Amid increased military activity by anti-Taliban groups, Ahmadullah Badr, the Taliban’s police chief in Panjshir, warned that armed entry into Afghanistan would bring severe consequences.
Badr said those who carried out armed activities would face a strong response.
The Taliban police chief made the remarks at a meeting attended by hundreds of members of the command and dozens of local elders.
He dismissed reports and social media coverage of attacks by Taliban opponents as propaganda, but said attempts to create insecurity should not be taken lightly.
He also criticised opposition political figures and movements, saying: “The roots of failed figures and failed policies have been removed from Afghanistan.”
Anti-Taliban groups, including the Afghanistan Freedom Front, the National Resistance Front and the United Front of Afghanistan, have recently expanded their activities and armed attacks in several provinces.
The attacks have caused concern within the Taliban.
As the Taliban complete five years in power this August, two confident predictions made in the autumn of 2021 have both aged badly.
The first was that the movement, unable to govern, would fracture within a season. The second, its mirror image, was that whoever governed Afghanistan would eventually be disciplined by the ordinary requirements of statecraft — revenue, recognition, neighbours — into moderation.
Neither happened. What has emerged instead is a government that is administratively more capable than its critics expected and politically more brittle than its own propaganda suggests. Holding both halves of that sentence together is the analytical task of the moment.
The quiet accumulation of Kandahar
Begin with Hibatullah Akhundzada, who is stronger today than at any point since 2016. This is not an accident of personality, and it is certainly not the product of charisma. He is a reclusive jurist who rarely meets his own ministers and communicates through clerical intermediaries. His strength has been assembled, patiently, from four materials.
The first is tribal. Hibatullah's Nurzai lineage within the Panjpai confederation has been quietly converted into an appointments network. Men like Balkh governor Muhammad Yousuf Wafa — a fellow Nurzai who has functioned as gatekeeper to the leader — illustrate how kinship substitutes for institutions. By late 2025, every commanding height of the state sat in Kandahari hands: the leadership, the premiership, the central bank, the chief justiceship.
The second is clerical, and it is the most underappreciated. Hibatullah's real constituency is not the old guerrilla commander but the new mosque-based clergy: prayer leaders and teachers in provincial towns who had status without resources under the Republic. The Taliban have given them both.
A leadership decree specifying dormitories for five hundred to a thousand students per madrassa, daily student stipends, and graded salaries for shaykh al-ḥadīth and Qur'an instructors is not merely an education policy. It is a patronage system with a curriculum attached. Alongside some fifteen thousand registered madrassas sits a parallel network of leadership-sponsored schools operating outside the ordinary system, with their own syllabus, oaths of allegiance to the leader, and — in provinces like Panjshir — buildings repurposed from shuttered girls' schools. Provincial ulema councils extend the same logic into dispute resolution.
The calculation is sound on its own terms. A cleric who owes his salary, his students and his standing to Kandahar is a more reliable instrument of rule than a commander who remembers his own battlefield.
The third is coercive. Since early 2025, units personally loyal to the leader have been moved into positions once held by the Haqqani network, including at Kabul airport and Bala Hissar. Decisions on weapons distribution and force deployment increasingly bypass the cabinet entirely.
The fourth is legal-bureaucratic. The 119-article criminal procedure code approved in January 2026 was circulated to provincial courts without announcement, surfacing only when the Afghan rights group Rawadari published a leaked copy. It codifies obedience, extends detention powers and criminalises public criticism. It arrived amid a two-month burst of reshuffles touching more than twenty-five officials, and a fourteen-point directive warning the movement that it faced a “major test.”
The paradox of rivalry
Here is the counter-intuitive part. A cabinet of prominent names — Baradar on the economy, Sirajuddin Haqqani at interior, Yaqub at defence, Muttaqi at foreign affairs — has not produced paralysis.
Because none of these men can challenge Kandahar openly, and because each needs a demonstrable record to protect his standing, the rivalry has been sublimated into competitive delivery. Ministries compete to be seen performing. The friction is real, but it is hidden from public view and channelled into output rather than confrontation.
Kabul Municipality is the showcase. Officials report roughly 450 kilometres of road built over four and a half years, 137 of them in 2025 alone; nearly 29 billion afghanis in revenue collected since March 2022; some 29,000 streetlights activated; twelve parks rebuilt; and 233 development projects budgeted for the current solar year. Set against the donor-financed municipal experiments of the Karzai and Ghani years, this is not a trivial record.
But the caveats matter as much as the numbers. Land acquisition covering more than eleven thousand properties has proceeded with almost no transparency, whole districts were transferred to the municipality by leadership order, and in June 2026 Afghan outlets reported — without official confirmation — a corruption investigation reaching the mayor himself.
