Taliban Five Years in Power: What Changed in Afghanistan, and What Hasn’t

The Afghan government did not fall in a single battle. It fell because a series of political and military supports gave way at nearly the same time. The U.S.-Taliban Doha Agreement, signed February 29, 2020, committed Washington to a full troop withdrawal in exchange for Taliban counterterrorism assurances and a promise of intra-Afghan talks — talks that never produced a real settlement because the Afghan government itself was excluded from the original negotiation. On April 14, 2021, President Biden announced that the remaining U.S. and NATO forces would leave by September 11, 2021 (later moved up to August 31). That fixed date, more than any single battlefield event, told Taliban commanders, provincial power-brokers and ordinary Afghan soldiers alike which way the war was going to end.

What followed was not so much a military campaign as a negotiated capitulation, province by province, as local strongmen and army units concluded that fighting on served no purpose once the international backing behind Kabul’s government was leaving. Afghan National Army morale, already strained by unpaid wages, corruption and the sense of being abandoned, broke down faster than intelligence assessments had predicted.

Signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, 2020, between U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the agreement traded a firm U.S. withdrawal timeline for Taliban commitments not to allow al-Qaeda or other groups to use Afghan soil against the United States or its allies, and for the Taliban to enter negotiations with the Afghan government. The Afghan government under President Ghani was not a signatory and had little influence over the terms. Intra-Afghan talks that opened in Doha in September 2020 stalled repeatedly, and by the time the Taliban’s 2021 offensive began, no political settlement existed to fall back on. Analysts and former officials have since disputed how much the agreement itself caused the collapse versus how much it merely set a clock that revealed problems — corruption, patronage-based command structures, low troop morale — that already existed inside the Afghan security forces.

Less conventional warfare, greater restrictions on women, partial economic stabilization, a still-severe humanitarian crisis, deeper regional engagement, and only one country’s formal recognition — these are not contradictions to be resolved by picking a side. They are the actual shape of five years of Taliban governance, and any single-sentence verdict (“Afghanistan is safer now” or “Afghanistan has collapsed”) leaves most of that shape out.

Taliban authorities point to several areas as evidence of successful governance. Examined against independent evidence, some of that holds up better than others.

Reduction in large-scale battlefield conflict. Claim: the 20-year civil war has ended. Evidence: independently confirmed — there has been no return to front-line warfare between Taliban forces and a rival Afghan government since 2021. Limitation: this framing excludes the new Pakistan border conflict since February 2026 and continuing ISIS-K attacks, both of which have killed and displaced large numbers of Afghans.

Opium suppression. Claim: the April 2022 cultivation ban eliminated Afghanistan’s drug economy. Evidence: UNODC confirms cultivation fell from roughly 233,000 hectares in 2022 to 10,200 hectares in 2025. Limitation: farmgate income for farmers collapsed by 48% in a single year (2024 to 2025) and dry opium prices remain about five times pre-ban levels — suppression, not elimination, and a real rural-income shock.

Revenue collection and trade. Claim: Taliban officials cite improved customs and domestic revenue collection and highlight infrastructure projects such as the Qosh Tepa irrigation canal. Evidence: AiTimeline could not locate an independently audited 2025 or 2026 Taliban government revenue figure. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid’s October 2025 claim that canal excavation was nearing completion is not independently confirmed; regional reporting (NZZ, Times of Central Asia) has flagged a large water leak along the canal route raising structural-integrity concerns. Limitation: treat all of this as a Taliban-sourced claim pending independent verification, not as an established fact.

Women’s rights and girls’ education represent the most extensively documented rollback: secondary schooling, university, medical training, most formal employment and, since September 2025, entry to UN offices are all barred to women by decree. Media freedom has fallen sharply — Afghanistan ranks 175th of 180 countries in RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with roughly two-thirds of the journalists working in 2021 having left the profession, and eight in ten women journalists have stopped working entirely. Political participation remains closed to anyone outside the Taliban’s own leadership; no elections have been held or scheduled. Humanitarian conditions remain severe, with a chronically underfunded UN appeal and food insecurity affecting more than a third of the population.

International recognition beyond Russia; economic integration with frozen central-bank reserves still unresolved five years on; a durable Pakistan relationship after the ceasefire that collapsed in February 2026; a sustainable path for the millions of returning refugees; closing the humanitarian funding gap; and any credible move toward inclusive governance that would satisfy the conditions most governments have set for deeper engagement.

No single sentence captures what has happened to women’s and girls’ rights under Taliban authorities since 2021 — the restrictions are specific, layered, and were introduced gradually rather than all at once. What follows is what is actually documented, sector by sector, with sources and dates.

