In today’s Afghanistan, the Taliban rule not only through guns, but also through fear. This fear is reproduced by spokesmen, clerics, YouTubers, analysts, diplomats, and even some Afghans abroad. The core message is simple: the Taliban are bad, but there is no alternative. This is not political analysis; it is psychological imprisonment. Its aim is not to make people love the Taliban, but to make them afraid of imagining change.
This narrative rests on several pillars: the Taliban itself, the ISIS threat, the ghost of the corrupt former republic, the Taliban’s conflict with Pakistan, and the gradual international normalization of Taliban rule. Together, these pillars trap people between repression, terror, memories of corruption, fear of an external enemy, and disappointment in the outside world.
The first pillar is the Taliban itself: a movement that rules through force, threats, prisons, the exclusion of women, the silencing of media, and the suppression of critics, while hiding all of this behind religion. Human rights organizations and United Nations reports have documented systematic restrictions on women, girls’ education, media, civil society, and public freedoms since the Taliban’s return to power (Source 6, 7, and 8). The Taliban present themselves not as an accountable political force, but as guardians of divine order. When political power claims to speak for God, every question becomes a sin, every criticism becomes hostility to religion, and every opposition becomes a crime. In such a system, people are not citizens; they are subjects.
The second pillar is the ISIS narrative. ISIS-K has existed and has carried out deadly attacks. But Afghanistan’s ISIS cannot simply be understood through the lens of Iraq and Syria. It never developed the same territorial, administrative, and social structure. Reports by the Afghanistan Analysts Network from 2014 and 2015 showed that the early appearance of the name “ISIS” in Afghanistan was surrounded by ambiguity, propaganda, contradictory claims, and unclear links with breakaway fighters and local networks (Source 1, 2, and 3).
What emerged under the name ISIS-K was often a confusing mixture of disgruntled Taliban commanders, breakaway fighters, Pakistani Taliban, local Salafis, criminal networks, smuggling interests, intra-jihadi rivalries, and intelligence games. Research by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point also examined intra-insurgency violence and rivalries among militant groups in Afghanistan as part of this wider complexity (Source 4). For this reason, the name ISIS in Afghanistan has not always meant a fully separate and independent structure from the Taliban. In many cases, it became a ready-made label for explaining atrocities, closing files, shifting blame away from security failures, hiding the Taliban’s role, and producing public fear (Sources 3 and 4).
This does not mean denying ISIS-K altogether. ISIS-K has existed, carried out attacks, and especially targeted religious minorities, Shiites, and Hazaras. Human Rights Watch has documented ISIS attacks against religious minorities in Afghanistan (Source 5). The central point is that the boundaries between ISIS, Taliban splinter groups, regional networks, smuggling interests, intra-jihadi rivalries, and intelligence operations have often been blurred. Whenever this ambiguity is ignored, the name ISIS turns from a security reality into a political tool for producing fear and whitewashing the Taliban.
During the republic, especially under Ashraf Ghani, many attacks on mosques, scholars, local figures, civilians, women, and children were quickly attributed to ISIS, particularly after 2014. At times, even before the chain of responsibility was clearly established, the answer was ready: ISIS. The name became a dark box into which every crime could be thrown, so that responsibility disappeared from the shoulders of the real perpetrators, security networks, the Taliban, and corrupt structures of power. Society asked who was behind the crime; the answer was ready: ISIS. The file was closed, and accountability vanished (Source 3 and 5).
The third pillar is the ghost of the corrupt republic, especially Ashraf Ghani’s circle, exiled republic loyalists, and parts of the old jihadi mafia remembered for corruption, monopoly, ethnic politics, collapse, and escape. The Taliban and their supporters exploit public anger toward this group and say: If the Taliban go, the same corrupt people will return. But the corruption of Ghani’s republic does not make Taliban rule legitimate. Afghans should not be forced to choose between the Taliban and Ghani, between repression today and betrayal yesterday.
The fourth pillar is the Taliban’s conflict with Pakistan. This conflict is not necessarily a complete performance; it brings real blood and real damage. But it also serves a political purpose for the Taliban. It creates an external enemy, stirs nationalist emotion, hides the Taliban’s crisis of legitimacy, and allows a movement historically shaped and supported by parts of Pakistan’s security establishment to present itself as the defender of Afghan independence. The contradiction is clear: a Taliban rooted in Pakistan’s security projects now uses tensions with Pakistan to build national legitimacy. Analyses by research institutions and human rights organizations have repeatedly examined the historical and security links between the Taliban, Pakistan, and the Afghan conflict (Sources 9 and 10).
So far, this hostility has not meant a total break. Embassies remain open, channels of contact do not fully die, formal trade suffers, but informal trade, smuggling, and border networks continue. This harms ordinary people, but benefits the Taliban politically. Whenever tensions with Pakistan rise, the Taliban try to appear not as a repressive regime, but as defenders of the nation. In that moment, questions about women’s rights, media freedom, poverty, forced displacement, ethnic exclusion, and political legitimacy are pushed aside.