This is a model of administration that delivers pavement while eroding property rights, and audits nothing. It is worth naming precisely, because it is the template now being exported to other Afghan cities.
Northern anchors
The same competence-without-legitimacy pattern shapes foreign policy, where Kabul's northern turn has been its most successful project.
Russia recognised the Taliban government in July 2025, and Putin accepted the Afghan ambassador's credentials in January 2026. China had accredited a Taliban ambassador as early as December 2023; the UAE, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have followed on credentials without formal recognition.
Trade with the five Central Asian states has grown to roughly $1.7 billion. Uzbekistan, whose bilateral trade passed $1 billion, is Kabul's most active partner and the sponsor of the Termez–Naibabad–Kharlachi “Kabul corridor.” Afghan exports through Turkmenistan's Torghundi crossing have more than doubled while Ashgabat presses on with TAPI. Kyrgyzstan removed the Taliban from its terrorism list and, with Tajikistan, inaugurated components of CASA-1000. Russian and Uzbek railway administrations have supplied the technical scaffolding, and Kabul's endorsement of the 1520mm Russian gauge was a geopolitical declaration disguised as an engineering choice.
None of this is affection. It is risk management by neighbours who want corridors, electricity markets and a quiet border — and who have concluded that the Taliban are the address at which such things are now negotiated.
It also remains modest. Most volume is Afghan imports, the rail projects are underfunded, and non-recognition still bars Kabul from the World Bank and the IMF.
Where Kabul fails
Two failures define the record, and neither is incidental.
The first is the treatment of women and minorities. UNAMA's April–June 2026 reporting documents arrests over hairstyles, floggings for breaking the Ramadan fast, at least thirty women detained in Herat in three days for “improper hijab,” hundreds of arbitrary arrests by the vice and virtue apparatus, and instructions to shopkeepers and clinics not to serve women unaccompanied by a maḥram. Afghan women have now been barred from UN premises for the better part of a year.
Minorities fare no better. Shia communities are pressed to observe the state's Eid calendar, Nowruz is discouraged, and the April attack near a Shia shrine in Herat killed twelve civilians. The ICC's July 2025 arrest warrants for Hibatullah and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani named gender persecution for what it is.
The crucial analytical point is that these policies are not a bargaining chip being withheld for a better offer. They are the currency in which Kandahar pays its clerical base. That is why every envoy who has offered recognition in exchange for girls' schooling has come home empty-handed — and why incremental diplomacy on this file keeps failing for reasons that have nothing to do with the skill of the diplomats.
The second is regional militancy, and here the irony is bitter. The relationship Kabul was most expected to manage — with Pakistan — has collapsed further than anyone forecast.
Islamabad's demands regarding the TTP have gone unmet, in part because a genuine crackdown would tear at the movement's own coalition and forfeit a fallback sanctuary its leaders still quietly value. Since the October 2025 clashes and border closure, the Doha ceasefire has collapsed, Istanbul talks deadlocked, and cross-border strikes resumed through 2026.
Pakistan–Afghanistan transit trade has fallen from roughly $5 billion in FY21 to about $367 million in FY26. That is a strategic amputation for Pashtun traders on both sides of the Durand Line, and a windfall for Chabahar and Iranian routes. Chinese shuttle mediation by special envoy Yue Xiaoyong achieved nothing; Qatari, Turkish and Saudi efforts produced only pauses. Beijing's economic leverage over two clients did not translate into influence over either — a finding that should temper expectations of Chinese conflict management everywhere in the region.
Central Asia's rail ambitions are collateral damage. Meanwhile UN monitors count more than twenty armed groups on Afghan soil and assess that ISKP, though degraded, retains the capacity to regenerate fighters faster than it loses them.
Washington's absence
Against all this, American policy is thin.
Quiet track-two conversations involving former diplomats and think-tank figures on both sides continue in Doha and Istanbul. They are useful: they preserve vocabulary, relationships and a shared factual baseline for a negotiation that will eventually have to happen. But Washington's power corridors are unmoved. The 2026 counterterrorism strategy barely mentions Afghanistan beyond ISKP and Abbey Gate. Engagement runs through detainee releases and episodic talk of Bagram rather than any strategy.
Counterterrorism has become the whole of policy. The United States therefore has views about Afghanistan but no position on Afghans.
The verdict
So: stable, or brittle? Both — and the tension between the two is the story.
The Taliban face no organised challenger. The diaspora remains split across the Vienna Process, the National Resistance Front and the Ankara grouping, each with a platform and none with a plan; the ethnic and generational arithmetic that divided them in 2001 divides them still.
