Introduction
Afghanistan today stands at one of the most complex junctures of its modern history, in the deepest humanitarian and social crisis it has known — a dangerous reality that much of the world has chosen to overlook. What is at stake is not simply the replacement of one government by another, or the reshuffling of political power. The deeper question is this: after decades of war, tyranny, haven for terrorism, foreign interference, monopolised power and the collapse of trust between the country’s communities, is it still possible to write a new social contract for Afghanistan?
Afghanistan is a country of contradictory experiences. Its history holds heroes and oppressors alike; construction and state-building alongside destruction; the struggle for independence alongside dependence on foreign powers. For that reason, the future cannot be built simply by returning to the past. The past must be studied and examined honestly — but the future has to rest on a new agreement among the country’s communities and its citizens.
It is against this background that the question of Badakhshan takes on particular weight. Given its history, its geography, its social capacity and its political record, can this province once again become a political centre for the forces opposed to the Taliban, and open the way to a national process leading toward a state that is inclusive, lawful, citizen-centred and built on broad participation?
The short answer is this: politically and historically, yes. Practically and internationally, only if a demanding set of conditions is met.
1. Badakhshan and the Historical Memory of State-Building
Badakhshan is not merely a remote province in Afghanistan’s north-east. Its geography, its trade routes, its cultural diversity and its openness to the wider world through the Pamirs and Central Asia have given it a distinctive place in the history of both Afghanistan and the region.
In the 1990s, when the Taliban captured Kabul, the government of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani and its allied forces gradually withdrew to the north-east. After the fall of Taloqan in 1998, Badakhshan effectively became the seat of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, and until the recapture of Kabul in November 2001 it served as that government’s de facto capital. Throughout those years it was the political, logistical, psychological and informational backbone of the United Front — and during the same period, Rabbani’s government retained Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations.
This precedent matters politically, because it shows that the idea of a temporary seat of Afghan government outside Kabul is not without precedent. Kandahar plays a comparable role for the Taliban today.
But there is a fundamental difference between that period and the present. In the 1990s, Rabbani’s structure still enjoyed a distinct legal and international standing. Today, any movement opposed to the Taliban must earn domestic and international legitimacy by clearing itself of the charge that it is reproducing civil war or returning to the failed politics of the past.
So if Badakhshan is ever to become the centre of a new political process, its legitimacy cannot rest on the legacy of the first resistance or of the former republic alone. It must be built on the right to legitimate self-defence, on the consent, support and participation of Afghanistan’s citizens, and on regional and international coordination.
2. Why Badakhshan Matters Geopolitically
In political-geographic terms, Badakhshan is one of the most exceptional regions of Afghanistan. It borders Tajikistan and Pakistan, and reaches China through the Wakhan Corridor. Three consequences follow.
First, Central Asia. The long border with Tajikistan means that any serious development in Badakhshan is immediately noticed in the capitals of Central Asia and in Moscow.
Second, China. The Wakhan Corridor, however forbidding its terrain and however poor its infrastructure, links Afghanistan directly to China. Its importance is partly symbolic and strategic, partly a matter of latent economic potential.
Third, Pakistan. The province’s position and its security dynamics also register in regional calculations. What Pakistan pursued in the past out of policy and necessity, and what it seeks now, has become clear enough. In 2005, I was present when the chiefs of the Pakistani and Afghan army staffs spoke in the trilateral meeting in Rawalpindi, with the NATO/ISAF commander in the room. The clarity, the directness, and the consistency of Pakistan’s demands in that conversation did not change across twenty years of the republic. Nor, on the other side, did the volatility, the short-sightedness, and the personality-driven, emotional, and improvised policy of the Karzai and Ghani administrations.
In my view, Afghanistan’s future government neither should nor will pursue a policy of one-sided courtship of India paired with hostility toward Pakistan. The major bilateral disputes should be settled with prudence and reason, through a referendum in which the essential interests of both sides are protected in accordance with international law and by mutual consent — settled without confrontation, so that no cursed inheritance and no vicious circle are handed down to the generations that follow. This is a national duty that falls to the country’s elites.
