Afghanistan and the Pashtun lands since 2021

The Taliban (طالبان, Tālibān), who call their government the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, retook power in Kabul on the weekend of 14 and 15 August 2021, after taking almost all of the country's 34 provinces in just over a week. [21] UN bodies call the Taliban government the de facto authorities. What follows runs to 31 October 2026, and several matters in it are unsettled. The earlier Taliban governments are in Pashtun history.

The airlift and Resolution 2593, August 2021

On 17 August the movement's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, gave his first press conference in Kabul. He said women "will be given all their rights within Sharia" and that women could work freely in the media if they did so in line with it. [21]

On 26 August blasts at the airport killed more than 150 people, according to UN News. [1] On 30 August the Security Council adopted Resolution 2593 by 13 votes to none, with China and Russia abstaining. It demanded that Afghanistan not be used as a shelter for terrorism and called on the Taliban to allow safe passage out of the country. The United States ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the Council "expects the Taliban to live up to its commitment to facilitate safe passage for Afghans and foreign nationals who want to leave Afghanistan, whether it's today, tomorrow, or after August 31". Russia's ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said his country abstained because certain "principled concerns" were not reflected in a draft circulated only on the Friday. [1]

The last American flights left that night. President Joe Biden said the next day that "the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan" the night before, that more than 120,000 people had been evacuated, and that thirteen American service members had been killed. [2]

A caretaker government and an open seat

On 7 September 2021 the Taliban announced a "caretaker" cabinet. Mullah Hasan Akhund, from Kandahar province, became acting prime minister, with Abdul Ghani Baradar as deputy; Sirajuddin Haqqani took the interior ministry, Amir Khan Muttaqi foreign affairs and Mohammad Yaqoob defence. Mujahid said all the appointments were acting ones, and the movement's information minister said the reclusive Hibatullah Akhundzada would be the overall amir. VOA reported that all those named so far were Taliban members, and a US State Department spokesperson said the list included Taliban members or close associates and no women. [22] Kandahar, which the Voice of America calls the birthplace of the Taliban, has its own history in Kandahar: an oasis city.

Recognition has come slowly. On 30 January 2024 President Xi Jinping accepted the credentials of the Taliban-appointed ambassador, Asadullah Bilal Karimi. Voice of America reported that some analysts and former diplomats counted this as recognition; China's foreign ministry spokesman did not answer directly when asked, saying China believed Afghanistan should not be excluded from the international community. [23] On 3 July 2025 Russia announced that it had received the credentials of the ambassador, Gul Hassan Hassan, and became the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government, after Moscow lifted its ban on the movement in April. Muttaqi called it "a good example for other countries". [24] A second formal recognition had not been reported in the sources checked as of 31 October 2026. At the United Nations, the Credentials Committee had two rival communications on Afghanistan's representation before it in November 2024, one from the existing mission in New York and one from the foreign ministry in Kabul. It postponed the question without a vote. This article follows the seat only to that November 2024 report; the Committee's 2025 decision was not read, so who holds the seat at 31 October 2026 is not stated here. [3]

Education, work and the 2024 morality law

The Taliban authorities barred girls from school beyond sixth grade in March 2022. [4] UNAMA's update for January to March 2026 recorded that the school year beginning that March was the fifth in which the ban applied, and cited UNESCO's figure of 2.2 million girls and women denied secondary and higher education since 2021. [5] Universities were closed to women in December 2022; less than a week later, UN News reported, the authorities ordered national and international NGOs to stop employing women, after reported "serious complaints" about dress. [6] The Security Council's Resolution 2777 of 17 March 2025 called on the Taliban to reverse the ban on Afghan women working for the UN and NGOs, together with the "vice and virtue" directive. [4] Since 7 September 2025 the authorities have also stopped Afghan women, UN staff included, from entering UN premises; 31 March 2026 was the 205th day. [5]

The Taliban give their own account. In a June 2023 interview Mujahid called the education ban "a temporary ban and there is a work in progress", and said that reopening could bring a "strong backlash from some opposition and the vast majority of people". [25]

On 21 August 2024 the authorities promulgated a "Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" of 35 articles. [4, 7] UNAMA's April 2025 report summarises it: women must wear a hijab with face covering outside the home, men must attend congregational prayers and keep an appearance considered Islamic, unrelated men and women may not look at each other, drivers may not carry women without a male guardian (mahram), and publications must not contain images of living beings. [4] Roza Otunbayeva, the UN Secretary-General's special representative, called it "a distressing vision for Afghanistan's future", adding that "even the sound of a female voice outside the home" appeared to be treated as a moral violation. UNAMA welcomed two articles, on orphans and on bacha bazi. [7] Mujahid replied on 26 August:

We urge a thorough understanding of these laws and a respectful acknowledgment of Islamic values. To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance. [26]

