You can read part one here: Part I: Afghanistan, the Home of Terrorism: Its Political Present and Future
Al-Qaeda is another of the world’s terrorist movements that is present and active in Afghanistan today. It is worth noting that al-Qaeda maintains the closest ties with the Taliban. The group’s leader and founder took refuge in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, where he came under Taliban protection and patronage. The Taliban have maintained friendly relations with al-Qaeda ever since. Every al-Qaeda member is regarded by the Taliban in Afghanistan as a guest, and the Taliban hold members of this group in special regard.
Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid, the late founder and leader of the Taliban, declared in 2001 that protecting Osama bin Laden was obligatory for the Taliban. Today, not only the Kandahari Taliban and supporters of Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, but also the Ghilzai Taliban and Haqqani Network loyalists continue to abide by Mullah Mohammad Omar’s directives and views.
Osama bin Laden, the leader and founder of al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, on the orders of then U.S. President Barack Obama. At that time, the Taliban had not yet taken control of Afghanistan. In the author’s view, had the Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2011 and had U.S. forces identified bin Laden’s hideout that same year, that location would undoubtedly have been in Afghanistan.
As was later seen, after the Taliban seized power in 2021, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command was identified and killed in Kabul by a U.S. drone on January 31, 2022, roughly a year after the Taliban takeover. There is no doubt that some political figures within the Taliban may have shared information about his presence in Kabul with the Biden administration, but the important point is that he was present on Afghan soil, which itself demonstrates the close relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
It is worth noting that some Taliban figures, such as Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s political deputy foreign minister and one of those known to be dissatisfied with the Taliban Supreme Leader, may not agree with al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan. However, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader, and the circle close to him maintain a special relationship with al-Qaeda. The sharing of information about al-Qaeda’s second-in-command’s presence in Kabul in 2022 may therefore signal a rift between certain Taliban political figures and the Kandahar team.
Nevertheless, the Kandahar team is the most influential and authoritative faction within the Taliban’s power structure and maintains friendly relations with many Islamist terrorist movements around the world. According to a United Nations report from early 2025, some of the weapons the United States left behind in Afghanistan have fallen into al-Qaeda’s hands. In response to that report, some Taliban officials have said they do not have precise information about the fate of half of the U.S. weapons left in Afghanistan.
In addition to ISIS and al-Qaeda, Yemen’s Houthis also move freely and amicably through Afghan territory. Although the Houthis follow Shia Islam and the Taliban oppose the Shia sect, the Taliban’s close ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the shared hostility of both the Houthis and the Taliban toward Israel have created grounds for closeness between the two sides.
Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper described Afghanistan in April 2025 as a country on the verge of a major explosion, a powder keg. The paper claims there is credible documentary evidence showing that Yemen’s Houthis have established ties with Taliban-run Afghanistan and that some of the U.S. weapons left behind there have also reached them.
The Hasht-e Subh Daily, which has published from outside Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return, also reported in April 2025 that some of the U.S. weapons left in Afghanistan have reached other regional terrorist groups, including Yemen’s Houthis.
Several fundamental questions arise here: How have the Houthis, al-Qaeda, and similar groups obtained the U.S. weapons left behind in Afghanistan? How have they been able to establish a presence so easily in Taliban-run Afghanistan? Is this possible without Taliban coordination? Doesn’t the presence of these groups in Afghanistan, along with their access to American weapons, indicate that the Taliban are aligned with them? These are only some of the questions raised in this regard, and it is worth noting that the answers to some of them may lie within the questions themselves.
Mike Waltz, while serving as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, announced that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Shabaab intend to attack the United States.
The terrorist movements Mike Waltz named as a serious threat to the United States are, ideologically and doctrinally, essentially a second face of the Afghan Taliban, and there is also considerable physical and logistical evidence, along with numerous media reports, documenting their presence in Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Moreover, just as the Taliban share ideological and political alignment with al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), terrorist groups opposed to the Indian government, Syrian Islamists, and similar movements, they also maintain close, fraternal ties with Hamas. This Taliban-Hamas brotherhood is one of the most openly acknowledged facts, one that Taliban officials themselves have repeatedly referenced (United Nations Population Fund, 2025).
