All is not quiet on the Afghan front. A new claim by the Afghan National Resistance Front that terrorist groups are once again operating in Afghanistan underscores the dangers of a conflict classified as “worsening” by the Council on Foreign Relations — and with potentially critical impact on American interests. 

The Taliban’s takeover of the country in August of last year has made instability the rule, not the exception in Afghanistan.

Case in point, the latest NRF counterattack left a reported 11 Taliban members dead today. The spokesman for the Afghan resistance, Sibghatullah Ahmadi, tweeted that “the seventh offensive by the occupying forces of the Taliban was repulsed after seven hours of fighting … in Balayi Darband e Kaasa Taraash and the Jar valley of Qaasaan e Andraab.”

It was while the resistance forces were retreating, after having defeated the Taliban offensive, that “the 11 fleeing enemies” were killed and “dozens of terrorists were wounded.”

Prior to today’s fighting, the head of the NRF’s foreign relations, Ali Nazary, told The New York Sun that the NRF had in the past months liberated a number of villages in the Andarab area from Taliban control.

He said that resistance forces are operating in a dozen regions of Afghanistan and that the NRF controls more than half of Panjshir province. Pansjhir was one of the last holdouts against the Taliban in September 2021 and skirmishes there and elsewhere between Taliban and NRF forces occur with regularity; in one such engagement, 10 members of the Taliban were said to be killed this month. 

“But it’s not only the Taliban we’re facing,” Mr. Nazary says. “We’re facing myriad terrorist groups that are being supported by the Taliban, who are allowing them to build their training camps and bases inside of Afghanistan.” 

As if that weren’t jarring enough — considering that the previous Taliban government’s refusal to hand over the terrorist chieftan, Osama bin Laden, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks that precipated America’s invasion of Afghanistan — Mr. Nazary says the Taliban “is handing over U.S.-made weapons and gear to these terrorist groups as well as granting these foreign fighters citizenship and giving them passports.” 

He estimates that these terrorists number about 13,000, and that the vast majority of these fighters are from groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.

“This is not a civil war,” Mr. Nazary said. “It is a continuation of the global war on terror.”

There was no mention of Taliban-sanctioned terrorist training camps, however, in a communiqué issued by the State Department today of the Special Representatives and Envoys for Afghanistan, who met at Brussels this week. In a press release of more than 1,000 words, five were devoted to terrorism — the Taliban “must fulfil their counterterrorism commitment.”

Elsewhere the communiqué mentioned inter alia that the envoys condemned the Taliban’s decision on March 23 to continue denying Afghan girls the ability to gain secondary education; raised the importance of a genuine and credible inclusive political process in Afghanistan with the meaningful participation of women and religious groups and minorities; and noted that the type and scope of future non-humanitarian development assistance to Afghanistan will be determined in large part by the Taliban’s actions and their upholding of the rights of all Afghans, particularly women, girls, and members of minority groups.

Western insistence that the Taliban does a better job of respecting women’s rights, and its failure so far to do so, is holding up assistance to the country such as a $600 million World Bank package to pay teachers’ salaries. Yet in recent weeks the Taliban has segregated parks, banned the BBC and other foreign media, and otherwise bolstered its Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. 

The man who oversees that body is the hardline Islamist cleric and Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who makes his home in Kandahar. A special forces commander from Kandahar was among the Taliban’s casualties in fighting with Afghan resistance units last month. 

The humanitarian dimension to the conflict in Afghanistan as the country risks sinking into a new dark age has so far eclipsed coverage of whatever combat activity has been taking place in the restive provinces outside the capital, Kabul.

According to Mr. Nazary, the NRF has more legitimacy vis-à-vis the Afghan masses than the Taliban could ever hope for. The backbone of the force is made up of special commando forces from the former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and regular soldiers of the national army and police force. 

“We are recruiting from the former soldiers of the pre-Taliban security forces, who see us as the last option and they are joining us en masse,” Mr. Nazary says.  “We are receiving more recruits than we can handle.” 

If Mr. Akhundzada seems to be making a priority of stripping Afghan women of the personal liberties that were hard fought for prior to the Taliban’s inglorious takeover, as well as enforcing arcane rules like mandatory beards for the gentlemen, it does not mean he and his ragtag team of clerics fully control the country.

“They are not a united or cohesive force,” Mr. Nazary says of the Taliban today, “and this is why no one is recognizing them — they don’t trust that they’re going to be staying in power.”

As for the terrorists-in-training with alleged Taliban connivance, Mr. Nazary is characteristically firm: “The global war on terror has not ended. If the U.S. ignores Afghanistan again and allows the Taliban to let Afghanistan become a sanctuary for international terrorism, then we might experience events much worse than 9/11,” he told the Sun.