Russia is courting the Taliban with one hand and arming the Taliban’s neighbor with the other. Moscow was the first country to recognize the Taliban, a diplomatic coup it has since tried to turn to its advantage. Now it is rushing weapons and border equipment to Tajikistan to guard against threats from Afghan soil. The […]

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The two sides turn to proxy groups after eight months of a conflict that has taken a heavy toll on civilians.

© Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Five years after seizing Kabul, the Taliban’s strongest argument for international acceptance rests on control. The Taliban governs every provincial capital and faces no conventional army capable of marching on Kabul. It repeatedly cites improved security as proof that Afghanistan’s post-2021 order is settled. But armed resistance is becoming more geographically dispersed, more organizationally diverse […]

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I have watched Pakistan-Afghanistan relations long enough to distrust easy headlines, and last week’s news produced a few of them. At the Center-2026 (Tsentr-2026) war games in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, Taliban officers stood among the foreign observers. Reports say it was the first time Moscow had invited a Taliban military delegation since the movement returned […]

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For years, Pakistan’s claim that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan operates from sanctuaries inside Afghanistan produced a familiar exchange: Islamabad accused, Kabul denied, and each new militant attack triggered another round of recrimination. That pattern is becoming harder to sustain. The sanctuary dispute can now be tested against a growing body of evidence rather than competing claims […]

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