Based on the foregoing, it can be said that Islamist terrorist networks have, throughout history, always been searching for a haven, a territory in which they can grow, organize, and plan. Following the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan, this aspiration has, for the first time, been largely realized for them.
The Taliban may pledge to the United States and other countries that they will not allow radical movements to operate on Afghan soil, but such pledges are made primarily to gain international legitimacy and recognition from the global community. Even if the Taliban were to be recognized by the world’s countries, they might well repeat the same pledge, but these commitments are not credible for at least two reasons.
First, the Taliban share common ideological values with movements such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, the TTP, Islamist groups opposed to the Indian government, al-Shabaab, and similar organizations, and these values form part of the Taliban’s own belief system.
Second, the Taliban may remain committed to these pledges to some degree as long as they receive financial or political support from regional countries or global powers, but the moment they lose that support, there is no guarantee they will prevent terrorist groups based in Afghanistan from attacking other countries. This situation turns Afghanistan into a bomb that could explode at any moment.
In addition to the presence of radical Islamist movements in Afghanistan, today’s students in Taliban-run Afghanistan, in the author’s view, also represent one of the greatest future threats to global security, an issue the author believes the international community is currently overlooking. This will be addressed in the following section (Washington Free Beacon, 2025).
Fourth: Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Terrorists
After the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, they made sweeping changes across all public and private sectors in accordance with their religious and customary beliefs.
Among the Taliban’s most significant measures have been changing the curricula of schools and universities and increasing the number of religious seminaries.
The Taliban closed the doors of schools and universities to women in Afghanistan. At the time, they told the world that this measure was not permanent but temporary, and that they would first revise school and university textbooks before reopening the doors to women. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has repeatedly told reporters: “We have not said that we have closed the doors of schools and universities to women forever; rather, we have said they are closed until further notice, and once we have reformed the education system, we will reopen them to women.”
The international community believed these Taliban statements, but the people of Afghanistan had a more accurate understanding of the Taliban. For this reason, they warned through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and other outlets that the Taliban were lying. From the very beginning, the people of Afghanistan, especially women and girls, told the world not to trust the Taliban’s statements, because the Taliban had closed the doors of schools and universities to women not temporarily, but permanently. Nearly four years later, it also became clear to the international community that the Taliban had been lying from the start and that this ban was not temporary but permanent. This shows that the people of Afghanistan understand the Taliban better than foreign countries and the international community do, and that the international community would do well to pay closer attention to what freedom advocates and intellectuals of Afghanistan say about the Taliban.
The Taliban are a radical, terrorist movement, and their conduct matches many of the characteristics of terrorism. Just as they operated as a terrorist network before 2021, the author believes that since returning to power, they have turned to a form of state terrorism.
To sustain religious radicalism and preserve their system in Afghanistan, the Taliban have taken three fundamental measures. The first is the prohibition of women’s education and employment. Extensive documentation, evidence, and video footage obtained by the author of this research through media outlets show that mosque imams in Afghanistan address the subject of women in most Friday sermons. They instill in the public the idea that if women attend schools and universities, study, and work, they will develop the capacity for argument, will dispute with their husbands, and will consequently become shameless and corrupt (Afghanistan International TV, 2025).
The Taliban fear women’s awareness, because they know that an educated, informed mother raises informed, freedom-seeking children, whereas an uninformed mother may raise an ignorant, submissive child. The Taliban therefore permanently closed the doors of schools and universities to women.
The Taliban’s second measure for sustaining their radical, state-terrorist system is changing school textbooks. In the Taliban’s view, depriving women of education and employment is not enough, since they believe the textbooks compiled for schools and universities during the republic era were prepared under American and European supervision and corrupt society. For this reason, the Taliban have declared a large number of textbooks “infidel” texts and removed them from the education system.
In the Taliban’s view, it is not only women who must be barred from education; men, too, must not read books they consider “infidel.” For example, the Taliban now present suicide bombings as a sacred, religious act, and this subject is now taught in boys’ textbooks.
The Taliban not only teach students in schools and universities that suicide bombings are a praiseworthy, religious act, but within the framework of religious instruction they also promote and teach various forms of violence, from flogging to stoning, hostility toward non-Muslims, the legitimacy of slavery, the legitimacy of husbands beating their wives, absolute obedience to the Amir al-Mu’minin as the Prophet’s successor, absolute obedience to mosque mullahs as representatives of the Amir al-Mu’minin, absolute obedience to the Islamic Emirate as the world’s only legitimate Islamic system, and the legitimacy of enslaving non-Muslim women, along with dozens of other topics.
