The Unseen Victims of Taliban Rule: Why Afghan Men Are Being Erased from the Human Rights Narrative
Last Updated: 11 September 2026
Table of Contents
Introduction- Why do the Taliban kill Afghan Men?
- 1.1 Taliban's Fear of Political and Military Resistance
- 1.2 Taliban's Psychological Warfare and the Criminalization of Victims
- 1.2 Ethnic and Sectarian Persecution by the Taliban
- 1.3 Ethnic and Regional Repression by the Taliban
- 1.4 Taliban's Tribal Revenge
- Why are These Male Victims so Easily Overlooked by the International Community?
- How did the Taliban Become Powerful Enough to do This?
- Why don't Afghans Simply Fight Back?
- The West's Selective Memory of Afghanistan
- 5.1 The Asymmetry of Global Attention: Diplomatic and Media Mainstreaming
- And Now Afghanistan is Becoming a Tourist Destination
Conclusion: Afghan Lives Should not be Divided Into Politically Useful Victims
Introduction
For five years, the Taliban have ruled Afghanistan. Their oppression of women and girls has rightly received enormous international attention. Women have been excluded from secondary and higher education, pushed out of much of public life, and subjected to a system of restrictions that the United Nations has described as deeply discriminatory and authoritarian. None of this should be minimized.
But there is another Afghan tragedy that receives far less attention: the systematic killing, torture, disappearance and persecution of Afghan men under Taliban rule.
This is not an argument for paying less attention to Afghan women. It is an argument for paying attention to Afghans as human beings—including the men who have been killed, imprisoned, tortured or disappeared. The Taliban's victims are not exclusively women. In many of the cases documented since August 2021, the victims have overwhelmingly been men: former soldiers and policemen, former government officials, members of ethnic minorities, resistance fighters and ordinary civilians accused of supporting the opposition.
It is also important to recognize the political and ethnic composition of the regime itself. Although the Taliban presents itself as a national Afghan movement, its senior leadership and much of its historical command structure have been overwhelmingly Pashtun. This does not mean that Taliban abuses can be reduced to an ethnic conflict, nor that Pashtuns as an ethnic group are responsible for them. It does, however, matter when examining why predominantly non-Pashtun communities—including Tajiks and Hazaras—have repeatedly reported discrimination, collective punishment, and targeted violence under Taliban rule.
UNAMA documented at least 218 extrajudicial killings of former government officials and members of the Afghan security forces between 15 August 2021 and 30 June 2023. Former soldiers of the Afghan National Army were identified as the group at greatest risk. The killings occurred throughout Afghanistan and included people who had been detained by Taliban security forces before being killed.
Amnesty International has likewise documented a continuing pattern of extrajudicial executions. In Panjshir alone, it verified at least 14 extrajudicial executions of National Resistance Front detainees during 12–14 September 2022, while the total number of people extrajudicially killed during that period was estimated at at least 48. Amnesty described the wider pattern of executions of former government personnel and people associated with armed resistance as potential war crimes.
These are not merely statistics. Every dead man leaves behind parents, children, wives and sisters. The killing of a man in a society where men are often the principal providers can therefore destroy an entire family. Afghanistan has suffered from a huge population of widows as a consequence of decades of war: a UK government research report citing UNAMA noted that more than half a million widows lived in Afghanistan, many of them war widows.
(A masked Taliban cyber official using the internet. The Taliban does not rely solely on physical force, but also uses psychological pressure, information control, and technology to maintain its grip on power.)Not every killing in Afghanistan can automatically be attributed to the Taliban, and not every allegation is independently verifiable. However, the accumulated evidence from UNAMA, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations establishes a broader pattern that cannot reasonably be dismissed as isolated incidents—establishing a broader pattern of systematic Taliban violence against Afghan men.
1. Why do the Taliban kill Afghan Men?The Taliban’s violence against Afghan men is neither random nor merely the result of chaotic post-war disorder. It is a deliberate tactic driven by several overlapping political, military, and ideological motives aimed at consolidating absolute control over the country.
1.1 Taliban's Fear of Political and Military Resistance
The men who served in the former Afghan security forces were not simply former employees. Many had spent twenty years fighting the Taliban. From the Taliban's perspective, they represented a potential nucleus for another uprising. Consequently, the promise of a general amnesty did not prevent systematic reprisals. UNAMA found that former soldiers and police were particularly exposed to extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, torture and disappearance.
