The First Five Years of Anti-Taliban Resistance in Afghanistan — Part II
Last Updated: 17 September 2026
For Part I read: The First Five Years of Anti-Taliban Resistance in Afghanistan — Part I
Table of Contents — Part II
4.1 Essential Questions for the Opposition
4.2 Broadening the Base Beyond Armed Fighters
5. The Diplomatic Arena and Realpolitik
6. Conclusion: A Strategic Orientation for the Afghan Opposition
4. The Path Forward: Transitioning to a National Movement
Survival alone will not overturn the status quo. The primary strategic challenge for Ahmad Massoud and the broader opposition is therefore transforming scattered armed formations and political networks into a unified, national political movement. Massoud has emphasized the need for greater internal unity and coordination among opposition groups, but the broader institutional questions of what such a movement would govern, how power would be distributed, and how it would avoid reproducing the failures of the former republic remain largely unresolved.
That transformation also requires internal reform. Khanjani's analysis highlights the need for clearer accountability, stronger communication between leadership and members, mechanisms for addressing legitimate criticism, and greater attention to the concerns of commanders, supporters, and the families of fallen fighters. These are not merely internal administrative questions. They affect whether the resistance can establish the credibility and public trust required of a future political movement.
4.1 Essential Questions for the OppositionTo present a viable alternative to the Taliban, the resistance must provide concrete answers to fundamental governance questions:
Governance Model: What specific constitutional and political system will replace the Islamic Emirate?
Power Distribution: How will administrative power be balanced between Kabul and the provinces to prevent past hyper-centralization?
Ethnic Representation: How will Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and other communities be guaranteed meaningful, equitable representation?
Rights & Institutions: What explicit guarantees will exist for women's full participation in public life, education, and governance?
Justice & Reconciliation: How will accountability be handled regarding past war crimes, security sector reform, and former Taliban combatants?
Anti-Corruption Safeguards: What structural mechanisms will prevent the return of warlordism, institutional corruption, and patronage networks that collapsed the former republic?
- Internal Accountability: What mechanisms will allow members, commanders, supporters, and affected families to raise legitimate concerns and receive credible answers without compromising operational security?
These are not secondary questions. They are central to whether the resistance can become a credible alternative. The objective cannot simply be the removal of one ruling elite. Afghanistan needs a political order in which power is exercised through institutions rather than personal networks, military commanders or factional loyalties.
That lesson is particularly important because the failures of the former republic cannot simply be forgotten. A post-Taliban Afghanistan cannot become a competition between different armed elites for control of Kabul. If the resistance wants to convince Afghans that it represents a genuine alternative, it must demonstrate what that alternative would actually look like.
4.2 Broadening the Base Beyond Armed Fighters
A credible political movement cannot rely exclusively on military figures or military performance. It must actively integrate non-combatant sectors while maintaining communication and trust between the movement and the wider public:
Women Leaders: Transitioning from treating women as symbols of resistance to positioning them as central architects of post-Taliban policy.
Civil Society & Professionals: Drawing on educators, journalists, legal scholars, and former administrators to build institutional blueprints.
The Global Diaspora: Leveraging diaspora expertise in economics, diplomacy, and international law to prepare for future state-building and governance transitions.
This is where the resistance has an opportunity. It can begin building the institutions of a future Afghanistan before it has political power.
It can develop proposals for administration, justice, education, economic recovery, civilian protection and constitutional reform. It can establish standards for accountability within its own ranks and develop mechanisms for communicating decisions and addressing legitimate criticism without compromising sensitive security matters. It can demonstrate that resistance to authoritarianism does not mean replacing one authoritarian structure with another. That would transform the meaning of resistance.5. The Diplomatic Arena and Realpolitik
While fighting continues on the ground, a parallel contest is unfolding in the diplomatic arena. The Taliban are actively pursuing international normalization, leveraging pragmatic concerns over counterterrorism, border security, migration, and trade. Through tactical maneuvering, the Taliban have established working relations with virtually all of Afghanistan's immediate neighbors and with a growing number of regional powers. These relationships do not necessarily amount to political support for the Taliban, but they provide the de facto authorities with influential regional and international partners, diplomatic space, and channels through which they can pursue their interests.
The significance of this diplomatic engagement is illustrated by the September 16, 2026, visit to Kabul by Ibrahim Kalin, head of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). During his visit, Kalin met with several senior Taliban officials, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister and a U.S.-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
(Ibrahim Kalin, head of Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), and Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban regime’s interior minister, met in Kabul on 16 September 2026.)
