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It has been five full years since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, a watershed moment that followed a sweeping territorial offensive launched as the United States and NATO withdrew their forces after 20 years of war. The withdrawal culminated in chaotic, widely documented scenes at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, where tens of thousands of Afghans crowded the facility desperate to flee the country ahead of the new regime’s takeover.

As the Islamist administration marks its five-year anniversary in power, the legacy of its rule remains deeply divided: while many Kabul residents acknowledge an end to decades of open conflict that shook the country, widespread frustration over persistent economic hardship, systemic exclusion of women and girls from education and employment, and international isolation casts a long shadow over the regime’s claimed progress.

For many ordinary Afghans, the most immediate improvement cited is the end of large-scale war. “Thank God, the past five years have passed in safety,” said 30-year-old Mohammad Qasim, speaking amid the country’s ongoing economic crisis. Like many Afghans, he emphasized that the Taliban’s primary unfinished task is addressing widespread youth unemployment, calling on the administration to open pathways to work and education for the country’s growing young population. “We, along with the entire nation, call upon the government to create employment opportunities for the youth and to encourage them to pursue education,” Qasim added.

The most contentious and widely condemned policy of the Taliban administration remains its sweeping rollback of women and girls’ rights. Though the group initially pledged to protect women’s rights following its takeover, it quickly implemented a ban on girls above age 12 attending secondary education, followed by a full ban on women’s access to higher education, citing its own strict interpretation of Islamic law. Additional restrictions have since barred most women from formal employment and required women to be accompanied by a male guardian for domestic and international travel.

The United Nations has acknowledged that large-scale conflict has decreased across Afghanistan since the takeover, but has repeatedly warned that durable stability and economic recovery are impossible unless the Taliban reverses its gender-based restrictions. “A reduction in conflict has brought tangible benefits for many Afghans and created opportunities to focus on recovery, development and regional economic cooperation,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted in a pre-anniversary statement. The mission added, however, that “the restrictions on women and girls impede Afghanistan’s recovery and its reintegration with the international community.”

This week, UN Women reinforced that warning, declaring Afghanistan is currently home to the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis. “Half a decade after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan has systematically dismantled the rights of half its population, making it a global outlier with no parallel in the modern world,” the agency said, adding that the exclusion of women from public life, education, employment, healthcare and the justice system has only intensified over the past year.

For Afghan women’s rights advocates like Fazila Soroush, a 39-year-old Kabul-based entrepreneur and activist, the five-year anniversary is a moment to demand concrete action from the Taliban to reverse education bans that have sidelined an entire generation of girls. “We consider it essential that the officials of the Islamic Emirate who had announced the closure of schools and universities until further notice, now make a clear and practical decision regarding this matter,” Soroush said.

Across Kabul, the Taliban has moved forward with public preparations for anniversary celebrations, with street vendors selling the group’s distinctive white flag with black script, and workers painting pro-Sharia slogans on public walls, including messages that “The Islamic system has been achieved at the cost of the martyrs’ blood” and “Our commitment stands firm: Consolidation and implementation of Islamic Sharia.”

Taliban officials defend their five-year record, framing the end of decades of war as their core achievement. Molvi Hayatullah Mahajar Farahi, deputy minister for broadcasting at the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture, told the Associated Press that in addition to delivering nationwide security, the administration has stabilized the Afghan currency, upgraded critical infrastructure, and established new industrial parks that have created new jobs for Afghans.

“Naturally, challenges and difficulties exist, yet we can highlight several accomplishments,” Farahi said. When pressed about the ban on girls’ and women’s education, Farahi declined to address the policy directly, instead noting that “the level of investment made in universities surpasses anything seen in the past.” He added that “the Emirate continues its efforts to further organize and improve services for our citizens in the fields of education and other sectors.”

Farahi rejected U.N. warnings that terrorist networks have reestablished footholds in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, dismissing the claims as “enemy propaganda, spread to portray the country as unstable.” On the issue of the Taliban’s ongoing international isolation, Farahi claimed the administration maintains working relations with roughly 40 countries, though to date only Russia has formally granted the Taliban government full diplomatic recognition. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has fulfilled all the requirements necessary for official recognition. It is now up to the international community and others to step forward and take the appropriate action,” he said.

