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In Afghanistan, Growing Resistance Meets Fears of Pakistani Influence

Five years after the Taliban’s return, the Afghan resistance is growing but so is the fear of Pakistan’s shadow.

August 15 marks five years since the Taliban returned to power, and throughout that time, the group has presented Afghanistan as a country completely under its control. The small armed opposition in Panjshir, Badakhshan, and Baghlan’s Andarab district has not managed to contest the Taliban’s dominance successfully. 

But the emergence  of new anti-Taliban movements across the country has begun to challenge that image.

Last month, a new resistance group called Sipahiyan-i-Mihan, or “Soldiers of the Homeland,” briefly captured the center of Yaftal-e Payeen district in Badakhshan. Local sources said its fighters entered the district headquarters, disarmed Taliban personnel, and raised their flag. The group withdrew several hours later and said the withdrawal was voluntary, although the Taliban said the fighters fled when reinforcements arrived. 

What neither side could deny was that, for the first time since August 2021, a district center had fallen out of Taliban control. The Taliban later sent reinforcements and prepared a larger operation, but so far, no decisive operation against Sipahiyan-i-Mihan has been publicly reported. 

Other new groups have announced operations as well. This week, the Republic Front of Afghanistan said it had targeted a vehicle carrying the Taliban intelligence chief for Kabul’s 18th district and claimed that he and his companions were killed. Local sources confirmed an explosion, but the casualties remain unverified. The U.S.-based Afghanistan United Front, led by former Afghan army commander General Sami Sadat, also announced “Operation Muharib” and claimed attacks in Kandahar, Helmand, and Badghis. 

Meanwhile, the established National Resistance Front, led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, and the Afghanistan Freedom Front, led by former army chief General Yasin Zia, have continued and expanded their struggle. For weeks, the Freedom Front and the Taliban have clashed in Badakhshan’s Zebak district. Both claim gains and heavy casualties, although independent verification remains impossible. Residents confirmed days of fighting, Taliban reinforcements, house to house searches, and a frontline visit by the Taliban’s chief of army staff, Fasihuddin Fitrat.

When I spoke by telephone this week with residents of Zebak and Yaftal, their concern was not which side was winning the war, but what militarization had done to their lives.

“Taliban fighters are everywhere, in schools and mosques. They have taken over everything and turned it into their base,” one resident told me.

“We are told to provide food for the Taliban fighters based in our village mosque,” another resident of Zebak said. “But how can we feed them when we can barely feed our own families?”

He was referring to the other war people in Afghanistan are fighting: the war to survive. A May 2026 U.N. Development Program assessment found that three in four Afghans could not meet their basic needs, while more than 80 percent of households were in debt. 

With a quick look at Afghan social media, one can easily see that many anti-Taliban Afghans, both inside the country and in the diaspora, have welcomed the operations by these resistance groups. But their hope is mixed with suspicion. A growing question among some is whether Pakistan, after falling into open conflict with its former Taliban partners, is trying to use the Afghan resistance movements as new instruments of influence.

Mostly, this fear comes from the memory of decades of Pakistan treating Afghanistan less as a sovereign neighbor than as strategic territory to be managed. Pakistan supported the Taliban against the former republic government, and prior to that against the Mujahideen government in the 1990s, always driven by Pakistan’s security calculations, its rivalry with India, and its desire for influence in Kabul. The Taliban were the most successful product of that policy.

Now Pakistan and the Taliban are fighting over the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), cross-border attacks, and the Taliban’s growing engagement with India. 

There are credible signs of political outreach by Pakistan to the Afghan resistance groups, although no public proof that Pakistan is directing or arming any of them. In 2025, Islamabad hosted an Afghan dialogue attended by political figures and women activists while the Taliban were absent. Organizers called it inclusive and not anti-Taliban, but because it took place in Islamabad, it revived suspicions about Pakistan’s........

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