Badakhshan could therefore serve as a diplomatic bridge between Afghanistan and Central Asia, China and other regional actors. Yet that same advantage can turn into a liability. If any political movement were to use Badakhshan’s territory for military action against neighbouring states — as the Taliban now use Afghan soil as an instrument of pressure — it would almost certainly alienate much of the international community and of the region.
The governing principle must therefore be clear: Badakhshan must not become a base for regional warfare. It should become a centre of Afghan national politics and diplomacy.
3. Two Different Things: A Temporary Capital and a Political-Diplomatic Centre
With its mountainous terrain, Badakhshan is among the most deprived regions of Afghanistan and faces severe economic and connectivity constraints. Two concepts must therefore be kept apart:
(a) A formal temporary capital of Afghanistan, accompanied by the declaration of an interim government.
(b) The political and diplomatic centre of a national coalition opposed to the Taliban.
The second is the more realistic option. The opposition can establish a transitional political centre or an interim national council, and ask the governments of the world to engage with it as an Afghan political structure. The difference in wording is far from cosmetic; it matters a great deal.
4. The First Strength: Historical Experience
One of Badakhshan’s greatest assets is the political memory of the 1990s. In those years, the province was not merely a place where armed forces were stationed; it was the seat of a political structure that claimed to represent Afghanistan.
That experience yields two lessons.
First, in both their first and second periods in power, the Taliban have proved that they want an absolute, authoritarian monopoly at any cost — through criminality and religious violence, through ethnic chauvinism, through the erasure of Persian Dari as a national language and of Ja’fari jurisprudence, and through the total removal of women from society and public life. They have shown no willingness whatsoever to engage in constructive inter-communal and intra-Afghan dialogue with their opponents, or to accept regional mediation. That leaves the opposition with only one option.
Second, resistance without state-building does not endure — but state-building without popular legitimacy simply produces a new monopoly. If the Taliban’s opponents wish to draw on experience, they must also learn from its mistakes. Afghanistan must not pass from one monopoly to another, and the opposition must promise the people and the world, clearly and deliberately, that it will not.
5. The Second Strength: Growing Opposition Activity in Badakhshan
Through 2026, numerous reports have documented increased activity by anti-Taliban groups in Badakhshan. In Saratan this year, forces of Sepahiyan-e Mihan (Soldiers of the Homeland), led by Qayum Malang — a fearless and patriotic officer of the national army’s special forces (KKA) with ten years of joint counter-terrorism operations alongside US commando special forces behind him — held the district centre of Yaftal-e Sufla for a period. In Zebak, fighting between Taliban forces and the freedom and resistance fronts continues without any foreign backing.
This mattered because, since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the temporary capture of two districts in Baghlan and of a district centre in Badakhshan by opposition forces had been an uncommon event. Political violence has also risen through 2026 in Badakhshan, in Herat and across much of Afghanistan — including friction between southern Taliban, local Taliban and host communities.
Yet because of the violent suppression of the free press and systematic censorship, hundreds of these realities have gone unreported; worse, the media have themselves been turned into instruments of Taliban propaganda. Through suicide attacks, the Taliban were able to kill newborns and women in hospitals, young people in universities and schools, and ordinary citizens in the streets, and to spread terror. But against the national army of the republic they were defeated, and they fell back cravenly on conspiracy and human shields.
These gains can eventually translate into durable control of a province and the creation of a national government, with the Taliban gradually losing their grip on the territory of Afghanistan and on its principal economic and governmental institutions. And all of this is happening before Jamiat, Wahdat, Junbish-e Milli and Hizb-e Islami — and the respected, experienced security and defence forces of the republic — have entered the field. Each of them commands a broad social base, and their entry would multiply the effectiveness of the struggle.
The conditions have changed. Beyond their lack of domestic legitimacy, the Taliban are no longer a strategic asset or a geopolitical fact for the United States, China or Russia, nor a reliable and credible partner for Iran, Pakistan or Qatar. Together with their foreign patron, they harbour a long-term design for the fragmentation of Pakistan and the destabilisation of the region — though they proved wholly incapable in the face of Pakistan’s recent retaliatory strikes. Along Afghanistan’s borders, a “war of ghosts” is now effectively under way, and the country has become a security nightmare for its neighbours.
