Where Does Afghanistan Stand After Four Years of Taliban Rule?

The Taliban have controlled Afghanistan for four years—sufficient time to assess their policies, the current state of the nation, and its prospects for the future. During their tenure, the Taliban have consolidated control over the country, largely maintained the cohesion of their leadership, and managed the economy better than expected in the face of severe shocks. Even as power has become increasingly centralized in the hands of their top leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and restrictions against women and girls have become ever-more draconian, many countries have moved toward normalizing relations with the Taliban regime.

Despite these achievements, however, the Taliban authorities face a number of challenges. Economic growth has been anemic—below the population growth rate—with widespread unemployment and poverty. In the absence of foreign aid and with decreasing humanitarian assistance, resources for public investment and social services are very limited. The Taliban’s drug ban, remarkably successful in curbing opium poppy cultivation for three years in a row, has devastated poor rural households that depended on opium to make ends meet.

Looking forward, the Taliban seem firmly entrenched in power, with few threats to their rule—especially since neighboring countries and great powers have no appetite for military involvement. However, Afghanistan’s turbulent history of unexpected, and often violent, regime change and leadership succession demonstrates the importance of closely following the country’s trajectory.

Background

The speed and completeness of the Taliban victory in 2021—culminating with their takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15—surprised most observers, and probably the Taliban themselves. Previous expectations for the future of the country, including a negotiating process for an interim authority and an associated transfer of power, were shattered by the rapidity of Taliban advances, the abruptness of the U.S. military withdrawal, and the collapse of Afghan security forces absent U.S. support.

Although the Taliban had probably not expected to immediately take over the country, the movement was better prepared for power than other new regimes in recent Afghan history. As an insurgency, they survived, spread, and became increasingly effective over time, benefiting from their sanctuary in Pakistan where they could regroup and replenish their resources. Despite some competition between different power centers and U.S. and Afghan government efforts to split off parts of the movement, the Taliban managed to avoid organizational fragmentation. Though waging insurgent warfare inevitably required some level of decentralization, the Taliban built up revenue-collecting mechanisms—effectively taxing transport, mining, and some other activities—and set up governance systems in their expanding areas of control, focusing on security and justice. Shadow governors and other local officials were appointed and active.

While the degree to which the Taliban had developed a governing apparatus by 2021 must not be overstated, they were in a better position than other Afghan regimes newly coming into power in the past 50 years—the Marxist-Leninists after their “accidental coup” in 1978, the Soviet occupation starting in 1979-1980, the mujahideen victory in 1992, the first Taliban regime in 1996, and not least the U.S.-led intervention in 2001.

Moreover, in 2021 the Taliban faced a relatively favorable environment internally and externally. The previous government was widely discredited and its leadership and security forces eviscerated, with former President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country; the Afghan people were profoundly war-weary; there were functional government agencies in place; and foreign countries had no appetite for further military actions against the Taliban. While the Taliban’s victory precipitated major economic and political shocks including sanctions, the freezing of foreign exchange reserves, diplomatic isolation, and more, direct threats to the Taliban’s hold on power were negligible. Ironically, the only comparably favorable situation in recent Afghan history was the defeat of the first Taliban regime in 2001, when the domestic and international environment was very favorable to the U.S.-supported, new government.

Consolidation, Centralization, Social Policies, and Foreign Affairs

After taking power, the Taliban quickly consolidated control over the country. They took over and utilized existing government structures, keeping many of them in place but abolishing agencies in core ideological areas and transforming others such as the security agencies through wholesale personnel changes.

In their initial months in power, Taliban policies appeared somewhat relaxed, perhaps reflecting their lack of preparation for their unexpectedly quick takeover of the country. But starting with the ban on girls’ secondary education in March 2022, restrictions against women and girls and related social policies have become increasingly harsh. Clearly, this is an ongoing effort to reshape Afghan society along radical ideological lines, representing a combination of a local, extreme interpretation of fundamentalist Islam and Pashtun tribal cultural norms. One priority, beyond blocking females from secondary and higher education as well as most professions outside the home, has been the transformation of educational curricula and the expansion of religious schools (madrassas). The Taliban seem animated by xenophobic sentiment, manifested not only in strong resistance to Western norms and foreign impositions but also to perceived pressure from mainstream international Islam—for example, over female education (which is allowed in all other Muslim-majority countries, as well as by many in fundamentalist Islamic sects such as Deobandism, who, though associated with the Taliban, have opposed the female education ban).