Boys’ education has continued largely uninterrupted at all levels, including university. Girls’ education stops at grade six. UNESCO’s report timed to the five-year anniversary, published in August 2026, counted 2.4 million Afghan girls excluded from secondary education — up roughly 200,000 from the prior year’s count — and projected the figure could approach 4 million by 2030 if the ban continues. UNESCO describes Afghanistan as the only country in the world formally barring girls and women from education beyond the primary level. Before the March 2022 ban, roughly 1 million girls were enrolled in secondary school. The December 2024 decree closing medical, nursing and midwifery training removed the last formal pathway into a healthcare profession for Afghan women, a decision UNICEF has warned could cost Afghanistan more than 25,000 female teachers and health workers by 2030 if left unchanged. Female teachers who once taught secondary-level girls have lost their positions or been redirected to primary schools, and literacy gains among adolescent girls made over the previous two decades have stalled.

This is not only an education story. Prolonged exclusion from secondary and higher education is linked, in the wider development literature UN agencies draw on, to earlier marriage, higher maternal health risk, and a shrinking future workforce — consequences that play out over a decade, not a news cycle. AiTimeline is not asserting specific economic projections for Afghanistan itself here; the point is structural, not a forecast.

The December 2022 decree barring women from working for national and international NGOs, followed by a ban on women in most civil-service roles and public spaces such as beauty salons, sharply narrowed formal employment. UN Women’s July 2026 survey found just 7% of working-age Afghan women employed, compared with 84% of men. The same survey, covering 74 Afghan women-led organizations, found roughly three-quarters had been hit by 2025 funding cuts, two-thirds had six months or less of operating funds left, and 92% had lost staff. Since September 2025, Taliban authorities have also barred Afghan women, including female UN staff, from entering UN office premises — a restriction the UN’s own human rights experts publicly protested. Enforcement is not uniform nationwide: some healthcare and education roles already filled by women continue in practice, particularly outside Kabul, even as the legal restrictions on new entrants remain in force.

The clearest consequence shows up in healthcare. Midwives provide up to 90% of essential health services for women and girls across much of rural Afghanistan, according to UNFPA, but as of May 2026 only about 18% of Afghanistan’s roughly 34,000 trained midwives were formally employed. With new midwifery and nursing training barred since December 2024, that workforce cannot be replenished. Afghanistan’s most recent recorded maternal mortality rate — 638 deaths per 100,000 live births, a 2024 figure, the highest in Asia and among the highest globally — predates the training ban and should not be read as a current 2026 number. Some UN-linked commentary has modeled that maternal mortality could rise by at least 50% if current restrictions on women’s training and movement continue; that is an explicitly modeled projection, not an observed outcome, and AiTimeline is labeling it as such rather than presenting it as fact. On the positive side, WHO and the Islamic Development Bank reported training more than 977 health workers under a joint maternal and newborn care initiative in 2026 — a real but partial intervention against a system-wide shortage.

UNAMA, the UN’s monitoring mission in Afghanistan, publishes the most systematic independent record of rights conditions. Its most recent quarterly update, covering April to June 2026 and published July 28, 2026, documented widespread and specific violations, summarized below. Taliban authorities have historically rejected or disputed individual UNAMA findings while broadly denying that systemic abuse occurs; UNAMA’s methodology relies on victim and witness testimony cross-checked where possible, which it states in every report.

An earlier OHCHR assessment, published March 2026, stated that “Afghanistan’s human rights situation continues to deteriorate dramatically.” Reporting also documents continued use of the death penalty and restrictions on independent media and civil society, alongside the education and employment restrictions on women covered above.

This question needs to be split in two, because the honest answer to each half is different. Has the large-scale, front-line civil war that killed tens of thousands of Afghans annually through the 2010s ended? Yes — there is no dispute about that, and it is the single most credible claim Taliban officials make. Many Afghans, particularly in provinces that saw heavy fighting before 2021, describe daily life as calmer. Is Afghanistan now simply “safe”? No. ISIS-K continues to carry out attacks, including a January 19, 2026 suicide bombing at a Chinese restaurant in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw district that killed seven people. A new and separate conflict opened along the Pakistan border in February 2026 (covered below), which by mid-2026 the UN said had killed more than 370 Afghans in the first quarter alone. The right framing, and the one this article uses throughout, is: large-scale conventional conflict has declined sharply, while other forms of insecurity persist or have emerged.

Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) is a rival jihadist group that opposes Taliban rule and has carried out repeated attacks against Taliban officials, religious minorities, foreign nationals and civilians since 2021. Independent assessments, including BBC Monitoring’s June 2026 review, describe the group as “severely crippled” relative to its 2021–2024 peak, following sustained Taliban counterterrorism operations. It retains the capability for high-profile, lower-frequency attacks, illustrated by the January 2026 Kabul bombing and by ISIS-K’s claimed killing of a Taliban provincial information official in Badakhshan in July 2026. AiTimeline is not detailing operational or tactical specifics here, consistent with standard practice for reporting on active extremist groups.