New U.N. data released this week underscores the depth of the educational crisis triggered by the Taliban’s gender ban. UNESCO estimates that 2.4 million girls are currently excluded from secondary education in Afghanistan — an increase of 200,000 from just one year ago. The restrictions have reversed 20 years of incremental progress in expanding educational access across the country, the agency said, noting that the crisis extends beyond gender exclusion: overall, 53% of primary school-aged Afghan children are out of school, and most schools lack basic infrastructure including clean water, sanitation and heating, with hundreds more closed due to frequent natural disasters.

Compounding these challenges, the U.N. World Food Program warns that child malnutrition has reached critical levels in one-third of Afghanistan’s provinces, and conditions are expected to worsen as international funding shortfalls force cuts to food assistance and other life-saving support for vulnerable households.

Even among Afghans who support the Taliban administration and welcome the end of open conflict, many are pushing for policy changes to address the country’s multiple crises. Dost Mohammad Khan, a 38-year-old Kabul resident who backs the Taliban, said the past five years have delivered the stability Afghans longed for after decades of war, but the country needs trained professionals from doctors to engineers to move forward. “We also call upon the Islamic Emirate to permit women to attend school under the sharia dress code and we urge the public to heed the directives of the Emirate also,” Khan said.

Nestled in the heart of central Tokyo, Yasukuni Shrine is far more than a simple Shinto memorial: it is a site of profound spiritual meaning for some, and a persistent source of diplomatic friction that has strained Japan’s relations with its neighboring nations for decades. The story of this controversial shrine begins in the earliest days of the Meiji Restoration, when Japan underwent a dramatic transformation from a feudal military state to a modern imperial power.

In 1868, after more than 250 years of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate, imperial authority was restored to the Japanese emperor. Just one year into the new Meiji era, Emperor Meiji ordered the construction of a memorial to honor those who had died fighting for the imperial cause. On an initial visit to the site in 1874, the emperor pledged that the names of all who sacrificed their lives for the nation would be commemorated there in perpetuity. The shrine was eventually renamed Yasukuni, drawn from Japanese characters meaning “peaceful country,” and today it honors more than 2.4 million people who died in service to Japan.

The founding of Yasukuni was deeply tied to the rise of State Shinto, a state-sponsored ideological framework that blended religious tradition with nationalist fervor. Under longstanding Shinto belief, Japanese emperors are direct descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, but the narrative of the emperor’s divine status was amplified during the Meiji era to unify the new nation. “Yasukuni Shrine was initially conceived as a way to send a message to the Japanese people,” explained Akiko Takenaka, a history professor at the University of Kentucky. “The message was about the emperor; the message was about a new Japan.” In this new order, dying for the emperor and empire was framed as the highest honor a citizen could receive, and the emperor himself was positioned as the source of that honor.

Under State Shinto, the Japanese government controlled the shrine’s operations and funding, and the line between religious practice and national patriotism was intentionally erased. As Susumu Shimazono, a leading scholar of religion and modern Japan, wrote in the *Japanese Journal of Religious Studies*, “The Meiji reformers believed that they were establishing an ideal nation in which the people and the sacred emperor maintained a spiritual union.” This arrangement ended abruptly after Japan’s surrender in World War II. In December 1945, occupying U.S. General Douglas MacArthur issued an order abolishing State Shinto, cutting off government funding for shrines and removing Shinto teachings from public institutions to enforce the constitutional separation of religion and state. Yasukuni was reorganized as a private religious corporation, a status that has not erased persistent questions about the meaning of official visits by sitting Japanese leaders.

