On April 8, 2022, Taliban fighters stormed the Qassan Valley in the Deh Salah area of Andarab District in Baghlan Province and took control of the upper area of Darband Kaasa Traash and Darra e Jar, the strongholds of the National Resistance Front (NRF). NRF fighters retaliated and, in the ensuing clashes, at least 11 Taliban fighters were killed and several injured. According to an NRF release, the Taliban fighters fled Dara-e-Jar after the attack. The current cycle of fighting in the area started on April 4, 2022.
On April 3, 2022, NRF fighters targeted a vehicle carrying the security chief of the Taliban, Mawlawi Rashad, in the city of Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan. While Rashad was severely wounded, two of his bodyguards were killed in the attack.
On April 1, 2022, NRF fighters ambushed the Taliban forces in the Hesarak area of Panjshir Province, killing 10 Taliban, and wounding another 12.
According to available data, since the formation of the NRF subsequent to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, clashes between NRF and Taliban have resulted in at least 195 deaths (154 Taliban, 37 NRF and four civilians). Such attacks have not been limited to the northern provinces. Indeed, Sibghatullah Ahmadi, Spokesperson and Director of Strategic Communications, NRF, tweeted on March 3,
Indeed, the NRF has reiterated, on several occasions, its resolve to overthrow the Taliban regime. On February 9, 2022, Ali Maisam Nazary, Head of Foreign Relations for the NRF, tweeted,
In an interview published on January 18, 2022, Nazary claimed that the Taliban had weakened and become unorganized and NRF would take power again. He disclosed that NRF fighters would start their offensive attacks against Taliban by the end of the winter.
Earlier, on January 11, during his meeting with Afghanistan’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Tehran, Iran, Ahmad Massoud, leader of the NRF, rejected the Taliban government’s offer of safe passage to the country. Ali Maisam Nazary, stated,
These developments clearly indicate that Taliban celebrations over the claim on September 6, 2021, that all of Panjshir Province was under Taliban control and the armed resistance in Afghanistan has ended, were premature. The NRF opposition is likely to last.
There are other resistance forces as well. These include the National Resistance Council, which allegedly includes major anti-Taliban key figures of the past decades such as Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, Mohammad Younus Qonuni, Ata Mohammad Noor, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Muhammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, and Engineer Mohammad Khan; the Unknown Soldiers of Hazaristan, referring to a part of central Afghanistan predominantly inhabited by the Hazara ethnic minority; the Liberation Front of Afghanistan; the Afghanistan Islamic National and Liberation Movement; the Afghanistan Freedom Front; the Freedom and Democracy Front, another apparent Hazara-centred resistance group; and the Freedom Corps that claims to be active in parts of the Takhar Province.
Moreover, the threat to the Taliban regime from Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP) remains strong. According to a United Nation (UN) report on the situation in Afghanistan released on January 28, 2022,
The report further noted,
Since January 1, 2022, IS-KP-linked incidents have resulted in 39 deaths (17 Taliban, six IS-KP terrorists, and 16 in the Not Specified Category).
Interestingly, however, Foreign Minister Muttaqi claimed on April 4, 2022,
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s own brutalities against the Afghans continue. Most recently, on April 2, 2022, the Taliban cruelly killed a young girl in the seventh district of Mazar-e-Sharif, first flogging her, then cutting off parts of her body with a razor blade, amputating one of her legs, and then firing 12 bullets at her half-dead body. In another such incident, on March 12-13, 2022, a 48-year-old shopkeeper, Ghulam Sakhi, was severely tortured and killed by the Taliban in the Mata village of Panjshir Province.
Moreover, the Taliban continues to rule the country according to its own interpretation of Islamic law. Accordingly, on March 23, 2022, it said schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture. A Ministry of Education notice announced, "We inform all girls' high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next order." Girls’ schools were scheduled to reopen across Afghanistan after months of closure and before March 22, the Taliban had expressed itself in favour of the reopening. Reports indicate that Afghan women are no longer permitted to go over 45 miles (or 72 kilometres) from their homes without the company of a close male relative. Since their return to power, the Taliban has curtailed women’s rights and freedoms, creating an environment similar to what it had imposed between 1996 and 2001, when female education and most employment for women was banned, and the severest restriction had been placed on their movements and activity.
Meanwhile, this last-minute reversal of the decision on girls’ schools is seen as further proof of a rising ideological rift within the Taliban leadership. Andrew Watkins of the US Institute of Peace, noted, “This last-minute change appears to be driven by ideological differences in the movement... about how girls returning to school will be perceived by their followers.” Significantly, since the Taliban was restored to power in Kabul, there have been reports of increasing rifts within the leadership.
In the meantime, the humanitarian crisis is deepening. According to a UNAMA release of March 31, 2022,
Thus, apprehensions that the misery of the Afghan people would greatly increase with the Taliban returning to power have unfortunately been proven correct. Not surprisingly, Resolution 2626 (2022) adopted by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) at its 8,997th meeting, on March 17, 2022, agreed that the mandate of the UNAMA would be extended through March 17, 2023.
Amidst the many disturbing developments in Afghanistan, the international community continues in its uncertainty about its stand on the legal status of the Taliban regime. The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, in her briefing to the UNSC on March 2, 2022, spoke in favour of the Taliban, arguing,
On the other hand, a UN report released on February 3, 2022, noted,
Afghanistan remains insecure, unstable and fraught with conflict, its future uncertain. There is no hope of any immediate relief to the people of the country, which super powers have invaded from time to time only to face defeat. In the devastation these powers leave behind, the misery of the people can only increase in the foreseeable future. Worse, as political volatility increasingly afflicts the mischievous neighbour and Afghanistan’s ‘tormentor in-chief,’ Pakistan, the deepening crisis in Islamabad can only augment uncertainties in Kabul.