The relationship between Taliban authorities and Pakistan, once a close if complicated one, has deteriorated into open conflict. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of sheltering Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants who carry out attacks inside Pakistan; Kabul denies this. A Pakistani airstrike in Kabul targeting a TTP leader in October 2025 triggered border skirmishes, a short-lived Doha ceasefire (October 18–19, 2025), and follow-up talks in Istanbul (October 25–30 and November 6–8, 2025) that ended without resolving how TTP activity would be verified or restrained. On February 26–27, 2026, Afghan forces launched a cross-border offensive and Pakistan retaliated with air and ground strikes on Kabul, Kandahar and border areas, collapsing the ceasefire. The UN’s human rights office reported more than 370 Afghans killed in the Pakistan conflict during the first quarter of 2026 alone, with over 115,000 people displaced and the majority of casualties attributed to airstrikes. AiTimeline could not independently confirm the precise state of the ceasefire specifically as of August 15, 2026 — the confirmed public record extends through the escalation of February to May 2026 and describes an unresolved, still-tense relationship rather than a settled one. Pakistan has also deported or expelled large numbers of Afghans since 2023 (see Refugees, below), adding an additional layer of strain, alongside repeated closures of the Torkham border crossing that has disrupted trade.

These four categories get conflated constantly, and the conflation is where most bad reporting on this subject comes from. Formal recognition means a government officially acknowledges the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government. Diplomatic contact means officials meet and talk, without that acknowledgment. Embassy or mission presence means a country maintains diplomatic staff in Kabul (or Taliban staff abroad) for practical business, again without recognition. Trade and humanitarian engagement can occur even in the total absence of the first three. As of August 2026, exactly one government — Russia — has taken the first step.

The U.S. relationship with Afghanistan since August 2021 has moved through several distinct phases rather than one fixed policy: the chaotic evacuation itself; an initial freeze of roughly $7 billion in Afghan central bank assets, later split with $3.5 billion moved into the Afghan Fund structure for humanitarian use outside direct Taliban control; continued sanctions and Taliban’s listing under U.S. terrorism authorities; ongoing but limited humanitarian aid channeled through UN agencies and NGOs rather than the Taliban government directly; and, in 2025, the Bagram Airbase dispute, which produced public friction but no policy reversal. Counterterrorism concerns, particularly around ISIS-K and residual al-Qaeda presence, remain the dominant lens through which Washington frames the relationship, alongside continued pressure over women’s rights.

Afghanistan’s economy did not simply “collapse” once in 2021 and stay collapsed; it shocked hard in 2021–22 as reserves froze and foreign aid that had funded roughly 40% of pre-2021 GDP vanished almost overnight, then partially adapted around sanctions, informal trade and Taliban-imposed fiscal discipline. The World Bank’s May 2026 assessment found GDP growth of roughly 4.8% in 2025, forecast to slow to about 4.0% in 2026, but GDP per capita actually falling 5.6% because population grew roughly 11% in 2025 — driven largely by the returnee influx from Iran and Pakistan outpacing economic capacity to absorb it. Inflation reached 7.6% by March 2026, driven by food prices. Roughly $9.5 billion in central bank reserves remains frozen. About 60% of Afghan trade now routes through Iran, a dependency the World Bank flagged as a vulnerability, and hawala — the informal, trust-based money-transfer network — has become the main channel bypassing formal banking sanctions.

Three pressures compound each other: a fragile post-shock economy, recurring natural disasters, and a wave of returning refugees larger than the system can absorb. On disasters alone, Afghanistan has been repeatedly struck since mid-2025 — a magnitude 6.0 earthquake across eastern provinces on August 31, 2025 killed 2,217 people; further earthquakes struck near Mazar-i-Sharif in November 2025, Panjshir in January 2026, and the Hindu Kush region in April 2026 (12 killed). The World Food Programme says 12 provinces are recording their highest-ever levels of critical acute child malnutrition, with 4.9 million women and children needing malnutrition treatment in 2026 and WFP alone needing $468 million to reach 6 million of the most vulnerable. Aid officials and WFP explicitly name the scale of 2025 returnee arrivals from Iran and Pakistan as a direct driver of the strain.

UNHCR counts 5.4 million Afghans as having returned from Iran and Pakistan since late 2023, with 232,500 more recorded in the first months of 2026 alone (146,206 from Pakistan, 86,253 from Iran, as of a March 2026 snapshot). These are not uniformly voluntary. Pakistan has framed its expulsions as action against “illegal foreigners,” a process rights groups describe as largely forced; Iran’s returns are a mix of formal deportation and what UN agencies describe as pressured departures under threat of arrest, sometimes labeled “voluntary” despite the coercive context. IOM has warned of a “dire funding shortfall” for reception capacity at border crossings, meaning many returnees arrive to inadequate housing, healthcare, food and schooling exactly where the humanitarian system is already stretched thinnest.