A 29 August 2026 report by 8am Media provides a more recent indication of this continuing concern. According to local sources, Taliban intelligence has ordered mosque imams, village elders, and other local representatives in parts of Ghazni, Maidan Wardak, Bamyan and Daikundi to compile lists of former government military personnel, including details of their current occupations and places of residence. The report said the Taliban's renewed pressure was linked to fears that former military personnel could form armed resistance against the group.
Panjshir provides perhaps the clearest example. The predominantly Tajik population of the valley and surrounding areas produced some of the strongest armed resistance to Taliban rule after Kabul fell. The response included mass arrests, torture, collective punishment and executions of alleged resistance members. Amnesty International documented evidence that Taliban forces tortured civilians accused of supporting the National Resistance Front, including cases in which detainees were tortured to death.
The National Resistance Front (NRF) has nevertheless continued to resist Taliban rule despite sustained military pressure and the severe human cost faced by suspected supporters and fighters. In August 2026, Abdullah Khanjani, head of the NRF's political office, said that more than 1,000 NRF fighters had been killed during the five years since the Taliban's return to power.
Khanjani also reported that NRF supporters had faced intimidation, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, while residents of Panjshir had been subjected to collective reprisals. According to Khanjani, the NRF has continued to carry out guerrilla attacks against Taliban forces despite its military setbacks.
The continuing repression in Panjshir is not only documented by human-rights organizations and resistance figures. A recent video recorded by a foreign visitor to the region also captured a Taliban fighter speaking openly about his participation in the conflict and his role in killing alleged members of the resistance.
On 27 September 2026, British tourist and content creator Will Bailey published a video on his YouTube channel documenting a four-day trip to Afghanistan, titled “Four Days in the World’s Most Dangerous Country.” During the trip, Bailey spoke with a Taliban fighter who said that he had joined a religious school in Nangarhar after finishing school and later received military and jihadist training. The fighter claimed that he had personally killed 14 people in a single day in Panjshir. According to the interpreter, the men were members of the National Resistance Front, which he said had collaborated with Americans and NATO. The fighter also said that killing people he regarded as non-believers or as refusing Sharia law was as easy for him as killing a chicken, raising further concerns about the dehumanization of opponents and the ideological environment surrounding Taliban violence.
(Screenshot from Will Bailey’s YouTube video: the Taliban fighter discusses his alleged killing of 14 people in Panjshir. Bailey appears fully shaved throughout the footage, in contrast to the grooming restrictions imposed on Afghan men under Taliban rule.)8am Media reported on the video and the fighter’s claims on 4 October, while noting that the account does not, by itself, independently verify the circumstances or identities of all 14 alleged victims.
This statement in front of a camera represents a significant first-person allegation consistent with the broader pattern of extrajudicial executions and other abuses documented in Panjshir. The video does not establish when the alleged killings occurred or the circumstances in which the 14 people were killed. However, the claim that the fighter killed 14 people in a single day raises serious questions about whether these were deaths in combat or whether at least some of the victims were captured or otherwise unable to fight back. Given the Taliban's documented practice of executing detainees and suspected resistance supporters in Panjshir, the possibility that the killings included executions cannot simply be dismissed. The video alone cannot establish this, but the fighter's own description of the killings and his apparent lack of remorse when discussing people he considered legitimate targets provide a disturbing illustration of the mindset surrounding violence against perceived opponents.
The purpose of such reprisals is not necessarily limited to punishing individuals already suspected of supporting the resistance. In response, Taliban forces have repeatedly targeted civilians, former government personnel, activists, and others suspected of sympathizing with or assisting the resistance. Such collective punishment can serve a broader strategic purpose: to convince ordinary Afghans that supporting, sheltering, informing for, or even openly sympathizing with the resistance will expose them and their families to detention, torture, disappearance, or death. In this way, the punishment of individuals becomes a mechanism for deterring wider participation in resistance and suppressing opposition before it can develop into a larger movement.
The objective, therefore, is not only to eliminate individual opponents but also to break the wider population’s will to resist. By demonstrating that even suspected supporters, relatives, and civilians can be detained, tortured, or killed, the Taliban seek to make resistance appear both futile and unbearably costly. But this strategy extends beyond physical repression: by portraying those targeted as criminals, enemies, or legitimate targets of punishment, it also seeks to shape how Afghan society perceives the victims themselves.
1.2 Psychological Warfare and the Criminalization of Victims
The Taliban's methods have also evolved considerably since the movement first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The movement that once governed Afghanistan has since developed into a far more sophisticated political, military, intelligence, and information apparatus. Its methods of repression increasingly extend beyond the physical elimination of opponents to the manipulation of how those victims are perceived.
