Dr Hassan Abbas is a US-based scholar and author of The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After the Americans Left (Yale University Press, 2024).

More than four and a half years after their return to power, Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers appear more consolidated than many of their critics expected. Predictions of imminent fragmentation, a dramatic elite split, or the rapid emergence of a viable alternative have not materialised. The regime, however, remains internationally isolated and deeply repressive, especially toward women and dissenters, but it has nonetheless demonstrated an uncomfortable political fact: it can govern, coerce, adapt, and survive. Recent UN-linked policy analysis suggests that power has become even more centralised around Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, with Kandahar – not Kabul – serving as the true centre of authority.

Hibatullah’s strength is not merely symbolic. He appears to have built a system in which trusted loyalists and clerical networks report upward across ministries and provincial structures. Recent analysis notes that he exercises direct influence over appointments, resources, and major policy decisions, while even prominent leaders know that they can be sidelined quickly if they overstep. There are many examples including that of higher education minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani. On the face of it, this is remarkable statecraft: austere, opaque, and ideological, yet politically effective. It is one reason why the Taliban state looks far less improvised today than it did in August 2021.

This helps explain why Hibatullah’s leading lieutenants have largely been tamed. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar retains visibility, especially because of his diplomatic role and the memory of Doha, while Mullah Yaqoob retains stature because of his lineage and defence portfolio. Yet visibility has not translated into autonomous political weight. Both operate inside a structure whose red lines are set elsewhere. Even Sirajuddin Haqqani, the most outspoken senior critic of the current style of governance, has discovered the limits of dissent. Hibatullah over the last year has himself repeatedly warned that internal divisions are the greatest threat to the emirate, underscoring how much the system depends on obedience and unity.

Siraj Haqqani remains the partial exception, though only a partial one. He has been the most willing among senior Taliban figures to voice dissatisfaction with rule by fear and with the narrowing of decision-making. Yet his outspokenness appears to have cost him his room to manoeuvre. The regime has shown an ability to absorb criticism without allowing critics to construct an alternative centre of power. That is why talk of “Taliban infighting” often captures friction but misses structure: internal tensions are real, but the hierarchy remains intact.

Publicly, Siraj Haqqani has also adopted a defiant tone toward Pakistan, warning that repeated military strikes would invite retaliation. He needed this to show that he is no longer aligned with Pakistan’s security and intelligence services. Yet reports also point to a quieter, more transactional layer: he apparently visited Pakistan’s tribal area in recent months to manage the demarcation of his land and was able to obtain help from local officials, with or without Islamabad’s formal blessing.

At the same time, Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban opposition abroad continues to struggle. Its members are dispersed across Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Europe, and North America, and while they include many educated and experienced Afghans, they have not come together around one platform, one leadership formula, or one workable roadmap. The problem is not only organisational weakness, but also social and historical baggage. Ethnic mistrust still shadows much of the diaspora, especially around Pashtun representation and suspicion of Pashtun political intentions. Different groups and personalities often continue to view one another through that lens, while Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, and Pashtun constituencies each carry memories of exclusion, domination, betrayal, or war. Even where there is agreement on opposing Taliban rule, there is far less agreement on the post-Taliban state. Without confronting this handicap more honestly, meaningful political convergence will remain elusive. Recent analysis has likewise highlighted that Afghanistan’s current power structure remains heavily Pashtun-dominated and that tribal networks continue to shape access to opportunity and influence.

This fragmentation has practical consequences. Some exiled groups still wait for the United States or other outside actors to return as meaningful sponsors. Others quietly hope that Taliban infighting will eventually create a political opening for them. Meanwhile, many younger Afghans with technocratic or bureaucratic experience have gradually returned to Afghanistan, not because they support the emirate ideologically, but because the state still requires administrators, and livelihoods still matter. In many ministries and municipal offices, governance now rests on a mix of Taliban authority from above and professional continuity from below. That reality weakens the exiled opposition’s expectation that isolation alone will hollow out the regime.

If there is a pragmatic side to Taliban governance, it appears most clearly in regional diplomacy – especially toward Central Asia. For a regime denied formal recognition globally, expanding ties with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and, more cautiously, Tajikistan has become a strategic asset. Regional states increasingly view Afghanistan not only as a security concern but also as a transport corridor, energy route, and commercial partner. That engagement gives the Taliban something almost as valuable as recognition: functional legitimacy. It also helps explain why the regime can look “more normal” than expected from the outside, even while remaining internally coercive and exclusionary.

A good example of the regime’s uneven but real administrative adaptation is municipal governance in Kabul. Taliban rule is rightly criticised for repression, exclusion, and the destruction of women’s rights, but some sectors of the state have not ceased to function. City administration has remained more operational than many expected after 2021, and officials such as Kabul mayor Mawlawi Abdul Rashid (Hamdullah Nomani) have acquired a reputation, at least among some Afghan observers, for delivery and continuity in urban management. This does not legitimise the regime. It simply illustrates that the emirate is not sustained by ideology alone; it is also sustained by bureaucratic routine, fear, and selective competence.