RSF’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index ranks Afghanistan 175th of 180 countries. Taliban authorities have issued more than 20 directives and provincial orders restricting the press since August 2021, and a newly adopted (leaked, January 2026) criminal-procedure law is reported to tighten restrictions further. The Afghanistan Journalists Center’s most recent annual count recorded 207 media-rights violations — two journalists killed, one injured, 183 threats and 21 arrests — up roughly 20% year-on-year. More than two-thirds of the roughly 12,000 journalists working in 2021 have left the profession, and RSF/AJC reporting indicates eight in ten women journalists have stopped working entirely.

Afghanistan’s Hazara community, predominantly Shia Muslim in a majority-Sunni country, has faced repeated ISIS-K attacks since 2021, including a September 12, 2024 assault in Qorodal, Daykundi province that killed 15 people, all Hazara Shia. AiTimeline could not confirm a comparable large-scale, ethnically or religiously targeted mass-casualty attack specifically within the 2026 window at the time of writing; this should not be read as evidence conditions have improved, only that no new incident of that scale was independently confirmed in the sources reviewed. Rights groups and UNAMA have separately documented discrimination allegations and underrepresentation of minorities in Taliban governing structures, alongside continuing insecurity that affects Hazara communities disproportionately given ISIS-K’s targeting pattern.

Authority is centralized under Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who governs from Kandahar rather than Kabul and issues binding decrees on matters from women’s education to public dress codes. A Kabul-based cabinet, led by acting Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund, handles day-to-day administration; Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network and a U.S.-designated terrorist, has served as Interior Minister since the September 2021 interim government was announced. Provincial governors and district officials, largely drawn from the Taliban’s own movement, administer local affairs, with religious courts applying the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law. No elections have been held, no political parties beyond the Taliban itself are permitted to organize, and AiTimeline found no credible, independently sourced reporting detailing the extent of internal leadership disagreements specific enough to publish without speculation — occasional reports of friction between Kandahar-based religious leadership and more pragmatic Kabul-based officials exist in regional media but are not treated here as confirmed fact.

Taliban authorities banned opium poppy cultivation in April 2022. UNODC’s most recent full survey, covering the 2025 season and published in November 2025, found cultivation of 10,200 hectares, down 20% from 12,800 hectares in 2024, and down roughly 96% from the approximately 233,000 hectares cultivated in 2022, the last season before the ban took hold. Production fell 32% year-on-year to 296 tons. But farmgate income for the farmers still growing it collapsed 48% in a single year, to $134 million, and the dry opium price of $570 per kilogram, while down 27% from 2024, remains roughly five times the pre-ban average — a sign of scarcity-driven pricing more than a healthy market exit. No UNODC data for the 2026 growing season has been published yet; the survey is released annually each November for the prior season, and any 2026 cultivation claim should be treated as unconfirmed until then.

1. Territorial control has proven easier for the Taliban than gaining international legitimacy. Holding Kabul took eleven days in 2021; gaining a second country’s formal recognition has taken five years and counting.
2. Reduced conventional warfare does not automatically mean political stability. The Pakistan border conflict that opened in 2026 shows security gains from 2021 can still be offset by new fronts.
3. Women’s exclusion has become one of the biggest barriers to international normalization — it is cited explicitly by the EU, the U.S. and UN bodies as a recognition precondition, more consistently than any other single issue.
4. Regional powers are engaging Kabul for practical reasons even without broad formal recognition — China’s mineral interests and India’s embassy upgrade both suggest pragmatism is outpacing principle in regional diplomacy.
5. Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be understood separately from aid funding and restrictions on women’s participation — a system that cannot employ enough female health workers cannot fully deliver aid to female patients, compounding the funding shortfall.
6. The Taliban’s ability to maintain control does not by itself prove sustainable development — GDP per capita fell in 2025 even as headline growth was positive.
7. Security and human rights should be measured separately, not traded off against each other in a single verdict on “how things are going.”
8. Economic adaptation has occurred, but adaptation is not prosperity — hawala networks and informal trade have kept commerce moving without restoring formal banking access.
9. Pakistan has shifted from strategic partner to the most difficult neighbor in the space of about eighteen months, a faster deterioration than any other bilateral relationship covered here.
10. The next five years may depend as much on Afghanistan’s relationships with its neighbors — Pakistan, Iran, China, India — as on any Western policy shift.
11. Claims of achievement from Taliban officials are verifiable in some areas (security, opium) and unverifiable in others (revenue, corruption) — readers should expect that split to persist, not resolve.
12. Aggregate national statistics can obscure sharply different lived experiences by gender, province, and proximity to the Pakistan border — a single “Afghanistan in 2026” verdict flattens real variation.