It is worth noting that, to implement these programs, the Taliban dismissed a large number of university lecturers and replaced them with mullahs and individuals affiliated with the Taliban.
Nida Mohammad Nadim, the Taliban’s minister of higher education, said at Balkh University in 2024: “Professors’ academic ranks do not rise based on their research, but based on how many suicide attacks they have managed, how many bombings they have carried out, and how much mine-laying they have done…”
These remarks by the Taliban’s minister of higher education were made in the presence of professors and students at Balkh University.
The Taliban’s third measure for sustaining religious radicalism and perpetuating the Islamic Emirate regime is the expansion of religious seminaries. As noted, to ensure the survival of their system, the Taliban first deprived women of education, then changed boys’ textbooks, and in a third step, dramatically increased the number of religious seminaries.
From August 2021 to the end of 2024, the Taliban established more than 40,000 religious seminaries in Afghanistan, and the pace of seminary construction continues. Between January and the end of April 2025 alone, a large number of new seminaries were opened, the most notable of which include:
- The Abdullah Almas Seminary in Charkh district, Logar province;
- The Faiz al-Uloom Seminary in Khak-e Safed district, Farah province;
- The Afiya Siddiqa Seminary for Girls in Muqur district, Ghazni province;
- The Mohammad ibn Hassan al-Shaybani Seminary in the fifth district of Kabul city;
- Two religious seminaries in Sayed Karam district, Paktia province;
- The Haqqania Seminary in Sarobi district, Paktika province;
- A religious seminary in Daman district, Kandahar province;
- And dozens of other seminaries.
It is worth noting that the Taliban may pledge to the United States and European countries that they will prevent terrorist activities, but five important and dangerous factors call this Taliban commitment to the United States and the West into question.
The first factor that undermines the Taliban’s commitment to the United States and all Western, secular countries is that the Taliban themselves, in the author’s view, are among the most dangerous terrorist groups of the twenty-first century. For example, if a dangerous snake with the deadliest venom promises to fight off other snakes to protect you, and you trust that promise, it ultimately means you will die from that very snake’s venom.
The second factor challenging the Taliban’s commitment to the West is the expansion of religious and jihadist seminaries in Afghanistan. In the author’s view, these seminaries produce not 99 percent but 100 percent terrorists. In the author’s assessment, the mindset and beliefs of these seminaries’ graduates are no different from those of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s former leader, or the current members of al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and similar groups. In other words, the Taliban’s religious seminaries, whose numbers continue to grow today, have become the world’s foremost centers for producing terrorism. Under such circumstances, building safe, friendly relations between the Taliban and the citizens of the United States and Western countries is, in the author’s view, like trying to keep a candle lit in a storm.
The third factor challenging the Taliban’s commitment to the United States and liberal democracies is the status of women. The status of women holds special significance in liberal democracies. In countries such as the United States, women make up more than 50 percent of the population, contribute significantly to scientific progress, women’s freedom is considered one of the most important social and political values, and women are regarded as key elements in strengthening and expanding democracy.
The Taliban, by contrast, regard women as intellectually deficient. In the Taliban’s view, women lack the capacity to work outside the home, and based on their own interpretation of Islamic teachings, they believe that if a woman were placed at the head of a society, that society would be driven toward misfortune and calamity. Against this view, however, the author raises the following question: if Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada is a man, why is Afghanistan, which is entirely under his rule, among the most miserable countries in the world, a country in which women have been completely barred from education, schooling, and participation in society?
There is therefore a fundamental conflict between the Taliban and liberal-democratic societies over the issue of women. Some male Western politicians, and even some female politicians, may engage with the Taliban, but women in Western societies stand united in defending women’s rights. A large share of taxes in the United States is paid by women; women serve as judges within the judicial system, and they are counted among leading university professors, human rights activists, security and police personnel, kindergarten and school teachers, technology specialists, members of parliament, and among the foremost defenders of democracy and human rights. For this reason, if engagement between the United States and the Taliban were to take place, American women could well react forcefully against the White House, since they know that every hallmark of gender apartheid exists under Taliban rule, and that this situation, far from diminishing, continues to expand.
