Introduction
Five years have passed since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. During this time, many questions have been raised about the country’s future: the future of citizens’ rights and freedoms, the situation of women and girls, the economy, Afghanistan’s relations with the world, and the fate of the Taliban’s opponents. Among all these questions, however, there is a more fundamental one that is rarely addressed directly: why have the Taliban been able to hold on to power in Afghanistan after five years? The endurance of a government cannot be explained solely by the level of public satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Governments endure when a set of favorable conditions exists, both within the power structure and in its surrounding environment. In the case of Afghanistan, the mere existence of discontent, human rights restrictions, international pressure, or political opponents does not, by itself, mean the emergence of a force capable of changing the balance of power. The main issue is why these factors have so far failed to bring about a fundamental change in Afghanistan’s political situation. Over these five years, the Taliban have faced a series of serious challenges: the international community has not recognized the group’s regime, wide-ranging restrictions have been imposed on the rights of women and girls, and Afghanistan continues to struggle with deep economic and humanitarian problems. Nevertheless, alongside these pressures, the Taliban have managed to keep power. This very reality makes the central question of this article more pressing: how has a regime facing such a set of challenges remained in power for five years?
Explaining the endurance of the Taliban, therefore, is not possible by examining the group’s performance alone. Part of the answer must be sought in the group’s power structure, another part in the lack of unity among opposition forces, the limits of internal resistance, and the way the international community has dealt with the Taliban government. Alongside these factors, the conditions under which opposition to the Taliban has continued must also be taken into account. Instead of repeating what has happened in Afghanistan over the past five years, this article attempts to look at the period from a different angle: what factors have allowed the Taliban to remain in power? To answer this question, four main areas will be examined: the Taliban’s power structure, the disunity of the opposition, internal resistance against the Taliban, and the international community’s approach toward the group. The aim of this examination is neither a simple description of the past five years nor a verdict on Afghanistan’s future, but an attempt to understand one of the most important political realities of Afghanistan today: how has the endurance of the Taliban regime been possible?
1. The Taliban’s Power Structure
The endurance of the Taliban cannot be explained solely by the weakness of their opponents or a shortage of foreign pressure. Before that, the Taliban’s power structure itself must be examined, a structure that, after the group’s return to power, gradually evolved from an insurgent organization into a centralized system of government. In 2021, the Taliban did not merely seize Kabul; they also took control of the country’s administrative, security, and political structures, and were able to maintain that control in the following years. The report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) (2026) emphasizes that Taliban officials continue to maintain effective control over Afghanistan’s national territory. This matters greatly, because the endurance of a government depends not only on its presence in the capital but also on its ability to enforce decisions across the country. At the top of this structure stands Hibatullah Akhundzada. In the years since 2021, important decision-making has increasingly come to depend on his leadership and his inner circle. The UN Secretary-General’s report (2022) showed that Akhundzada had expanded his role as the primary decision-maker and relied on consultation with a small group of people close to him. A year later, another report by the organization (2023) showed that decrees and edicts attributed to the Taliban Supreme Leader were mostly issued from Kandahar, while many administrative decisions were implemented in Kabul.
Therefore, the Taliban’s power structure cannot be understood merely on the basis of the capital and the formal institutions of government; the main center of political power lies in a structure with Kandahar and the Taliban leadership at its head. This concentration of power has had an important consequence for the Taliban’s endurance: a gap between decision-making and implementation does not necessarily mean a dispersal of power. Fundamental decisions can be made at the top of the power pyramid and then implemented across the country through the administrative and security apparatus. For this reason, even if there are disagreements among Taliban officials over certain policies, these disagreements do not necessarily turn into a crisis of government. In fact, one of the important points in understanding the Taliban is that the “existence of disagreement” should not be equated with the “collapse of the power structure.” A political system can have internal disagreements, but as long as the center of decision-making and the hierarchy of power are preserved, these disagreements do not necessarily destroy its ability to continue governing. Here, the difference between cohesion and uniformity becomes important. The Taliban should not be imagined as a completely homogeneous group. Leaders and officials of the Taliban have held differing views on certain political and social issues, and the relationship between the center of power in Kandahar and officials based in Kabul has not always been free of friction. But the fundamental point is that these disagreements have so far failed to turn into an organized rift that threatens the Taliban’s control over the country. As a result, the Taliban’s power depends less on the absence of any disagreement than on the ability of the group’s structure to keep disagreements within its own framework.