Concomitant with the changes in social policy, leadership power has been increasingly centralized in the person of Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s amir, and a small circle of clerics surrounding him in Kandahar. This is a notable development given the decentralized nature of operations during the insurgency and the importance of prominent military leaders such as Mullah Yaqoob (first Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s son) and Sirajuddin Haqqani, and the midlevel commanders and forces associated with them. The religious significance of the amir and his hands-on control over government appointments and resources, as well as the Taliban’s near-pathological fear of disunity (reflecting their view that the 1992-1996 mujahideen regime fell apart after its victory due to violent factional infighting), may explain this trend.

Additionally, there has been a near-constant “churn” of government appointments, whereby Hibatullah regularly removes and reassigns senior officials, with few instances of someone being outright dismissed from government, and likewise few instances of new faces being appointed. This enhances Hibatullah’s power and probably is intended to ensure that fiefdoms of patronage and personal loyalties don't become entrenched.

Overall, the Taliban leadership has remained largely cohesive, contrary to initial expectations by some observers, and despite cracks and signs of discontent that have bubbled up from time to time (Sirajuddin Haqqani’s absence from Afghanistan for a period of time being a prominent example). This cohesion and the centralization of power under Hibatullah have occurred despite the unpopularity of the Taliban’s social restrictions (in the general population as well as among parts of the movement itself), opposition against the opium ban in key rural areas, and the economic hit to the population (exacerbated by large-scale forced returns of migrants)—all discussed below

That said, given the decentralized, multiethnic, multitribal, and locally oriented nature of Afghan society, as well as geographic and tribal distinctions among the Taliban, this centralization faces limits and does not go as far as Taliban rhetoric may suggest. Afghanistan has always been a decentralized society, usually presided over by a centralized state, with associated tensions requiring management. But the degree of centralization within the Taliban and the regime’s reach into the provinces and districts appears to be greater than under past Afghan regimes.

Interestingly, the Taliban have governed under interim arrangements during their four years in power, with ministers and other top officials serving in acting capacity. Hibatullah issues major decrees (vetted by a review board of judicial clerics, headed by his close associate the chief justice of the Supreme Court, but subject to Hibatullah’s final decision). On Aug. 15, Hibatullah announced removal of all acting designations, meaning that his appointments are no longer provisional and indicating that the Taliban perceive themselves as fully entrenched in power, with no need for temporary arrangements let alone a broadening of their regime by bringing in other stakeholders. However, there are few signs that the Taliban are moving toward formally putting in place a new Islamic constitutional order, perhaps finding the current arrangements most flexible for Hibatullah’s rule.

In the realm of diplomacy, Taliban foreign policy has been bilaterally oriented, resisting multilateral engagements, particularly under UN auspices, based on the perception that they are disadvantageous. A broad international consensus not to recognize the Taliban regime as the legitimate government of Afghanistan unless the authorities form a more inclusive government and relax their restrictive gender and social policies held firm for a couple of years. But this earlier consensus has been increasingly fraying. While most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have not taken significant steps toward normalizing relations with the Taliban regime, and the UN has not allowed the Taliban to take up Afghanistan’s seat in the General Assembly, countries in the region as well as China and Russia have taken action to normalize relations in both de jure (Russia, to some extent China, and Pakistan) and de facto ways. By holding to a hard diplomatic line and refusing political or social policy concessions, the Taliban have successfully resisted international pressures.

