciprocity are beginning to take shape to open the door to engagement on the most difficult issues,” says Gagnon whom we meet inside the UN’s vast, heavily fortified compound. She calls them “small steps on the long road”.

She insists it has to be done through a collective effort, not only through discussions by individual governments. “Pressure has not worked so far, threats have not worked; our best chance lies in consistent and common messaging and action.”

For some sceptics, even inside the UN, there’s worry that the Mosaic approach isn’t going to work either.

But just keeping the lights on, preventing a slide into isolation, and continuing protection work with vulnerable communities, especially women, is seen as essential.

Talk quietly

In dusty provincial capitals and farmers’ fields, where international and Afghan aid agencies wrestle with ways to work on the ground, the conversations continue day in day out.

It’s there that edicts handed down by the reclusive emir are translated into what are known as workarounds. These workarounds can mean women are able to work in some agency sectors from home, or in different rooms, on different floors, or even in different buildings to men.

“Everything in Afghanistan is relationships, and day-to-day that can help make things easier,” says Chris Kinder, the chairman of Afghanaid, a British charity which has been working in Afghanistan for more than 40 years. He emphasises that most of these conversations on access and implementation are conducted by experienced Afghan staff.

My own visits to provincial cities and towns in recent years have underscored how some local Taliban officials try to find pragmatic solutions. But others remain deeply suspicious of any foreign assistance.

Local agreements were described by another charity as “verbal and fragile”.

Kinder rejects criticism that aid agencies have had to compromise on principles to keep their projects in place.

“The Taliban have their red lines and we, and our donors, have ours. We discuss approaches so both sides understand where they are coming from.”

Here too, many aid officials call for a more unified approach.

Talk tougher

“We need to keep talking, but now we need to set conditions,” is the view of Najia the jam maker. It’s a stance also taken by women activists in the diaspora and human rights groups who say dialogue has been a one-way street, with the Taliban not offering any significant changes in return.

They insist discussion should not go beyond aid issues until they do.

A recent flashpoint was the decision by EU officials in June to host a Taliban foreign ministry delegation in Brussels for the first time since the Taliban returned to power. Representatives of 15 member states joined this one-day meeting to discuss processes to send back Afghan nationals who had no legal right to remain in the EU.

The EU called them “technical-level” talks. The Taliban saw them differently. A spokesperson described the agenda as including possible consular presence in Europe and the “need for trust-building measures”.

“The diplomatic community is well aware that there are already existing channels through which technical issues can be discussed with the Taliban,” says Rina Amiri, an Afghan-born former American diplomat who served as the US special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights from 2022 to 2025 and also grappled with the terms under which to meet the Taliban.

“Meeting in Brussels was clearly a decision that was about politics, not logistics,” she says.

The critics call it “creeping normalisation”.

Will it work?

“After these last five years I spent in Afghanistan, what do I have to show?” asks Mahbouba Seraj, an Afghan activist who runs a shelter, when we visit her in Kabul. When the Taliban took over in 2021, Seraj made headlines when she announced that she would stay in her country to fight for women’s rights.

Seraj, 78, now says she’s preparing to leave.

Her last shelter, which provided a life-saving refuge for more than 30 Afghan women fleeing domestic abuse, was shut down in December. Her repeated appeals to Taliban leaders to re-open classrooms for women and girls have been ignored.

“These small windows that the world sees, the little openings here and there including secret schools for girls, are just meant to fool everybody,” she laments with visible sadness.

But Seraj calls on the international community to keep talking.

“They have to talk, but they have to make sure that when they sit down and talk, it’s not just a lot of people just filling the air.”

A girl hides her face behind a white hijab — *Activists say women and girls have been forgotten*

There are others who say the same.

“Only more capable diplomacy through quiet and confidential engagement can deliver the change,” says a former Afghan official who’s been involved in discreet discussions with Taliban officials. He hopes whoever is chosen as the new UN Secretary General and takes office at the start of next year will engage more effectively.

But, in the end, it’s not the international community which is in the driving seat of any change.

“I don’t think the answer is the world finding the right language to talk to the Taliban,” says a Western analyst who’s long been involved in Afghanistan and like others interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous. “Five years on, it’s very clear that real change can only come from within.”