It is the enshrinement of convicted war criminals that has made Yasukuni the most divisive site in Japanese post-war memory. Unlike traditional cemeteries, Yasukuni does not hold the remains of the deceased; instead, those commemorated are enshrined as kami, or sacred spirits, in the Shinto tradition. The honorees include ordinary soldiers, female battlefield medics, student wartime workers, and even foreign nationals who died in Japanese service. But the most contentious enshrinements are 14 convicted Class-A war criminals — Japanese wartime leaders found guilty of “crimes against peace” for planning and waging aggressive war across Asia, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, a key architect of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

These 14 war criminals were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni by the shrine’s head priest in 1978, three years after Emperor Hirohito’s last visit to the site. When Hirohito learned of the enshrinement, he never returned to Yasukuni to avoid international criticism, according to Mark R. Mullins, a professor of Japanese and religious studies at the University of Auckland. Neither of Hirohito’s successors has visited the shrine in person, though both have sent official emissaries to attend key annual rites. The controversy extends beyond war criminals: dozens of enshrinements of Buddhists, Christians, and colonial subjects from Korea and Taiwan have been contested by family members who say their relatives were added without consent. Many of these families have taken legal action to remove their relatives’ spirits, but Japanese courts have repeatedly rejected these efforts.

For many Japanese people, particularly bereaved families of fallen soldiers, Yasukuni holds deeply personal meaning that is separate from its political baggage. Before deploying to war, Japanese soldiers were often told that if they died in service, their spirits would reside at Yasukuni. “They told their families: ‘I want you to come see me at Yasukuni Shrine,’” said Toshiei Mizuochi, president of the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association. Mizuochi’s own father, a navy officer, was killed in a bombing just six days before Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945. Of the more than 2.4 million Japanese soldiers who died overseas in World War II, roughly 1 million still have not had their remains recovered. “For that reason, the vast majority of bereaved families who received neither remains nor personal belongings believe that the spirits of the war dead are at Yasukuni Shrine,” Mizuochi explained. Many relatives visit the shrine year-round, not just on the annual August 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender, to mark family milestones, commemorate death anniversaries, and connect with the spirits of their loved ones. Mizuochi says he visits dozens of times a year, and every time he prays, he sees his father’s face in his mind.

Other visitors frame their trips as a matter of spiritual reflection, not glorification of war. “I have absolutely no intention of glorifying war,” said Kana Shindo, a member of Tokyo’s Minato City Assembly, who visits to purify her mind and give thanks for the peace modern Japan enjoys. “I visit because I believe that the peaceful Japan in which we live today exists upon the lives and accumulated history of the people who lived before us,” she added.

But for neighboring countries that endured decades of Japanese imperial occupation and aggression, including China and South Korea, Yasukuni is an unmistakeable symbol of Japanese militarism. Visits by sitting Japanese prime ministers and other government leaders regularly draw fierce diplomatic condemnation, with both nations arguing that such trips are evidence that Japan has not fully reckoned with or taken full responsibility for its wartime atrocities. Adjacent to the shrine, the private Yushukan Museum, which displays wartime artifacts, has drawn widespread criticism from scholars for its biased retelling of Japanese military history, which erases the suffering of Chinese and Korean people under imperial rule. “By eliminating the enemy, the Yushukan remembers a war that was only ever glorious,” John Breen, a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, wrote in an analysis of the shrine’s memorial practice. For nationalist groups that seek to reverse post-war reforms and restore Japan’s pre-war imperial identity, Yasukuni holds particular symbolic meaning, deepening the divides around the site.

Today, Yasukuni remains what it has been for more than 150 years: a site that reflects competing visions of Japan’s history, identity, and place in the world, carrying meaning that shifts dramatically depending on who is asked.

Days after the end of Japan’s annual Bon Buddhist holiday week, devastating record-breaking downpours swept through eastern regions of Tokyo overnight, leaving a trail of destruction across Chiba prefecture that has claimed at least four lives and left one resident unaccounted for. The extreme weather triggered widespread flooding that submerged roads, damaged dozens of residential properties, cut power supplies to tens of thousands of households, and stranded thousands of travelers across the region.

As rain levels began to subside early Friday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) announced it would downgrade its highest-level emergency heavy rain warning for more than 10 municipalities across the prefecture. Even so, forecasters warned of additional precipitation expected later in the day, keeping local disaster response teams on high alert. When dawn broke Friday, aerial footage and on-the-ground reporting revealed the full scale of the damage: muddy floodwaters engulfed ground floors of family homes, swallowed parked vehicles, and submerged sections of regional railway tracks.