(Ibrahim Kalin also met with other senior Taliban officials in Kabul on 16 September 2026.)Officially, the visit was described as focusing on security and intelligence cooperation, counter-narcotics efforts, coordination between the two countries’ interior ministries, and broader regional issues. According to a source within the Taliban administration cited by the BBC, recent tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan were also among the topics discussed.
At the same time, Qatar’s Deputy Chief of the National Security Council, Hamad bin Khamis Al-Kubaisi, also met with Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid in Kabul on September 16, 2026.
(Hamad bin Khamis Al-Kubaisi, Qatar’s Deputy Chief of the National Security Council, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, Taliban Defense Minister, met in Kabul on 16 September 2026.)According to the Taliban Ministry of Defense, the two sides discussed the continued strengthening of relations and further cooperation across various sectors, although no details of the discussions were released. The simultaneous visits by senior Qatari and Turkish security officials are notable, particularly given Qatar and Türkiye’s previous involvement in efforts to mediate between the Taliban and Pakistan. Those talks, however, did not produce a permanent ceasefire or a formal agreement to end the conflict. The precise objectives of the latest visits and whether they were coordinated remain unclear.
More importantly, the timing of the two visits is notable. They came amid a broader regional escalation involving Iran and its allies on one side and Saudi Arabia and its allies, including Pakistan and Türkiye, on the other. In this environment, engagement with the Taliban provides regional powers with additional channels for addressing security concerns and pursuing their respective interests, while giving the Taliban further diplomatic space to engage with influential external actors. The simultaneous presence of senior Qatari and Turkish security officials in Kabul also highlights the extent to which Afghanistan remains connected to wider regional security dynamics. It raises the possibility that Afghanistan could once again become an arena for competing geopolitical interests, with regional powers seeking to advance their strategic objectives through engagement with the country's de facto authorities.
More broadly, the Taliban appear increasingly willing to exploit competition among external powers to expand their diplomatic room for maneuver. Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi's outreach to Washington, for example, can be viewed not only as an attempt to improve relations with the United States, but also as part of a broader effort to balance the Taliban's relationships with competing regional powers.
(Screenshot from the Financial Times, August 30, 2026, reporting on Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi's outreach to the Trump administration over potential mineral deals. The Taliban's outreach illustrates its increasingly pragmatic approach, seeking areas of mutual interest even with governments that have not recognized the Islamic Emirate.)The Taliban's diplomatic position is also strengthened by influential individuals outside formal government structures. Former officials, diplomats and political figures have continued to advocate greater engagement with the Taliban, arguing that isolation could create a political or security vacuum. While such views do not necessarily represent official government policy or support Taliban policies, they can contribute to an international environment in which engagement with the de facto authorities becomes increasingly normalized.
Regional powers and international actors routinely engage with the de facto authorities out of practical necessity. For the Afghan opposition, countering this trend requires a calibrated approach:
Reframing Engagement: Accepting that foreign governments will maintain practical contacts with the de facto authorities, while insisting that such engagement does not amount to permanent political recognition or acceptance of Taliban rule as legitimate.
Proving Viability: Demonstrating to foreign governments that long-term stability in Afghanistan cannot be achieved through an exclusionary regime that suppresses major segments of its population.
Offering a Concrete Alternative: Moving beyond anti-Taliban rhetoric to present foreign ministries with a clear, realistic road map for a stable, inclusive successor state.
Foreign governments need to know what comes after the Taliban. If the resistance wants international political support, it must be able to present a credible alternative. Not merely: “We oppose the Emirate.” But: “This is the Afghanistan we intend to build.”
Governments, international organizations and civil society should also consider the wider security implications of Taliban rule. Taliban leaders and representatives have repeatedly denied maintaining ties with or providing safe haven to international terrorist organizations, particularly al-Qaeda. Yet the presence of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in central Kabul provided a stark counterpoint to such assurances. On 31 July 2022, al-Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. drone strike while residing in a house in Kabul. U.S. officials subsequently said that the Taliban had sheltered him and accused the group of violating its commitments under the Doha Agreement.
The al-Zawahiri episode is difficult to reconcile with assurances that Afghanistan would not provide safe haven to al-Qaeda. Subsequent United Nations monitoring has continued to describe the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda as close, while reporting that al-Qaeda maintains personnel and networks inside Afghanistan. The broader concern, therefore, is that multiple terrorist and militant networks continue to operate inside Afghanistan, while the nature and extent of their relationships with the Taliban vary.