We can also observe that the Taliban’s capacity for psychological and propaganda warfare has weakened markedly. Their narratives no longer reach the hearts and minds of the population as they once did, and the gap between their false claims and the lived reality of ordinary people has never been more visible. This is the most significant opportunity yet for the opposition and for the supporters of the republic to exercise the right of legitimate defence and to restore the rule of law.
Will the Taliban listen to reason, and accept that a portion of their movement might take part in a future inclusive government? At the same time, the opposition must not mistake tactical successes for strategic victory.
6. Geography: An Advantage and a Constraint at Once
Badakhshan’s greatest asset can simultaneously be its greatest weakness. The province is intensely mountainous, remote, and hard to traverse; for many months of the year, much of it is difficult or impossible to reach.
In defensive terms, and in asymmetric and guerrilla warfare, that same characteristic is a genuine advantage.
7. The Economy and the Danger of a War Economy
No war can be won without economic foundations. Badakhshan possesses mineral wealth and precious stones, agricultural and horticultural capacity, livestock and considerable potential for nature tourism. Historically, the region has also been tied to trade, to regional routes and to the Silk Road.
But a war economy carries a danger. If mineral resources — gold, lapis lazuli and the rest — become a means of financing armed groups, as we see today under the Taliban’s rule by mullahs and commanders, any new political structure risks being captured from the outset by an opaque economy and by warlordism.
One of the first steps for Afghanistan’s future must therefore be the creation of a Transparent National Resources Fund, so that revenue from natural resources is recorded in auditable accounts and no armed group — neither the Taliban nor the strongmen left over from the republic — can treat national assets as private property.
8. The Decisive Test: Converting Military Power into Political Capital
This is perhaps the most important lesson for the Taliban’s opponents and for the democratic forces of the republic: military strength alone does not build a state.
The essential task is to convert military power into security, stability, justice and freedom — and from there into social legitimacy, political capital and international standing.
The war ahead is not only a war of the battlefield and the rifle. It is a comprehensive contest fought across many dimensions at once: over narrative, over the media, over the economy, over peace, over diplomacy and relations with the neighbours, over human capital, over national and international legitimacy, over public opinion — the hearts and minds of the people — and ultimately over the political future of the country.
If the Taliban’s opponents operate only in the military arena, they may well lose politically even while winning tactically. If, by contrast, war and politics advance together, every military success can become a source of hope and a political message.
A caution is in order here. The “war of narrative” must not descend into falsehood, ethnic hatred, fabricated news, or propaganda directed against groups, ethnicities, regions, or religious communities. Nor must it become — as it did under Dr Ghani’s presidency — an instrument serving the personal interests of a small circle against the vital interests of the country, and a means of destroying the reputations of political rivals.
The powerful narrative is the one that can tell the world: we are not merely against the Taliban; we are ready to build a different Afghanistan, governed by law.
9. The Former National Army and the Rebuilding of Military Capacity
The self-sacrificing, volunteer national army of the republic is a strategic asset for Afghanistan and for the world. In experience, professionalism and commitment, it had few equals in the region. Among Afghanistan’s former security and defence forces lies considerable human capital: officers, NCOs and warrant officers, soldiers, pilots, commandos and special forces, as well as specialists in intelligence, communications, engineering, medicine and logistics.
But the political use of that human capital must be carefully considered, and the mistakes of the Ghani period must not be repeated. If former security personnel are presented merely as “the army of one faction”, it will deepen the anxieties of regional states and of part of Afghan society. If, however, they are placed within a national security framework for Afghanistan’s future, they can be a vital asset to the state that comes next. I see that capacity and that competence in my fellow professionals — honest men and women committed to Afghanistan’s national interest, who have proved it before.
I have carried on my own shoulders the coffins of hundreds of members of the national army, from every ethnicity, province, language and faith. It is right that I also honour the sacrifices of coalition forces in the fight against terrorism — a task that is not yet finished. With the world’s material and moral support, and with the blood of our own soldiers, we did not build the Afghan National Army to surrender it to the enemy.