Women in Afghanistan are barred from education and schooling, denied the right to work, publicly stoned and flogged by Taliban forces, subjected to sexual assault in prisons, and forced into child and coerced marriages, with some setting themselves on fire to escape forced marriage, and girls as young as nine and ten married off to men aged 45 to 50. In the author’s view, the most dangerous form of gender apartheid in the world today is being carried out against women in Afghanistan (the Hasht-e Subh Daily, 2025).
The fourth factor challenging the Taliban’s commitment to the United States and liberal-democratic countries is the very nature of the Taliban regime. The Taliban regime is an Islamic Emirate, a system that fuses its own interpretation of Islam from 1,400 years ago with misogynistic local customs. In the author’s view, this regime is incompatible with any freedom-oriented political system, particularly Western liberal democracies, and was essentially formed to confront secular societies and undermine their security.
In May 2025, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader, ordered a serious campaign against secularists. This order is nothing new; he has issued similar directives repeatedly in the past. In Taliban parlance, “serious campaign” means killing, flogging, stoning, imprisonment, and other forms of punishment and torture.
The fifth factor challenging the Taliban’s commitment to the United States and the West is the matter of “implementing pure Islam.” In the author’s view, countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and several others do not implement Islam fully in accordance with the Taliban’s interpretation, since they consider the enforcement of certain rulings neither feasible nor appropriate under current conditions. The author cites examples such as hostility toward non-Muslims, husbands beating their wives, slavery, marriages between older men and young girls, mandatory hijab, and punishments such as execution, flogging, and stoning, and argues that enforcing such rulings hinders a country’s development and engagement with the international community. For this reason, countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and several others have distanced themselves from fully implementing the Taliban’s preferred model and have adopted secularism, at least in part of their system of governance (Amu TV, 2025).
Conclusion
The Taliban are among the most radical terrorist movements in existence. The United States held part of its secret negotiations with the group in Qatar. These negotiations were led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative. Although Zalmay Khalilzad is a U.S. citizen, he is originally from Afghanistan. Like the Taliban, he is ethnically Pashtun. From 2001 to 2021, several Afghanistan’s secularists and freedom advocates regarded Zalmay Khalilzad as a Taliban supporter. Some writers from Afghanistan believe he has been one of the Taliban’s lobbyists among American politicians.
In addition to Zalmay Khalilzad, his wife, Cheryl Benard, has also been described by some critics as a “female Talib.” In May 2025, she published an article on the National Interest website describing Taliban-run Afghanistan as a safe homeland for all people of Afghanistan, especially women. The author of this research believes that in that piece she attempted to whitewash the Taliban’s violent, tainted image. In the author’s view, this article contradicts the reality of Taliban-run Afghanistan, and there are numerous documents, pieces of evidence, and questions that call it into question and warrant independent research.
In the author’s view, Zalmay Khalilzad, with a spirit and outlook close to the Taliban’s own, engaged with the Taliban in Qatar on behalf of the United States, and as a result of that secret engagement:
- The republican system in Afghanistan collapsed;
- The Taliban, one of the most radical and notorious terrorist movements, returned to power;
- More than ten million people from Afghanistan were displaced or forced to migrate, and among them, thousands of women, children, the elderly, and young people lost their lives or went missing along migration routes;
- Afghanistan’s army and its security structures collapsed;
- Some of the women and men who, with the social support of USAID and European programs, had moved away from traditional and extremist ways of thinking were forced into migration or displacement; some were tortured in Taliban prisons, some were killed, some took their own lives under Taliban rule, some now live in hiding and fear inside Afghanistan, and a number lost their lives or disappeared along migration routes;
- Freedom of expression, which had expanded unprecedentedly in Afghanistan over the previous two decades, vanished overnight;
- The private sector, particularly the segment tied to women, collapsed fundamentally;
- Afghanistan’s education system, which had made remarkable progress over the previous twenty years, particularly in schools, universities, private universities, and private schools, suffered serious damage. Lecturers had become pioneers in producing academic works and research papers, and the number of women and girls among students, faculty, and writers had been steadily rising, but all of these achievements were lost;
- For four years, the women and girls of Afghanistan have been denied education, work, and freedom, and, in the author’s view, have in practice also been denied the right to a normal life;
- And other catastrophic consequences that, in the author’s view, resulted from the secret engagement between the United States and the Taliban.
