The Taliban seized power in August 2021 after 20 years of fighting the world's most powerful army. No country officially recognised them until Russia did so in July 2025, when the Taliban flag was raised at the Embassy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Moscow. On August 20th 2025 the Taliban hosted a trilateral meeting with China and Pakistan.
At least 15 mostly regional countries have ambassadors in Kabul, including China, Russia, Iran and several Gulf states. The UAE accepted a Taliban ambassador in August 2024; China followed in January 2025. Britain has a special envoy who has met Taliban officials at least once since being appointed in June 2025. The EU has an office in Kabul. Norway received a Taliban diplomat in January 2025. Switzerland reopened its humanitarian office in March 2025. Germany accepted two Taliban diplomats in Berlin and Bonn in July 2025 to co-ordinate the deportation of convicted Afghan criminals; more than 100 have been flown to Kabul since August 2024.
Western states engage with the Taliban on multiple issues without conceding formal recognition, a process an American diplomat calls a "charade". Until recently, Taliban officials met weekly with American diplomats in Qatar, covering human rights, drugs and counter-terrorism.
Girls are banned from secondary school. Women are banned from working for NGOs and from going to parks. Vice-and-virtue police patrol Kabul with increasing zeal to check that women are covered up and accompanied by a male relative.
The Taliban have cut corruption, halted poppy cultivation, ended 40 years of war and helped hammer the local Islamic State franchise (ISKP). There is no credible opposition, either inside Afghanistan or in exile. The Taliban feel so secure that they are slashing their bloated security apparatus to save money. Chinese, Turkish and Iranian firms are cutting deals in the country. Both China and Russia eye Afghan minerals.
After America's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 it left behind vast quantities of weapons. Pakistan says America should buy them back on Afghanistan's black market to prevent more falling into the hands of insurgents. "Everything is available to the highest bidder" in Afghanistan, according to Pakistan's military spokesman.
America has between 12,000 and 15,000 illegal Afghan migrants it would like to return. In January 2025 the Biden administration traded prisoners with the Taliban. America has lifted $10m bounties on three top Taliban leaders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister, who orchestrated suicide-bombings against Western forces. Haqqani remains on the terrorist list, but in 2022 sanctions were diluted to the point that businesses are free to deal with his ministry.
A worrying cycle of violence has emerged along the 2,600km Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pakistan demands the Taliban attack TTP sanctuaries; the Taliban refuse; Pakistan strikes; the Taliban retaliate. The fiercest round came in October 2025 when fighting erupted in at least seven places. Pakistan struck Kabul itself, targeting Noor Wali Mehsud, the TTP leader, whose presence in the Afghan capital hints at deepening ties between the TTP and the Taliban. Pakistani officials accuse the Haqqani network—a Taliban faction with longstanding ties to Pakistan's ISI—of double-dealing.
India announced in October 2025 that it would reopen its embassy in Kabul, which was shut when the Taliban came to power in 2021. The Afghan foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, made a six-day visit to India. Pakistan's military media wing acerbically "noted with concern" that the border fighting coincided with the visit.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have clashed in four of the past five years. In late February 2026 the cycle intensified dramatically. After a TTP suicide bombing killed two Pakistani soldiers on February 21st, Pakistan launched air strikes into eastern Afghanistan. Afghan forces retaliated against Pakistani border posts; Pakistan responded with Operation Righteous Fury, bombing military sites in Kabul and Kandahar and targeting Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban's supreme commander. The Taliban reportedly launched drone strikes across the border.
The border has been closed since October 2025. Pakistani trade with Afghanistan fell by around four-fifths in the first seven months of the fiscal year. Over 2m Afghans have been deported from Pakistan since September 2023.
On March 16th 2026 Pakistan struck the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul—formerly Camp Phoenix, an American base—killing at least 143 people. The hospital housed more than 2,000 patients. Pakistan claimed it hit a terrorist site; reports from the ground suggest many patients and doctors were killed. The Taliban initially claimed 400 dead. The strike was the deadliest since the conflict ramped up in February 2026. The Taliban had looked divided over how to handle tensions with Pakistan, but the civilian toll may unite militant factions and provoke a more spectacular retaliatory attack inside Pakistan.
Afghanistan relies on Iran for food, energy and building materials—all of which have been disrupted by the 2026 Iran war.
The InterCon, the first luxury hotel in Afghanistan, opened in 1969. It was a symbol of the modernising instincts of King Mohammed Zahir Shah and of Kabul's reputation as the "Paris of Central Asia". Women paraded poolside in bikinis and people sipped drinks in the Nuristan Cocktail Lounge. The hotel hosted a catwalk show by Pierre Balmain, a French couturier, in 1971. The king was ousted in 1973; three presidents were murdered in 1978-79, but the hotel remained standing through bloody coups, civil wars, occupations and Islamist rule. In 1993, during the second civil war, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a warlord, attacked the district of Afshar and positioned his tanks next to the InterCon's pool. The hotel was the site of terrorist attacks in 2011 and 2018. When the Taliban returned in 2021, the staff rolled out prayer mats, turned music off and hid alcohol; the men grew beards and the women were told not to come back.
In late October 2025 Afghanistan revealed plans to build dams on the Kabul river, rankling Pakistan, with which it had skirmished on the border just days before.
Cuts by Donald Trump's administration to humanitarian aid, the pushback of refugees by Iran and drought are all pressures on the country.
Endless Loop, n.: see Loop, Endless. Loop, Endless, n.: see Endless Loop.