To demonstrate that it has not forgotten its former allies, the United States could halt its monthly assistance of 150 million dollars to the Taliban and instead pay five years of salaries to the former security and defence personnel of the republic. Substantive discussions on this have been raised and shared through a joint mechanism, and the effort to realise it must be pursued to the end. It is the legitimate right of the devoted members of the republic’s armed forces, who have been badly wronged.
Afghanistan’s future army must belong to the state, to the constitution and to the citizens of the country — not to an ethnic group, a party, a front, a leader or a political family.
10. More Important than Military Victory: A New Social Contract and Constitution
This section is, to my mind, the heart of the Afghan question.
Afghanistan’s central problem is not only who governs in Kabul or which faces are exchanged for which. The deeper problem is this: what kind of state should govern Afghanistan?
The Afghanistan to come must be built on a new social contract, resting at minimum on the following principles:
- equality of all citizens before the law;
- political participation for all ethnic groups and regions, elected district governors, provincial governors and mayors, and accountable local government;
- freedom of expression and of the press;
- freedom of education for all;
- an independent judiciary;
- credible and observable elections;
- peaceful transfer of power;
- sensible decentralisation;
- prohibition of ethnic, linguistic, religious and regional discrimination;
- a national, non-partisan army and police;
- guaranteed rights for religious and cultural minorities;
- a genuine fight against corruption;
- a balanced and independent foreign policy.
11. On Islam and Law
The relationship between Islam and the constitution is a deeply sensitive subject in Afghanistan. Islam cannot be set aside. But religion must return to its moral place — in the service of social coexistence, of engagement, of tolerance and of human dignity. It must not be an instrument of monopoly and despotism.
One point is fundamental: Afghanistan cannot be governed indefinitely through legal ambiguity and a Taliban reading of sharia. No society can be run on the slogan of “Islamic sharia” or of “democracy” alone; every society needs rules that are clear, predictable and enforceable — such as the constitution of the republic provided.
Rather than a crude opposition between “Islam” and “law”, what is needed is a deep legal and national conversation about how religious values, citizens’ rights, fundamental freedoms and Afghanistan’s legal order can be reconciled.
That conversation must take place among jurists and religious scholars, lawyers, academics, women, young people, ethnic communities and representatives of every region — not be settled unilaterally by any single group.
12. “National Interest” Is No One’s Property
One of the most important questions before us today concerns the concept of national interest. In Afghanistan there is a real danger that every group declares: my view is the national interest, and whoever disagrees with me is its enemy. That definition has been dangerous throughout our history.
National interest must be defined through national dialogue, equal participation and broad agreement. A minimum set of principles could serve as a starting point:
- the territorial integrity of Afghanistan;
- prevention of the country’s fragmentation;
- political independence;
- non-use of Afghan soil against other countries;
- the rule of law;
- equality of citizens;
- political participation;
- security, stability and economic development;
- the right of women to education, work and public life;
- fundamental freedoms;
- balanced relations with the neighbours.
These can form the first foundations of a shared definition. National interest is not a finished document that one group hands down to the others; it is a political and social agreement that has to be built.
13. Ethnic Communities and the Question of Afghan Identity
One of the gravest political errors of the past has been turning ethnicity into a tool for monopolising power. Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural country.
Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Baloch, Nuristanis, Pashai, Aimaq, Qizilbash and other social and ethnic communities are all part of Afghanistan. So too are Persian Dari, Pashto, Uzbeki, the Pamiri languages and the country’s other tongues — all of them part of a shared inheritance.
The state that comes next must not tell its citizens: you are first a member of such-and-such an ethnic group, and only then an Afghan citizen. It must say the opposite: you are first an equal citizen of Afghanistan, and your ethnic and cultural identity is respected.
This shift of outlook can be one of the foundations of the future state. After the fall of the republic and in the dark years of Taliban despotism, such an idea may seem remote — but historical experience has shown that it is not impossible.
