PUBLISHED on November 9, 2025
Afghanistan’s story of political deception began not on the battlefield but at a negotiating table in Doha, where the world put its faith in diplomacy and the Taliban mastered the art of deception. When the Doha Agreement was signed in February 2020 between the United States and the Taliban, it was hailed as a framework for peace, promising the end of America’s longest war and the beginning of Afghan reconciliation. However, five years later, what the world faces is a shattered agreement, a destabilized region and a regime that thrives on repression, radicalism and lies. The Taliban exploited peace to prepare for war, used diplomacy to consolidate terror, and turned Afghanistan into a rogue state sustained by drugs, fear, and militancy.
The Doha Agreement had four main pillars. The first and most fundamental pillar of the Doha Agreement required that Afghan soil not be used to threaten the security of the United States or its allies. This clause required a clear separation from terrorist organizations, particularly Al Qaeda and its affiliates. However, empirical evidence from the 35th report of the United Nations Sanctions Monitoring and Analytical Support Team (S/2025/71) reveals otherwise. The Taliban not only maintained but deepened its operational and ideological collaboration with terrorist networks, including TTP, ISKP and Al Qaeda.
The report explicitly names Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as “the largest terrorist group in Afghanistan”, sustained thanks to the financial and logistical support of the Kabul regime. It confirms that the Taliban provides monthly payments of 3 million Afghanis (US$43,000) to the family of TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud, while the TTP maintains training centers in Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktika.
These camps, once breeding grounds for Taliban fighters, have become regional centers of militancy where suicide operations and ideological indoctrination are jointly administered by TTP and Al Qaeda operatives. The data paint a gloomy picture: Afghanistan has once again become the epicenter of the terrorism that the Doha framework sought to dismantle.
The second commitment of the agreement was to foster intra-Afghan negotiations and establish an inclusive political structure that represents all ethnic and political groups. The Taliban publicly accepted this principle, but in practice they annihilated it. The collapse of the intra-Afghan dialogue in 2021 was followed by a military takeover that imposed an authoritarian government lacking diversity or democracy. Today, governance remains the monopoly of Kandahari hardliners, with no representation of women, minorities or opposition groups. The Taliban’s so-called “Islamic Emirate” is sustained not by consent but by coercion. Its repression has been particularly brutal towards women, the first victims of its ideological regression. A 2025 UN Women report, produced with EU support, ranks Afghanistan as the country with the second largest gender gap in the world, with a 76 percent disparity in health, education and employment outcomes between men and women. Afghanistan’s Gender Index reveals that women are realizing only 17 percent of their potential, compared to a global average of 60.7 percent. Seventy-eight percent of young Afghan women are now excluded from education, employment or training, and the secondary school completion rate for girls is falling to zero due to educational bans. The Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has reintroduced gender apartheid, criminalizing the visibility of women in public life. These facts empirically refute the Taliban’s claim of inclusive governance and confirm its systematic violation of the second Doha pillar.
The third pillar, the prisoner release clause, has proven to be the most catastrophic for regional security. The agreement ordered the release of thousands of Taliban detainees as a “confidence-building measure.” However, this mass liberation became the resurrection of militancy. Among those freed were several hardened TTP commanders who quickly rejoined the battlefield, reviving networks that Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaigns had dismantled through immense sacrifices. The results are quantifiable. In 2025 alone, Pakistan carried out 62,113 intelligence-based operations (IBOs), averaging 208 operations daily, against terrorist threats emanating from Afghan sanctuaries. These operations led to the death of 1,667 terrorists and the neutralization of 4,373 incidents, but at a high human cost: 1,073 martyrs, including 584 soldiers, 133 law enforcement officers and 356 civilians. In Khyber district, which remains the frontline of this asymmetric war, 514 incidents occurred in 2025, resulting in 198 casualties, 36 army and FC personnel killed and 138 injured. These figures expose the direct consequences of the Taliban’s duplicity. Their promise of counterterrorism cooperation has been replaced by terrorism facilitation. The Taliban’s unfulfilled obligations have forced Pakistan into a perpetually defensive posture, expending lives and resources to contain a threat that should have been neutralized under the first and third clauses of Doha.
The fourth and final commitment of the Doha Agreement required the Taliban to normalize relations with the international community and demonstrate responsible governance. Instead, Afghanistan finds itself isolated, unrecognized by any major power, economically crippled and morally bankrupt. The regime thrives on narcotics and illicit trade, transforming the country into the largest opium producer in the world.
Recent counter-narcotics operations in Pakistan’s Tirah Valley revealed a disturbing nexus: local poppy crops, grown on more than 12,000 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at profits of Rs 1.8 to Rs 3.2 million per acre, are trafficked to Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, where they are refined to produce heroin and methamphetamine (ice). Even local politicians and tribal middlemen are complicit in this network, revealing how the Afghan economy has merged with the criminal world. This is not governance; It is capture of the State for crime.
The Taliban’s conduct at the third UN-facilitated Doha meeting in October 2025 further exposed its hostility to global norms. During the session, which brought together key international stakeholders to review humanitarian aid and counter-terrorism compliance, the Taliban delegation refused to engage in dialogue with Afghan civil society, women’s representatives or human rights defenders. Its delegates walked out of sessions that raised questions about inclusion and education prohibitions, dismissing calls from the UN and Qatari facilitators. This pattern was repeated in the Istanbul consultations, where Turkish mediators reported the same attitude of complaint and arrogance. His refusal to cooperate even with his traditional allies highlighted a dangerous isolationism and an unwillingness to reform. Together, these two meetings demonstrated that the Taliban regime is not only reneging on its previous commitments but also rejecting any attempt to return it to a rules-based order.
Afghanistan exists today as a rebellious, irresponsible, unrepentant and unreformed State. His regime violates international agreements, sponsors terrorism, and tramples on the rights of its own citizens, all while claiming legitimacy before the very world it deceives. The Doha experiment has failed, not because diplomacy has failed, but because the Taliban never intended to honor it. His government is not born of faith but of fear; Its laws are not Islamic but despotic. Although Pakistan continues to pay the price, with more than a thousand martyrs in 2025 alone, the international community must face the reality that appeasement has emboldened an extremist state in the heart of Asia. The Istanbul dialogue, like previous Doha talks, has exposed the futility of negotiating with actors who exploit diplomacy as camouflage for aggression. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime today is a case study in how peace without accountability breeds perpetual conflict. The world can no longer afford illusions; must choose between containment and complicity. And for Pakistan, the message is even clearer: stability cannot be outsourced to a neighbor that feeds on chaos, nor can peace be negotiated with those who sanctify deception as an art of statecraft.
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer.
The author is an independent researcher with experience in Political Science, specialized in national and regional security with a focus on critical strategic issues. She can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on X @OmayAimen