Some senior Taliban officials have occasionally spoken out about the emir’s harshest orders, in particular the closure of girls’ schools, and there’ve been rare instances when some were able to find ways to roll back his rules. One such case was last year’s nation-wide internet shutdown which paralysed daily life and was later reversed.

The emir’s edicts are regarded as absolute. The movement has shown it values unity, and power, above all else. Even the entreaties of Islamic scholars and officials of Islamic countries the world over have not bent the iron will of the emir and his enforcers, especially on the most sensitive issue of education.

Five years on, there are no simple or swift solutions.

At Najia’s jam workshop, a table bristling with her framed training certificates – from local Afghan institutes to the now defunct USAID – attests to her efforts to become a bigger and better entrepreneur in the face of cascading restrictions.

Year on year, a new society starts to take shape. But many Afghans still keep pushing and praying for a different future – and hope the world won’t forget them.

Germany Invites Taliban To Aid Afghan Deportations

September 1, 2026 Analytical articles

Kathy Gannon

Substack

September 1, 2026

Afghans areno longer welcome by those who once helped thme leave Afghanistan, abandoning them, no longer wanted. Western Values eh? Go figure.

Once welcomed, Afghans are now being deported. Once only those with criminal records. Now not so much. Taliban invited to Germany to aid with the deportation

Germany has turned to Afghanistan’sTaliban to assist its deportation of Afghans back to Afghanistan, from where they fled. It’s quite the about face even for the West.

On Monday Germany’s foreign ministry made it clear it is stepping up deportation of Afghans to Afghanistan and needs the Taliban’s help, never mind that the Afghans in Germany likely fled the same Taliban, who are now being invited to Germany to arrange their return to Afghanistan.

The foreign ministry says there are about 450,000 Afghan nationals in Germany. It didn’t say how many they wanted to deport, but the spokesman, Sebastien Giese made it pretty clear at Monday’s press conference in Berlin that it is Germany’s hope to deport as many as they can.

“It is the clear objective of the Federal Government to increase the number of deportations to Afghanistan. We are also working toward that,” said Giese, thus the need to get the Taliban to Germany to give Germany’s new center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party a hand.

It seems more than a little hypocritical of Germany to refuse to reopen its embassy in Afghanistan because it abhors the Taliban’s regressive laws which Afghans are forced to live under, including those targeting women and girls, yet Germany invites the Taliban to Germany to help deport Afghans, who fled Taliban rule, back to Afghanistan.

Western values eh? Go figure.

Last year, after Germany opened the Afghan diplomatic mission in Bonn to the Taliban, the Taliban launched an advertising campaign looking for interns seeking “to gain practical and professional experience at the Consulate General of Afghanistan in Bonn, working within a diplomatic mission.” The upside: It didn’t say women need not apply.

Germany has sought to sidestep the question of diplomatic recognition, which Germany, like all countries, except Russia, have refused to give the Taliban governemnt, with talk of seeking “technical” aid from the Taliban. But that seems disengenuous given that the Taliban are at the Afghan diplomatic mission in Bonn. You can’t have it both ways Germany.

Germany also says it is deporting those Afghans with a criminal record. Not true. On the last plane load of 81 Afghans sent from Germany to Afghanistan, at least one had no criminal record. It was the first, but given the ramped up efforts to deport Afghans it most certainly won’t be the last.

Germany appears to be the first country to openly seek the Taliban’s assistance in deporting Afghans. However it is not likely to be the last.

Because the Taliban effectively govern Afghanistan under the international-law principle that those controlling most of a country function as its government, Germany or any country returning Afghans does indeed need their help. Certainly Germany can’t just fly a planeload of Afghans to Kabul, dump them off and fly away. Nor it would seem can any country seeking to fly deported Afghans home.

Germany may just be setting a trend. Certainly much of the west is lining up to deport Afghans from their territory. Bizarrly the United States is simply shipping deportees to third countries, mostly in Africa.

Western values eh? Go figure

It’s a far cry from the 2021 welcome many western countries gave Afghans fleeing Kabul when the Taliban defeated the United States and its NATO allies and returned to power.

The open arms were never really about affection for Afghans, but more a gesture intended to assuage the collective guilt of the largely western world for its failed 20-year invasion and its desperate and humiliating departure from Kabul.

Rather than admitting they were abandoning Afghans and Afghanistan, taking their planes and going home, the departing invaders sought to take those who had befriended them, ignoring the 42 million other Afghans, who had also hoped for a better day back in 2001 when the invaders first arrived.

