Five Years Under the Taliban: The Resistance, Its Gains, Its Losses and What Comes Next
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. (A National Resistance Front (NRF) fighter in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains.) Yet, the resistance has not disappeared. Anti-Taliban armed groups continue to operate, and reports of attacks have spanned a wider geographic area than during the initial post-2021 years. Opposition fronts have claimed operations across multiple provinces, with Badakhshan emerging as a clear hotspot of sustained armed opposition and local unrest. While individual claims and casualty figures remain difficult to indep...