Another factor that distinguishes this structure from a merely armed group is the Taliban’s ability to use the state apparatus. After the fall of the Republic, many of the country’s administrative institutions were not destroyed but were placed under Taliban management. This allowed the Taliban to use the existing structure to collect revenue, administer services, appoint local officials, and implement their policies. As a result, they did not have to build an entirely new administrative system from scratch. What changed, more than anything, was the center and the holder of power at the top of this structure. This matters even more with regard to the security structure. A government can maintain its power when, in addition to issuing decisions, it has the ability to carry them out. After 2021, the Taliban organized their security and military structures within the framework of the new government and took control. UN reports in recent years show that the Taliban continue to maintain effective control over the country’s territory and that armed opposition groups have not been able to create a decisive challenge. This reality must be viewed alongside the Taliban’s ability to run the country’s security and administrative structures, because political power endures when it can be converted into executive power. But perhaps the most important point is that the Taliban’s structure does not rest solely on “power from above”; this structure has also been accompanied by a form of political concentration and social control.
Since the Taliban’s return, numerous decrees and regulations have been issued by the leadership, and the scope of the government’s intervention in social life has grown. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report (2022) on the human rights situation in Afghanistan showed that in the first months after returning to power, the Taliban limited the space for public opposition by restricting protests, freedom of expression, and civic activities. Part of the endurance of this structure, therefore, must also be sought in the government’s ability to reduce the space for opponents to organize. Nevertheless, control is not the same as legitimacy. The fact that the Taliban have been able to preserve their power structure does not mean that the group’s government enjoys broad public support or domestic and international political legitimacy. The issue this article pursues is precisely this difference: how does a government facing a crisis of legitimacy and widespread opposition remain capable of holding on to power? The Taliban’s centralized structure is one of the answers, but it is not a complete one. Ultimately, the Taliban’s power structure can be considered one of the main pillars of their endurance: a structure in which political power is concentrated at the top, key decisions are directed from the leadership center, the administrative and security apparatus serves to implement them, and internal disagreements have so far failed to become a decisive rift. This structure has allowed the Taliban to convert a military victory into relatively stable political control. But holding on to power depends not only on the ability of those who govern, but also on the capacity of those who stand against them. From here, the issue of the disunity of the Taliban’s opposition forces arises as the next factor.
2. The Disunity of the Taliban’s Opposition Forces
The fall of the Republic was not merely the end of a government; for many opponents of the Taliban, it meant the loss of the very framework that, despite their many differences, had until then kept them together. When that structure collapsed, the Taliban’s opponents suddenly faced a fundamental question: who should stand against the Taliban, and how should Afghanistan be governed after the Taliban? There was no single answer to this question. Under the Republic, too, deep disagreements existed among political leaders, commanders, parties, and others. These disagreements did not disappear with the fall of the Republic. On the contrary, there was no longer a government to bring these forces together in an official structure. Each current followed its own path; some political figures left the country, some sought to build political coalitions, and some groups chose the path of armed struggle.
The report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (2023) shows that even among the forces opposed to the Taliban, there have been serious disagreements over leadership, political goals, the shape of Afghanistan’s future system, and the use of armed resistance. The main problem here was not merely a “lack of unity”; it was the absence of a shared and acceptable goal for everyone. Opposition to the Taliban could be a common ground, but it was not enough to build a political force. One current might want the return of the republican system, another might seek a change in the country’s political structure, and yet another might focus primarily on armed resistance. When there is no agreement on the destination, even cooperation along the way becomes difficult.
