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 With foreign combat troops withdrawn and fragmented opposition groups unable to mount a meaningful challenge to the Taliban’s centralized rule from Kabul, the movement has achieved a level of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.