Yet Taliban resilience should not be mistaken for strategic invulnerability. One of the more striking lessons from recent Afghanistan analysis is that the threat of assassination against top leaders remains real. The December 2024 killing of Khalil Haqqani in Kabul was the highest-profile assassination of a Taliban official since the movement returned to power, and it reinforced concerns about persistent security breaches and Islamic State Khorasan Province’s (ISKP) continuing reach. New global precedents also offer little reassurance. The recent Iran crisis shows how quickly regional escalation can normalise the targeting of senior figures and sovereign assets. In that context, leadership decapitation scenarios are no longer hypothetical abstractions. As one insider reportedly put it when asked what would happen if Hibatullah were eliminated: “Khalifa” – meaning Siraj – “will be taken out also as a reaction.” Whether or not that specific prediction proves right, it captures the climate of anxiety surrounding succession, retaliation, and factional mistrust.

Another structural vulnerability is economic. Recent policy analysis has emphasised that the Taliban’s system is more durable than expected but still cushioned by external aid and by the willingness of regional actors to engage pragmatically. International humanitarian aid flows remain steady relative to Afghanistan’s economy and continue to blunt the kind of socio-economic pressure that might otherwise destabilise the system. In other words, the regime’s durability is not simply a product of ideological cohesion; it also depends on outside economic buffers, however reluctant or indirect.

The Taliban’s claim to have restored order is also undercut by the continuing threat from ISKP and, more quietly, al-Qaeda. UN assessments in early 2026 suggest that ISKP has been weakened but not defeated: it remains capable of high-profile violence inside Afghanistan and still poses an external operations risk. Al-Qaeda, by contrast, is not the main source of daily instability, yet its reported continued presence in Afghanistan remains politically and strategically damaging. Together, these two threats expose a central contradiction of Taliban rule: the regime is stronger than many expected, but it still cannot fully monopolise violence, nor can it convincingly reassure the outside world that Afghanistan will not again serve as a permissive arena for transnational terrorism.

The war with Pakistan offers the clearest recent example of both Taliban strategy and Taliban weakness. Islamabad’s military escalation in early 2026 was meant not only to retaliate for cross-border militancy but also to coerce the Taliban into recalculating their ties to or tolerance for anti-Pakistan militants, especially the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Recent analyses from Reuters, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, and others describe a pattern of escalating strikes, counter-strikes, and failed mediation efforts that brought the relationship to one of its worst points since 2021. The Taliban responded by framing the confrontation in nationalist terms and by seeking space through regional diplomacy. But they also took a hit. Pakistani strikes reportedly targeted military sites, ammunition depots, and drone-related infrastructure, even as Taliban officials accurately insisted that a high number of civilians were also killed, especially in the strike on the rehabilitation facility at Camp Phoenix.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan negotiations hosted very recently by China create some space for cautious optimism, particularly because they reflect a growing recognition that continued escalation serves neither Kabul nor Islamabad. Still, the larger picture remains deeply fragile. Persistent TTP violence in Pakistan, coupled with recurring Pakistani strikes inside Afghanistan, is worsening the atmosphere, fuelling mutual recrimination, and making any diplomatic breakthrough far harder to sustain.

This conflict also shows how India-Pakistan rivalry continues to shape Afghanistan negatively. Pakistan’s Afghan policy remains deeply tied to its own security anxieties and to its long-standing rivalry with India, while India has in turn adjusted by cautiously increasing engagement with the Taliban in order not to cede the field entirely. International Institute for Strategic Studies analysis in late 2025 explicitly described a renewal of India-Pakistan rivalry over Afghanistan. The March 2026 crisis underscored this wider regional overlay, as India sharply condemned Pakistan’s strike on Kabul and used the episode to reinforce its own position. Afghanistan thus remains not only a Taliban-ruled state but also a regional arena where old rivalries continue to distort its possibilities.

The broader conclusion is therefore paradoxical. The Taliban are stronger than many expected and more politically resilient than many hoped. Hibatullah appears firmly in control; his rivals are constrained; regional outreach, especially to Central Asia, has given the regime breathing room; and the external opposition remains fragmented by strategy, ambition, and ethnicity. At the same time, the regime remains structurally vulnerable – economically dependent, security-exposed, and heavily reliant on coercion rather than genuine legitimacy. It is surviving and showing resilience, but it is difficult to believe that it has genuinely gained many new supporters. Even so, with the help of regional crutches and the weakness of alternatives, the Taliban state is beginning to look more normal than almost anyone would have guessed. That normality, however, remains thin, illiberal, and reversible.