This problem became more complicated when many political figures of the Republic era left Afghanistan. Operating from outside the country allowed them to keep their voices alive, but at the same time it widened the distance between them and society. The report of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) (2023), referring to a UN assessment, speaks of the absence of a significant political opposition inside Afghanistan and stresses that figures associated with the former government are scattered abroad and that their statements have limited influence inside the country. This distance is not merely a geographic problem. Afghanistan is a society in which the experience of war, migration, and political distrust runs very deep. For people who have lived through years of war, a call to a new struggle, without it being clear who is going to replace the Taliban and what the outcome would be, does not necessarily turn into a broad social movement. Therefore, the existence of dissatisfaction with the Taliban did not, in itself, mean that society was ready to join an opposition force. The military sphere was not much different. After the fall of Kabul, groups such as the National Resistance Front (NRF) and the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) continued the armed struggle. These resistance movements show that the Taliban face armed opposition, but not a serious threat. The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) (2024), in its assessment of Afghanistan, also cited the limited resources and the level of coordination among armed groups opposed to the Taliban as factors that have limited their ability to challenge the Taliban government.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to attribute this situation solely to the military weakness of the opponents. The strength of a resistance depends not only on the number of fighters and weapons; it also depends on the ability to turn scattered opposition into a joint movement. When political resistance, civic activity, and armed struggle each move along separate paths, their pressures do not necessarily add up. The protest of one group can remain unconnected to the activity of another, and none of them may be able to generate enough force to change the balance. On the other side, the Taliban made the emergence of such a joint force more difficult by restricting the political space. Independent political parties effectively cannot operate freely, and opponents face serious restrictions. Freedom House, in its 2024 report, described Afghanistan under Taliban rule as lacking any real space for political competition and wrote that political parties do not enjoy legal protection and that there is no possibility of competing for power. As a result, the Taliban do not face a single opposition; they face a collection of opponents, each of which represents a part of the opposition. This difference is very important. A government can deal much more easily with several scattered opposition groups, even if each of them is a threat on its own, than with a single, organized force. Of course, it should not be concluded from this reality that the whole responsibility for the Taliban’s endurance lies with their opponents. Political repression, restrictions on civic space, pressure on the media, and the difficulty of organized activity have also created conditions that have made the formation of a strong opposition harder. But alongside these factors, political disagreements and the lack of a shared framework among the opponents also meant that the opportunity the fall of the Republic had created for building a new political force did not turn into a joint project.
Under these conditions, the Taliban not only faced opponents who could not unite, but also enjoyed time and space in which they were able to consolidate their power structure. The more time passed, the wider the gap between opposition groups grew, and the more opportunity the Taliban found to strengthen their control. For this reason, the disunity of the Taliban’s opposition forces should be regarded not as a secondary occurrence but as one of the factors that allowed the Taliban to turn a military victory into a more durable political situation. But even if the opponents had been more united, an important question would remain: could external pressure have forced the Taliban to change their behavior, or even to alter the power structure? The answer to this question leads us to another factor in the Taliban’s endurance: the approach of the international community toward the Taliban, which is addressed in this same article.
3. Internal Resistance Against the Taliban
The Taliban’s return to power did not mean the end of opposition in Afghanistan. From the first months, civil protests, especially protests by women, took shape in different parts of the country and continued in the following years. Alongside these protests, armed groups opposed to the Taliban also continued their activities. The issue, therefore, cannot be explained on the assumption that the Taliban have faced no resistance inside Afghanistan. But there is a large gap between the existence of resistance and the ability to change power. This very gap may be one of the most important points for understanding the endurance of the Taliban. Resistance in Afghanistan appeared more as scattered and limited movements than as a nationwide movement with a single leadership and organization. Women’s protests are a clear example of this situation. Despite severe restrictions, arrests, and threats, women protested against being deprived of education, work, and presence in society. But these protests took place in an environment where the possibility of assembly, organization, media activity, and communication among activists had been severely restricted. UNAMA, in its human rights reports, has spoken of the restriction of freedom of assembly and expression and of the treatment of protesters.
In one of the most recent examples, UNAMA announced in June 2026 that dozens of women had been detained in Herat and that, during public protests against these detentions, Taliban forces used force and at least one person was killed. But even in the absence of such restrictions, turning scattered protests into a national movement was not easy. A protest can change the balance of power when it is able to go beyond individual or local discontent, connect different individuals and groups, and have a network, resources, and leadership to sustain its activity. In Afghanistan, such conditions did not readily exist. Many opponents either left the country, continued their activities in secret, or refrained from open activity because of the existing dangers. The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), in its 2026 report, also reports the severe narrowing of civic and political space and the turn of many opponents toward migration, hiding, or self-censorship. Armed resistance also presents a situation entirely different from the picture sometimes portrayed of the war against the Taliban. After 2021, Afghanistan did not enter a nationwide war between the Taliban and a rival military force. According to the EUAA’s assessment, the level of armed violence dropped dramatically after the fall of the Republic, and UN sources have described this period as a “relative absence of armed conflict.” Attacks by armed groups opposed to the Taliban have continued, but their intensity has been low, and they have not led to control of territory. This reality clarifies an important point: armed resistance existed, but not to a degree that could change the power equation.