In response to the crisis, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force launched emergency rescue operations to evacuate stranded residents and travelers. Around 4,000 people who were forced to spend the night at Soga Train Station — a commuter hub that also serves the nearby Tokyo Disney Resort — were picked up by military-arranged buses. Officials confirmed the popular theme park suffered no structural damage or injuries from the flooding. Thousands more holiday travelers were stranded overnight at Narita International Airport, the major air hub serving the Tokyo metropolitan area, after all regional train services out of the affected area were halted. Train operations partially resumed Friday morning, though significant delays continued, while inbound and outbound flights at Narita operated on a normal schedule as travelers headed home following the end of the national holiday week. Hundreds of other residents affected by flooding took emergency shelter overnight at the Chiba prefectural government building.

Prefectural disaster officials confirmed four fatalities linked to the flooding: a man found floating in floodwaters on a road in Ichikawa City, a woman trapped inside a submerged vehicle in Sakura City, and a third person pulled from a flooded car in Kashiwa City who was pronounced dead at the scene. As of Friday morning, one more person remained missing.

Across Chiba, more than 80 residential properties have been fully or partially flooded, and local authorities issued evacuation advisories to nearly 230,000 residents, urging them to move to safer, higher ground. Power outages affected roughly 68,000 households at the peak of the storm, according to TEPCO Power Grid, and that number had dropped to around 23,000 by Friday morning as repair crews worked to restore service.

Meteorological data confirmed the unprecedented intensity of the storm: Chiba City recorded 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches) of rain in just one hour, while Sakura City hit 9.7 centimeters (3.8 inches) in the same time frame — both new all-time records for the region. “We have recorded rainfall levels that are unprecedented,” JMA forecast official Takuya Hosomi told viewers during a live televised emergency news conference Thursday night.

AP contributes to this report, with additional coverage of Asia-Pacific events available at the AP News Asia-Pacific hub.

Half a decade has passed since the Taliban reclaimed full control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, and the country has shifted dramatically from a war-torn battleground to a functioning yet harshly authoritarian state. With foreign combat troops withdrawn and fragmented opposition groups unable to mount a meaningful challenge to the Taliban’s centralized rule from Kabul, the movement has achieved a level of domestic security that was unthinkable under the former Western-backed government. This hard-won stability, however, is built on systemic exclusion of marginalized groups – most sharply women and girls – and has left the country economically crippled and diplomatically isolated across the global community. While the Taliban has defied expectations by governing without ongoing Western military or financial support, it remains an international pariah overseeing one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. Today, Afghanistan is far quieter than it was in the final years of the civil conflict, but it is also poorer, more cut off from the world, and brutally repressive toward half of its population. As the regime enters its sixth year in power, its first five years of territorial consolidation will be followed by a critical test: whether it can withstand growing internal and external pressures to survive.

At the core of the Taliban’s state-building project over the past five years has been the slow, deliberate consolidation of power in the hands of reclusive Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who governs from his base in Kandahar. Appointed to lead the insurgency in 2016, Akhundzada has overseen the movement’s transformation from a decentralized rebel force to a rigid, centralized governing authority. He has built a tightly knit power network that places all key state institutions – including the prime minister’s office, the central bank, and the chief justice’s seat – in the hands of allies aligned with Kandahar’s leadership. This control is further reinforced by a sprawling patronage system tied to roughly 15,000 registered madrassas across the country, where students receive stipends and teachers are paid graded salaries. This framework has secured the loyalty of provincial clergy, the Taliban’s core political base, by granting religious leaders both social status and consistent, reliable income.

