Five Years Under the Taliban: The Resistance, Its Gains, Its Losses and What Comes Next
Last Updated: 12 September 2026 Five years after the Taliban returned to power, the Afghan resistance finds itself in a difficult and often misunderstood position. The Taliban have not been overthrown; they retain effective control over Afghanistan’s state institutions, security apparatus, roads, administrative structures, and intelligence infrastructure. The resistance possesses no comparable military system or secure national territorial base, and it has no major foreign power providing sustained military assistance. The Taliban, by contrast, have access to a much broader network of international and regional relationships than the resistance, including governments willing to engage with them, regional powers that maintain working ties, and transnational militant networks operating within or around Afghanistan under Taliban rule. (A National Resistance Front (NRF) fighter in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains.) Yet, the resistance has not disappeared. Anti-Taliban armed groups c...
