The United Nations says armed groups opposed to the government remain active.
Saturday marks five years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, and armed opposition to the movement is no longer confined to a single front or leadership.
Since the fall of the previous government in August 2021, several groups operating under different names and banners have emerged, claiming responsibility for attacks on government forces in a number of provinces. Their presence online has also increased noticeably in recent months.
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A key question has emerged: Does the growing number of fronts represent a genuine expansion of armed opposition, or does it reflect fragmentation and divisions among its leaders?
The issue has taken on particular significance following renewed clashes in Badakhshan province, where the Afghanistan Freedom Front fought government forces in the province’s Zebak district.
The United Nations says armed groups opposed to the government remain active, but have been unable to pose a significant challenge to Taliban control of Afghan territory and do not control any fixed geographical areas.
The National Resistance Front was the first major armed formation to emerge after the fall of Kabul. As the previous government collapsed, hundreds of members of the army and security forces travelled to Panjshir province, north of Kabul, bringing weapons and equipment to join the new armed opposition.
The front sought to turn the valley into a centre of resistance against the Taliban, but the Taliban seized the provincial capital and most of the area following a major offensive. Fighting later shifted to limited operations and intermittent clashes in different locations.
Security affairs researcher Karim Amini told Al Jazeera that political and military figures from the former Afghan government sought to establish armed fronts after the US withdrawal as a means of putting pressure on the Taliban, “but they were unable to turn these projects into an influential force on the ground”.
Amini partly attributes that to most of these groups being formed outside Afghanistan, limiting their ability to establish a field presence and build a social base in the country.
Their reliance on armed confrontation with the Taliban also “ran up against an Afghan society exhausted by decades of war and no longer prepared to become involved in another cycle of conflict”, he said.
According to Amini, several opposition forces also failed to understand the changes Afghan society had undergone after four decades of conflict. They treated armed opposition as a political and military legacy that could simply be revived from abroad, rather than beginning with the priorities of Afghans and their vision for the country’s future.
Afghan society is tired of war, he said, and many of these groups have therefore failed to find the local environment needed to establish a lasting presence.
“An opposition that does not emerge from Afghan realities and the needs of the people will struggle to establish a foothold inside the country, regardless of the experience or military leadership it possesses abroad,” Amini said.
The challenge facing these groups, he added, is not merely their ability to carry out sporadic attacks, but whether they can regain domestic trust, build a social base and present a convincing political project – conditions he considers more important than the proliferation of banners or statements claiming responsibility for attacks.
Recent fighting in northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province has revived debate about the future of the armed opposition.
In July, the Afghanistan Freedom Front said it attacked Taliban positions in Zebak district, seized military positions and inflicted losses on the movement.
The Taliban, for its part, said it repelled the attack and killed a number of the assailants, while the front said it had beaten back counterattacks. The clashes continued for several days – a notable development compared with the opposition’s usual pattern of operations – before the intensity of the fighting subsided.
Afghan security affairs researcher Abdul Karim Khan told Al Jazeera that the Zebak fighting was significant because it tested the ability of anti-Taliban groups to move beyond hit-and-run operations towards longer confrontations.
But he said it could not be considered a strategic shift unless similar fighting was seen elsewhere.
“The real measure is not controlling a position for a few hours or days, but the ability to hold it, secure supply lines, expand the network of fighters and force the Taliban to alter its military deployments on a sustained basis,” Khan said.
Away from the battlefield, the opposition landscape appears increasingly crowded.
Alongside the National Resistance Front and the Afghanistan Freedom Front, groups have emerged under names including the Homeland Army, the Freedom and Justice Movement, the United Front of Afghanistan, the Green Movement, the National Independence Front, the Republican Front, the People’s Democratic Front, the National Guard Movement, the National Revolutionary Front of Afghanistan, the Freedom and Democracy Front and the National Front of Liberators, among others.
But claiming responsibility does not necessarily mean a group carried out an attack. In some cases, more than one organisation has claimed the same operation, while in others, groups based outside Afghanistan have claimed attacks attributed to other factions.
Mohammad Nouri, an expert on digital media and armed conflict, told Al Jazeera that social media had become a second battlefield, with armed groups needing to demonstrate their existence online as much as on the ground.
Verifying claims of responsibility, he said, requires comparing photographs and videos, the locations of attacks, testimony from residents and statements from the different parties, because a statement alone is not sufficient evidence.
Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid played down the activities of armed groups opposed to the Taliban, saying their presence was concentrated largely online rather than on the ground.
He told Al Jazeera that the government “controls all Afghan territory and has the ability to deal with any insurgency or armed group that emerges in the country”, adding that these organisations do not constitute a genuine threat to Afghanistan’s stability.
Mujahid said Afghan society had become more committed to security and stability after decades of war and was no longer prepared to allow those he described as “warlords” to return to the political scene.
He said previous experience had led broad sections of the population to reject a return to armed conflict.
The opposition fronts, he added, are “active in cyberspace”, but that activity has not translated into a military presence capable of changing realities on the ground.
Despite the proliferation of armed groups, the Taliban continues to control Afghanistan’s cities and institutions and maintains security and military forces across the provinces. None of the groups opposing it has succeeded in establishing a sustainable area of territorial control.
Continuing attacks nevertheless impose a security cost on the movement, requiring it to deploy forces in mountainous and remote regions and pursue small groups capable of carrying out surprise attacks.
The opposition’s immediate objective may therefore be less about capturing cities and more about wearing down the Taliban and keeping an active security front open.
Rafiullah Kakar, an expert on armed movements, also told Al Jazeera that the opposition does not initially need to control large areas to exert pressure on the Taliban, but it does need to maintain a level of operations that forces the movement to continuously allocate troops and resources.
He cautioned, however, that attrition alone would not produce political change unless the opposition could also build a social base and offer a convincing political project.
Afghanistan’s political and security equation today looks different from the first months following the Taliban’s return to power.
Rather than betting on a large-scale direct military confrontation, armed opposition groups increasingly rely on small units capable of operating in different regions. The Taliban, meanwhile, is seeking to maintain security control and prevent these groups from developing into a broader rebellion.
Writer and political analyst Khalid Ahmadi told Al Jazeera that “the main problem is that the armed opposition exaggerates its ability to carry out operations, but has so far failed to present a unified vision for a post-Taliban period.
“At the same time, the Taliban maintains control, but faces challenges over political legitimacy and foreign relations.”
The growing number of armed fronts therefore does not necessarily mean Afghanistan is heading towards “a new civil war”, but it does show that conflict did not end with the collapse of the previous government, he added.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/15/five-years-on-how-will-taliban-deal-with-armed-opposition?traffic_source=rss