In the author’s view, after seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021 through secret engagement with the United States, the Taliban expanded their ties with terrorist movements around the world. The discussions presented in this research indicate that the Taliban share ideological and political commonalities with groups such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, the TTP, terrorist groups opposed to the Indian government, al-Shabaab, and similar organizations, and these commonalities have provided the basis for their closeness. These groups hold shared views on issues such as the status of women, secularism, Western governments, and the establishment of Islamic states based on their own interpretation of early Islam. Politically, the destruction of Israel and attacks on Western countries are also, in the author’s view, recurring themes in these groups’ rhetoric, themes their members have learned from their leaders (The Guardian, 2025).
In preparing this research, several academic works were reviewed, interviews were conducted with several generals and former Afghan government officials now living abroad, discussions were held with several young people from Afghanistan currently living under Taliban rule, and images and reports from credible media outlets were examined.
In the author’s view, these assessments show that Taliban-run Afghanistan has become a haven for terrorist groups worldwide. As explained in this research, movements such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Shabaab, Hamas, Yemen’s Houthis, radical Syrian Islamists, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the TTP, terrorist groups opposed to the Indian government, and other similar organizations move in and out of Afghanistan. In addition, according to this research’s findings, some of the U.S. weapons left behind in Afghanistan have reached these groups.
Some of these movements merely pass through, but groups such as al-Qaeda, in the author’s view, are not only present in Afghanistan but have settled there and are actively working toward their plans. In the author’s view, this situation poses a serious threat to the world, particularly to Western countries and the United States. Therefore, any country that ignores the Taliban or trusts their superficial pledges will, in the author’s view, be committing a strategic error.
The findings of this research, in the author’s view, show that not only the presence of the Taliban and other terrorist movements in Afghanistan, but also the generation of adolescents currently living in Afghanistan, could become a threat to global security in the future. More than 40,000 religious seminaries backed by the Taliban government, along with thousands of other local religious seminaries, are currently operating in Afghanistan. In the author’s view, those running these seminaries hold radical views. To illustrate the point, the author offers this example: if each of these 40,000 seminaries trains just one radicalized individual per year, 40,000 people with such tendencies will be produced annually.
Since families in Afghanistan typically have many children, young people and adolescents make up a large share of society. With girls barred from education, and with boys, in the author’s view, being taught ideological and extremist content in religious seminaries, schools, and universities, with large numbers of them drawn into seminaries, the author concludes that Taliban-run Afghanistan has become the world’s largest center for producing extremism. In the author’s view, the international community’s failure to address this situation, and particularly the United States’ trust in Taliban pledges, amounts to disregarding the future security of citizens of Western countries.
In the face of Afghanistan’s current dangerous situation, various solutions exist, but engagement with the Taliban, in the view of this research’s authors, is not considered a reasonable solution. According to the authors, when speaking of solutions to the Afghanistan problem, they do not mean solutions built on engagement with terrorists, since engagement with terrorists may lead to a temporary peace between the negotiating parties, but such peace would not be lasting. Pakistan negotiated with terrorist groups for years, yet today finds itself unable to stand against them and continues to suffer casualties. Therefore, the fate of any country that negotiates with terrorists could be similar to, or even worse than, that of Pakistan.
Therefore, in the authors’ view, meaningful solutions to the Afghanistan problem are those that can, on one hand, establish a democratic and relative peace in Afghanistan and, on the other hand, prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for terrorism. Some of these solutions include:
The most important solution is to follow the theory of Hans Morgenthau, the prominent realist school theorist. Morgenthau argued that power must be contained by power. Experience has shown that the Taliban bow their heads only in the face of power. There are numerous practical examples of this. Taliban officials have repeatedly said that in 2001 they were prepared to take part in the Bonn Conference in Germany but were not invited, and Afghanistan’s interim government was formed at that conference without Taliban participation. At the time, the Taliban were under U.S. military pressure, and their government had collapsed. But in 2019, 2020, and 2021, as that pressure eased, they no longer showed any willingness to compromise.