While high-profile Taliban figures such as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Maulvi Yaqoob, and Amir Khan Muttaqi oversee day-to-day governance, economic policy, and diplomatic outreach from Kabul, ultimate authority remains firmly rooted in Kandahar. In early 2026, a 119-article criminal procedure code was quietly approved there to cement absolute loyalty to the regime and criminalize all forms of public criticism of the leadership. “Hibatullah’s influence reaches far beyond religious affairs: major political, judicial, and administrative decisions increasingly reflect the preferences of the Kandahar leadership,” Muhammad Israr Madani, an Islamabad-based analyst and co-author of a book on state-building in Taliban-led Afghanistan, told Middle East Eye. The concentration of power in Kandahar has strengthened the Taliban’s ability to prevent internal fragmentation, but it has also stoked resentment among regional commanders who believe power is becoming overly concentrated in a single faction, according to a mid-level Taliban leader who previously oversaw administration in Khost province, speaking to MEE in early 2024. Even so, he emphasized that internal dissent does not mean the regime is on the brink of collapse: top leaders understand that open infighting would cause their government to crumble, so tensions are kept contained. Ultimately, the Taliban has learned a core lesson of state-building: durable control requires more than military force – it depends on patronage networks, financial leverage, ideological alignment, and institutional systems to systematically reward loyalty.

Beyond political consolidation, Afghanistan is grappling with a layered, deep-rooted economic crisis shaped by structural dependency and extreme international isolation. When the Taliban seized power in 2021, the country lost international budgetary grants that previously covered 75% of all public spending. This financial gap was widened dramatically when the United States froze $7 billion in Afghan central bank assets and suspended U.S. humanitarian funding in early 2025, cutting off a flow of resources that made up 45% of the country’s total aid lifeline. While the Taliban has managed the national economy better than many outside observers predicted, expanding state revenue through more effective collection of customs duties and mining royalties, these gains have not translated into improved living conditions for ordinary Afghans. Today, an estimated 75% of Afghans cannot afford to meet their basic daily needs.

Economic growth slowed from 2.3% in the 2023/2024 fiscal year to 1.9% in 2024/2025, according to a May 2026 report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Minimal economic gains have been entirely outpaced by rapid population growth, driven by the expulsion of more than five million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan since 2023. As a result, real GDP per capita fell by an estimated 2.1% in 2025/2026, putting massive strain on communities already facing acute job shortages and overstretched public infrastructure, the UNDP added. Compounded by frequent natural disasters – most notably destructive earthquakes – diplomatic isolation, and severe restrictions on access to the international banking system, the Taliban regime remains locked out of critical financial support from the World Bank and International Monetary Force, trapping Afghanistan in an unsustainable cycle of forced self-reliance. Even the regime’s most widely touted policy achievement, a national ban on opium cultivation that cut poppy production by 95%, has acted as economic self-harm for the country’s most vulnerable populations. While wealthy landowners profited from skyrocketing prices for existing opium stockpiles, the ban destroyed the livelihoods of low-income rural households that relied on poppy cultivation for their primary income.

The systemic suppression of women and girls remains the most widely condemned feature of Taliban rule, with leading international human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch describing the regime’s gender policies as “gender apartheid”. A relentless series of decrees from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has stripped women and girls of almost all fundamental freedoms, imposing harsh restrictions on movement, employment, and participation in public life. Girls remain barred from attending secondary school, and women are banned from enrolling in or teaching at universities. Enforcement of these rules has intensified sharply in recent years, with authorities detaining women for violations including “improper hijab” and travelling without a male guardian. Reflecting global outrage over these policies, the International Criminal Court has issued sealed arrest warrants for Supreme Leader Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, citing gender-based persecution as a crime against humanity.

Beyond the devastating human toll, these exclusionary policies represent severe self-sabotage for Afghanistan’s already fragile economy. Barring women from formal work deprives the country of critical human capital while accelerating the brain drain of skilled Afghans leaving the country. The United Nations estimates that restricting women’s participation in the labor force costs Afghanistan up to $1 billion annually – equal to nearly 6% of the country’s total GDP. The structural damage caused by these policies, particularly acute shortages of female healthcare workers, teachers, and civil servants, has been crippling basic health and education delivery for an entire generation of Afghans, according to a Kabul-based humanitarian expert working for a UN agency. By sacrificing half the population to enforce ideological purity, the regime is dismantling the country’s prospects for sustainable economic recovery and long-term development, he told MEE.

