By The Diplomat | Created at 2026-08-14 19:25:42 | Updated at 2026-08-14 23:16:55
10 hours ago
August 15 marks five years since the Taliban returned to power, and throughout that time, the group has presented Afghanistan as a country completely under its control. The small armed opposition in Panjshir, Badakhshan, and Baghlan’s Andarab district has not managed to contest the Taliban’s dominance successfully.
But the emergence of new anti-Taliban movements across the country has begun to challenge that image.
Last month, a new resistance group called Sipahiyan-i-Mihan, or “Soldiers of the Homeland,” briefly captured the center of Yaftal-e Payeen district in Badakhshan. Local sources said its fighters entered the district headquarters, disarmed Taliban personnel, and raised their flag. The group withdrew several hours later and said the withdrawal was voluntary, although the Taliban said the fighters fled when reinforcements arrived.
What neither side could deny was that, for the first time since August 2021, a district center had fallen out of Taliban control. The Taliban later sent reinforcements and prepared a larger operation, but so far, no decisive operation against Sipahiyan-i-Mihan has been publicly reported.
Other new groups have announced operations as well. This week, the Republic Front of Afghanistan said it had targeted a vehicle carrying the Taliban intelligence chief for Kabul’s 18th district and claimed that he and his companions were killed. Local sources confirmed an explosion, but the casualties remain unverified. The U.S.-based Afghanistan United Front, led by former Afghan army commander General Sami Sadat, also announced “Operation Muharib” and claimed attacks in Kandahar, Helmand, and Badghis.
Meanwhile, the established National Resistance Front, led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, and the Afghanistan Freedom Front, led by former army chief General Yasin Zia, have continued and expanded their struggle. For weeks, the Freedom Front and the Taliban have clashed in Badakhshan’s Zebak district. Both claim gains and heavy casualties, although independent verification remains impossible. Residents confirmed days of fighting, Taliban reinforcements, house to house searches, and a frontline visit by the Taliban’s chief of army staff, Fasihuddin Fitrat.
When I spoke by telephone this week with residents of Zebak and Yaftal, their concern was not which side was winning the war, but what militarization had done to their lives.
“Taliban fighters are everywhere, in schools and mosques. They have taken over everything and turned it into their base,” one resident told me.
“We are told to provide food for the Taliban fighters based in our village mosque,” another resident of Zebak said. “But how can we feed them when we can barely feed our own families?”
He was referring to the other war people in Afghanistan are fighting: the war to survive. A May 2026 U.N. Development Program assessment found that three in four Afghans could not meet their basic needs, while more than 80 percent of households were in debt.
With a quick look at Afghan social media, one can easily see that many anti-Taliban Afghans, both inside the country and in the diaspora, have welcomed the operations by these resistance groups. But their hope is mixed with suspicion. A growing question among some is whether Pakistan, after falling into open conflict with its former Taliban partners, is trying to use the Afghan resistance movements as new instruments of influence.
Mostly, this fear comes from the memory of decades of Pakistan treating Afghanistan less as a sovereign neighbor than as strategic territory to be managed. Pakistan supported the Taliban against the former republic government, and prior to that against the Mujahideen government in the 1990s, always driven by Pakistan’s security calculations, its rivalry with India, and its desire for influence in Kabul. The Taliban were the most successful product of that policy.
Now Pakistan and the Taliban are fighting over the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), cross-border attacks, and the Taliban’s growing engagement with India.
There are credible signs of political outreach by Pakistan to the Afghan resistance groups, although no public proof that Pakistan is directing or arming any of them. In 2025, Islamabad hosted an Afghan dialogue attended by political figures and women activists while the Taliban were absent. Organizers called it inclusive and not anti-Taliban, but because it took place in Islamabad, it revived suspicions about Pakistan’s intentions.
Last year, New Lines Magazine reported, citing unnamed sources, that Islamabad had opened channels with opposition representatives and that rumors suggested certain resistance fronts had opened an office in Pakistan. Abdullah Azad Khinjani, head of political affairs for the National Resistance Front, told the magazine that the front remained cautious about Pakistan because the Pakistani establishment historically sought to “manage and contain” Afghanistan’s opposition.
This is why Afghans are watching where their political leaders travel, who gives them money, and what commitments they make both in public and in private. Pakistan may want pressure on the Taliban today, but if a post-Taliban government tomorrow refuses to be subservient to Islamabad, what prevents Pakistan from searching for yet another faction to weaken it? That is the cycle the people of Afghanistan fear when it comes to Pakistan. They do not see Pakistan as a well-intentioned neighbor aiming to help resistance groups in Afghanistan build an independent state; they see it as a country that has long helped certain Afghan groups gain power, then turned against Afghanistan when those groups began acting independently.
Among the armed fronts, the NRF has offered the clearest public framework for relations with Pakistan. Massoud said in an interview that Afghanistan and Pakistan should build an honest strategic relationship based on mutual respect, but he also made clear that he would not accept foreign pressure dictating Afghanistan’s decisions. After Pakistan’s 2026 attacks, he blamed the Taliban’s protection of militant groups for creating regional insecurity, yet rejected foreign bombing and argued that Afghanistan’s freedom must come through a legitimate, Afghan-led national effort. The newer movements discussed here have not publicly set out comparably clear conditions for any engagement with Pakistan.
When I asked a former diplomat, media personality, and supporter of the resistance this week, who wished to remain anonymous, how worried she was that Pakistan might exploit the situation, she said: “Any group that sides with Pakistan, I will not support that resistance group.”
“Pakistan is bombing our country, claiming it is killing the Taliban, but the people we see killed are civilians. To side with Pakistan means siding with those killing the people of Afghanistan,” she added.
Her anger is grounded in the civilian suffering caused by Pakistani bombings of Afghanistan. The United Nations said at least 28 civilians were killed in Pakistani operations in late June, and Amnesty International later called for an investigation into a March strike on a Kabul drug-treatment facility after UNAMA verified at least 269 civilian deaths. Pakistan maintains that it targeted militants and military facilities.
The resistance supporter, however, did not accept the idea that Pakistan and the Taliban had become natural enemies.
“They disagree today, but the Taliban are a product of Pakistan,” she said. “Pakistan invested nearly three decades in bringing them to where they are. Even if they are enemies now, that does not mean non-Taliban groups should become Pakistan’s allies. If the resistance takes power and later refuses to become Pakistan’s puppet, Pakistan will bring another group to remove it. This cycle has continued until today.”
“No Afghan faction should allow itself to become a vehicle for another state’s strategic ambitions once again,” she concluded.
On this fifth anniversary, Afghans are not merely looking for someone capable of fighting the Taliban. They are looking for an alternative worthy of replacing them. After five years of repression, with women and girls living under a system increasingly described as gender apartheid and millions struggling to survive, the desire for change is understandable and urgent. But the lesson of Afghanistan’s history is equally important to Afghans because they know that liberation delivered through another country’s machinations can easily become a new form of captivity.
This time, the alternative Afghans are searching for must be built inside Afghanistan, answerable to its people, inclusive of its women and communities, and independent enough to cooperate with neighbors without becoming their instrument of influence. Resistance may begin with removing oppression, but it will deserve the name liberation only if it also breaks the cycle of proxy rule.