This phenomenon, however, did not begin with the Taliban's return to power. The former Afghan government under Ashraf Ghani also routinely attributed attacks and killings to the Taliban, ISIS-K, or other armed groups, without solving the underlying problems or stopping the bloodshed and chaos that plagued Afghanistan. The blame game continued under Taliban rule. But what has changed under the Taliban is the extent to which the new authorities themselves control the security apparatus, detention system, and official narrative surrounding such killings.
One particularly effective tactic employed by the Taliban is the criminalization of the victim. Taliban authorities and affiliated media can portray people killed during security operations not as political opponents or civilians, but as criminals—often alleged thieves, kidnappers, or armed robbers. The killing can then be presented as the unavoidable outcome of a confrontation: the victim supposedly opened fire first, forcing Taliban forces to respond. The dead are thus transformed in the public narrative from victims into criminals whose deaths appear justified.
This is more than a matter of terminology. It is a form of psychological warfare. By attaching criminal labels to those who have been killed, the Taliban can undermine sympathy for their victims, discourage public mourning, and make extrajudicial killings appear to be legitimate law enforcement. The tactic also places the burden of proof on the dead: once a man has been branded a "thief" or "criminal," his family must first disprove the accusation before the circumstances of his death are even seriously questioned. The dead cannot defend themselves or challenge accusations of guilt, while surviving relatives face coercive blackmail, intimidation, and direct threats of retaliation to ensure their silence regarding Taliban killings and torture.
The purpose of such intimidation extends beyond controlling the narrative around individual killings. It also serves to silence Afghan society more broadly. When people know that criticizing Taliban decrees, reporting abuses, defending victims, or publicly questioning official accounts can result in detention, threats, or retaliation, many will choose silence rather than risk becoming the next target. In this way, the repression of individuals has a wider psychological effect: it teaches an entire population that speaking out carries a price. The Taliban's intimidation campaigns are also reinforced by domestic and international supporters who defend, amplify, or legitimize the regime's narratives, helping to isolate critics and further discourage Afghans from speaking openly about abuses.
The significance of such tactics lies precisely in their simplicity. A dead resistance fighter can become a "criminal"; a dead civilian can become an "armed robber"; and a security operation can be presented as an ordinary police action. If the allegation is repeated often enough, the circumstances of the killing can disappear behind the label.
A case reported on 6 September 2026 illustrates the danger of such practices. In Herat, Taliban forces reportedly shot dead 30-year-old Abdul Qadir Pahlawanzada after beating and torturing him with his hands bound. According to 8am Media, local sources identified Qadir as a welder with no military background or known ties to any political or armed group. A video obtained by the newspaper reportedly shows him being beaten with a rifle butt and then shot while his hands were tied. The killing took place at a Taliban checkpoint in Herat’s fourth district. His family said that he had never previously been detained by the Taliban and that no charges had been brought against him. Other media likewise reported that he was detained, beaten, and then shot with a Kalashnikov.
Following the extrajudicial killing, Sheikh Nooruddin Ahmad Islamjar (also known as Noor Ahmad Islamjar)—the Taliban-appointed governor of Herat province since October 2021—reportedly contacted Abdul Qadir’s family. According to reports, Governor Islamjar sought to deflect institutional accountability by framing the killing as a personal vendetta linked to an incident from the previous year. Simultaneously, Taliban authorities engaged in blackmailing family members, threatening them with severe consequences to force their silence and prevent public challenges to the official narrative.
Concerns regarding Governor Islamjar extend beyond administrative oversight to his influential theological writings. Known by the religious title Shaikh al-Hadith, Islamjar authored an Arabic-language book titled Mabāḥith fī al-ʿAqīdah al-Māturīdiyyah al-musammā Muʿtamad Māturīd min Muʿtaqad Māturīd (Investigations into Maturidi Creed), written around April–May 2021. The work contains sectarian characterizations of Shia Muslims, framing them in hostile theological terms and associating them with deviation from orthodox belief.
(Reporting by 8am Media detailing Taliban-linked rhetoric that classifies Shia Muslims as unbelievers and rejects non-Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence in Afghanistan.)Such language echoes hardline sectarian rhetoric used by extremist scholars elsewhere, where Shia Muslims are portrayed not simply as a distinct religious community, but as suspect or inherently aligned with hostile forces.
The case is significant because it illustrates the very problem described above: a person does not have to be a former soldier, resistance fighter, or political activist to become vulnerable to lethal Taliban violence. Abdul Qadir was reportedly an ordinary civilian, yet the available accounts describe a killing carried out after detention and torture, with the victim's hands bound. Such cases demonstrate why official or Taliban-affiliated descriptions of people killed during security operations cannot automatically be treated as evidence that those people were legitimate criminal targets.