The relationship between the Taliban and its long-time historical sponsor Pakistan has collapsed completely over the past five years, shifting from a strategic partnership to open armed conflict by early 2026. When the Taliban retook power in 2021, Islamabad celebrated the takeover as a major geopolitical victory that would secure Pakistan’s western border and eliminate Indian influence in Afghanistan. Then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery”, while current Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif posted a photo of a Taliban leader with former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo captioned “God is great”. That early optimism unravelled quickly, however. The Taliban administration’s refusal to crack down on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, turned the border between the two countries into an active conflict zone. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of granting the TTP safe havens inside Afghanistan and access to abandoned U.S. weaponry, which has driven a sharp surge in cross-border attacks on Pakistani targets. A recent UN Security Council report echoed these concerns, reiterating that the “terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan remained largely unchanged” and warning that militant sanctuaries pose an ongoing risk to neighboring states and Central Asia as a whole.

In response to the Taliban’s inaction, Pakistan has deployed aggressive coercive measures, deporting around 2.6 million Afghans since late 2023, repeatedly closing critical border crossings, and launching retaliatory air strikes inside Afghan territory. Publicly, Taliban officials reject allegations that they harbor TTP fighters, dismissing the violence as an internal Pakistani security issue. Privately, however, managing the TTP has exposed deep ideological divides within the Taliban regime. “Hardline elements within Taliban ranks view Pakistani militants as historical comrades-in-arms, making any forcible disarming politically unthinkable,” explained a mid-level Taliban official currently working with the Afghan interior ministry. He added that shielding the TTP deepens Afghanistan’s international isolation, while taking aggressive military action against the group would risk pushing disaffected fighters to join the ranks of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Taliban’s main jihadist rival.

The fifth year of Taliban rule has also seen a sharp acceleration in the systemic exclusion of Afghanistan’s religious and ethnic minorities, particularly the Shia and Hazara populations that make up 15% of the country’s total population. Despite early promises of inclusive governance after the 2021 takeover, Shia jurisprudence has been erased from the country’s legal system, universities, and primary and secondary schools, stripping away protections that Shia communities won under the former Afghan republic. Local Shia leaders point to a recent Taliban decree that shut down two critical cultural institutions, the Khatam al-Nabieen Educational Centre and Tamadon TV. Further, Supreme Leader Akhundzada has excluded Shia scholars from all new provincial ulema (religious scholar) councils, even in Shia-majority provinces such as Bamiyan and Daykundi. The Taliban “are systematically working to remove our sect from the country’s legal and educational landscape,” warned a Quetta-based Hazara Shia cleric connected to the Afghan Shia community, who spoke on condition of anonymity over safety fears. Beyond the Shia population, the Taliban has launched a sweeping crackdown on the country’s small Salafi minority under the guise of cutting off ISKP’s ideological support base, severely restricting Salafi access to mosques and religious seminaries. Analysts warn this heavy-handed repression risks alienating local Salafi communities and pushing radicalized youth to join ISKP, worsening national instability.

Five years after returning to power, the Taliban regime is militarily well-entrenched but structurally fragile. No organized armed opposition currently has the foreign backing, controlled territory, or unified leadership required to threaten Kabul’s control. Groups such as the National Resistance Front remain fragmented and unable to challenge the regime’s centralized security apparatus. Instead, the greatest threat to the Taliban’s rule comes from within its own political architecture. Internal rifts continue to widen, prompting rare public warnings from Akhundzada that internal discord could dismantle the government from within. While these political tensions have not yet triggered a full-blown power crisis, an outright collapse of the regime would likely plunge Afghanistan back into full-scale civil war, devastating civilian populations and destabilizing all of its neighboring states. Demographic change presents an equally existential challenge: with a stagnant economy and a national population projected to double by 2050, long-term survival of the regime depends on delivering basic livelihoods, food security, and employment – a mandate that current policies are completely failing to meet.

