The First Five Years of Anti-Taliban Resistance in Afghanistan — Part I
Last Updated: 17 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 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 independently verify and require analytical caution, the persistence and geographic spread of armed activity are undeniable.
This reality creates a far more complex picture than either side of the current debate acknowledges. The resistance has not demonstrated the capacity to threaten the Taliban's nationwide control, but the Taliban have likewise failed to eliminate organized armed opposition. The vital question is not whether the resistance is winning or losing—it is whether it can survive, adapt, and transform tactical survival into meaningful political leverage.
But time is becoming an increasingly important factor. The longer the Taliban remain in power, the more difficult it may become to reverse the political, security and social changes taking place under their rule. The immediate concern is not only whether the remaining resistance can survive, but whether Afghanistan is entering a period in which the human and institutional capacity for organized opposition is steadily being eroded, while a new generation is being shaped under the Taliban's ideological and educational system.
This question extends beyond Afghanistan itself and has implications for international security. The Taliban, an organization that was previously designated as a terrorist organization by several governments, now exercises effective control over an entire state and its population. Millions of Afghans are therefore living under a political and security system they did not necessarily choose or support. The long-term consequences of this transformation—for Afghanistan, for the region, and for the wider international security environment—remain uncertain.
Table of Contents — Part I
1. Ahmad Massoud and the Burden of Leadership
1.1 The Role of the NRF Leadership
1.2 The Killing of Hasib Quway Markaz
2. The Mechanics of Taliban Power and the Human Cost
2.1 The Asymmetry of Intelligence
2.2 The Cost Beyond the Battlefield
2.3 The Information and Psychological Battlefield
3. Survival and Geographic Expansion
3.1 Badakhshan and Local Grievances
A persistent question hangs over the National Resistance Front (NRF): What responsibility does Ahmad Massoud bear for the fighters who continue to operate under his banner?
This inquiry has gained urgency following the deaths of senior resistance commanders. However, evaluating leadership requires more than pointing to casualties and assuming commanders are being recklessly sent to their deaths.
1.1 The Role of the NRF Leadership
The NRF, led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953-2001), was the first group to emerge following the collapse of the republic, inspiring subsequent anti-Taliban formations. Massoud’s framework for the struggle encompasses several key realities:
Resistance as a Last Resort: Massoud maintains that the NRF initially sought meaningful political negotiations before turning to armed defense.
A Multi-Dimensional Strategy: The NRF presents armed struggle as only one element of a broader resistance that also depends on political organization, civil resistance, women’s participation, diplomacy, public communication, and public trust.
The Structural Asymmetry: Asking civilians and fighters to resist a regime holding a massive state advantage creates a deep moral and strategic dilemma for the leadership.
(Screenshot: Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front (NRF), explaining his reasons for resisting the Taliban in a Farsi-language video recorded in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in 2023. Published on YouTube on August 30, 2026.)This broader understanding of resistance is reinforced by internal analysis within the movement. In a speech delivered in late August 2026, NRF political analyst Abdullah Khanjani* argued that military performance alone cannot determine the strength or future of the resistance, emphasizing that organizational discipline, internal communication, public legitimacy, and public trust are equally decisive.
(Screenshot: Abdullah Khanjani (left), head of the Political Bureau of the NRF, discussing the movement’s activities and broader strategy during the previous five years in Afghanistan. Published on YouTube on August 29, 2026.)Khanjani's analysis points directly to the question of accountability within the resistance. He argues that legitimate criticism—particularly regarding organizational effectiveness, relations with commanders, responsibility toward the families of fallen fighters, and internal communication—should not simply be dismissed. At the same time, he distinguishes legitimate concerns from narratives amplified by hostile actors. For the NRF, the key institutional challenge is creating formal mechanisms to address these internal grievances without allowing misinformation to define the debate.
Addressing these dilemmas during his speech in Dushanbe, Massoud reiterated that armed struggle is not his primary preference, but an unavoidable response to Taliban authoritarianism. He argued that if the Taliban regime genuinely claims popular legitimacy, it should accept UN-supervised elections to allow the Afghan public to determine their own government.