The concern extends beyond physical training camps. The Taliban and their supporters operate numerous propaganda channels on YouTube and other social-media platforms, using them to promote the movement's narrative, defend its rule, attack opponents and reach audiences inside and outside Afghanistan. These platforms also provide militant and ideological networks with opportunities to spread propaganda, recruit supporters and maintain connections abroad. Anti-Taliban voices, however, face greater risks. Activists, journalists and ordinary users may face surveillance, intimidation, detention and online harassment, creating an environment in which many people remain silent because of the potential consequences.
The scale and coordination of individual networks are difficult to establish from publicly available information. Nevertheless, the broader digital environment gives militant organizations opportunities for propaganda, ideological outreach, recruitment and communication with sympathizers beyond Afghanistan. Combined with the physical presence of terrorist organizations and training infrastructure inside the country, this raises concerns about Afghanistan's ability to remain a source of regional and international security threats.
United Nations monitoring has continued to identify more than 20 terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan, including al-Qaeda, TTP, ETIM/TIP, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Jamaat Ansarullah, while noting differing degrees of autonomy and relations with the Taliban. The longer these organizations retain the ability to operate, recruit and maintain networks inside Afghanistan, the greater the potential for their activities and influence to extend beyond the country's borders.
A report by The Washington Post on September 12, 2026, adds further weight to these concerns. Citing U.S. and Western intelligence officials and a United Nations monitoring organization, the newspaper reported that al-Qaeda and its affiliates had established at least eight training sites in Afghanistan over the previous three years.
(Screenshot from The Washington Post, September 12, 2026, reporting on the expansion of al-Qaeda and its affiliates' training infrastructure in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.)The al-Qaeda camps are reportedly being used for weapons, explosives and guerrilla training, as well as instruction in newer capabilities including encryption, drones and artificial intelligence. The report also described al-Qaeda as providing training and operational advice to other militant groups, including Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), highlighting the broader network of militant organizations operating within Afghanistan.
The relationship also raises questions about the broader flow of resources between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. According to The Washington Post, citing a U.N. report, the Taliban have provided a “permissive environment” in which al-Qaeda has been able to consolidate, including through safe houses and training camps across Afghanistan. This raises the question of whether financial, logistical, technical, or other forms of support flow in the opposite direction as well. The precise nature and scale of the relationship remain difficult to establish publicly, but the evidence indicates that the Taliban have provided an environment in which al-Qaeda can maintain safe houses, training camps, personnel, and operational infrastructure inside Afghanistan.
Another significant development for al-Qaeda came on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, when its media arm, As-Sahab, released a new propaganda video featuring footage presented as Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden.
The release of a video featuring Hamza bin Laden is significant because it shows that al-Qaeda continues to use the bin Laden legacy for propaganda, recruitment and ideological mobilization, while questions remain about the organization's personnel and operating environment in Afghanistan. If these reports about his presence in Afghanistan are accurate, his ability to remain there would also raise questions about the Taliban's knowledge of, tolerance for, or ability to monitor senior al-Qaeda-linked figures operating within the country.
Another issue requiring scrutiny is the Taliban's own account of past contact with the Islamic State. In a September 2026 interview on the Taliban-affiliated Rawayatpad podcast, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid described an attempt to communicate with ISIS during the leadership of Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
According to Mujahid, Mansour initially favored dialogue rather than confrontation. Mujahid said he drafted a message to Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, then the ISIS spokesman, asking the group not to recruit Taliban fighters. He said al-Adnani rejected the approach, instead demanding that the Taliban publicly state their position and pledge allegiance to ISIS. Mujahid recalled that the two groups subsequently fought in several parts of Afghanistan, with the Taliban continuing to describe ISIS as “Takfiri.”
The precise nature and scope of the reported contact cannot be established from the public record alone. But Mujahid's account is significant because it offers a Taliban spokesman's own description of direct communication with ISIS, which he characterized as an attempt to resolve disagreements between the two groups.
For the Afghan resistance, this creates a difficult strategic paradox: the Taliban's continued control makes organized opposition harder to sustain, while the presence and activity of transnational militant networks gives the international community additional reason to scrutinize the security consequences of Taliban rule. It also raises a broader concern that continued disengagement from Afghanistan, combined with reliance primarily on the Taliban and a limited circle of political interlocutors, could risk repeating some of the strategic conditions that preceded the 9/11 terrorist attacks. If meaningful support is not extended to those resisting or challenging Taliban rule, while international engagement remains concentrated on the de facto authorities and established political networks, the long-term consequences for Afghanistan and for regional and international security could be significant.