Yet the cracks in the power corridors are widening. Leaked audio has Hibatullah himself warning that internal discord could destroy the government. Sirajuddin Haqqani has publicly condemned rule by fear. The demolition of the Jalaluddin Haqqani madrassa in Khost was read across the movement as calculated humiliation. Non-Pashtun commanders have been sidelined, and no successor has been named — a silence that becomes more dangerous with every year the leader ages.
The more consequential pressure, however, is coming from below. Nearly five million returnees since 2023, twenty-eight million people in poverty, per capita income falling. And against that: teachers running underground classes, women documenting abuses, traders rerouting supply chains, and Afghans abroad organising with more coherence than their political class has managed.
Ordinary Afghans, inside and outside the country, are the one variable that cannot be appointed, salaried or reshuffled. Regimes of this type rarely fall to a rival. They bend — unevenly, and without ever admitting it — under the weight of a society that has stopped believing them.
Sources and further reading
1. Human Rights Watch. World Report 2026: Afghanistan. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2026. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/afghanistan
2. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Quarterly human rights update, April–June 2026, summarised in UN News, “A hijab inspection, a slap, a warning letter: Inside three months of Taliban rule,” July 2026. https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1168039
3. Congressional Research Service. Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy in Brief, R45122, updated 10 March 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45122
4. Weinbaum, Marvin G. “Unfinished Business Will Drive the Mideast Agenda in 2026.” Middle East Institute, March 2026. https://mei.edu/brief/unfinished-business-will-drive-the-mid-east-agenda-in-2026/
5. Middle East Institute. “Time for a More Realistic Approach to Afghanistan.” January 2025. https://www.mei.edu/publications/time-more-realistic-approach-afghanistan
6. Atlantic Council. “In the Thorny World of Intra-Afghan Talks, New Challenges and Opportunities Emerge.” MENASource, 2025. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/in-the-thorny-world-of-intra-afghan-talks-new-challenges-and-opportunities-emerge/
7. The Diplomat. “Despite Chinese Mediation Efforts, Taliban-Pakistan Conflict Continues With New Strikes.” July 2026. https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/despite-chinese-mediation-efforts-taliban-pakistan-conflict-continues-with-new-strikes/
8. Eurasianet. “Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict Scrambling Central Asia's Trade Aspirations.” 3 March 2026. https://eurasianet.org/pakistan-afghanistan-conflict-scrambling-central-asias-trade-aspirations
9. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “Afghanistan Pivots to Central Asia as It Seeks to End Economic Dependence on Pakistan.” November 2025. https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-pakistan-border-trade-central-asia-kazakhstan-uzbekistan-turkmenistan/33592451.html
10. Times of Central Asia. “Trans-Afghan Corridor Becomes Central Asia's New Trade Gateway Amid Competition.” December 2025. https://timesca.com/trans-afghan-corridor-becomes-central-asias-new-trade-gateway-amid-competition/
11. Hasht-e Subh. “The Expansion of Taliban Madrasas: A Breeding Ground for Extremism.” September 2025. https://8am.media/eng/the-expansion-of-taliban-madrasas-a-breeding-ground-for-extremism-and-a-dark-future-for-the-people-of-afghanistan/
12. Pajhwok Afghan News. “Kabul Municipality to Implement 233 Development Projects Worth Over 9b Afs.” 11 April 2026. https://pajhwok.com/2026/04/11/kabul-municipality-to-implement-development-233-projects-worth-over-9b-afs/
Amid increasing Taliban pressure on the media, a senior official has urged outlets to report on the “crimes of the past 20 years” and the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
The Taliban was one of the principal parties to the conflict during those two decades and has been accused of killing civilians.
The request comes as the Taliban does not permit the media to criticise freely either its past conduct or its current administration. Many journalists have been detained and independent outlets closed over critical reporting.
Hayatullah Muhajir Farahi, the Taliban’s deputy information and culture minister, told journalists and media officials in Paktia province on Wednesday, 5 August: “Those whose hands are stained with the people’s blood and who looted the country’s wealth are still encouraging young people from abroad to create insecurity in Afghanistan.”
Farahi claimed the “crimes” of the past two decades had not been fully explained to the public and urged the media to raise awareness of what he described as “the realities of the occupation period”.
However, he made no reference to the Taliban’s role as one of the principal parties to the 20-year conflict.
The Taliban fought the former Afghan government and international forces stationed in Afghanistan for two decades.
During the war, the group claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks, including incidents in which civilians were killed.
Human rights organisations and war victims have repeatedly called for investigations into alleged war crimes, including the prosecution of Taliban members before international courts.