Internationally, limited pragmatic ties with Russia, China, and Central Asian neighbors provide small economic lifelines, but these relationships have not brought the formal Western diplomatic recognition the regime needs to reverse economic isolation. By governing through an extreme ideological police state that systematically represses half the population, the Taliban leadership risks complete alienation from the Afghan public. The coming five years will test whether the Taliban can transition from ruling through coercion to sustainable, inclusive governance that meets the needs of the population. Based on its trajectory over the past five years, this fundamental transformation remains highly unlikely. Instead, persistent economic despair, widespread social repression, and escalating regional friction threaten to reignite systemic instability, leaving Afghanistan as an enduring source of regional crisis for the foreseeable future.

Against the backdrop of ongoing conflict and occupation in the Palestinian territories, a newly released public opinion survey from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has painted a stark portrait of widespread Palestinian public sentiment on security, political leadership, and long-term national aspirations. The most striking finding from the poll, published Wednesday, is that more than seven out of 10 Palestinians reject any demand for Hamas to disarm before Israel completes a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. A full 72% of respondents hold the conviction that if Hamas were to surrender its weapons, Israel would refuse to follow through with a full withdrawal and would resume its large-scale military offensive in the enclave, which respondents and many global observers have characterized as genocide.

The survey comes amid recent diplomatic maneuvering: Hamas has already accepted a ceasefire and governance proposal put forward by Nickolay Mladenov, head of the U.S.-backed Board of Peace. Even with this diplomatic development on the table, however, 40% of Palestinians surveyed expect the current cycle of violence and instability to persist, with ongoing civilian casualties continuing in the months ahead. Israel has already formally rejected the U.S.-backed proposal, dimming immediate hopes for a negotiated end to the conflict. Another 30% of respondents hold a more optimistic outlook, forecasting that a period of calm will take hold, a new interim Gaza administration led by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza will take power, and long-delayed reconstruction of war-ravaged Gaza can finally begin.

Notably, widespread opposition to early disarmament does not equate to broad satisfaction with existing Palestinian political institutions. The poll documents deep and persistent public anger at the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its long-serving leader, President Mahmoud Abbas. Nearly 79% of all respondents believe Abbas should step down from his position, a figure that has held between 79% and 89% over the past three years, showing consistent public dissatisfaction with his leadership. Corruption is also a top concern: 83% of Palestinians agree that corrupt practices are widespread within PA institutions, and 65% view the authority itself as more of a burden on the Palestinian people than a historic national achievement.

When it comes to picking Abbas’ successor, the clear favorite among the public is Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian political leader who has been imprisoned by Israeli authorities for more than 20 years. Barghouti earned the support of 39% of respondents as the preferred next leader, outpacing all other potential candidates. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya came in second with 16% support, followed by former PA official Mohammed Dahlan at 15%, and independent politician Mustafa Barghouti at 6%. In a hypothetical head-to-head presidential election, the gap grows even wider: Barghouti would secure 54% of the vote, compared to 26% for al-Hayya and just 14% for the incumbent Abbas.

The survey results also underscore the pervasive sense of insecurity that shapes daily life for Palestinians across both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Three-quarters of respondents – 76% – reported that they and their immediate family members do not feel safe in their current homes, with only 23% saying they feel secure. Public trust in international diplomatic bodies involved in Middle East peace efforts remains extremely low: only 24% of Palestinians express trust in the Board of Peace, which oversees the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan, while 66% say they distrust the body entirely.

In the West Bank, fears of Israeli settlement expansion are near-universal: 87% of respondents there worry that growing Israeli settlements and outposts will eventually force them off their land or out of their homes. Palestinians also remain deeply skeptical that any change in Israel’s leadership will bring meaningful improvement to their conditions. Thirty-four percent believe Israeli policy toward Palestinians would remain unchanged even if the opposition took power, 33% expect policy to worsen under a new Israeli government, and just 28% hold out hope that policy would improve if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were removed from office.

Even amid the catastrophic destruction of Gaza and accelerating Israeli annexation of West Bank land, the core national aspiration of the Palestinian people remains clear: 43% of respondents identified achieving a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 armistice lines and establishing an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital as the highest priority for the Palestinian people moving forward.