This helps explain why documenting Taliban violence is so important. The question is not only who was killed, but also how the Taliban described the victim afterward—and whether independent evidence supports that description. The killing of Abdul Qadir Pahlawanzada in Herat is a particularly disturbing example: according to local sources cited by 8am Media, he was an ordinary welder with no military background or known ties to an armed group, yet he was reportedly beaten, tortured with his hands bound, and shot at a Taliban checkpoint. In an environment where the authorities control the security apparatus, restrict independent journalism, and can intimidate those who question their accounts, the circumstances of a killing must therefore be examined independently rather than accepted solely through an official narrative.
This climate of state-sanctioned religious denial, hostile sectarian rhetoric, and active suppression of non-Hanafi Islamic schools reinforces concerns that violence against civilians does not occur in isolation. When high-ranking provincial officials like Islamjar combine sectarian ideological framing with direct pressure on victims' families, it demonstrates how administrative authority and ideological hostility intersect. These dynamics heighten fears of persistent targeted violence, systemic impunity, and broader regional instability, even during periods officially characterized as calm or under complete Taliban control.
1.3 Ethnic and Sectarian Persecution by the Taliban
Afghanistan's Hazaras have endured persecution for generations. They are predominantly Shia Muslims and have repeatedly been targeted because of both their ethnic identity and religious affiliation. The Taliban's return did not end this vulnerability. The UN Special Rapporteur has repeatedly raised concerns about attacks and discrimination against Hazara-Shia communities, while UN reporting has described the persecution of minorities as a serious human-rights concern. Hazara men have been among those killed. Amnesty International, for example, documented the killings of Hazara men in Uruzgan and Herat, including religious figures, alongside beatings, destruction of property and other abuses.
Extrajudicial executions of Hazara men continue under the pretext of routine law enforcement. In August 2026, reports emerged that Taliban forces extrajudicially killed at least eleven unarmed Hazara men in Kabul over a 10-day period.
(Four of the eleven young Hazara men extrajudicially killed by Taliban security forces in Kabul under the pretext of anti-crime operations—a wave of killings that received almost no coverage in Western mainstream media.)Taliban officials claimed the men were "armed robbers" killed in shootouts. However, independent reporting and statements from former judicial officials confirmed that the victims—including young men from Daykundi, Ghazni, and Wardak—were unarmed civilians shot at close range or pulled from vehicles and executed without trial.
1.4 Ethnic and Regional Repression by the Taliban
Tajiks, particularly those associated with the resistance in northern Afghanistan and Panjshir, have faced collective punishment and extrajudicial killings. Minority Rights Group reported that the Taliban's campaign against the resistance included killings of Tajik members of the National Resistance Front and described a surge in extrajudicial executions in the context of resistance in Panjshir.
This pattern of ethnic repression extends across Tajik-populated regions like Parwan and Shamali, targeting both active commanders and ordinary civilians. Prominent Tajik resistance figures, such as Hasib Quway Markaz—a key commander from the Panjshir Valley associated with anti-Taliban resistance forces—have been primary targets of Taliban assassination and counter-insurgency operations.
(Prominent Tajik resistance figures like Hasib Quway Markaz—a key commander from the Panjshir Valley associated with anti-Taliban resistance forces—have been primary targets of Taliban assassination and counter-insurgency operations.)Furthermore, civilian populations in these areas endure ongoing arbitrary roundups; Taliban security forces regularly detain local Tajik residents in Parwan on unverified accusations of affiliation with resistance commanders.
A more recent case illustrates how accusations of affiliation with the resistance can become a pretext for lethal violence. On 28 August 2026, local sources in Baghlan reported that Taliban forces had arrested and shot dead two young Tajik men, identified as Amrullah and Salam, aged 17 and 19, in the mountainous area between Farghanbal in Khost district and Warsaj district of neighboring Takhar province. Sources told Amu TV that Taliban forces poured acid on the bodies after the killings, and then displayed the bodies first in the market of Farghanbal and later in the Doabi market, the center of Khost district. The men were accused of being members of the National Resistance Front, but the head of the NRF's political committee stated that they were not members of the group and were civilians. Local sources said the two had been travelling toward Badakhshan to work in the mines and were carrying rifles because of the remote and mountainous terrain. Taliban-controlled media, however, reported that two NRF members had been killed in Farghanbal and two others in Nahrin district.
Those detained are routinely subjected to arbitrary imprisonment, brutal interrogation, and severe physical abuse without meaningful access to judicial recourse. Detainees have also been shot dead during or after their arrest, while others have been tortured to death by Taliban forces. These cases illustrate how accusations of supporting the resistance can expose Tajik civilians and suspected opposition members to a continuum of repression ranging from arbitrary detention and torture to extrajudicial execution.