In January 2016, the Taliban attacked a vehicle carrying media workers in Kabul in an incident that became known as “Black Wednesday”.
At least seven employees of the private broadcaster Tolo News were killed and 20 others were wounded. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack at the time.
During the war, the Taliban repeatedly claimed responsibility for suicide bombings, other explosions and attacks on government, educational and civilian sites.
Human rights groups and international organisations also accused the group in numerous reports of killing civilians and committing human rights violations.
Since returning to power, the Taliban has prohibited public and media criticism of its administration and imposed severe restrictions on news organisations.
Domestic media outlets and journalists in Afghanistan currently operate under extensive Taliban censorship.
A Fatemiyoun Division commander told Afghanistan International on Tuesday that he and hundreds of fighters under his command were ready to fight the Taliban.
The commander said that any anti-Taliban group able to provide sufficient resources could mobilise hundreds of his fighters under its banner for operations against the group.
The Fatemiyoun commander, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said remarks by Seyed Hassan Mortazavi, Iran’s deputy ambassador in Kabul, that Tehran did not regard war against the Taliban as “resistance” had angered Fatemiyoun fighters.
According to him, many members of the Fatemiyoun believe that if fighting the Taliban does not qualify as resistance, then conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the Strait of Hormuz are also meaningless.
The commander, who was trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that for many Fatemiyoun members with whom he works, addressing Afghanistan’s situation takes priority over any other regional conflict.
Sources within the Fatemiyoun said some members of the division were currently stationed in the Strait of Hormuz.
A second Fatemiyoun source said the Iranian deputy ambassador’s remarks had even affected the morale of fighters currently on alert in the strait.
The source said they were angered by inequality and discrimination against their communities in Afghanistan and considered resistance against the Taliban “a religious duty”.
Mortazavi recently said the Islamic Republic did not support any political or military group opposing the Taliban.
He said Tehran did not regard armed conflict against the Taliban administration as “resistance”.
Mortazavi added that an “Islamic government” had been established in Afghanistan and that all sides should resolve the crisis through dialogue.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid welcomed the Iranian diplomat’s remarks, but the comments have fuelled discontent among Fatemiyoun fighters.
For the first time, a Fatemiyoun commander provided Afghanistan International with confidential information about the division’s relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
According to the commander, the Revolutionary Guard promised Fatemiyoun members in 2016 that it would support them in forming a powerful military-political organisation in Afghanistan like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The commander said the organisation was intended eventually to become an influential force in Afghanistan’s political affairs, but the Islamic Republic “never fulfilled its promise”.
When the Taliban entered Kabul in August 2021, Revolutionary Guard officials reportedly told the Fatemiyoun to wait for an appropriate time before resisting the group.
The commander said Guard officials warned that immediate fighting against the Taliban could trigger killings among Afghanistan’s Shia population.
At the time, the Revolutionary Guard reportedly promised that by the spring of 2027, the Fatemiyoun would become a powerful force in Afghanistan comparable to Hezbollah.
The commander said Afghanistan’s suffering mattered more to him than events in Gaza and Lebanon.
He said most Fatemiyoun fighters had joined the Revolutionary Guard because of religious convictions and what he described as grand promises.
However, he said repeated broken promises, disregard for the lives of Fatemiyoun fighters killed in combat, mistreatment and discrimination against Afghans in Iran had gradually discouraged members from continuing to cooperate with the Islamic Republic.
He argued that Tehran’s alignment with the Taliban would prompt many Fatemiyoun fighters to seek opportunities to join anti-Taliban resistance groups.
According to the commander, Fatemiyoun members would be willing to leave the Revolutionary Guard and return to Afghanistan to fight for their country if an anti-Taliban front provided the necessary resources.
The Fatemiyoun Division was established in 2013 with the support and organisation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by bringing together Afghan fighters, including former members of the Abuzar Brigade and other Afghan combatants.
The militia has primarily recruited Shia and Hazara Afghans, particularly migrants living in Iran.
As one of Iran’s most important allied forces supporting Bashar al-Assad’s government, the Fatemiyoun fought for years in the Syrian war, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.
Fatemiyoun’s Complex Contact With the Revolutionary Guard
The commander said Fatemiyoun members and commanders communicated through a website called “Derakhshan” with a branch of the Revolutionary Guard allegedly connected directly to the leadership office of Mojtaba Khamenei.
He said Fatemiyoun members and commanders entered coded requests on the Derakhshan website when they needed assistance and later received responses from the Revolutionary Guard through telephone calls or in-person meetings.
The website’s main office is reportedly located in Mashhad, with branches in several Iranian cities.
Iran has not released precise figures for the number of Fatemiyoun fighters.