The EUAA’s report says that the activities of resistance groups have been mostly scattered and geographically limited, and that these groups have relied on local networks rather than on stable control of territory. Another report likewise states that none of the armed resistance groups currently holds any territory in Afghanistan, and that their level of coordination and operational capacity has remained limited. Here, one simplistic reading must also be avoided: the fact that armed resistance has not been able to overthrow the Taliban does not necessarily mean that the people of Afghanistan are satisfied with the Taliban. Satisfaction and resistance are not two ends of one spectrum; a person may oppose the Taliban’s policies yet be unwilling to enter a conflict because of years of war experience, fear of repression, family responsibilities, or the lack of a clear alternative. In a country whose people have experienced several decades of war, the cost of returning to a wide-scale war may weigh more heavily for many people than political dissatisfaction. This becomes especially important when we recognize that the Taliban have managed to take control of almost the entire formal space for political activity. The EUAA describes the Taliban government as holding a political monopoly; political parties are not allowed real activity, and civic space is severely restricted. Many critics have either left the country, hidden their activities, or turned to self-censorship. Under such circumstances, even the discontent that exists in society cannot easily turn into a political organization.
Therefore, the issue of internal resistance should not be measured by the simple question, “Did anyone fight or protest against the Taliban?” The answer to that question is clear: yes. The more important question is whether these forms of opposition have been organized enough to force the government to change. Over the past five years, no such thing has happened. Civil protests have not been able to turn into a nationwide movement; armed resistance has not been able to achieve territorial control or become a decisive military threat; and the political and civic space has been restricted in such a way that communication among groups and the spread of opposition have become harder. As a result, opposition to the Taliban has existed, but it has not acquired the capacity to become a power that changes the country’s political balance. This may be one of the important differences between Afghanistan today and Afghanistan before 2021. After returning to power, the Taliban did not face a nationwide war front or a military rival of equal standing; rather, they faced a collection of limited protests and resistance movements, each operating under different conditions. This very fragmentation, together with the severe restriction of political and civic space, gave the Taliban the opportunity to consolidate their control. Nevertheless, here we return once again to the main question of the article: was the endurance of the Taliban solely the result of Afghanistan’s internal conditions? If internal resistance was limited and political opponents were unable to create a united force, what was the role of outsiders? Over the past five years, the international community has repeatedly spoken of changing Taliban policies, respecting human rights, and forming an inclusive government; but why have these pressures failed to force the Taliban into fundamental change?
4. The International Community’s Approach Toward the Taliban
After the Taliban’s return to power, the international community did not face a simple choice: on the one hand, the new regime adopted policies that conflicted with human rights principles and with the demands of many governments; on the other hand, cutting off all contact with a regime that controlled the entire country could confront Afghanistan with other crises. For this reason, the international community, from the very beginning, moved between two approaches: pressure on the Taliban to change their behavior, and maintaining engagement to prevent the further collapse of Afghanistan. In the first years, an important part of the international pressure was applied through political isolation, financial and diplomatic restrictions, and non-recognition of the Taliban government. At the same time, however, the UN and various governments maintained their contact with the Taliban. This contact was not only for political matters; security, humanitarian aid, the economy, migration, and preventing the spread of armed groups also obliged countries to stay in contact with the Taliban.
The periodic reports of the UN Secretary-General on Afghanistan (2024 and 2025) likewise show that engagement with the Taliban, alongside pressure to respect human rights and form an inclusive government, has become a fixed part of international policy toward Afghanistan. This duality became more significant as Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis continued. The international community could not, for the sake of pressuring the Taliban, completely halt the aid that millions of people in Afghanistan needed to survive. For this reason, humanitarian aid continued alongside political pressure. But this policy carried a contradiction: the world wanted to raise the cost of the Taliban’s behavior, but did not want that cost to be passed directly on to the people of Afghanistan. This was one of the main limits of external pressure. After the fall of the Republic, Afghanistan faced a very fragile economy, and its dependence on foreign aid remained high.
