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GUIDANCE NOTE
Last update: January 2023

The Taliban takeover

On 15 August 2021, the Taliban leaders entered the presidential palace and declared the war to be over, while emergency evacuations organised by foreign countries took place in Kabul. Resistance forces, i.e. the National Resistance Front (NRF), held out for a few weeks in the province of Panjshir before the Taliban claimed to have defeated them on 6 September 2021.

Following the Taliban takeover, the number of security incidents reported in the country decreased significantly, and confrontations were generally limited to areas where resistance groups formed and operated and where the ISKP was active. Increased fighting between the NRF and the Taliban was reported in January/February and May 2022. The Taliban have also been facing an increase in ISKP attacks mainly in the east and the north of the country. 

However, the Taliban claimed control of the entire territory of Afghanistan and no other actor reportedly exercised territorial control or constituted an existential threat to the Taliban’s authority as of June 2022.

State building and political system

Following the sudden collapse of the former government of Afghanistan, the Taliban announced the re-establishment of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, which was previously in power in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. As of June 2022, the Taliban de facto authorities had not yet been formally recognised by any foreign government.

During the first press conference after the takeover, Taliban spokesmen said that the Taliban had changed during the past 20 years in terms of experience, maturity and vision, but that Afghanistan was still a Muslim nation and that there would be ‘a strong Islamic government’. They announced that they intended to act on the basis of their principles, religion and culture, and emphasised the importance of Islam and that ‘nothing should be against Islamic values’. Moreover, the Taliban have issued instructions impacting, inter alia, media, girls’ and women’s rights and the general population as regards observing Islamic law (sharia) in their daily lives.

The Taliban de facto government suspended the previous Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s constitution and announced a review of the compliance of existing Afghan laws with the sharia. However, as of early 2022, the applicable legal framework remained unclear and by 1 June 2022, the Taliban had not formally enacted a constitution.

Taliban remained unclear on policies they would pursue. The legal instructions issued by them were in the form of decrees and general guidance that were enforced unevenly. The lack of clarity regarding the prevailing legal order and lack of predictability in its application were reported as some of the most prominent factors of life in Afghanistan after the takeover.

Humanitarian situation

After the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was in ‘free fall’, with public services and the banking system collapsing. In January 2022, the UN launched the largest single country aid appeal in history. 24.4 million people were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance. The Afghan healthcare system was also reported to be on the brink of collapse.