Afghanistan’s Hazaras and Shias, who make up a large proportion of Fatemiyoun members, continue to face security and legal challenges under Taliban rule.
Islamic State Khorasan Province attacks against Shias and Hazaras have continued, while reports have documented land disputes and forced displacement in some areas.
These communities are also largely absent from the Taliban’s main power structures.
Shia jurisprudence has been removed from the legal and judicial system, universities and schools, while access to public services remains limited in some Hazara-majority areas.
The Taliban denies these allegations, but human rights organisations and the United Nations continue to express concern about the situation of Hazaras and Shias.
The Taliban has not responded to Iran’s military recruitment and use of Afghan migrants through the Fatemiyoun Division.
The former Afghan government, however, had called on Iran to dissolve the Revolutionary Guard-backed force.
After Fatemiyoun casualty figures were published in 2018, the Afghan presidency criticised the use of Afghan citizens in proxy wars and implicitly called for the organisation to be disbanded.
At the time, the presidency said the emotions and hardships of Afghan migrants in Iran should not be exploited for expansionist policies or the political objectives of neighbouring countries.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned the Fatemiyoun Division in January 2019.
Vasile Tofan, Moldova’s prime minister, called the arrival of a Taliban Agriculture Ministry delegation shameful and unacceptable, blaming an assessment error and institutional failure.
In a social media post, Tofan stressed that Moldova does not recognise the Taliban regime.
He said the visit had been approved following administrative checks, but its political and diplomatic consequences had not been adequately assessed.
The Moldovan prime minister explained that the request for the visit had been submitted by a local company that exports agricultural products to Uzbekistan and wanted to expand its operations into the Afghan market.
Moldova’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry referred the request to the Foreign Ministry, the General Inspectorate for Migration and the country’s border police.
The reviews found that members of the Taliban delegation were not on the European Union’s sanctions list. As a result, the migration authorities gave a favourable opinion, and the Moldovan Foreign Ministry issued them visas.
According to reports, Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service was not consulted because such consultation was not required under existing regulations.
Tofan said procedures were formally followed, but the necessary political and diplomatic assessment was not carried out.
He stressed that a sensitive issue was handled like an ordinary administrative case, and as a result, the wrong decision was made.
Tofan said government institutions should not limit themselves to following administrative procedures but must also consider the context, risks and possible consequences of their decisions.
Responding to calls for responsible officials to resign, the Moldovan prime minister said the priority should be reviewing the procedures.
He acknowledged public demands for resignations but said simply blaming one person would not resolve the issue. Instead, responsibility should be determined and the procedures that allowed the decision to occur should be reformed.
Tofan said the government would review its consultation mechanism with the Intelligence and Security Service and called for those responsible for the decision to be held accountable.
Moldova’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday, 3 August, that entry visas had been issued to the Taliban Agriculture Ministry delegation.
However, the ministry stressed that no official meetings would be held with the delegation. The Moldovan government has also launched an internal review of the matter.
Residents of Helmand say Taliban morality police have intensified pressure on women over dress-code rules, detaining more than 10 women in the past week for allegedly failing to observe the required hijab.
Residents of Lashkar Gah told Afghanistan International that most of the arrests took place around the women’s market in the Karte Lagan area of the city.
They said the measures had created fear among women and severely affected economic activity at the market.
Sardar Mohammad, a Helmand resident, said more than 10 women had been detained in the past week for allegedly failing to observe the Taliban’s hijab and dress code rules or refusing to follow the orders of ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice officers.
He added that many women were now avoiding the market for fear of arrest.
According to the source, several other women were detained at the same market over the past two days for allegedly failing to observe the required hijab and travelling without a male guardian.
Witnesses also reported an altercation between a Taliban morality police officer and a woman near the women’s market.
They said the woman intended to enter the market after getting out of a vehicle, but the Taliban officer stopped her.
According to witnesses, the officer grabbed the woman’s hand, prompting her to strike him with her shoe. The dispute then escalated into a physical confrontation, with several members of the public intervening.
Witnesses said that following the incident, Taliban morality police increased surveillance, searches and questioning of women at the market and imposed further restrictions.
Local sources said many women were now staying away from the market to avoid detention and were asking male relatives to make purchases on their behalf.
Traders at the women’s market also said the Taliban’s strict restrictions had caused a sharp fall in customer numbers and brought their businesses close to a standstill.
They said the monthly rent for each shop ranged from 20,000 to 40,000 afghanis, but declining sales had left many shopkeepers unable to pay their rent.
They warned that they would be forced to close their businesses if the situation continued.
The Taliban has not commented on reports of women being detained in Helmand.