14. Women Remain the Real Test of Any New State
No political project that excludes half of society can call itself inclusive. Afghanistan needs hundreds and thousands of new leaders — women and men, skilled in leadership and management, genuinely present across every part of governing and state-building.
This is not only a human-rights question. It is a question of state capacity and of the country’s advancement. An Afghanistan that sets aside half of its human capital effectively halves its own capacity to develop. Numerous reports over the past five years have identified the continuing sweeping restrictions on women and girls as a major driver of the country’s humanitarian and developmental crisis.
15. The Diaspora and the Return of Human Capital
One of Afghanistan’s greatest strategic resources lies outside its borders. Millions of our compatriots live abroad, and among them are people with economic capital, university education, managerial experience, military experience, medical expertise, technological knowledge, legal training and international networks.
Their return need not be physical. An Afghan specialist living in Berlin, Toronto, London, Istanbul or Dushanbe can still be part of building our homeland. The Afghanistan to come should create a global network of its own human capital.
But that network must not operate through favouritism or above the law — as the offices of the National Security Council, of National Procurement and of the Presidential Palace did, answerable to Dr Ghani personally rather than to the constitution, the judiciary, the interests of Afghanistan or the National Assembly.
16. The Role of Karzai and Ghani: Between the Past and the Future
Former leaders deserve a realistic assessment. There are deep political disagreements about the mixed record of the republican governments, and many Afghan citizens are critical of both men and of their periods in office: corruption, permanent political infighting, over-centralisation, foreign dependency and the collapse of the security institutions.
At the same time, excluding experienced and influential political figures entirely is not necessarily in Afghanistan’s interest either. So the right question is not whether Hamid Karzai, Dr Abdullah, Dr Ashraf Ghani, Atta Mohammad Noor, Marshal Dostum, Amrullah Saleh, Mohammad Mohaqiq or Ismail Khan should return to power. (Ahmad Massoud stands outside this discussion.)
The right question is: can they play a constructive role in a national process without demanding a guarantee of personal power?
The answer may well be yes. Any former political leader, including former presidents, can be useful — provided one principle is accepted:
No one owns Afghanistan’s future. Not the Taliban. Not the former republicans. Not the armed resistance fronts. Not the jihadi leaders. Not the technocrats. Not one ethnic group, one religious community, or one political family.
17. The Essential Condition: Unity Without Monopoly
If the forces opposed to the Taliban want credibility at home and abroad, their most urgent need is unity. But unity does not mean the elimination of disagreement, or agreement on every question facing the country.
A national coalition can accommodate very different constituencies: political forces, civic activists, women, young people, community leaders, religious scholars, academics, diplomats, former security personnel, armed resistance groups and Afghans abroad.
What all of them must agree on is a minimum set of principles: one united Afghanistan, equal citizenship, a decentralised constitution, a single national army, and a shared future of coexistence grounded in respect for human dignity. That can be the foundation of a national coalition.
18. The Danger of Many Fronts and Many Leaders
No one negotiates or makes peace with the weak, and weakness commands no respect in politics. Fragmentation is precisely the weakness of the Taliban’s opponents. If every group has its own leader, its own flag, its own supreme council, and its own spokesman, the world is left with a simple question: who actually represents Afghanistan?
This has to be resolved quickly, through reasoned dialogue. One solution is a layered, sequenced structure:
- A Transitional National Council — composed of genuine representatives of regions, ethnic communities, women, young people, religious scholars, civil society, political parties and forces, and refugees.
- An Executive Body — to manage political, economic and diplomatic affairs.
- A Professional Military Council — with a clear chain of command, subordinate to legitimate political authority, composed of respected, experienced and educated officers.
- A Legal and Constitutional Council — to draft the legal framework of the future state.
- A Diplomatic Council — to engage the United Nations, regional states, Europe, the United States and other actors, with women playing a prominent role.
Such a structure can prevent political and military resistance from hardening into personal rule.
19. Would the World Recognise a Political Centre Based in Badakhshan?
The prospect is not far-fetched, although states normally look for three things: control of territory, political legitimacy and the capacity to govern.