Managing the Economy

In the face of serious economic problems, the Taliban have managed the economy better than expected (far better than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s). The abrupt halting of international development assistance, the freezing of Afghan foreign exchange reserves, existing sanctions affecting the Taliban and prominent leaders, fear of sanctions on the part of banks and Western businesses, and isolation from normal international financial relations gave rise to an economic freefall during the Taliban’s initial months in power. The World Bank estimated that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by more than a quarter (from $20 billion in 2020 to $14.5 billion in 2022). This was followed by stabilization at a much lower level of economic activity, supported by a surge in humanitarian aid commitments (which peaked at $3.8 billion in 2022). The exchange rate for the Afghani currency has been generally stable after recovering from a sharp depreciation in the early months of Taliban rule. Growth of the money supply has been contained (partly due to the Afghan central bank’s difficulties in printing more banknotes due to sanctions). Inflation fell sharply after the initial surge, and there was even price deflation during 2023-2024. The macroeconomic policy stance has arguably been too restrictive—significant and prolonged price deflation is the last thing a country needs in a recessionary economic situation.

After an initial dip, the Taliban have been mobilizing somewhat more revenue than the previous government (reaching around $3 billion in the 2023-2024 Afghan fiscal year) despite the weakness of the economy. This reflects better collection of customs duties (due to more complete documentation of imports and less corruption) and higher nontax receipts, especially royalties from mining activities.

However, in the past three years the economy has been growing very slowly (by 2.2 percent in 2023 and 2.5 percent in 2025, according to the World Bank), which is below the population growth rate—meaning average per-capita incomes are stagnating, with poverty aggravated by forced returns of Afghan migrants from Iran and Pakistan. Agriculture has been weather-dependent, but there have been declines in cultivated areas in recent years, based on satellite imagery. The bloated, aid-fueled service sector contracted sharply after the stoppage of aid and international military expenditures, and urban economies suffered disproportionately. Manufacturing has been at a low level but has seen a modest revival. Afghanistan has an active private sector, including many expatriate businesses in the Middle East and elsewhere, but their business efforts and investments cannot offset the macroeconomic headwinds the country faces.

Building on their experience issuing mining licenses and taxing transport of minerals during the insurgency, Taliban authorities have been focusing on the mining sector as a source of revenue. Large numbers of (mostly small and medium-sized) mining contracts have been issued, and taxes and royalties are being collected far more effectively than under the previous Islamic Republic government. However, wasteful exploitation of resources using crude techniques (also rampant under the previous government) continues to be a problem, as does local environmental degradation.

In the absence of foreign aid, with little direct foreign investment, and humanitarian assistance declining (aid commitments fell by half to $1.9 billion in 2023 and further after that), public resources are very tight: Revenues have started to plateau and expenditures—dominated by spending on security forces—have been squeezed, with little room for public investments or social programs.

A striking feature of the Taliban economy is its large and growing trade deficits, which surprisingly have not generated downward pressure on the Afghani exchange rate. While these imbalances have been partly covered by humanitarian aid, there is a large remaining unexplained gap. Remittances from Afghans outside the country are a big part of the story, though estimates of their level have varied widely (a recent estimate by the World Bank is $3.1 billion in 2023). Another factor may be that while documentation of imports under the Taliban has improved markedly, some re-exports smuggled into Pakistan may well continue to go unrecorded. Finally, there may be some capital inflows for real estate investments and other sectors (though recent reports of rent increases reflect the forced returns of Afghan migrants, who tend to settle in cities rather than rural areas). Last but not least, some receipts from the continuing exports of opium (see below) may stay in the country. The Taliban’s crackdown on capital flight—limiting outflows of cash U.S. dollars carried by individuals—which had been rampant under the previous government (with estimates ranging up to $5 billion per year) may be yet another explanatory factor.

Social services and social protection have suffered greatly from the cutoff of development aid and the Taliban’s failure to replace this aid with domestic resources, while maintaining high spending on security forces. The public health sector, which had been funded largely by international aid, has shrunk significantly. Education has been harmed by the ban against female secondary and higher education as well as the loss of female teachers, aid cuts, deteriorating quality, and the shift toward religious training.

Human development indicators undoubtedly depict a very poor situation, though availability and quality of data have deteriorated since the Taliban takeover. Indicators of food insecurity and malnutrition are bleak: According to the World Bank’s Afghanistan Welfare Monitoring Survey, during April-June 2023, 37 percent of households reported having insufficient income to cover food expenses, another 25 percent not enough for other basic necessities beyond food. Unemployment is high, according to the same survey—26 percent for working-age males and 49 percent for females during April-June 2023, with an additional 15 percent of males and 57 percent of females reportedly not participating in the labor force at all.