As a result, there are thousands stranded in Pakistan who were helped to leave Afghanistan by their so-called foreign friends, living in fear of being deported back to Afghanistan or thousands more living in western countries, now uncertain of their future, living in countries whose governments want them gone.

Western values eh? Go figure.

5 Years Later, Inside the Last 24 Hours of America’s War in Afghanistan

September 1, 2026 Analytical articles

Afghan evacuees line up at night to board a brightly lit U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Kabul airport. — Afghan passengers board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III during evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Donald Allen)

Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, had been the final American service member to step aboard. Ross Wilson, the top U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, was also on the aircraft.

One minute later, Aug. 31 began in Kabul. No U.S. troops remained on the ground in Afghanistan.

Five years ago Sunday, that flight ended a military mission that had begun nearly 20 years earlier, on Oct. 7, 2001, when the United States launched combat operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban government that had sheltered Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The final day was anything but quiet. American troops were still evacuating Afghans, defending the airport from ISIS-K attacks, dismantling equipment and pulling thousands of service members out of a shrinking perimeter. The final extraction involved five C-17s that would carry the remaining American forces out of Afghanistan.

The Airport Was Still Under Attack

The final 24 hours began under the threat of another ISIS-K attack.

Four days earlier, on Aug. 26, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at Abbey Gate, where crowds of Afghans had gathered hoping to enter the airport. The attack killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians, according to the military’s investigation.

A supplemental Pentagon review completed in 2024 upheld the finding that a single suicide bomber carried out the attack. Threat reporting remained intense.

U.S. Marines with Golf Company, 2nd Platoon, 1st Marine Division, pose for a photograph at Hamid Karzai International Airport during Non-combatant Evacuation Operations in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2021. The photo was taken prior to the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate while Marines secured the airfield and processed evacuees. (Courtesy photo by Lance Cpl. Noah Smith)

On Aug. 29, the U.S. military launched a drone strike against a white Toyota Corolla in Kabul that commanders believed was connected to an imminent ISIS-K attack on the airport.

CENTCOM initially described the strike as successful. It was not.

The Pentagon later acknowledged that U.S. personnel had misidentified the vehicle and its occupants. An Air Force investigation determined the strike killed three adults and seven children. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a “tragic mistake” and accepted responsibility.

Then, on the morning of Aug. 30, five rockets were fired toward the airport.

The military’s Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar systems, known as C-RAMs, engaged the attack. Two rockets fell on the airfield, and McKenzie later said the defensive systems probably prevented more significant damage. The weapons remained operational until almost the end.

Soldiers with the Massachusetts National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 101st Field Artillery Regiment, were still operating their C-RAM guns after 9 p.m. local time. Two of their guns had engaged the five-rocket volley earlier that day. Not long afterward, the remaining equipment was destroyed, and the soldiers boarded a C-17.

U.S. Army soldier in camouflage hands bottled water to Afghan children during the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan. — *A U.S. Army soldier distributes bottled water to Afghan evacuees during evacuation operations Aug. 21, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jimmie Baker)*

At the same time, Army engineers were working to leave the airport’s electrical system running after American forces departed.

On Aug. 29, soldiers from the Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion started, synchronized and connected all 15 generators at the airport’s three power plants. Ten fuel storage tanks were filled to capacity to keep the plants operating after the withdrawal.

The airport still had to function while the Americans dismantled the force protecting it.

The Evacuation Continued Into the Final Day

Even as troops began collapsing their positions, evacuation flights continued. McKenzie said more than 1,500 Afghans were flown out during roughly the final 24 hours.

By the end of the operation, U.S. military aircraft had evacuated more than 79,000 civilians from Kabul over 18 days. That included about 6,000 Americans, more than 73,500 Afghans, and third-country nationals. Combined U.S. and coalition flights evacuated more than 123,000 people.

At the peak of the evacuation, approximately 21,600 people were flown out in a single 24-hour period aboard U.S. and coalition aircraft. Thirty-seven U.S. military flights carried about 12,700 people, while 57 coalition and partner flights carried another 8,900.

That pace slowed dramatically as the military approached its withdrawal deadline and shifted from moving civilians to extracting the troops who had been running and protecting the airport.

The final five C-17s were part of what McKenzie called the “joint tactical exfiltration.”

