The Taliban governs every provincial capital and faces no conventional army capable of marching on Kabul. It repeatedly cites improved security as proof that Afghanistan’s post-2021 order is settled.But armed resistance is becoming more geographically dispersed, more organizationally diverse and harder to dismiss as a residual and largely spent northern rebellion. The Taliban may have won Afghanistan’s last war while creating the conditions for its next one.
In the first years after the takeover, the National Resistance Front and the Afghanistan Freedom Front dominated anti-Taliban armed activity, concentrating their operations in Panjshir, Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan and other northern and northeastern provinces.