Increased Afghan Resistance to the Taliban

Now that meteorological winter is ending in Afghanistan, new militias are springing up to fight the Taliban regime and the main one, the National Resistance Front, has increased and expanded its operations in northern Afghanistan. The NRF is made up of ethnic Tajiks, who are a significant minority in Afghanistan, and former Afghan military and police. The Taliban regained power in Afghanistan last year after having been overthrown by the United States and an international coalition after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks by al-Qaeda Islamists harbored by the Taliban. The Taliban had controlled most of Afghanistan since the mid-1990s, but the Tajik-area of Afghanistan had remained under the control of the internationally recognized Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, whom al-Qaeda assassinated before the September 11 Attacks. His son leads the NRF. The Taliban have been killing former Afghan regime members and imposing harsh Islamist law. Their persecution of the Hazara ethnic minority has inspired a Hazara militia, but other Afghans have formed other militias across Afghanistan, including some from the plurality Pashtun, the same ethnic group from which the Taliban originates. Afghanistan’s poverty and disease; a lack of international recognition for the Taliban; attacks from the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State; and the Taliban’s unpopularity from their oppression, together with the resistance from the militias, pose a challenge to the Taliban’s hold on power and their ability to host terrorists again. The U.S. and the international community must remain vigilant to the threat the terrorist-backed Taliban pose to global security.