Afghan evacuees carrying bags walk up the ramp of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Kabul airport. — Families board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III during evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Samuel Ruiz)

No additional American civilian evacuees reached the airport in time to leave aboard those five aircraft, although U.S. diplomatic personnel, including Wilson, departed as part of the final American contingent. McKenzie said the military retained the ability to take evacuees until shortly before departure, but none reached the airport in time.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said later that evening that fewer than 200, and likely closer to 100, Americans who wanted to leave remained in Afghanistan. He cautioned that officials were still working to determine the exact number. Afghan interpreters, Special Immigrant Visa applicants and other U.S. partners also remained behind.

The Final C-17s Flew Into a Darkening Airport

Air Force records released after the withdrawal provide a glimpse of what crews encountered while flying some of those final missions.

MOOSE 81 and MOOSE 92 were two of the five C-17s sent from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar for the final flight into Kabul on Aug. 30.

As they approached the airport, the crews observed air defense artillery, flares and heavy machine-gun fire. They also received reports of rooftop snipers in the area. Despite the threats, deteriorating weather and mountainous terrain, the C-17s landed on what the Air Force described as an unsecured airfield.

Once on the ground, the crews moved quickly.

Air Force records say the loadmasters aboard MOOSE 81 and MOOSE 92 loaded the remaining U.S. personnel and sensitive equipment onto their aircraft in less than an hour. Airmen from the crews later received Distinguished Flying Crosses with “C” devices for their actions during the mission.

McKenzie said U.S. forces demilitarized up to 70 MRAP armored vehicles and 27 Humvees. Seventy-three aircraft left on the airport ramp were also rendered inoperable. Most of those aircraft, McKenzie emphasized, were already not mission-capable before U.S. forces left.

The C-RAM systems that had helped defend the airport hours earlier were also disabled.

The decision to leave them operating until nearly the last moment was deliberate. Breaking down and extracting the systems would have taken time, McKenzie said, and commanders determined that protecting the remaining troops was more important than bringing the equipment home.

The Last American Soldier

There was no formal ceremony and no formal handover of the airport.

McKenzie said the Taliban had established a perimeter outside the airfield during the withdrawal, preventing people from entering while the Americans departed. Shortly before leaving, Donahue spoke with the Taliban commander with whom U.S. forces had been coordinating and told him the Americans were leaving.

“We did not turn it over to the Taliban,” McKenzie told reporters. Then the remaining paratroopers boarded.

Army Master Sgt. Alex Burnett photographed Donahue walking toward the final C-17 through the green glow of night-vision equipment, his rifle hanging at his side. The photograph quickly became one of the defining images of the withdrawal.

Donahue was the final U.S. service member to board.

Last American Soldier leaves Afghanistan — Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Donahue is the final American service member to depart Afghanistan; his departure closes the U.S. mission to evacuate American citizens, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and vulnerable Afghans. (U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Alex Burnett)

Wilson boarded with him, bringing the State Department and Defense Department teams out together on the final aircraft. At 3:29 p.m. Eastern time, 11:59 p.m. in Kabul, the final C-17 lifted off.

“Every single U.S. service member is now out of Afghanistan,” McKenzie told reporters shortly afterward. The departure marked the end of a U.S. military mission that had lasted 19 years, 10 months and 23 days.

It also ended an evacuation carried out under extraordinary circumstances. U.S. troops had secured and operated an international airport inside a capital controlled by the Taliban, while military and diplomatic personnel processed evacuees and troops provided security, medical assistance, food and water.

More than 123,000 people were evacuated aboard U.S. and coalition aircraft. Thirteen American service members were killed at Abbey Gate. Ten Afghan civilians were killed in the mistaken U.S. drone strike. Americans and Afghan partners who still wanted to leave remained in the country after the last military aircraft was gone.

For the troops aboard the final C-17s, the deadline had arrived.

The wheels left the runway with one minute remaining before midnight, and America’s nearly 20-year military mission on the ground in Afghanistan was over.

Why the United States Can’t Quit Its Wars

August 31, 2026 Analytical articles

By Greg Jaffe

Reporting from Washington

The New York Times

Aug. 30, 2026

The country’s longest war came to an end exactly five years ago. Today it offers lessons for policymakers seeking to avoid an endless war in Iran.