Addressing this challenge requires more than armed resistance. It requires a political program, institutional capacity, and a coalition broad enough to represent Afghanistan's different communities. Armed activity can create pressure; political organization can convert that pressure into leverage; and diplomacy can turn that leverage into negotiations. Without the latter two stages, armed resistance risks becoming an endless cycle of attacks and retaliation.
6. Conclusion: A Strategic Orientation for the Afghan Opposition
The ultimate test for Ahmad Massoud's NRF and the broader resistance is therefore not simply whether they can continue fighting. It is whether they can transform survival into political leverage. Massoud himself argues that the resistance has already produced political effects beyond the battlefield. He points to the failure of most countries to formally recognize the Taliban government, the growing consolidation of anti-Taliban political forces, and what he sees as increasing skepticism in the region and internationally toward the Taliban's promises of an inclusive government. In his view, these developments demonstrate that resistance can generate political pressure even without possessing the military strength to defeat the Taliban outright. That requires several things at once: improved operational security, greater coordination between opposition groups, meaningful participation by women and civil society, institutional preparation, internal accountability, responsible communication, resilience against information warfare, and a political framework capable of attracting Afghans beyond traditional resistance networks. In other words, the resistance must become capable not only of surviving pressure from the Taliban, but also of managing its own internal weaknesses in ways that preserve the trust on which long-term political legitimacy depends.
(Since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Taliban fighters have continued to walk openly on the streets of Afghanistan (as seen in the picture), in contrast to resistance fighters who must rely on hit-and-run operations and concealment under Taliban control.)Ahmad Massoud's late father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, had warned of this danger in an earlier period of Afghanistan's history during a speech at a mosque in Afghanistan: “more than the international conspiracies our own desires became dangerous.” The lesson remains relevant: external pressures may shape Afghanistan's trajectory, but internal divisions and political failures can be equally decisive.
(Resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud delivering a speech at a mosque in Afghanistan, in which he warned against the dangers of international conspiracies and internal ambitions.)
Ahmad Massoud's own description of resistance points in this direction. He has presented political organization, civil resistance, women's resistance, diplomacy and military resistance as interconnected elements of a wider struggle. But that vision now has to become more concrete. The resistance must learn from losses, protect its commanders and supporters as effectively as possible, address legitimate internal criticism, and confront internal disputes where credible evidence exists. It must also communicate with its supporters carefully enough to maintain public trust without compromising operational security. Ultimately, it must answer the larger strategic question: What is the pathway from resistance to political change?
The issue also concerns the international community because time is not politically neutral. Every additional year of Taliban rule potentially strengthens the regime's institutional control, reduces the pool of experienced Afghan opponents capable of organizing resistance, and gives the authorities greater opportunity to shape the country's educational, religious and social environment. Beyond these political considerations, the continued presence of terrorist organizations and militant networks creates security risks that may extend beyond Afghanistan's borders. The international community therefore faces a long-term question: whether continued engagement focused primarily on the de facto authorities, without meaningful attention to the forces and institutions that could shape a different political future, risks allowing Afghanistan's political and ideological trajectory to become progressively harder to change.
Ahmad Shah Massoud had drawn a similar lesson from the Soviet withdrawal in an interview with CNN, arguing that Western countries, particularly the United States, had “forgotten Afghanistan” after achieving their strategic objectives and had left Afghanistan vulnerable to the influence of regional actors. His warning remains relevant to the consequences of international disengagement and to the danger of treating Afghanistan's future primarily through short-term strategic interests.
The killing of Hasib Panjshiri does not answer the larger question of how resistance can translate into meaningful political change. Neither does the killing of other commanders. Nor does one successful ambush against the Taliban. Nor, from Massoud's perspective, does the absence of a military breakthrough necessarily mean that resistance has failed politically. His argument is that maintaining opposition, preventing the normalization of Taliban rule, consolidating anti-Taliban forces and creating pressure for negotiations can themselves constitute strategic gains. Whether those gains are sufficient to produce meaningful political change, however, remains an open question. The same is true in reverse. The survival of the NRF does not prove that the Taliban are close to collapse. The existence of armed opposition does not automatically constitute a national movement.
The strategic challenge is to connect these different forms of resistance into something larger: political resistance, civil resistance, women's resistance, armed resistance, diplomatic pressure and diaspora expertise. If these remain separate activities, the resistance may survive without changing Afghanistan's political trajectory. If they begin reinforcing one another, the situation could become very different.
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