Even without formal recognition, however, an opposition political centre can play a significant role. It can open political offices abroad; engage with parliaments and governments; appoint special representatives; lobby within international organisations; convene conferences on Afghanistan; put forward a draft constitution and an economic programme; document the human-rights record; and maintain links with civil society inside the country.
In that situation, political legitimacy can grow well before legal recognition arrives. The Taliban, too, should recognise this reality and abandon their obstinacy.
Rising armed opposition in Badakhshan will not by itself bring the Taliban down. But if armed opposition converges with social discontent, humanitarian crisis, poverty and economic collapse, diplomatic pressure, human-rights restrictions and the total exclusion of women, ethnic and regional grievance, internal fractures and a crisis of legitimacy, the political cost of Taliban rule will rise sharply.
A realistic strategy should therefore not be built on “imminent collapse”. It should focus on gradually shifting the political and social balance — and on genuine unity.
20. Diplomacy Must Move in Step with Resistance
One of Afghanistan’s recurring historical mistakes has been that its politicians have sometimes pursued war without diplomacy, and diplomacy without social foundations. The Ghani period is the clearest example. Under present conditions, the two must reinforce one another.
But successful diplomacy only emerges when the opposition can tell the world what it proposes for Afghanistan after the Taliban — not merely that it opposes them.
The world needs a clear programme and a clear vision: for security and stability, for the economy, for the constitution, for women’s rights, for elections, for refugees, for countering extremism and terrorism, and for relations with the neighbours.
21. The First Danger: Badakhshan as a Proxy Battleground
Badakhshan’s geography makes it vulnerable to competition between regional powers, and this danger should not be dismissed. A proxy war is the exact opposite of state-building and of our national interest.
Afghanistan must not be an arena for the rivalries of foreign powers. Relations with neighbouring states must rest on mutual interest, not on dependency.
22. The Second Danger: The Ethnicisation of Resistance
If resistance to the Taliban comes to be understood publicly as “one ethnic group resisting another”, it has already lost politically before it begins.
The struggle against the Taliban must be defined by opposition to monopolised power, lawlessness, systematic violence and injustice — not by opposition to Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks or any other community.
It must be clear to Afghan society and to the world: the Taliban are a warlord political movement with an ideological dictatorship, which maintains its strategic relationship with international terrorists and calls itself God’s representative on earth. Being Pashtun is an ethnic identity. The two must never be conflated — and the same principle applies to every other community.
It is an open truth, and one the world understands, that a large part of Pashtun society, exhausted by the Taliban’s continuing oppression and lawlessness, prays for the victory of the resistance — even as several educated Pashtun elites and technocrats, for various reasons, still lend support to an absolute Taliban evil and to its ties with international terrorism.
23. The Third Danger: The Return of Localism and Warlordism
Afghanistan has a bitter experience of this. It should therefore be declared now: once the Taliban are defeated and disarmed and a transitional government is formed, no military commander and no front leader will stand above the law.
Weapons must ultimately serve the national state, and the national state must serve the law and answer to the people.
24. The Real Measure of Victory
Victory should not be measured by the number of districts captured. More telling indicators exist:
- Legitimacy — do the people accept it?
- Cohesion — can the opposition manage its own differences, and does it have the capacity to govern?
- International standing — are other states willing to engage with it?
- Political horizon — do people believe their lives will be better after a change of government?
These are what make a military victory durable.
25. The Afghanistan to Come: Moving Beyond the Past, Not Back to It
One of the most serious political mistakes is to build the future out of nostalgia. Neither a return to the Taliban order nor an exact reconstruction of the former republic is the answer. Afghanistan needs a third version: not an exclusionary emirate, not the ineffective republic of the past, but a new political system that learns from the failures of both.
In twenty years of service under the republic I saw, across the whole country, millions of villagers and rural people deprived of everyone and everything: no access to public services, no accountability from the district governor, the provincial governor or the mayor, and no one listening to them. The centre tried to build Afghanistan out of Kabul, and local rulers were imposed from above like a visitation from the sky. Instead of treating the people’s ailments, they became part of a larger sickness, because they knew nothing of ordinary life or of the realities of the village. Governors appointed from the centre said so plainly: we are not accountable to you — you did not appoint me. And so the people, dispirited, hopeless and full of resentment, went looking for an alternative.