For much of the Afghanistan war, the only thing harder for the United States than winning was quitting.

The country’s longest war ended in chaos and defeat five years ago Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, desperate to escape Taliban insurgents, swarmed the Kabul airport. Thirteen U.S. troops died there in a suicide bombing.

But since then, the fears that prevented three presidents from quitting the war have proven to be unfounded. Afghanistan has not become a terror haven or launchpad for attacks in the United States.

Today, the U.S. military is mired in a new war in Iran. Once again, the prospects for a military victory look bleak. Even President Trump has hinted that he would like to quit the war, only to reverse course and make a case for staying.

“We don’t have to be there,” he said in an Oval Office address in the spring. “We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”

The long war in Afghanistan raises hard questions for the generals and policymakers contemplating the way forward in Iran: Why was quitting in Afghanistan so hard? What does the long struggle to accept defeat there say about the Trump administration’s predicament in Iran?

The United States has faced questions about quitting in just about every war it has fought since its emergence as a global power after World War II. “So much of what we’ve been involved in these last several decades is really policing the empire,” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a senior analyst at RAND Corporation, a think tank that studies security matters.

In most instances, U.S. troops have gone to war to impose order on an unruly world, or to defend American values. “We’re not fighting existential conflicts,” Mr. Hoehn said.

The aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death in May 2011 offered the best opportunity to leave Afghanistan. The perpetrator of the Sept. 11 terror attacks was dead, and a decade of drone strikes had decimated his organization. The Taliban insurgents, who had ruled Afghanistan and harbored Al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion, were proving almost impossible to eradicate.

Presidents and the Pentagon were motivated to keep fighting by concerns about the country’s credibility, a sense of obligation to trusted Afghan allies and a feeling that defeat would dishonor the sacrifices made by dead and wounded troops.

For many of these officers, who lost close friends in firefights with the Taliban, the idea of quitting ran counter to years of training and experience.

“Simply put, one reason the Americans did not leave Afghanistan earlier is that the U.S. military fights to win,” Mr. Malkasian wrote.

Political and foreign policy leaders fretted about U.S. credibility on the world stage and the costs that they could pay at the ballot box for losing a war.

By 2011, U.S. troop levels had already begun falling in Afghanistan, and the Taliban recognized that it just needed to outlast U.S. troops and the exhausted American public’s willingness to pay for the war.

As the prospect of defeating the Taliban grew more remote, U.S. political leaders shifted their goals. They focused on reducing casualties, cutting the war’s costs and keeping the corrupt and unpopular Afghan government alive.

“They’re like a doctor in a critical care ward that knows the patient is going to die,” said Rosemary Kelanic, the Middle East program director at Defense Priorities, which promotes a more modest U.S. foreign policy. “They’re just hoping the patient dies after their shift is over. They don’t want it to be on their watch.”

The war continued for another decade after bin Laden’s death, claiming the lives of another 868 service members. U.S. commanders who led troops in the war’s waning years sensed that they were being set up to fail. On a recent podcast, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the last commander in Afghanistan, recalled his mind-set when he was selected in 2018 for the job. He expected to emerge from his tour “very tired” and with a “diminished reputation.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed earlier this year that the war in Iran would be nothing like the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Hegseth had deployed to both conflicts as a young Army National Guard officer. The experience left him angry and disillusioned.

“Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous foolish politicians like Bush, Obama and Biden squander American credibility,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters in March.

Those wars were quagmires, he said. The Iran war, he promised, would be different — “laser focused,” lethal, swift and “decisive.”

“This is not Iraq,” Mr. Hegseth insisted. “This is not endless.”

Iran responded to punishing attacks by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this summer, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that U.S. bombs and missiles likely would not be enough to defeat Iran or to even reopen the critical waterway to commercial traffic.

“Air power has got limits,” he said in Senate testimony, “and we always have to be mindful of those.”

Today the administration is betting that a U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian exports through the strait and economic sanctions will accomplish what the earlier airstrikes failed to do.

There are early signs of an uptick in the number of ships and oil exports transiting the strait.

Despite the modest gains, U.S. military leaders are no longer talking about a swift victory. Instead, they are describing a campaign that would squeeze Iran for months or longer.

Asked how long the Navy, already strained by long deployments, could sustain the blockade, Mr. Hegseth replied: “We can hold it as long as we need to — indefinitely.”