Another example is Cheryl Benard’s, Zalmay Khalilzad’s wife, trip to Taliban-run Afghanistan. The author states that she expressed satisfaction with how the Taliban received and saw her off. Given that the Taliban do not allow women of Afghanistan to leave their homes without a mahram escort, such as a father, brother, or husband, the question arises: did the Taliban apply this same restriction to Cheryl Benard? Did they tell her she could not move about Afghanistan’s cities without her husband, Zalmay Khalilzad, accompanying her? Naturally, no such restriction was applied to her. This is only one of the questions that, in the author’s view, applies to Zalmay Khalilzad’s wife.
There is a clear difference between how the Taliban treat women and men of Afghanistan and how they treat foreign citizens, but this does not mean the Taliban permanently respect foreign citizens, particularly citizens of Western countries. The author believes the Taliban are currently seeking international legitimacy, which is why they display different behavior toward Western citizens, but their ideological hostility toward the West remains firmly in place.
Accordingly, the United States and Western countries can compel the Taliban to accept the formation of an inclusive government with broad participation from women, young people, and all segments of Afghan society, to draft a new constitution, and to allow Islamists and secularists to live alongside one another.
Just as many countries view Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons as a threat to global peace and security, the author believes the spread of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism poses a serious, and perhaps even more serious, threat to global security. From this perspective, the expansion of religious seminaries, the revision of school and university textbook content to reflect the Taliban’s worldview, gender apartheid, the presence of foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, and the continuation of the Islamic Emirate system are all factors that threaten the future of the world’s nations, particularly Western countries.
Therefore, if the first solution is not acceptable to the international community and Western countries, the author proposes, as a second solution, providing financial and military support to fronts opposed to the Taliban and applying pressure on countries that support the Taliban to collapse the Islamic Emirate and compel the Taliban to accept a democratic peace.
Recommendations
In conclusion, readers and researchers are encouraged to conduct further research on the following topics, as they continue to require deeper investigation:
- Research into why, in the policies of some powerful Western countries, these two forms of apartheid are not treated equally: racial apartheid in South Africa and gender apartheid in Taliban-run Afghanistan.
- An examination of the relationship between the 2001 Bonn Conference and the Taliban’s eventual return to power.
- An examination of the causes of financial and political corruption in the governments of Hamid Karzai and Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and its relationship to the collapse of the republic.
- An examination of why the international community has overlooked the Taliban’s return to power and the threats posed by the continuation of state terrorism in Afghanistan.
- An examination of why international human rights institutions have been ineffective in addressing gender apartheid in Taliban-run Afghanistan.
- Identifying Taliban lobbyists in Western countries and examining their role in building trust between Western countries and the Taliban.
References
- Aminian, Bahador. The Legacy of Two Decades of U.S. Presence in Afghanistan: The Heavy Costs Borne by the People of Afghanistan and Regional Countries. 2024, Elmnet.
- Beyk Khorasani, Razieh; Heravi, Javad. The Religious Approach of Darul Uloom Deoband in Afghanistan. 2024, Noor Specialized Journals Database.
- Washington Free Beacon. Afghanistan Becoming a Safe Haven for Terrorists. Retrieved: May 12, 2025.
- The Guardian. Taliban Have Publicly Flogged Hundreds of Women and Men. Retrieved: May 10, 2025.
- Amu TV. Taliban Seminary Construction. Retrieved: May 12, 2025.
- Statements by Amrullah Saleh, former Vice President of Afghanistan. Warning on Taliban Financing. Retrieved: April 28, 2025.
- Statements by a U.S. Senator. Warning on Taliban Financing. Retrieved: April 27, 2025.
- United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Maternal Mortality in Afghanistan. Retrieved: April 29, 2025.
- Afghanistan International TV. Taliban Publicly Flog Three Women and Five Men in Khost and Daikundi Provinces. Retrieved: May 21, 2025.
- The Hasht-e Subh Daily. Ban on Women’s Presence Without a Male Guardian at Health Centers. Retrieved: May 21, 2025.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis article here:
بخش دوم و پایانی – خانه تروریسم؛ افغانستان: حال و آینده سیاسی