He added that concerns raised by various parties "will not sway the Islamic Emirate from its commitment to upholding and enforcing Islamic law". [26] UNAMA reported that about 3,300 male inspectors worked in 28 of the 34 provinces by March 2025, and that on 26 October 2024 the vice and virtue ministry said women's voices were forbidden only in reciting the Quran and singing loudly. [4]

Media are affected by the same rules. In September and October 2024 some television stations in Badghis, Helmand, Takhar and Kandahar stopped showing images of living beings or closed. [4] On 26 January 2026 the Ministry of Information and Culture said it had revoked the licences of all media support organisations except three, citing unprofessional operation and inactivity. [5] In the same quarter UNAMA documented judicial corporal punishment of at least 312 people (269 men, 39 women and four boys), and found that inspectors in Uruzgan, Paktya and Kandahar had told health centres not to treat women without a mahram. [5]

Hunger, aid and returns

OCHA's plan for 2026 counted 21.9 million people in need of humanitarian help, targeted 17.5 million, and asked for US$1.71 billion. [8] On 15 October 2026 FAO and WFP reported that the latest IPC analysis projected about 19.2 million people (38 per cent of the population) in acute food insecurity from November to April, against 17.4 million projected for the same season a year earlier, with about five million in the emergency phase. Malnutrition cases were expected to reach four million in 2027. WFP listed more than 1.2 million forced returns from Iran and Pakistan "this year", border closures, disrupted trade and funding shortfalls as the drivers. [9]

The TTP and the violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, is, in the Associated Press's words, "separate from but allied with" the Afghan Taliban. [27] The Monitoring Team's report of 8 December 2025 said the TTP had intensified attacks on Pakistani state targets, that it kept about 6,000 fighters in Khost, Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktika and Paktiya, and that by some estimates there had been more than 600 attacks in 2025. It reported that the Taliban authorities "continue to deny and deflect responsibility" for failing to restrain the TTP, and that within the Taliban views of it vary. [10] According to NPR (31 October 2025), Pakistan accuses the Taliban authorities of giving the TTP a base and failing to restrain it; the Taliban deny this. [28]

The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in Islamabad counts violence-linked deaths among civilians, security personnel and what it calls "outlaws" together, so its totals include militants killed; CRSS does not define the term on the page read. A CRSS listing for its 2022 annual report gives 850 deaths for 2021 [18] and 2,546 for the whole of 2024; for January to November 2025 it recorded 3,187 deaths, 1,981 injuries and 1,188 incidents. [19] Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where, as Pashtun history records, 81 per cent of people gave Pashto as their mother tongue in the 2023 census, took 2,165 of those deaths (nearly 68 per cent) and Balochistan 896. [19] In July to September 2026 the toll rose 83 per cent on the previous quarter to 1,415, of which 829 were in Balochistan and 556 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. [20]

Border fighting and closed crossings, 2025 and 2026

In the first half of October 2025 the dispute became a border war. According to NPR, TTP militants ambushed a Pakistani army convoy on 8 October and killed 11 soldiers; the Monitoring Team dates the ambush 7 October, in Kurram. On 9 October Afghanistan blamed Pakistan for strikes inside its territory, Kabul included; Pakistan neither confirmed nor denied them. Two nights later, NPR reported, Afghan forces fired at Pakistani border posts. [10, 28] UNAMA, which monitors only incidents in Afghanistan, documented 47 civilians killed and 456 injured between 10 and 17 October. On 15 October alone it recorded 457 casualties, 89 per cent of them in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar. [11] A ceasefire was agreed in Doha on 19 October, and after talks in Istanbul the two sides agreed to continue it, Turkey's foreign ministry announced. [28]

Fighting resumed in late February 2026. UNAMA recorded 185 civilian casualties in Afghanistan, 56 killed, between the evening of 26 February and 5 March, including 14 civilians killed by airstrikes in Barmal district of Paktika on 27 February. [12] AP reported on 3 April 2026 that Afghanistan's Taliban government said Pakistan had launched strikes in Kabul and other areas in February, causing mostly civilian casualties, that Pakistan said it targeted TTP hideouts, and that Pakistan has said it is in "open war" with Afghanistan. [27] Torkham, the main crossing between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Nangarhar, was reported closed from late February. A week-long ceasefire was agreed on 18 March, and a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government spokesman told the Anadolu agency on 31 March that Torkham had reopened only for the return of Afghans detained in Pakistan, the day a reported assembly of elders from both countries met in Peshawar (Peshawar: a short history). [29] At talks in Urumqi in April, Pakistan's foreign ministry said "the burden of a real process lies with Afghanistan, which must demonstrate visible and verifiable action against terrorist groups using Afghan soil", while Kabul's foreign ministry said diplomacy "grounded in mutual respect and non-interference" could produce "practical and lasting solutions". [27]