For the United States, the stakes are much lower, and so too are the costs of quitting.

The U.S. military likely could open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war started. “It is a doable task,” said Thomas G. Mahnken, who served as a senior Pentagon official under President George W. Bush. “But it would take some effort on the ground, just because the Iranians have spent decades building and fortifying positions.”

For now, the costs of such an operation in blood and treasure seem higher than Mr. Trump or the American people, who polls show oppose the war, are willing to bear.

Mr. Hegseth on Wednesday marked the five-year anniversary of the end of the Afghanistan war by presenting three retired Marines with upgraded awards for valor. Two of the three suffered severe shrapnel wounds in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.

Despite their injuries, they continued to help the wounded get to safety.

In his remarks, Mr. Hegseth praised their heroism. “When the wicked sought to sow terror, these men stood as lions at the gate — bold in their purpose, fierce in their resolve and unbreakable in their courage,” he said.

“You are the vanguard of a lethal, proud and undefeated force,” Mr. Hegseth told the Marines. He awarded them their long-delayed medals.

No one mentioned the country’s defeat.

Afghanistan After America

August 27, 2026 Analytical articles

A Conversation With Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith

Foreign Affiars

Published on August 27, 2026

Episode Details

Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the country remains dire, and the collective forgetting of the United States’ longest war carries costs of its own.

Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith have each spent many years working on and within Afghanistan. Miller, now president of the Asia Foundation, was a longtime U.S. diplomat who became a top official focused on Afghanistan from 2013 to 2017. Smith worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2018 before serving as an Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Miller and Smith on Tuesday, August 25, about the lessons and legacy of the American war in Afghanistan, how the country has changed under Taliban rule, and the questions that U.S. policymakers should grapple with moving forward.

Sources:

“The Myth of a Responsible Withdrawal From Afghanistan” by Laurel Miller

“The World Has No Choice But to Work With the Taliban” by Graeme Smith and Ibraheem Bahiss

This episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Rachel Powell and Kanishk Tharoor, with audio engineering by Todd Yeager and Christopher Koch and original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Irina Hogan.

Struggling to Survive Poverty: The strategies taken by Afghan families pushed to the limits

August 24, 2026 Analytical articles

Gulhan Durzai

Afghanistan Analysts Network

25 Aug 2026 print sharing button

Much has been written about the Afghan economy since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate in 2021: the data show a calamitous economic contraction, a fragile recovery where per capita GDP is actually falling, a labour market struggling to provide jobs and livelihoods, women and children taking on home-based work for a pittance, a large number of older boys taken out of school to work and Afghans emigrating, even as millions more are forced to ‘return’ from Iran and Pakistan. This report goes beyond the macro-economic trends to look at what they mean for individuals and their families. Guest author Gulhan Durzai* hears from Afghans, especially Afghan women, about their efforts to survive deepening impoverishment, the daily calculations and sacrifices, their relentless determination to try to keep households afloat and the point at which survival requires the unthinkable.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

The accounts in this report reveal the sequence through which households exhaust one coping mechanism after another, something that economic indicators alone cannot convey. Some of the interviewees were once self-reliant, with professional jobs, savings and assets. Others were already poor and had little cushion against further economic shocks. Yet their stories reveal a common progression as families exhaust one option after another. Savings are spent and assets sold. Women and children take on home-based piecework for meagre returns or become street vendors. Families borrow from relatives, neighbours and landlords. Sons are sent on dangerous journeys to Iran in the hope that remittances will keep those left behind afloat. Children are withdrawn from school to work, or sent to residential institutions that can provide them with food and shelter. Strategies that ensure immediate survival often erode the very resources – education, assets and earning potential – on which a family’s future depends. The accounts show, as well, how Emirate policies have removed many of the options available for women by severely restricting their access to education and paid employment. For those with no male breadwinner, the options are desperate indeed.

These stories illustrate how sudden shocks – work drying up, illness, a breadwinner dying – can push even the better-off into previously unimagined poverty and already vulnerable households into extreme hardship. They show how economic shocks cascade through Afghan society: when a university lecturer loses her job, the widowed cleaner she employed loses her income as well and is pushed to begging; when a son who has been sending back remittances, is deported, his whole family is impoverished, overnight; when a widowed mother becomes too ill to work, it is her eldest daughter, just 11 years old, who has to try to keep the family afloat.