1.5 Taliban's Tribal Revenge
The persecution of members and supporters of the Achakzai tribe in Kandahar illustrates how Taliban reprisals can intersect with old political and tribal rivalries. Supporters of the late Afghan security commander Abdul Raziq Achakzai have reported killings, disappearances, torture, detention, displacement and property seizures since the Taliban takeover. These allegations cannot all be independently verified, and the Taliban has denied targeting the Achakzai community. Nevertheless, individual cases of former security personnel from the Achakzai community being killed have continued to be reported.
2. Why are These Male Victims so Easily Overlooked by the International Community?There is another, more uncomfortable possibility: that the international narrative surrounding the fall of Afghanistan has made Afghan men unusually difficult to recognize as victims.
When the Afghan government and security forces collapsed in August 2021, the explanation offered in much of the Western political and media discourse focused heavily on the failure of Afghan forces themselves. Afghan soldiers were portrayed as unwilling to fight, unwilling to die for their government, or simply incapable of defending their own country. Such explanations contained elements of truth—there were undoubtedly serious problems within the Afghan security forces—but they also risked obscuring the failures of those who had designed, financed and ultimately abandoned the system.
The United States and its allies had spent two decades building Afghanistan's political and military institutions. They negotiated directly with the Taliban, agreed to withdraw, reduced their military presence, and ultimately left the country in August 2021. The rapid collapse of the Afghan state was as much a product of Western political decisions as it was of domestic military failures.
3. How did the Taliban Become Powerful Enough to do This?The uncomfortable answer is that the Taliban's eventual takeover was not simply the result of Afghan weakness or military failure. The international intervention—particularly the decisions and policies of the United States and its NATO allies—played a decisive role in creating the conditions under which the Afghan state and security forces ultimately collapsed, allowing the Taliban to inherit the Afghan state.
It would be inaccurate to say that the United States simply "handed Afghanistan to the Taliban." The Taliban captured territory and Kabul as the Afghan state and security forces collapsed during the withdrawal of US and NATO forces in 2021. But the political outcome was unmistakable: the internationally backed Afghan government collapsed, the Taliban seized the capital, and the movement became the de facto government of Afghanistan.
The Taliban's return to power was also enabled by networks extending beyond Afghanistan. Its 2021 offensive was not achieved through military force alone, but through a combination of internal networks, external support, political and diplomatic engagement, and the collapse of the former Afghan government's international backing. Regional states continued to engage with the Taliban, while the movement benefited from financial and other forms of assistance, sympathetic networks within the Afghan diaspora, and relationships with other armed and militant groups. The Taliban therefore entered its second period of rule with connections and sources of support extending well beyond Afghanistan.
The collapse, however, cannot be understood solely as an Afghan military failure. The United States and its allies had spent two decades constructing, financing, training, and sustaining a security system that remained heavily dependent on foreign military presence, logistical support, intelligence, airpower, and financial assistance. The decision to withdraw U.S. and NATO forces removed many of these critical supports while the Afghan government was already under severe political, military, and economic pressure.
The military consequences were equally profound. For two decades, the United States and its allies had equipped and trained the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. When those forces collapsed, substantial quantities of equipment remained in Afghanistan and were captured by the Taliban. SIGAR documented that the Taliban consolidated captured Afghan military equipment and sought to place it in the hands of its own security forces.
This does not mean that the United States deliberately armed the Taliban. Much of the equipment had originally been provided to the Afghan government, not to the Taliban. But the final result remains difficult to escape: the Taliban inherited a state containing weapons, military infrastructure, vehicles, aircraft and surveillance capabilities that had been built largely with Western assistance.
The Taliban therefore did not merely conquer a country. It inherited the machinery of government. And that machinery matters. But this outcome was not simply the consequence of Afghan military or political failure. It was also the consequence of two decades of international policy and, ultimately, the U.S.-led withdrawal that removed the external support on which the Afghan state and security forces had depended.
4. Why don't Afghans Simply Fight Back?The answer to this question is more complicated than the romantic image of Afghans endlessly resisting foreign or domestic rulers. Afghans certainly can fight the Taliban. They have done so. The National Resistance Front and other armed groups continue to conduct attacks, although the United Nations has assessed that they do not pose a significant challenge to Taliban territorial control.