UNAMA counted 499 civilians killed and 1,216 injured in Afghanistan from 1 October 2025 to 30 June 2026, all attributed to Pakistani forces in the April to June quarter. The paper annexes both governments' comments. The Taliban foreign ministry described the strikes of 28 and 29 June as killing about 36 civilians, rejected Pakistan's claim that militants were hit, and said that for about nine months all crossing points along what it called the "so-called Durand Line" had been closed. Pakistan's foreign ministry said its strikes, which it said killed 26 and then 25 militants, were selective, directed only at identified TTP and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar sites, and taken in self-defence, and that Afghan nationals took part in a 27 June attack in Karachi. [13] No settlement was found in the sources checked as of 31 October 2026. Reports on the crossings conflict: the Pakistani spokesman's March account of a limited Torkham reopening sits beside the Taliban foreign ministry's June statement that all crossing points had been closed for about nine months, and the current state of Torkham and Chaman was not established. Torkham sits at the foot of the Khyber Pass, described in The Khyber Pass, and the road beyond it on the Afghan side runs to Jalalabad.

Deportations from Pakistan and Iran

On 3 October 2023 Pakistan's caretaker interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, announced that illegal immigrants had until 1 November "to willingly return to their countries" or law enforcement agencies would deport them. He said there were 1.73 million unregistered Afghans in the country. [30] The Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan resumed on 7 March 2025: holders of Afghan Citizen Cards were told to leave by 31 March or face deportation from 1 April, and on 31 July the plan extended to Proof of Registration cardholders with a grace period to 31 August. UNHCR counted some one million returns from Pakistan since April 2025. [14] By its February 2026 update, over 2.95 million Afghans had returned from Pakistan since September 2023, and about 1.95 million remained. [15]

In Iran, UNHCR said the expiry of temporary stay permits on 20 March 2025 started a "regularization/return scheme" for two million Afghans. As of 29 November 2025, over 1.8 million Afghans had returned from Iran since January, 1,191,500 of them deported, and daily returns passed 39,400 on 4 July. [16] UNHCR put total Afghan returns in 2025, mostly from Iran and Pakistan, at about 2.9 million. [14]

The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement

The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM, also spelled Tahaffuz), led by Manzoor Pashteen, began its protests in February 2018 against extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, profiling and harassment of Pashtuns, and with a call for demining in the former tribal areas. Islamabad said it had addressed "genuine" grievances and rejected the accusations of grave abuses. [31] In an April 2018 interview Pashteen said:

We have also called for a commission to investigate extrajudicial killings by Pakistani state security forces including the secret services, army, police, and others who have tortured and killed Pashtun civilians. The Taliban militants and other [pro-government] militants did the same. We want this commission to investigate all such crimes. [31]

RFE/RL reported that he wanted the campaign's concerns addressed "within the laws and constitution of Pakistan". He called on young people in Afghanistan to "eliminate the war from Pashtunkhwa" (پښتونخوا), which he defined as "the land of all Pashtuns". [31]

On Sunday 6 October 2024 Pakistan listed the PTM as a proscribed organisation under its anti-terrorism law, saying it was engaged in activities "prejudicial to the peace and security of the country". According to VOA, the listing allowed offices, assets and bank accounts to be sealed and public advocacy to be prohibited. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on 9 October that PTM leaders used "abusive language" against security institutions, that "we cannot allow anyone to set up a parallel judicial system in the country", and that "you are allowed to engage in discussions about politics and rights, but you are not allowed to encourage people to revolt against national institutions". The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called the ban "neither transparent nor warranted". VOA reported that PTM supporters clashed with police near Peshawar ahead of the movement's planned three-day Pashtun National Jirga, and that at least three activists died. Amnesty International called the listing "arbitrary". The PTM's own reply to the 2024 listing was not read in the sources checked. [32] On 3 March 2026 Pakistan Today reported that the Peshawar High Court had dismissed petitions by Pashteen and nine other leaders against the ban as not maintainable and sent them to the federal review committee, so the ban stood at that date. [33]

Pashtuns on both sides of the line

Almost none of the figures above count people by ethnic group. The exception is UNHCR's table of registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, the group the repatriation plan has covered since July 2025, which records 1,042,050 of about 1.22 million as Pashtun. [17] Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where four in five people speak Pashto, took about 68 per cent of the deaths CRSS counted in Pakistan from January to November 2025. [19] The PTM, which campaigns for the rights of Pashtuns in Pakistan, was banned there on 6 October 2024 and, as of the March 2026 report, the ban stood; its leader defined Pashtunkhwa in 2018 as "the land of all Pashtuns". [31] This article does not treat the Taliban authorities as the voice of Pashtuns, who live under that government, across the border from it and abroad. Pashtuns abroad, in Karachi, the Gulf and Britain, are the subject of Pashtuns today, where the refugee history since 1979 is told.