The interviews also demonstrate how households struggle relentlessly to survive, rather than passively succumbing to poverty, tracing a process that aggregate economic indicators cannot capture. The strong social contract whereby Afghans try to help each other in a crisis still holds, but is under strain. As one coping mechanism after another fails, today’s survival increasingly comes at the cost of tomorrow’s prospects, until some families are left facing choices no parent would willingly make.

Edited by Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour

*Gulhan Durzai graduated in 2026 with a Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has worked as a freelance researcher for AAN since 2023, and as an archive researcher, interpreter and assistant in documentary film production.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

20260812 surviving poverty FINAL Download

The Ongoing Betrayal of Our Afghan Allies

August 24, 2026 Analytical articles

Grace Segers

The New Republic

August 23, 2026

Tens of thousands of Afghans are stuck in legal limbo as the Trump administration makes it more difficult for them to arrive in the United States and resettle.

Five years ago this month, when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan and Kabul fell to the Taliban, Sayed Sadat was out of the country earning his master’s degree at a university in Germany. Having worked with the American government as a lawyer in Afghanistan, Sadat believed it would be relatively easy for himself and his wife to apply for asylum in the United States.

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Despite beginning his application in 2021, he did not arrive in the U.S. until 2024. Because his wife was included in his asylum application, he expected that she would join him shortly after he arrived. She had previously been informed by the United Nations International Office of Migration in Jordan that she would be able to receive a visa, then be evacuated first to the United Arab Emirates and the United States. But conditions changed before she could leave Afghanistan: President Donald Trump took office in January of 2025.

It wasn’t long before she heard the bad news. Sadat’s wife received word that the Trump administration had suspended resettlement of refugees. As a result, she would be unable to leave Afghanistan for an indefinite period of time. Sadat has not seen his wife in five years.

Along with halting the refugee resettlement program, the Trump administration has suspended visas and immigration requests for all Afghan migrants, and included Afghanistan in a travel ban that makes it nearly impossible for any Afghan—including family members of asylum seekers already in the country—to enter the U.S. Even for those relatives who have seen their petitions approved, the State Department refuses to issue travel documents in accordance with the travel ban.

“Every day, when she’s calling me three times a day, she’s asking me six times a day: ‘Is the travel ban over, and is the family reunification open now? When is the time that we’re going to be reunited?’ I don’t have an answer for her,” said Sadat. Meanwhile, he has been unable to obtain his green card because of the pause on visa processing.

Speaking in a press call, Sharif Ali, the president of the International Refugee Assistance Project, a legal aid and advocacy organization that represents refugees said, “As we take stock of whether the U.S. has lived up to its obligations and promises to the Afghans who worked and served alongside American military personnel and partners—often at great personal risks—the clear answer, unfortunately, is a resounding no.”

In July, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must allow the family members of asylum seekers, like Sadat’s wife, to be permitted to enter the U.S. The State Department has appealed the decision and requested a motion to stay the court’s order.

“It is really hard to achieve that sense of permanency and belonging when your family’s still separated and you don’t know that they’re safe, or you know that they’re not safe,” said said Kristyn Peck, the CEO of the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, a regional refugee resettlement organization.

Sadat also hears stories from fellow community members as an intake and administrative coordinator in the Sacramento office of World Relief, a refugee resettlement organization. Family separation weighs most heavily on these clients, as their relatives of all ages are stuck in Afghanistan or neighboring countries. Sadat said that sometimes he will hear from parents that their children in Afghanistan feel abandoned, and will no longer speak to them. The uncertainty has contributed to a frustration within the Afghan community writ large, and a sense that they have been left behind by the American government.

“They’re, like, emotionally hurt. Their feelings are hurt, they don’t believe that anything will happen soon. As I don’t expect that anything will happen soon,” said Sadat. “I even heard from one of the Afghan community members here, they said, like, ‘We were betrayed.’”

The Trump administration also removed a previous exception for SIV holders to the travel ban, who are already stuck in an approval process that has been found in court to be unlawfully slow. Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, an organization that was founded in 2021 to facilitate the arrival of Afghans into the U.S., said [in a press call] that nearly 180,000 people have been approved for visas but are still waiting for interviews.

