Afghanistan’s Taliban faces growing opposition to its three-year post-conflict rule, rising threats that are gnawing at the stability the one-time insurgent group has sought to impose on the nation.
The Islamist regime appeared to be riding high just recently in celebrating the third anniversary of its second time in power with a military parade showcasing fighter aircraft and weapons seized after the US-led coalition withdrew in chaos in August 2021.
But behind the celebration and military flexing, the Taliban is contending with potent challenges on multiple fronts. Crucially, the Taliban has wholly failed to rein in the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) jihadist group, which seeks to create a caliphate across South and Central Asia.
IS-K was responsible for the deadly attack outside of Kabul’s airport on August 26, 2021, that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US military personnel amid the chaotic withdrawal of Western forces.
IS-K continues to carry out destabilizing terror attacks, including an attack on the Hazara neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in Kabul in January, a shooting that killed six Shiite minority members at a mosque in Herat in late April and the murder of three Spanish tourists in Bamiyan in May.
Many also suspect IS-K was responsible for an explosion last week that injured 11 people in a crowded market in Kabul.
IS-K is growing in strength. The United Nations warned in June it was recruiting disaffected Taliban members and has reportedly infiltrated the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) and government ministries, as seen in the arrest of 20 members of the GDI in July over suspected links to the terror group.
The Taliban’s desire for international legitimacy has been mocked by IS-K, which has accused the regime of bowing to the West, a message that has resonated with many disaffected Afghans.
Concurrently, the regime’s inability to defeat IS-K has made it look weak in the eyes of many Afghans, failing to provide the stability and security it promised when it returned to power.
Armed resistance is growing elsewhere, with the anti-Taliban group the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) – led by former General Yasin Zia – becoming increasingly emboldened in carrying out attacks on Taliban forces throughout the country.
In the last fortnight, the AFF has carried out more than 15 attacks on the Taliban across seven provinces, including an attack on a military compound in Faryab province that killed two Taliban fighters and a rocket attack on the military section of Kabul’s airport, both last week.
The AFF also attacked the Taliban’s interior ministry in Kabul on October 18, killing four Taliban fighters and issuing a statement saying it was “shattering the false illusion of the Taliban’s security.”
The AFF is cooperating with the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud, son of anti-Soviet military leader and Afghan hero Ahmad Shah Massoud.
The NRF is also growing more confident, carrying out two attacks last Thursday (October 24) in Kabul and Faryab that killed six Taliban fighters, while on October 22 an operation in Farah province that killed one Taliban member.
By all accounts, the confidence of these anti-Taliban groups is rising. The AFF used the third anniversary of the Taliban’s return to call for better “unity, cohesion, and alignment” among all anti-Taliban groups, while veteran warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum has recently called a government in exile to overthrow the Taliban with the backing of the international community.
While the Taliban still currently outguns the opposition, it lacks legitimacy internationally, seen in the UN’s enduring refusal to hand over Afghanistan’s seat to it in the General Assembly, an ongoing humiliation for the regime.
No country is willing to officially recognize the regime, with neighbors India and China using this week’s BRICS summit to call on the Taliban to improve its treatment of women and the country’s security situation before it is recognized.
As long as the Taliban lacks international legitimacy, it will look weak among emboldened resistance groups. If the international community decides to fund and arm this resistance – like the support it gave to anti-Taliban groups in 2001 – the Taliban could be in real trouble.
The regime is responding by doubling down on its brutality. The Taliban has created new societal tensions with its recent edict banning images of living things. Videos and photos on television, computers and mobile phones are forbidden, with media companies now forced to run audio-only TV programs. This comes after the Taliban outlawed music last year.
The Taliban continues to target journalists and civil society, arresting and detaining 141 journalists since 2021 according to Reporters without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group.
This includes arresting three radio journalists in Khost province for broadcasting music and receiving calls from female listeners and banning of media companies Noor TV and Barya TV for not respecting “national and Islamic values” in April. Amnesty International has stated civil society has been “shattered” under the Taliban.
For women, Taliban control over their lives is almost total, with almost all denied an education or jobs in most sectors. After banning women from beauty parlors and national parks, the Taliban has implemented a new morality law imposing severe restrictions on a woman’s appearance, behavior and movement, and has gone so far as to ban women from speaking to each other.
Violence against women is also widespread, with the regime now using stoning as punishment and gender-based violence commonplace. The UN has declared the situation for women in Afghanistan the “worst globally.”
The Taliban’s rising repression is sparking new resistance from everyday Afghans, including an attempted assassination of a Taliban official in broad daylight in Herat province this week.
More subtle forms of protest have also become commonplace, seen by a protest by elderly Afghans outside of the Taliban’s finance ministry on Saturday over unpaid salaries, and marches and social media campaigns by women and girls over the continued oppression they face.
Even former President Hamid Karzai has recently risked the wrath of the Taliban by recently speaking out on the need to lift the ban on women’s education.
Critics say the Taliban needs to understand that brutality and fear are not substitutes for good governance, and that there is a limit to how much oppression Afghans will tolerate. Resistance will grow stronger the more the Taliban clamps down.
During the US occupation, a Taliban commander famously told his captors “you have watches, we have the time”, a reference to the fragility of power in Afghanistan, which has seen local rulers and foreign empires come and go for centuries. It’s the Taliban that’s now on the clock and time may be running down on its rule.