But an insurgency against the Taliban today faces a fundamentally different strategic environment from the one the Taliban itself enjoyed during its years as an insurgency. The Taliban now controls the government, the police, intelligence structures, checkpoints and much of the country's security apparatus. A suspected opponent is no longer merely fighting an armed group hiding in the countryside; he is confronting an organization that controls the roads, border crossings, detention facilities and administrative structures of the state.
The danger, however, does not fall only on those who take up arms. Under Taliban rule, suspected resistance supporters can face detention, torture, disappearance, or death, while their relatives and communities may also be subjected to intimidation and collective punishment. A man considering armed resistance therefore risks far more than his own life. He may also expose his parents, wife, children, siblings, or other relatives to retaliation. This makes resistance not merely a personal decision, but one that can carry potentially devastating consequences for an entire family.
The resistance also lacks the kind of external support that the Taliban benefited from during its insurgency. The Taliban benefited for years from cross-border sanctuary, recruitment networks, financing, logistical support, and political and diplomatic relationships. The anti-Taliban resistance, by contrast, has no comparable international military infrastructure, secure territorial base, or reliable state sponsor capable of supplying it with weapons, intelligence, training, and sustained logistical support on the scale required to challenge the Taliban.
There is also no single, unified Afghan opposition currently capable of turning widespread dissatisfaction into a nationwide armed movement. Resistance groups operate with limited resources, while many Afghans who oppose Taliban rule may not be willing to join an armed organization. After decades of war, opposition to the Taliban therefore does not automatically translate into a willingness or ability to wage another war.
The Taliban also possesses a substantial recruitment base. Historically, the movement drew heavily from rural communities, religious networks, madrassas, and tribal structures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. European asylum authorities have noted that the Taliban traditionally mobilized large numbers of rural Pashtun men and religious students. During 2021, thousands of Taliban fighters and supporters reportedly entered Afghanistan from Pakistan as the movement consolidated its territorial gains.
These factors help explain why widespread opposition to the Taliban has not produced a successful nationwide uprising. Resistance is possible—and some Afghans continue to resist—but isolated attacks cannot compensate for the enormous imbalance in organization, resources, intelligence, territory, and state power. For an ordinary Afghan, joining the resistance can also mean risking the lives and livelihoods of family members without any guarantee that the resistance can ultimately prevail. The result is a population in which many may oppose Taliban rule while remaining unwilling or unable to turn that opposition into open armed resistance.
5. The West's Selective Memory of AfghanistanThere is another uncomfortable question: Why does the killing of Afghan men attract so much less attention?
Part of the answer is that international reporting quite understandably focuses on the extraordinary oppression of Afghan women and girls. Their situation is catastrophic, and the Taliban's gender apartheid deserves sustained international condemnation. But there is a danger when Afghanistan is reduced to a story in which women are victims and men are either perpetrators, Taliban supporters, or potential fighters. Afghan men can also be victims.
A former Afghan soldier dragged from his home, tortured, and executed is not less deserving of attention because he is male. A Hazara man murdered because of his ethnicity and religion is not less of a human-rights victim because he is male. A Tajik resistance fighter executed after detention is not outside the scope of human rights because he carried a weapon. And the killing of an Afghan father does not become politically irrelevant because his widow and children are the ones who remain behind.
The international community should resist the temptation to view Afghan society through a simplistic gender binary: oppressed women versus violent men. The reality is much darker and more complicated. Afghan men have fought, suffered, disappeared, and died in enormous numbers throughout the country's modern wars. They have also been among the principal victims of the Taliban's reprisal campaigns.
The tragedy is that this pattern of selective framing and abandonment is hardly a new phenomenon. In a CNN interview from the late 1990s, anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by Taliban allies al-Qaeda on September 9, 2001, argued that Afghanistan had been abandoned once its strategic utility to foreign powers expired. Reflecting on the Soviet war, he described how Afghans bore the brunt of suffering and resistance while the wider world eventually looked away.
His broader warning remains relevant: Afghanistan has repeatedly been treated as a battlefield where outside powers pursue their own strategic objectives, while Afghans themselves are left to bear the consequences. During the Cold War, Afghans were enormously valuable to the West. After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan descended into civil war, out of which the Taliban emerged. After September 11, the country again became strategically indispensable. Twenty years later, the Western military presence ended, and Afghanistan once again became a country the outside world would prefer to look past.
To acknowledge the full scale of the Taliban's human rights abuses against Afghans would force the international community to confront a difficult reality. Recognizing their active alliances with terrorist groups and their reliance on terrorist methods—even if contained within Afghanistan for now—demands meaningful action against the regime.