The Opium Ban

The Taliban’s ban on production and trade of opium and other illegal narcotic drugs, announced in April 2022 and implemented starting in the 2022-2023 season, has reduced poppy cultivation to extremely low levels (rivaled only by their first, single-year opium ban in 2000-2001) for three years in a row. Estimated total national opium poppy cultivation dropped from around 220,00 hectares in 2022 to an estimated 22,693 hectares in 2023 and 7,382 hectares in 2024. The government used coercive tactics, including violence, to enforce the ban, which faced protests and opposition in parts of the country, notably Badakhshan province in the northeast. There are signs the ban is fraying in 2025, with visible opposition appearing more prominently in the southwest (which had accounted for the bulk of pre-ban opium production), though poppy cultivation will remain low by historical standards this year.

The opium ban imposed an enormous shock on the livelihoods of land-poor rural households especially in the south, the southwest, and Badakhshan. These households had depended on poppy cultivation to make ends meet. On the other hand, landed farmers holding inventories of opium built up from past bumper harvests have been selling them down, reaping capital gains from higher prices due to the ban. Thus the ban has worsened inequality in many rural areas.

Since poppy cultivation has been replaced predominantly by wheat and some land left fallow, the ban is unsustainable economically—and perhaps politically—as opium inventories are depleted and more influential segments of Pashtun rural society press demands for a return to poppy cultivation. (The principal advantage of wheat—a low-value, less labor-intensive but water-intensive crop—is that, unlike in the case of perennial cash crops, it is easy to return to opium, which like wheat is an annual crop.)

While reflecting core ideological precepts of the Taliban, the opium ban was arguably a policy mistake given its lack of sustainability. It may also weaken the Taliban—as was the case with their highly successful one-year ban on poppy cultivation during 2000-2001, which arguably undermined the Taliban in core rural areas when the post-9/11 U.S. intervention toppled their regime. Moreover, flows of opiates to international markets continue despite the ban, reflecting inventory decumulation and continuing production in Badakhshan and to a lesser extent other provinces, and more recently, significant poppy cultivation has predictably shifted to Balochistan province in Pakistan.

Looking Forward

At present the Taliban seem firmly entrenched in power, with few threats to their regime. Past Afghan regime changes involved some combination of internal factionalization and violent infighting (1979, 1992); strong domestic opposition supported by foreign countries with arms and other assistance (1989, 2021); or direct foreign military intervention (1980, 2001). None of these eventualities seem imminent—especially foreign intervention given other countries’ aversion to military engagement.

Likely the only development that might lead to a substantial, regime-threatening foreign military intervention (direct or through proxies) would be a 9/11-level terrorist attack on a neighboring country, the United States, or possibly Europe, clearly planned and organized from Afghanistan. So far there have been significant attacks in Pakistan by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has a base of support and historical ties with the Afghan Taliban. These have prompted Pakistani retaliation, including occasional airstrikes and cross-border attacks on Afghanistan, but they do not pose a serious threat to the Taliban regime. Moreover, Pakistan has favored nonmilitary pressures such as border closures affecting trade and forced returns of Afghan migrants. While there have been serious terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere attributed to the Islamic State, they have not been clearly linked to Afghanistan itself.

The Taliban seem cognizant of this risk and appear to be discouraging international terrorist attacks planned or launched from Afghan soil. Nevertheless, this contingency bears watching; an unexpectedly large and successful attack could initiate a chain of events affecting the Taliban’s hold on power.

Turning to the possibility of internal factionalization and violent infighting, there have been clear signs of discontent among factions of the Taliban leadership, but so far these have been tamped down in the interest of maintaining unity. Though this seems the least improbable driver of regime change in the future, so far it has failed to materialize. However, Afghanistan’s history of unpredictable regime changes and leadership successions suggest that the situation could change and therefore warrants close observation. In addition to the opium ban, which could open up fault lines within the Taliban if it is not relaxed, tightening resources and associated disputes over access to them may become problematic. Leadership succession also poses a potential problem, with no obvious potential successor(s) to Hibatullah having emerged.