1.2 The Killing of Hasib Quway Markaz
The killing of Hasib Panjshiri, also known as Hasib Quway Markaz, a prominent and widely recognized commander of the National Resistance Front (NRF), by the Taliban on 19 August 2026, along with several of his comrades, underscored the severe risks facing figures associated with the armed opposition. Panjshiri was killed in a Taliban ambush in the Salang area while travelling with other NRF members; the NRF subsequently confirmed his death. Reports indicate that Taliban forces had obtained information about the group's movements before the ambush.
In the aftermath of his death, reports and statements emerged alleging internal disputes within the NRF and raising questions about possible internal betrayal. Among the figures mentioned in connection with these allegations is Tareq Mohammadi, who has been described as a senior aide to NRF leader Ahmad Massoud. Claims concerning Mohammadi's alleged involvement in the circumstances surrounding Panjshiri's death remain contested, however, and have not been independently verified. The available evidence does not, by itself, establish that an NRF insider provided the information that enabled the Taliban to locate Panjshiri.
Evaluating these claims requires strict analytical discipline:
Hypothesis vs. evidence: An internal betrayal is possible, but asserting it as fact without concrete proof risks mistaking suspicion for evidence.
Operational vulnerabilities: A prominent commander operating in enemy-controlled territory can be exposed through poor operational security, local surveillance, communications tracking, unauthorized movements, or long-term intelligence gathering.
The realities of clandestine operations: The Taliban do not necessarily require a high-level informant to locate a prominent opposition commander. Persistent intelligence collection, local observation, surveillance, and the tracking of movements can eventually expose even high-profile targets.
A commander can be killed because of an insider. He can be killed because of inadequate operational security. He can be exposed through local observation, surveillance, communications, an unauthorized movement, or information gathered over time. And sometimes, particularly when a known opposition commander is operating inside territory controlled by his adversary, sustained intelligence efforts may simply succeed in locating him.
The death of Panjshiri therefore warrants investigation and criticism where the evidence supports it. But it should not automatically be transformed into proof of an internal conspiracy. Nor does his death, by itself, establish that Massoud “sent him to die.”
The outcome of an operation does not, by itself, establish why it failed. A commander can be killed without betrayal, while the leadership can still be held accountable for the decisions, procedures, and security arrangements that preceded his exposure. As Khanjani argues, accountability should lead to investigation and institutional learning rather than unsubstantiated blame. This is particularly important after the loss of senior commanders, because credible communication and meaningful answers to fighters, families, and supporters are essential to maintaining the NRF's internal cohesion and public trust.
2. The Mechanics of Taliban Power and the Human Cost
Understanding the resistance's struggle requires evaluating the massive structural imbalance defining the conflict. The Taliban went from an insurgent movement operating from the mountains and terrorizing the Afghan population to the de facto authorities controlling Afghanistan.
(Taliban fighters at a checkpoint in Afghanistan, highlighting the extensive security presence and territorial control faced by resistance groups.)The Taliban inherited two decades' worth of state infrastructure, military equipment, communications tracking tools, and administrative databases. Consequently, opposition figures face a deeply uneven operational environment:
Constant Visibility: A high-profile commander operating inside Afghanistan cannot remain permanently invisible; movement, meeting people, procuring supplies, and managing communications inherently create persistent footprints.
Layered Surveillance: The regime accumulates actionable intelligence over time through local checkpoints, administrative coercion, informant networks, and signals tracking without needing an insider in every cell.
Operational Friction: Under these conditions, the discovery and elimination of resistance cells is usually the result of cumulative intelligence work rather than a single operational betrayal.
Understanding this asymmetry clarifies why exposure is rarely evidence of extraordinary operational failure or internal treason alone. While rigorous operational security remains vital, leadership must distinguish between structural exposure under state surveillance and deliberate betrayal when evaluating failed operations.