Yet, this pattern of abandonment reflects a stark geopolitical reality. Neither Western powers nor regional actors like China, Russia, or Iran are willing to support regime change in Kabul. Distracted by major global conflicts and regional escalations, foreign governments often prefer short-term containment over active intervention. Arming and supporting anti-Taliban opposition forces, such as the National Resistance Front (NRF), is viewed by Western powers as an unpredictable drain on resources already committed elsewhere, and by regional powers as a potential catalyst for renewed civil war rather than a solution to human rights abuses.
Not everyone, however, believes that Afghanistan can simply be left to the Taliban. On August 26, 2026, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker warned that continued neglect of Afghanistan could pose risks to U.S. and global security, explicitly invoking the experience of the 1990s. Speaking at the National Endowment for Democracy, Crocker argued that developments in Afghanistan are closely connected to regional and international security and stressed the importance of continued engagement with Afghanistan and support for Afghans working in human rights, education, independent media, and civil society. He also sharply criticized the Taliban's efforts to reshape Afghan society around the subordination of women and the dominance of men under an unelected emir ruling through arbitrary decrees.
(Screenshot: Ryan Crocker beginning his remarks at 38 minutes and 45 seconds during an event at the National Endowment for Democracy on Afghanistan under Taliban rule, published on YouTube on 25 August 2026.)Crocker's warning illustrates that opposing the Taliban does not necessarily mean advocating Afghanistan's isolation. Engagement can serve legitimate purposes, including supporting Afghan civil society, protecting human rights, and preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a source of international security threats. The crucial distinction, therefore, is not simply between “engagement” and “isolation,” but between engagement that preserves pressure and leverage over the Taliban and engagement that progressively normalizes the regime without securing meaningful concessions.
Yet, this pattern of abandonment reflects a stark geopolitical reality. Neither Western powers nor regional actors like China, Russia, or Iran are willing to support regime change in Kabul. Distracted by major global conflicts and regional escalations, foreign governments prefer short-term containment over active intervention. Arming and supporting anti-Taliban opposition forces, such as the National Resistance Front (NRF), is viewed by Western powers as an unpredictable drain on resources already committed elsewhere, and by regional Eastern powers as a catalyst for chaotic civil war, rather than a solution to human rights abuses.
At the same time, there are influential voices advocating greater engagement with the Taliban, including figures from the Afghan Pashtun diaspora such as Zalmay Khalilzad and Aisha Wahab. Their positions differ in important respects, but both have publicly advocated forms of engagement with the Taliban or the authorities currently governing Afghanistan. This creates a tension in the international debate: while some voices argue that Afghanistan should not be isolated, others risk treating normalization of Taliban rule as an end in itself rather than as a means of securing meaningful political, security, and human-rights concessions.
As a result, the international community appears content to tolerate internal atrocities—including the systematic execution and persecution of Afghan men—so long as the regime keeps violence contained within its borders. History suggests that this indifference may persist until the Taliban's domestic repression spills over or transnational militant groups hosted in Afghanistan spark an international crisis that forces foreign powers to react once again.
5.1 The Asymmetry of Global Attention: Diplomatic and Media Mainstreaming
While the ongoing targeted violence against civilian men in regional provinces remains largely invisible, Western political institutions and major media outlets routinely provide space for the Taliban to shape their narrative globally. Over the course of mid-2026 alone:
Diplomatic Engagement: In June 2026, a five-member Taliban delegation was hosted in Brussels for meetings with diplomats from over 15 EU member states. Despite official claims of non-recognition, European authorities actively engage the regime on migration management and regional security, treating them as de facto operational partners.
Mainstream Media Access: In August 2026, major Western news outlets—particularly
The New York Times BBC Dari 
(Title of The New York Times' interview with Amir Khan Muttaqi on 14 August 2026, referring to him as Afghanistan's foreign minister rather than the Taliban's foreign minister.)
(Screenshot: BBC News Dari interview with Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul, Afghanistan, published on YouTube on 13 August 2026.)(In his August 15, 2026 interview with BBC News Dari, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid revealed his real name as Tahir Shah Siddiqui for the first time. While framed as a gesture of institutional transparency on a global stage, security analysts emphasize that both the identity and the claim remain open to doubt, underscoring how Western media platforms are leveraged for calculated regime PR.)
Focus on Elite Narratives: High-profile commentary—such as
Bloomberg’s August 2026 interview 
(Screenshot: Bloomberg Podcasts interview with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, published on YouTube on 21 August 2026.)
This ongoing mainstreaming reveals a stark contrast in editorial focus: while opposition leaders like Ahmad Massoud were routinely interviewed before and during the 2021 takeover, international media coverage has since shifted overwhelmingly to platforming Pashtun Taliban officials. The result is a grim irony: while human rights abuses against local men are quietly ignored, the regime is increasingly rebranded as safe enough for foreign engagement.