“They finished all of the paperwork. All they needed is an interview, a medical check, and a visa printed. That’s not a backlog. A backlog is what you have when you’re working through cases. This is what you have when you just stop it,” VanDiver said. He added that roughly 3,000 relatives of current active-duty American service members are stranded outside of the United States, including 150 in Camp As Sayliyah, a refugee camp in Qatar. The 1,100 Afghan families currently living there have been vetted by the U.S. government.

The Trump administration has also ended Temporary Protected Status for Afghans, leaving around 11,000 Afghans in the U.S. unable to work and facing the threat of detention and deportation. Even those with seemingly secure legal status have been subject to new scrutiny. The Department of Homeland Security has sent notices to hundreds of Afghans with green cards who arrived through SIVs saying that the approval letters that formed the basis of their applications have been revoked.

Even though there are “no inadequacies or insufficiencies or credibility issues” with peoples’ legal status that the team can find, Peck said, the re-vetting process creates fear and anxiety.

“We want people to feel like they belong in their communities, and how can you feel like you belong if your very legal status here is at risk?” Peck asked.

In a press call, Danilo Zak, the director of Policy at Church World Service, another refugee resettlement organization, told reporters, “The provisions have left families and children hungrier and sicker, and denied them often the temporary help they need to get established in their new homes.”

Resettlement organizations and charitable groups have been forced to pick up the slack. Zak said that Church World Service programs are opening up food banks for the first time to help support community members in need.

Jonathan Parsons, interim regional director for the resettlement organization World Relief Texas, said that the ending of SNAP eligibility for refugees had required his colleagues to pivot to providing more basic needs. On the upside, this has allowed for strengthening connections with the local community who can help provide resources, but it also introduces significant challenges.

“It is definitely stretching us in our capacity, and also it does add a lot of stress to staff,” Parsons said. “There’s a lot more weighing on our staff on a day-to-day basis, and just feeling like we don’t have the answers, and … we don’t know when the end is in sight for some of these situations.”

Meanwhile, Afghans in the U.S. are afraid of being detained and deported under the stricter immigration enforcement implemented by Trump. Arrests of Afghans already in the country increased in the wake of a shooting by an Afghan national in Washington, D.C. last December that killed one member of the National Guard. Some asylum seekers have been detained during routine required check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Peck said that their organization was offering legal trainings and bringing food to the apartment complexes where clients are living, because they are afraid to leave their homes.

“We’re hearing from food banks that they’re seeing a significant decrease in the cohort of refugee and immigrant populations that would be typically accessing their services, and so we’re trying to do what we can to bring it to them,” she said.

Some Afghans have been detained in their communities. Earlier this summer, Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, an Afghan man who had fought alongside the U.S. military, was taken from his home by ICE and died while in custody the day after from an allergic reaction.

Laila Ayub, the co-founder and director of Project Anar, a legal advocacy organization, said [in a press call] that the detention of Afghans was a “direct consequence of restrictive immigration policies and a lack of meaningful access to pathways” to permanent residency. Some Afghans have sought to enter the United States through the southern border, resulting in their being sent to detention centers.

“Many that we are in touch with still today are in detention centers for months or even years. At this point, they face harsh conditions, lack of access to medical care, and often mistreatment based on their nationality and faith,” said Ayub.

More recently, members of Congress from both parties and chambers have introduced legislation to reinstate TPS for Afghanistan. Representative Don Bacon, one of the bill’s Republican cosponsors, has suggested using a discharge petition to force a vote on the legislation on the House floor. Even if the bill were to receive sufficient bipartisan support to receive a vote in the House, it’s unclear whether it could overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

“We have a moral obligation to those we have served with in Afghanistan, who serve by our side, helping us out. We had a promise, and promises made should be promises kept,” Bacon said in a press call.

Sadat said that he remains confident that he will be able to obtain his green card and is hopeful that he will be joined by his wife soon. He added that Afghans may need support in their continued resettlement, but they are also integrated into their communities in the U.S.

“I don’t care about if I don’t have a green card, or I’m not a permanent resident. Still, I see that I’m a member of this family, this community, and I know we will overcome these challenges, and I will keep fighting,” said Sadat.

Grace Segers is a staff writer at The New Republic.

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.”

Engage, not isolate

Open dialogue

Talk quietly

Talk tougher

Will it work?

Afghans areno longer welcome by those who once helped thme leave Afghanistan, abandoning them, no longer wanted. Western Values eh? Go figure.

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