The Taliban's advantage is also reinforced by the wider militant environment operating inside Afghanistan. The resistance is not confronting only a conventional state security apparatus. It is operating in an environment in which Taliban forces coexist and, according to multiple reports, cooperate or maintain close relationships with foreign militant organizations.
(Another Taliban checkpoint in Afghanistan (with one masked Taliban fighter). The image illustrates the security presence and operational environment faced by resistance groups.)Recent reporting from Badakhshan provides a useful example. 8AM Media reported in September 2026, citing local sources, that more than 20 foreign fighters—including members of Jamaat Ansarullah, a Tajik militant group, Uyghur militants, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—were present at a Taliban border battalion base in Nusay district. The report further stated that some of these fighters did not speak Persian or Pashto and that all of them had been issued Afghan national identity cards. Their presence illustrates the broader security environment in which local resistance groups operate: Taliban-controlled areas can contain networks of foreign militants whose presence adds another layer of manpower, experience and cross-border connectivity to an already powerful security structure.
(Screenshot from 8AM Media, September 6, 2026, reporting on the Taliban crackdown following the arrest of Juma Khan Fateh and citing local sources on the reported presence of foreign fighters, including Ansarullah, Uyghur militants, and TTP members, among Taliban forces in Badakhshan.)The same reporting described the deployment of Pashtun Taliban special units into parts of Badakhshan, alongside the reported displacement of local Taliban personnel. It also reported continued clashes between the Taliban and the Freedom Front in Zebak. The significance of these developments is not simply ethnic or territorial. They suggest that the Taliban can reinforce local security structures with personnel drawn from elsewhere, reducing the ability of geographically isolated resistance groups to exploit local divisions within the regime.
This matters for understanding why resistance groups have struggled to achieve the breakthroughs that some expected after 2021. They are fighting an adversary that can draw upon centralized state resources, intelligence networks, nationwide administrative structures and external militant connections. The result is a conflict in which the resistance must build clandestine networks under intense pressure while the Taliban can reinforce contested areas and mobilize personnel across provincial boundaries.
2.2 The Cost Beyond the Battlefield
The risks of opposition extend far beyond active fighters. Human rights organizations and UN reporting have documented systematic reprisals against former security personnel, suspected NRF sympathizers, and their families.
Deterrence Through Retaliation: Arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, and family harassment create a massive psychological deterrent against open rebellion.
The Real Decision: An Afghan considering resistance is rarely deciding just on their own safety; they are weighing the immediate survival of their parents, spouse, and children.
Requirements for Uprising: Courage alone cannot fuel a nationwide movement. It requires secure networks, sustained resources, and a realistic expectation that resistance will yield a viable alternative.
There is also a major material difference between the two sides. Taliban fighters operate within a regime that provides them with regular income and organizational support, whereas resistance groups generally lack the resources to pay their fighters regular salaries. Many resistance fighters are therefore ordinary men who must continue working or finding other ways to support themselves while participating in the resistance. They operate under severe psychological and material pressure, balancing the demands of daily survival with the risks of armed opposition.
The resistance also faces a less visible form of attrition: the gradual loss of Afghanistan's pool of experienced military and security personnel. Former soldiers, intelligence personnel, police officers and experienced resistance commanders have been killed, detained, forced into hiding or pushed out of the country since the Taliban's return. The deaths of prominent resistance figures further reduce the movement's accumulated operational experience and leadership capacity. This matters because a resistance movement cannot replace experienced commanders simply by recruiting more people; organizational knowledge, local relationships, intelligence experience and battlefield leadership take years to develop.
The result is a form of strategic attrition that extends beyond individual casualties. Every experienced commander removed from the field potentially represents the loss of networks, knowledge and institutional memory. For the remaining resistance, the absence of sustained external support therefore has consequences not only for weapons and financing, but also for its ability to preserve and reproduce the human infrastructure required for a long-term political and security movement.