6. And Now Afghanistan is Becoming a Tourist DestinationThere is perhaps no more striking symbol of this moral contradiction than the growing number of Western tourists visiting Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Supported by state initiatives—including a male-only tourism institute in Kabul—the Taliban actively promotes foreign travel to present the country as safe, stable, and open. Official statistics show foreign tourist arrivals surging from fewer than 700 in 2021 to nearly
Of course, a tourist visiting Afghanistan is not automatically a supporter of the Taliban. Some visitors genuinely want to experience Afghan culture, history and landscapes, and some argue that tourism provides income to ordinary Afghans. But there is an unavoidable ethical question: What does it mean to spend one's holiday in a country governed by a regime that denies basic rights, imprisons dissidents, persecutes minorities and has been accused of extrajudicially killing its opponents?
A foreign visitor can often move through Afghanistan with privileges that an Afghan citizen does not possess. The Taliban wants precisely this image: a country that is peaceful, stable and open to the world. Tourism can therefore become an unintended contribution to the normalization of Taliban rule.
The contradiction is striking. Western governments warn their citizens about travelling to Afghanistan. Human-rights organizations document persecution. The United Nations repeatedly warns about the deterioration of human rights. Yet an increasing number of foreigners enter the country voluntarily, take photographs, visit historical sites and return home with stories of an "authentic" Afghanistan.
Meanwhile:
- Afghan men disappear from their homes.
- Former soldiers are arrested.
- Resistance fighters are executed.
- Hazara communities remain vulnerable.
- Tajiks accused of resistance face collective punishment.
- Families are forced into silence regarding abuses against their loved ones out of fear of direct retaliation.
Conclusion: Afghan Lives Should not be Divided Into Politically Useful Victims
To understand why Western media and international institutions often overlook the oppression of Afghan men, one must look beyond simplistic narratives. Beyond editorial biases, global and regional powers—preoccupied with other conflicts—prefer the short-term containment of the Taliban over supporting anti-Taliban opposition, tolerating internal repression as long as it remains within Afghan borders. The solution, however, is not to reduce attention on Afghan women and girls, whose plight under Taliban gender apartheid demands relentless condemnation. Rather, it is to recognize that the Taliban’s tyranny is a single, unified system—one that oppresses women through institutional disenfranchisement while systematically eliminating men through imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial execution.
When international reporting reduces Afghanistan to a binary of "oppressed women versus violent men," it turns a blind eye to the thousands of former soldiers, ethnic minorities, and civilians who disappear into Taliban detention centers. When foreign tourists travel to Kabul for photo opportunities, they inadvertently assist a regime attempting to normalize a state built on collective punishment.
Similarly, many non-Afghans underestimate the dangers posed by the Taliban beyond Afghanistan's borders. The movement is not simply an isolated Afghan political authority; it maintains relationships with militant networks in the region, including Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), while elements of the Taliban have continued to maintain ties with al-Qaeda. The international community's willingness to engage with the Taliban can therefore contribute to the normalization of a regime whose security relationships extend beyond Afghanistan. Germany's decision in August 2026 to issue 30-day visas to a Taliban delegation, officially to facilitate cooperation on deportations, illustrates how quickly practical cooperation can develop even with a regime that Germany does not recognize as Afghanistan's legitimate government. Such engagement may be understandable for specific practical purposes, but it should not obscure the wider security and human-rights risks associated with the Taliban and its militant connections. The international community should not allow Afghanistan's militant and terrorist networks to become an internationalized security threat, nor should it create channels through which those threats can be imported into other countries.
Human rights cannot be selective:
The Afghan woman denied education, employment, and autonomy deserves justice.
The Afghan woman tortured or sexually abused in Taliban detention deserves justice.
The widow surviving in poverty deserves justice.
The Hazara family whose son was executed under the guise of an anti-crime operation deserves justice.
The former soldier promised amnesty and then disappeared deserves justice.
The Tajik family targeted for collective punishment deserves justice.
The boy abducted and forcibly recruited by the Taliban as a child soldier deserves justice.
The girl forced into marriage with a Taliban official deserves justice.
And every other victim of Taliban repression deserves to be remembered and treated with equal dignity, regardless of gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, or whether they were able—or willing—to fight back.
These demands do not compete—they reinforce one another. Afghan men are not merely potential perpetrators or political footnotes; they are, in vast numbers, victims of a ruthless regime. Their deaths deserve to be counted, their families deserve to be heard, and their suffering deserves to be remembered.
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