This week marks five years since the fall of Kabul to Taliban rule, an anniversary that closes one chapter of Afghanistan’s modern history while highlighting the unresolved consequences of the country’s isolation.
The Taliban’s rapid takeover followed the withdrawal of US forces, ending nearly two decades of American military presence. The speed of the withdrawal and the Taliban victory ushered in a new period in which Afghanistan became more isolated from the international community, while access to developments inside the country diminished.
The Soufan Center, whose assessment provides the basis for this account, describes the intervening five years as a period characterised by reduced international visibility, major cuts to foreign aid, international sanctions and disengagement. Those developments have made it harder to observe the deterioration of Afghanistan’s economy, the treatment of women and the country’s security conditions.
The Taliban government has survived despite the economic shock that followed its return to power. The departure of US forces and the consolidation of authority by an Islamist fundamentalist movement that had previously provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda prompted much of the international community to withdraw aid and financial assistance to the government and freeze Afghanistan’s central bank reserves.
The consequences have fallen heavily on Afghan society.
The United Nations has reported that 80 per cent of Afghan households are experiencing debt, while more than half of the population — an estimated 28 million people — live below the poverty line. Last year, Afghanistan recorded an $11.3 billion trade deficit, equivalent to 60 per cent of its dwindling GDP. Employment and affordability have also declined across the country.
The economic pressures are intensified by demographic and environmental changes. Afghanistan’s population increased by 6.5 per cent between 2025 and 2026, while recurring droughts have placed additional pressure on agriculture, food security and access to safe drinking water.
The country’s drought risk is expected to become still more severe. The Afghanistan Drought Risk Management Strategy has predicted that by 2050, 90 per cent of the country will have experienced drought severe enough to hamper crop yields and cause water shortages.
But Afghanistan’s economic crisis cannot be separated from the transformation of women’s lives under Taliban rule.
The restriction of women is not simply a consequence of broader instability. According to the assessment by The Soufan Center, it has become a central component of the Taliban’s governance strategy. Women and girls have been progressively removed from educational, professional and public spaces.
Girls have been prohibited from attending school beyond sixth grade, effectively ending their education at around the age of 12. Women are excluded from secondary and higher education and face restrictions on employment in government agencies, universities, schools, non-governmental organisations and United Nations agencies.
Women are also required to be accompanied by a male guardian, or mahram, when travelling or appearing in public. They have been barred from public parks and marketplaces and required to conceal their voices in public, alongside requirements to wear a chador under Taliban morality laws.
Even spaces traditionally intended for women have been affected. Beauty salons and women-only gyms have been closed, further reducing opportunities for women to participate in public life. UN Women has described the process as the “erasure” of women from public life.
The consequences extend beyond education and employment.
Restrictions on women have placed additional pressure on Afghanistan’s healthcare system, particularly services provided to women. Training and services in nursing, midwifery and other medical fields have reportedly been reduced, while restrictions on movement have made it harder for women to access healthcare.
The mahram requirement has reportedly led some clinics to refuse treatment to women without male escorts. Foreign humanitarian workers involved in delivering medical care have also received death threats.
UN Women has warned that restrictions and reductions in female healthcare services could raise maternal mortality rates by 50 per cent by 2026. Its spokesman described the consequences starkly: “The results are devastating. Women are living shorter, less healthy lives.”
The legal protections available to women have also been dismantled. By June this year, 166 of 264 Taliban decrees relating to human rights — nearly 63 per cent — were directed at women and girls.
Responsibility for enforcing restrictions on women’s clothing, behaviour and conduct has increasingly been transferred to husbands, brothers, fathers and other male relatives. Reports of domestic violence, assault, coerced marriage and child marriage have accompanied the changes.
UN Women reported in June 2025 that 35 per cent of Afghan women had experienced domestic violence from their partners during the preceding year, almost three times the global average.
The Taliban has largely avoided collecting data on gender-based violence. Nevertheless, journalists and experts have documented 231 cases in which women died as a result of domestic violence since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Families of victims have reported intimidation and retaliation when they attempted to seek intervention from the authorities.
The documented cases therefore represent only part of the violence experienced by Afghan women.
Yet the crisis is not confined to gender and economic conditions. Afghanistan remains a sanctuary for transnational terrorist organisations and violent extremist groups.
Al-Qaeda remains present in the country, as does Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Credible reports indicate that al-Qaeda fighters maintaining training camps in Afghanistan have provided training to TTP militants. Al-Qaeda’s media arm, as-Sahab Media Foundation, has expressed support for the Taliban government and for TTP attacks across the border in Pakistan.
Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, also remains active despite counterterrorism pressure from the Taliban. The most recent UN Monitoring Team report has additionally documented reports of foreign fighters relocating from Syria to Afghanistan.
The persistence of these groups underlines the security implications of Afghanistan’s isolation. A government that has consolidated territorial control has nevertheless been unable to eliminate the extremist networks operating within the country.
The country’s relationship with the international narcotics trade has also changed rather than disappeared.
The Taliban introduced a nationwide prohibition on poppy and ephedra cultivation, seeking to undermine Afghanistan’s role as a major source of heroin and methamphetamine. Satellite imagery indicates that the ban has had an effect on drug production inside Afghanistan.
But the prohibition has also contributed to what has been described as a “balloon effect”, in which producers, criminal enterprises and armed actors move into neighbouring countries.
Afghan farmers, chemists and criminal operatives have reportedly crossed the Durand Line into Pakistan’s Balochistan region and into Iran, where they have become involved in production and trafficking while competing with local armed groups and landowners.
The result is a shifting narcotics and security problem rather than its disappearance.
Afghanistan has consequently entered its sixth year under Taliban rule with several of its central crises unresolved. Its economy remains under severe pressure, women and girls face extensive restrictions, and extremist organisations continue to operate from within its territory.
The country’s isolation has also reduced the international community’s visibility into those developments. At the same time, the Taliban’s restrictions, economic decline and continued presence of terrorist organisations are creating conditions that can facilitate further radicalisation, criminal activity, competition among armed actors and terrorist alignment.
Five years after Kabul fell, the Taliban has demonstrated that it can retain power. But political survival has not translated into a resolution of Afghanistan’s deeper crises.
Instead, the country remains caught between isolation and instability: economically weakened, socially transformed, increasingly restrictive towards women and still capable of providing space for transnational extremist organisations.
The central warning from The Soufan Center’s assessment is therefore not simply that Afghanistan has changed since the fall of Kabul. It is that the forces driving that change — economic deterioration, repression, insecurity, criminal networks and militant activity — continue to reinforce one another.
Five years on, Afghanistan may be quieter in the international news cycle. It is not, however, detached from the security problems that once drew the world to its doorstep.