That is one reason why the question "Why don't Afghans simply fight back?" is far more complicated than it sounds. The same human cost applies to how the resistance communicates about its own casualties. Khanjani argues that a fallen fighter should not be reduced to a statistic or political symbol. Information surrounding a death may initially be incomplete, and premature reporting can affect relatives, comrades, and the security of the wider network. Responsible communication therefore requires confirming what happened before publicly identifying the dead or injured, while balancing the public's need for truthful information against operational-security concerns.
Afghans have fought back. They continue to fight back. But turning opposition into a nationwide uprising requires more than courage. It requires organization, resources, secure networks and a political environment in which ordinary people believe that resistance has a realistic chance of producing something better.
2.3 The Information and Psychological Battlefield
The resistance is also fighting on an information battlefield. Khanjani argues that the Taliban and their supporters do not rely exclusively on military pressure; propaganda, misinformation, social-media activity, psychological pressure, and attacks on the credibility of opposition figures form another layer of the conflict.
The purpose of such activity, in his assessment, is not merely to promote the Taliban. It can also undermine confidence in the resistance, amplify reports of failure, spread rumors, deepen divisions among opposition groups, and discourage Afghans from openly expressing support for resistance.
Social media therefore becomes strategically important. Khanjani describes patterns in which apparently ordinary accounts repeatedly praise the Taliban, attack resistance figures, support Taliban policies, or engage in personal attacks against opponents. Whether every such account is coordinated cannot be established from individual examples alone, but the broader concern is significant: an information environment saturated with coordinated or misleading narratives can make it difficult for ordinary users to distinguish genuine public sentiment from organized influence activity.
This creates a particular challenge for the NRF. The answer cannot simply be to counter propaganda with propaganda. The movement's credibility depends on providing accurate information, correcting false claims, acknowledging uncertainty where facts remain unconfirmed, and communicating with the public without exposing sensitive operational information. Information resilience therefore becomes part of organizational resilience.
Khanjani's argument also extends to psychological pressure on activists, journalists, women, and resistance supporters.
(Afghan women under Taliban rule, amid the restrictions imposed on women's public and private lives. Photo: Sandra Calligaro / ITEM / SAIF IMAGES.)Repeated insults, accusations, and harassment can discourage people from expressing opposition publicly even when they are not physically participating in armed resistance. In this sense, the information battlefield can reinforce the Taliban's broader deterrent effect: people may remain silent not because they support the regime, but because the perceived social and psychological cost of opposition becomes too high.
For the NRF, however, the information problem is not simply external. Khanjani's analysis suggests that the movement's own credibility is part of the same battlefield. If supporters receive incomplete, contradictory, or premature information from the resistance itself, distrust can grow even without deliberate hostile manipulation. The organization therefore faces a dual requirement: it must counter disinformation originating outside the movement while maintaining sufficiently accurate, timely, and responsible communication inside it.
This creates an important distinction between information warfare and information management. The NRF cannot control every narrative surrounding the resistance, but it can influence how vulnerable its own supporters are to those narratives. Clear communication, acknowledgment of uncertainty, correction of false claims, and mechanisms for addressing legitimate criticism can strengthen resilience without requiring the movement to respond to propaganda with propaganda of its own.
2.4 The Battle for the Next GenerationThe resistance faces another problem that cannot be measured through battlefield activity: the struggle over Afghanistan's next generation. The longer the Taliban remain in power, the greater their ability to shape the country's educational, religious and social environment according to their own ideological framework.
The expansion of religious and, in some cases, explicitly jihadi-oriented madrasas has become an increasingly important part of this process. In January 2026, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that more than 20,000 religious schools under the Ministry of Education were operating across Afghanistan, with around 2.5 million students studying religious sciences.
(Afghan religious students in a classroom under Taliban rule. The expansion of religious schools and religious education is reshaping the environment in which a new generation of Afghans is growing up.)Reporting in 2026 has also documented the expansion of Taliban religious and jihadi schools in provinces including Bamiyan, Daykundi and Sar-e Pol. The significance is not that religious education itself is inherently extremist; rather, the concern is what happens when a state systematically expands an educational environment dominated by its own ideological interpretation while restricting or weakening other forms of education.