Therefore, applying harsher economic pressure did not always mean more direct pressure on the Taliban; a considerable share of its consequences could fall on ordinary people. But that was not the only problem. Over time, various countries began pursuing their own interests in Afghanistan. For some countries, the main issue was security and the fight against armed groups; for others, controlling migration, trade, border relations, or economic access mattered more. This difference in priorities meant that the international community could not create a fully unified policy toward the Taliban. A clear example can be seen in the behavior of regional countries. In April 2025, Russia removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations and opened a more formal path of engagement with the group. Moscow pursued this change within the framework of cooperation with the Taliban on countering security threats, particularly the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) (Reuters, 2025). This did not mean that the international community had generally accepted the Taliban, but it showed an important reality: the isolation of the Taliban could no longer continue as it had in the first months after the fall of the Republic, because various countries needed to engage with the rulers in Kabul for different reasons. This very fact gave the Taliban more room to maneuver.
In contrast, the international community continued to demand that the Taliban change their policies, especially toward women and girls. The UN, in its human rights reports (2024 to 2026), has repeatedly documented the wide-ranging restrictions against women and girls, civil liberties, and public participation, and has stressed the need to change these policies. Even in 2026, five years after the Taliban’s return, UNAMA continues to report on the persistence of these restrictions and their impact on Afghanistan’s social and economic life (UNAMA, 2026). So the important question is not whether the international community pressured the Taliban or not; the question is why this pressure failed to force the Taliban into fundamental change. One answer must be sought in the difference between the demands of the two sides: the international community wanted to push the Taliban toward changing certain policies through political and diplomatic pressure; but in many cases the Taliban were willing to bear the cost of international isolation and not back down. For the Taliban, holding on to power and implementing their particular reading of an Islamic system have been more important than gaining international acceptance. Pressure produces results when the other side feels that continuing the current situation is costlier than changing it. The Taliban, on the one hand, face a crisis of legitimacy, and on the other hand are engaged with many countries and have also preserved control over territory.
In 2026, most countries of the world have still not recognized the Taliban government, and human rights restrictions remain one of the main obstacles to the normalization of relations. But the important difference here is that non-recognition is not the same as complete isolation. The Taliban have managed to create a gap between the two; that is, without accepting all the demands of the international community, they have expanded their political and economic relations with part of the world. Afghanistan’s situation today lies precisely in this gray zone. Therefore, the endurance of the Taliban cannot be attributed solely to the weakness of the international community’s foreign policy. The international community faced a very difficult choice: if it increased pressure excessively, there was a risk of further harm to the people of Afghanistan; if it increased engagement, there was a risk that the Taliban would feel they could expand foreign relations even without fundamental changes in their policies. What happened over the past five years was a combination of these two approaches: pressure that was not severe enough to force the Taliban to change, and engagement that was not conditional enough to link any normalization of relations to real changes inside Afghanistan.
As a result, the international community’s approach unintentionally gave the Taliban an important opportunity: time. Five years is not a short time for a newly established government. During this period, the Taliban consolidated their power, restricted domestic opponents, expanded their regional relations, and, despite not accepting many human rights demands, were able to continue engaging with the world. This does not mean that the international community has accepted the Taliban; rather, it means that the Taliban have been able to endure in the space between “isolation” and “international legitimacy.” Accordingly, the international community’s approach must be examined alongside the three other factors: the Taliban maintained power; the opposition forces were unable to turn into a united political force; internal resistance was unable to change the balance of power; and the international community was unable to turn external pressure into a lever that would make the continuation of this situation intolerable for the Taliban. Perhaps for this reason, the answer to the article’s main question cannot be summed up in a single factor. Over the past five years, the Taliban have endured neither because of the complete defeat of their opponents, nor because of the complete success of their foreign policy, nor solely because of the capacity of their power structure. The endurance of the Taliban was the result of several weaknesses and several realities coming together: the Taliban’s centralized power, the fragmentation of the opposition, the limited scope of internal resistance, and an international approach caught between pressure and engagement.
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