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.
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. 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.
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