This creates a long-term strategic problem. A political movement can eventually be defeated militarily and later re-emerge, but changing the political outlook of an entire generation is considerably more difficult. If young Afghans grow up with limited access to pluralistic education and are instead exposed predominantly to a state-controlled religious and ideological framework, the Taliban may gradually strengthen the social foundations of their rule even without resolving the country's underlying political conflicts.
The broader concern is therefore not simply the number of madrasas. It is the cumulative effect of education, religious messaging, social restrictions and state-controlled narratives on a generation that has little experience of an alternative political order. The Taliban are not merely governing the Afghanistan that existed in 2021; they are increasingly shaping the Afghanistan that will exist in 2030 and beyond.
This is where the question of time becomes critical. Every additional year gives the resistance less access to an adult population with direct experience of the former republic, while giving the Taliban more opportunity to influence how younger Afghans understand government, religion, national identity and political authority.
For the opposition, this means that resistance cannot remain exclusively a struggle over territory. It must also become a struggle over ideas, education and political imagination. If the resistance wants to remain relevant to younger Afghans, it must offer a coherent alternative vision of Afghanistan rather than simply opposing the Taliban.
3. Survival and Geographic Expansion
Despite these structural hurdles, the resistance has avoided eradication. What began as a localized fight in Panjshir and parts of northern Afghanistan has gradually expanded into a wider, more geographically dispersed pattern of operations.
By mid-2026, opposition groups claimed actions across a wide matrix of provinces:
Northern & North-Eastern Focus: Badakhshan, Kunduz, Baghlan, Faryab
Western Provinces: Herat, Badghis, Ghor
Southern & Eastern Hubs: Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar
While individual skirmishes do not signal an impending military defeat for the Taliban, the regime's inability to eliminate organized armed opposition five years into its rule remains strategically significant. This does not mean that the resistance is close to military victory. It is not. Nor should every reported attack be described as a major strategic breakthrough. But it is important to recognize that the Taliban regime has not succeeded in eliminating organized armed opposition.
Yet Khanjani's analysis suggests that the resistance should not be measured exclusively through battlefield activity. Military operations are only one component of a broader movement whose durability also depends on organization, communication, public trust, and political legitimacy. A resistance can therefore suffer military setbacks while retaining political and organizational relevance; conversely, continued attacks alone do not demonstrate that a national movement is emerging.
3.1 Badakhshan and Local GrievancesBadakhshan illustrates a critical evolution: armed opposition overlapping with broader civilian discontent. In this region, resistance groups benefit from widespread local grievances against the regime:
Forced implementation of aggressive poppy eradication policies without alternative livelihoods.
Disagreements over local administration, taxation, and resource distribution.
High-handed conduct by non-local Taliban-appointed officials.
This may be more important in the long term than the number of individual attacks. The broader security environment described above further complicates this local dynamic. A resistance movement becomes more difficult to suppress when military opposition and civilian grievances begin to reinforce one another. The Taliban may be able to defeat an isolated armed cell. It is much more difficult to permanently eliminate the political grievances that produce opposition in the first place.
This is why the recent resistance should not be judged only by territory captured or Taliban fighters killed. The more important question is whether opposition can develop political depth. The more these grievances become connected to organized political opposition, the more difficult they become for the central authorities to suppress.
Footnote:
*Abdullah Khanjani, an Afghan politician, former journalist and media executive, and former deputy minister at the State Ministry for Peace, serves as head of the Political Bureau of the National Resistance Front (NRF). In an August 2026 speech, he discussed the movement's organizational and political challenges, including accountability, internal communication, public trust, information management, and organizational reform. His remarks provide an internal perspective on the resistance's challenges and should therefore be considered alongside, rather than separately from, assessments by external observers.
Continue for Afghanistan Beyond the Taliban: Building the Road to Democracy — Part II
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