Another historical pattern that may spell trouble for the Taliban regime and its longevity is that since the founding of Afghanistan in 1747, most governing authorities have been dependent on foreign resources to support the state. This started with raids into and holding parts of the lucrative Indian subcontinent by the first Durrani rulers; then British Empire funds associated with two disastrous wars and occupations as well as subsidies to curb unrest emanating from Afghanistan; followed by substantial Soviet and U.S. aid during the Cold War; Soviet financial and material support to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government during the 1980s; and culminating in peak aid dependency during the two decades of the Islamic Republic government.

No country is willing to replace the U.S. and its allies in generously funding the Afghan state under the Taliban. Whatever limited inflows may be forthcoming will be for humanitarian purposes, or project-based. Consequently, the Taliban are attempting to put in place a theocratic, authoritarian, low-cost police state with very limited resources, fundamentally reshaping Afghan society in the process. This will be challenging to manage and may undermine the regime over time, increasingly alienating it from the bulk of the population.

Irrespective of what happens politically—violent change could exacerbate the situation—the economy will remain weak absent a reversal of Taliban social policies and gender restrictions (which would improve foreign economic and political relations); a relaxation of the opium ban (which would revive the rural economy); or major investments in infrastructure, energy, or water (which take time). Economic growth is likely to remain fairly anemic due to the country’s weak fundamentals: landlocked, with daunting mountainous geography; lack of strong comparative or competitive advantage vis-a-vis neighbors; poor infrastructure; deteriorating human capital due to Taliban restrictions on female education, declining and low-quality schooling for males, and large-scale “brain drain”; and limited water resources—reflecting failure to develop major water conservancy projects over the past half-century and the worsening impact of climate change (a negligible contributor to global warming, Afghanistan is one of the countries most harmed by it).

Some observers see Afghanistan’s mineral resources as its economic savior, but this is not realistic. Though the country has extensive mineral reserves, obstacles to large-scale exploitation are daunting. Energy, transport, and other infrastructure present severe bottlenecks, and water—required for processing many minerals—is the country’s scarcest material resource. Afghanistan is poorly equipped to deal with the serious environmental fallout associated with mining operations. And being landlocked, it faces higher transport costs and more obstacles than countries closer to the main areas of demand or with access to the sea. Additionally, the legal framework in Afghanistan is rudimentary and does not give international mining companies the confidence to invest. And the Taliban’s reputational toxicity internationally—due to their draconian restrictions against women and girls and other human rights abuses—means that Western mining companies are unlikely to invest in Afghanistan.

Overall, the outlook for the Afghan people remains bleak: stagnant per-capita incomes, continuing widespread poverty and deprivation, high and likely rising unemployment, poor health and other social indicators, and continuing loss of educational opportunities for women and girls as well as deterioration in the quality of education. It remains to be seen whether discontent associated with the weak economy and the challenges faced by the Afghan population could grow to pose a meaningful challenge to the Taliban regime, but so far it has failed to do so. History suggests economic problems alone are unlikely to precipitate regime change, as long as government revenues remain sufficient to pay security costs (and there is not a war, which would multiply such costs).

Finally, it must be emphasized that predictions about Afghanistan are risky. Going back to the early 2000s, few if any observers would have predicted that significant numbers of U.S. troops would still be in the country at the beginning of the 2020s—nearly two decades later. As mentioned, the speed of the Islamic Republic government’s collapse in 2021 was surprising to nearly everyone. The consolidation of personal power under Hibatullah, a religious cleric who did not lead military forces and operations, would have been hard to predict in 2021. The low-level equilibrium the Afghan economy achieved after a few months of freefall in 2021 and early 2022, and the stability of key macroeconomic indicators since then, were not predicted before they happened, including by this author. And some of the Taliban’s actions that seem mistakes from an authoritarian playbook or realpolitik perspective—notably the opium ban and outlawing girls’ secondary and higher education—have not seriously undermined the Taliban after three years of implementation, though the former may in the future. So, while my discussion of past trends and the current situation is factual, what the future holds for Afghanistan remains to be seen.