We must therefore think clearly, build shared values, and organise society from within. We must build a system that removes the state from the ownership of groups and from central over-concentration, and turns it into the common institution of its citizens.
26. A Proposed National Roadmap
If the opposition genuinely wishes to seize the present opportunity, it must first achieve unity — “whatever you are, be it among friends” — and then put forward a general, non-exclusionary roadmap:
Stage One: a common charter. Agreement on fundamental principles: territorial integrity and national sovereignty; freedom, justice and equal citizenship; the rule of law; women’s rights; political participation; good-neighbourly relations; and the fight against extremism and terrorism.
Stage Two: a national dialogue council. Convening political forces, women, young people, civil society, religious scholars, academics, ethnic communities, and representatives of refugees and the diaspora.
Stage Three: declaration of a temporary political centre. If security conditions permit, the establishment of a political centre inside Afghanistan — Badakhshan being one possible option — or else in a neighbouring country.
Stage Four: regional diplomacy. Simultaneous engagement with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, India, the Arab states, Europe and the United States.
Stage Five: a transitional government. With a defined and limited mandate and duration.
Stage Six: a new constitution. Drafted with the broad participation of the people and of genuine representatives of society.
Stage Seven: elections. Held once minimum security, legal and institutional conditions exist — not staged merely to manufacture immediate legitimacy.
In a series of recent meetings, most political factions, military fronts, former security and defence forces, and Afghan and international figures have signalled readiness to cooperate on such terms. But time is short, and the opposition has no choice but to reach a national consensus quickly.
27. The People’s Simple Question to Their Leaders
- If the Taliban must leave tomorrow — what Afghanistan will you build?
- Will my son have to pick up a weapon to stay alive?
- Will Afghanistan once again be the battlefield of other countries?
- Will I be a second-class citizen because of my ethnicity, my language, or my faith?
Conclusion
The fall of the Taliban need not be costly, provided the opposition manages it with judgement and with regional and international coordination, and provided a circle of the Taliban retains a place in the future government.
In recent days all of Afghanistan’s neighbours have warned, with acute concern, of intensifying potential security threats along their borders; the head of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation has placed preventive measures, readiness alerts and the deployment of additional forces on the frontiers — together with stepped-up intelligence activity — on the agenda. What emerges from the latest regional meetings is that these states are now analysing and pricing the cost of the Taliban’s departure.
I should add that even with a stable government, nationwide security and the settlement of every dispute with the neighbours, a degree of insurgency and the historical conflicts of the tribal regions will persist.
Historically, geographically and politically, Badakhshan possesses a distinctive capacity. Its record as the de facto seat of Professor Rabbani’s government during the first Taliban emirate; its geopolitical position bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan; its social, cultural and demographic weight; and the growth of anti-Taliban activity through 2026 have all made it a serious candidate for an opposition political centre — and one of the possible birthplaces of a free and renewed Afghanistan.
I would stress, however, that the strategic significance of such a development will not depend on battlefield advances alone. It will depend equally on the opposition’s ability to hold territory durably and expand it, to create political institutions, to earn domestic legitimacy and to attract effective international support.
But if Badakhshan can become a model of the Afghanistan to come — one in which all communities and citizens, of every persuasion, including religious minorities, women and men, the young and the older generations, feel that the country belongs to them — then its historical significance will reach far beyond the borders of a single province.
The Afghanistan of the future must not flee from its past. It must know that past, examine it critically, and learn from it. Nor should the ultimate objective be merely the defeat of the Taliban; that is an operational goal. The strategic goal must be to end the cycle of monopolised power and dictatorship. If that monopoly is broken and the state becomes the shared home of its citizens, then it can be said that Afghanistan has finally begun to move from its bloody history toward a new social contract.
And perhaps the most important principle of that journey is this: Afghanistan for all. A state for its citizens. Law above power. And the future belonging to the generations to come. That is the point at which military resistance can become political resistance — and then social capital, the constraint of power, its fair distribution, its accountability to the people, and finally the building of a state.
