Back to Tribune. HomeT-Magazine. Five years of Taliban ruleT-Magazine. Next Story. Five years of Taliban

But nothing embodied the desperation of those final hours more vividly than a viral video clip of a US military transport plane roaring down the Kabul runway as frantic Afghans clung to its exterior and landing gear in a final, doomed bid for freedom.

After the longest and costliest war in American history, the United States handed Afghanistan back to the very Taliban it had ousted from power 20 years ago.

“This concentration of power in the hands of one ethnic group is fuelling growing resentment.”Meanwhile, other non-jihadi groups — including National Resistance Front (NRF), Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), Homeland Guardians Front (HGF), Afghanistan United Front (AUF), Green Trend of Afghanistan (GTA), Freedom and Justice Movement (FGM), and Afghanistan Republican Front (ARF) — are also reviving hidden caches, local stockpiles, and older weaponry to challenge the Taliban’s claim of complete control over the country.

“Badakhshan has become a microcosm of resistance to Taliban rule,” says Inam.

Women have also been barred from university education since 2022 and continue to face severe restrictions on employment and participation in public life,” UNESCO this month. These regressive policies have created divisions within the top cadres and invited widespread international condemnation. “It seems to be a gender apartheid regime.

The Taliban regime has been reluctant to take action against the group, instead maintaining plausible deniability despite repeated demands from Islamabad. “Pakistan’s central concern has been that whatever government sat in Kabul would cooperate with Pakistan on combating cross-border terrorism, particularly given the intensifying attacks in recent years from the TTP, the BLA, and other groups sheltering on Afghan soil.

“The report also notes that TTP has raised two new divisions — one for Gilgit-Baltistan and one for Azad Jammu and Kashmir — and is developing its own drone capability, essentially an ‘air force.’

It's consolidating and expanding its reach, with collusion between TTP, al Qaeda, the BLA, and elements of the Afghan government.”The UN report also says that around 2,000 TTP fighters and their families have been moved away from the Pakistani border.

“The Taliban have found it genuinely difficult to take strong military action against groups like the TTP and BLA — partly because they share ideological ground with them, and partly out of fear that cracking down on them could push those fighters toward bigger international terrorist networks like al Qaeda or ISKP instead,” says Mansoor.

Inam, however, believes the Taliban regime might be using the TTP and other terror groups as bargaining chips in its dealing with neighbours.

Without such a shift, their grip on power may endure, but the country risks remaining trapped between international isolation and growing unrest at home.

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