The fifth pillar is the global normalization of the Taliban. Every official meeting, diplomatic photo, and conversation under the name of “practical engagement” is not only an external achievement for the Taliban; it is also a tool for domestic messaging. The Taliban use it to say: the world has accepted us, so Afghans have no choice but to accept us too. International discussions on engagement with the Taliban, the Doha meetings, humanitarian access, and political dialogue have repeatedly raised concerns among human rights organizations, especially when Afghan women, civil society, and victims of repression are excluded or pushed to the margins (Source 11, 12, and 13). If engagement is not tied to clear pressure on rights and political accountability, it unintentionally strengthens the myth that there is no alternative.
This geometry of fear is a calculated psychology of power. When people believe there is no way out, they stop trying. When society believes every change will bring disaster, it becomes silent. When people think every alternative is worse, they tolerate the present. This is learned helplessness: a condition in which people, after years of war, terror, betrayal, corruption, and collapse, feel defeated before they even resist.
The Taliban and their supporters work precisely on this exhaustion. They do not need people to believe the Taliban are just; they need people to believe there is no other option. The whitewashing of the Taliban often begins with seemingly neutral phrases: corruption has declined, there is less theft, the Taliban have changed, we must be realistic, what is the alternative? If the Taliban fall, ISIS will come; if the Taliban are gone, Ghani’s corrupt circle will return; if the Taliban weaken, Pakistan will swallow Afghanistan; if the world engages with the Taliban, Afghans must accept them too.
Afghans who whitewash the Taliban speak less about imprisoned women, closed girls’ schools, silenced media, poverty, forced displacement, ethnic exclusion, and public fear. They speak more about security. They define security as if fewer explosions make dignity, freedom, justice, bread, education, and the right to live irrelevant. This is the language of cleansing, even when the speaker claims not to support the Taliban. Reports by Human Rights Watch, UN Women, and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan show that security without rights, freedom, and human dignity cannot mean real peace for society (Source 6, 7, and 8).
Foreign actors who want the Taliban to remain use the same strategy in more diplomatic language. They speak less about Taliban oppression and more about regional stability, counterterrorism, practical engagement, border security, migration control, and dialogue. It may sound rational, but in practice,ce it reduces the suffering of Afghans to other countries’ security concerns. Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that engagement with the Taliban must not lead to the exclusion of women, the neglect of victims, or the normalization of repression (Source 11 and 12).
In this way, Afghan whitewashers and foreign pragmatists both help normalize the Taliban. One says from inside society that there is no alternative; the other says from outside that everyone must deal with reality. The conflict with Pakistan helps the Taliban recast themselves as defenders of the nation, while international engagement adds weight to the message that Afghans have no choice but submission.
The claim that there is no alternative to the Taliban is a lie that must be exposed. The Taliban are not Afghanistan’s destiny, not God’s representatives, and not guarantors of security. ISIS must not be used to bury the truth and whitewash the Taliban. The corruption of Ashraf Ghani and his circle must not force people to accept today’s tyranny. The conflict with Pakistan must not erase the Taliban’s history of dependence. And international engagement must not become a seal of approval for repression.
The result of this geometry of fear is the sacrifice of forty-five million people who, after the Doha deal, were left voiceless and powerless under a violent and unaccountable order. Until this geometry is recognized and exposed, fear will continue to rule in place of the people.
Sources
Source 1: Afghanistan Analysts Network, Messages in Chalk: “Islamic State” Haunting Afghanistan?, 2014.
Source 2: Afghanistan Analysts Network, The Shadows of “Islamic State” in Afghanistan, 2015.
Source 3: Afghanistan Analysts Network, First Wave of IS Attacks? Claim and Denial over the Jalalabad Bombs, 2015.
Source 4: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Red on Red: Analyzing Afghanistan’s Intra-Insurgency Violence, 2017.
Source 5: Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan: ISIS Group Targets Religious Minorities, 2022.
Source 6: Human Rights Watch reports on Afghanistan and human rights violations under Taliban rule.
Source 7: UN Women reports on the situation of Afghan women after the Taliban’s return to power.
Source 8: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, reports and updates on human rights, restrictions on women and girls, civic space, and media freedom under Taliban rule.
Source 9: Brookings Institution, analyses on Pakistan’s security policy, Taliban sanctuaries, and Afghanistan-Pakistan relations.
Source 10: Human Rights Watch, reports and analyses on Pakistan’s support for Taliban networks and Afghanistan’s crisis of impunity.
Source 11: Human Rights Watch reports on the exclusion of Afghan women from United Nations meetings and the risks of normalizing the Taliban.
Source 12: Amnesty International, analysis on the credibility of United Nations-hosted meetings on Afghanistan in Doha.
Source 13: United Nations, UNAMA, and United Nations Security Council discussions on Afghanistan, humanitarian access, women’s rights, political engagement, and the risks of normalization under Taliban rule.
