PUBLISHED November 9, 2025
The story of Afghanistan’s political deception began not on the battlefield, but at a negotiating table in Doha, where the world believed in diplomacy and the Taliban mastered the art of deception. When the Doha agreement was signed in February 2020 between the US and the Taliban, it was hailed as a framework for peace that promised the end of America’s longest war and the beginning of Afghan reconciliation. But five years later, what the world faces is a broken deal, 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 would not be used to threaten the security of the United States or its allies. This clause required a clear separation from terrorist organizations, especially al-Qaeda and its affiliates. However, empirical evidence from the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team’s 35th Report (S/2025/71) reveals the opposite. The Taliban not only maintained but deepened their operational and ideological collaboration with terrorist networks, including the TTP, ISKP and al-Qaeda.
The report explicitly names Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as “the largest terrorist group in Afghanistan”, sustained through financial and logistical support from the Kabul regime. It confirms that the Taliban make monthly payments of 3 million Afghanis ($43,000) to the family of TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud, while the TTP has training centers in Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktika.
These camps, once hotbeds for Taliban fighters, have evolved into regional militant hubs where suicide operations and ideological indoctrination are jointly managed by TTP and al-Qaeda operatives. The data paint a stark picture: Afghanistan has returned to the epicenter of terrorism that the Doha Framework tried to dismantle.
The agreement’s second commitment was to promote intra-Afghan negotiations and establish an inclusive political structure representing all ethnic and political groups. The Taliban publicly accepted this principle, but in practice they obliterated it. The collapse of the intra-Afghan dialogue in 2021 was followed by a military takeover that imposed an authoritarian rule without diversity or democracy. Governance today remains the monopoly of Kandahari hardliners, with no representation for women, minorities or opposition groups. The Taliban’s so-called “Islamic Emirate” is maintained not through consent, but through coercion. Their repression has been particularly brutal against women, the first victims of their ideological decline. A 2025 UN Women report, developed with EU support, ranks Afghanistan as the second largest gender gap in the world, with a 76 percent difference in health, education and employment outcomes between men and women. The Afghanistan Gender Index reveals that women realize only 17 percent of their potential, compared to a global average of 60.7 percent. 78 percent of young Afghan women are now excluded from education, employment or training, and secondary education rates for girls are collapsing to zero due to education bans. The Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has reinstated gender apartheid and criminalizes women’s visibility in public life. These facts empirically disprove the Taliban’s claim of inclusive governance and confirm their systematic violation of the second Doha pillar.
The third pillar, the prisoner release clause, has proven to be the most disastrous for regional security. The agreement mandated the release of thousands of Taliban prisoners as a “confidence-building measure.” Yet this mass release became the resurgence of militancy. Among those released were several hardened TTP commanders who quickly rejoined the battlefield, reviving the networks that Pakistan’s counter-terrorism campaigns had dismantled at huge cost. The results are quantifiable. In 2025 alone, Pakistan conducted 62,113 intelligence-based operations (IBOs), an average of 208 operations daily, against terrorist threats from Afghan sanctuaries. These operations resulted in 1,667 terrorists killed and 4,373 incidents neutralized, but at a steep human cost: 1,073 martyrs, including 584 soldiers, 133 policemen and 356 civilians. In Khyber district, which remains the frontline of this asymmetric war, 514 incidents took place in 2025, causing 198 casualties, with 36 Army and FC personnel martyred and 138 injured. These figures reveal the direct consequences of the Taliban’s duplicity. Their promise of counter-terror cooperation has been replaced by the facilitation of terror. The Taliban’s unfulfilled commitments have forced Pakistan into a perpetual defensive posture, spending lives and resources to contain a threat that should have been neutralized under Doha’s First and Third Paragraphs.
The fourth and final commitment in the Doha Agreement required the Taliban to normalize relations with the international community and demonstrate responsible governance. Instead, Afghanistan stands isolated, unrecognized by any major power, economically crippled and morally bankrupt. The regime thrives on drugs and illegal trade, turning the country into the world’s largest producer of opium.
Recent anti-narcotics operations in Pakistan’s Tirah Valley revealed a disturbing link: local poppy crops, grown over 12,000 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with profits of Rs 1.8 to 3.2 million per acre. hectares, are smuggled into Afghanistan under Taliban protection, where they are refined into herophetamine (and refined into herophetamine). Even local politicians and tribal brokers are complicit in this network, revealing how the Afghan economy has merged with the criminal underworld. This is not governance; it is state capture of crime.
The Taliban’s behavior at the third UN-facilitated Doha meeting in October 2025 further revealed their 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 with Afghan civil society, women’s representatives or human rights defenders. Their delegates walked out of sessions that raised issues of inclusivity and education bans, rejecting appeals from the UN and Qatari facilitators. This pattern repeated itself at the Istanbul consultations, where Turkish mediators reported the same grumbling attitude and arrogance. Their refusal to cooperate with even their traditional allies underscored a dangerous isolationism and an unwillingness to reform. Taken together, these two meetings showed that the Taliban regime is not only reneging on its past commitments, but also rejecting any attempt to return it to a rules-based order.
Afghanistan exists today as a rogue state, irresponsible, unrepentant and unreformed. Its regime violates international agreements, sponsors terrorism, and suppresses the rights of its own citizens, all while claiming legitimacy before the very world it deceives. The Doha experiment has failed, not because diplomacy failed, but because the Taliban never intended to honor diplomacy. Their rule is not born of faith, but of fear; their laws are not Islamic but despotic. Even as Pakistan continues to pay the price, with over a thousand martyrs in 2025 alone, the international community must confront the reality that appeasement has emboldened an extremist state in the heart of Asia. The Istanbul dialogue, like the Doha negotiations before it, has revealed the futility of negotiating with actors who use diplomacy as a camouflage for aggression. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime stands today as a case study in how peace without accountability creates perpetual conflict. The world can no longer afford illusions; it must choose between containment and complicity. And for Pakistan, the message is even clearer: stability cannot be outsourced to a neighbor that thrives on chaos, nor can peace be negotiated with those who sanctify deception as statecraft.
All facts and information are solely the responsibility of the author
The author is an independent researcher with a background in political science specializing in national and regional security with a focus on critical strategic issues. She can be contacted at [email protected] and followed at X @OmayAimen
