An early July counternarcotics operation by Taliban authorities triggered a week-long outbreak of violence in Khash District in central Badakhshan Province, resulting in as many as 15 dead. Protests and repression in the area are not new, as violence also broke out during last year’s poppy cultivation season. The drug trade, competition over minerals, ethnic and religious tensions, and the presence of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) will likely continue to challenge the Taliban regime’s ability to exert control over Badakhshan, a province where it historically enjoyed only limited support.
Unless things escalate further, the recent unrest in Badakhshan seems unlikely to pose a threat to the Taliban’s control over the country. However, the province should serve as a bellwether for the Taliban’s attempts to adapt its dogmatic governance to an increasingly underserved national population.
Badakhshan Province was never ruled by the Taliban during the first emirate, though the movement did enjoy some support in the area. Several key members of the Taliban are from the province, including the current Chief of Army Staff Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat. During the insurgency, the Taliban presence increased in the central districts of the province after 2014. While the Taliban lacked the manpower in the northeast to expand their base of support past a few districts, the Taliban’s presence around Faizabad meant that it was only the ninth provincial capital to fall once the group began its takeover of the country in 2021. Since the takeover, the Taliban have been careful in their governance of the province, seeking to manage their lack of support in the more remote districts of the province.
The ethnic disposition of the Badakhshan presents a problem for the Taliban. Tajiks and Uzbeks make up the overwhelming majority of the province’s population with a limited number of Pashtuns sprinkled among the urban areas, working as traders or government officials. In an effort to accommodate local sensitivities, the Taliban has allowed Badakhshi commanders and officials to hold government posts in their local areas, something not generally allowed elsewhere in the country. However, as time as passed, there is an increasing tension between local Tajik and Uzbek Taliban members and Pashtun senior leaders from outside of the province.
There are also sectarian elements to the instability in Badakhshan as the Deobandi Taliban have sought to assert control over Salafi mosques and Ismaili prayer houses and cultural centers in the province. Religious tensions in the province likely caused the killing of a local Agha Khan Foundation official on July 9 and a local Salafist Taliban leader on May 27.
While it has been quiet in recent months, ISKP has a historic presence in Badakhshan, capitalizing on the area’s religious and ethnic fault lines. The Taliban target ISKP cells in the province as they are identified, to mixed results. Iranian officials claimed the Islamic State’s January 3, 2024 attack in Kerman was facilitated out of Badakhshan. However, ISKP only conducted four attacks inside the province in 2024, and has not claimed an attack in Badakhshan this year.
Despite the group’s recent decline, its actions set the stage for the current problems in the province. On June 6, 2023, ISKP killed the deputy governor of Badakhshan with a car bomb. ISKP then conducted a suicide attack on the deputy governor’s funeral two days later. Recognizing the need for a firmer hand in the province, the Taliban named Muhammad Ayub Khalid, a Pashtun, to be Badakhshan’s governor. Khalid’s prior experience as a military commander suggests the regime is increasingly focused on security in the region. The movement of additional Pashtuns into intelligence and police positions in the province set the stage for renewed tensions with the local populace as the national government seeks to tighten its control over Badakhshan.
Competition between local leaders and the national government over Badakhshan’s rich mineral resources is a critical driver for instability. The province has aluminum, gold, and limestone deposits as well as jewels such as rubies and lapis lazuli. The Taliban regime awarded mining contracts in 2024 for the region’s large deposits and tried to crack down on illegal mines run by the local population. Control over the province’s mines is no trivial matter. The Taliban seek to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral wealth in order to mitigate the pressure of Western sanctions and impact of persistent budget shortfalls. For Badakshis, the mines provide a critical revenue stream for many to meet their basic needs as the government provides only minimal services and the terrain and climate limit agricultural opportunities in the province.
Conflict over the drug trade is also increasing in Badakhshan. After the Taliban banned poppy cultivation across the country, Badakhshan has emerged as the new center of the Afghan drug trade. The Taliban anti-drug efforts largely depend on deterrence of farmers, rather than aggressive eradication or interdiction campaigns. The Taliban was able to deter poppy cultivation in other parts of the country through strong networks of supporters and allies that convinced the population of the rectitude of the ban. The Taliban in Badakhshan lacked that support network. In fact, many local Taliban commanders did not enforce the ban. Further, southern Pashtun drug traffickers established connections with Badakhshi growers to refine their opium to heroin for shipment to international markets.
The eruption of cultivation eventually became something Taliban senior leadership could not ignore. As the Taliban began eradication in the province in spring of 2024, they moved largely Pashtun fighters into Badakhshan from other provinces. The new troops almost immediately began fighting not only with the local population, but eventually with local Badakhshi Taliban as well.
As they seek to smooth over ethnic and religious turbulence and improve control, the Taliban have made significant investments in Badakhshan. The government has built canals and bridges in addition to a terminal for international cargo handling. The most notable, and ambitious, infrastructure project is a road through the Wakhan Corridor to connect the province with China. A road project to better connect Badakhshan to Panjshir and Nuristan is also underway. These roads serve to improve the security forces’ access to restive parts of the country and increase the government’s ability to establish additional mines in Badakhshan and elsewhere in the northeast.
With the transportation network improving and Pashtuns now firmly entrenched in key positions in the province, the Taliban are gradually moving to bring governance in Badakhshan in line with Afghanistan’s other provinces. Since Khalid’s installation as governor, local officials have begun floggings for moral offenses, removing women from educational positions, seizing weapons, and regulating holiday celebrations, things that started long ago in other parts of the country. These moves have further exacerbated popular grievances.
When Taliban forces showed up in Darayim and Argo districts in 2024 and in Argo, Jurm, and Khash districts in May and July this year to eradicate local poppy crops, violence was an extraordinarily likely outcome. The Taliban seem to be developing a playbook for such disturbances: withdraw the offending troops and reconstitute, flood the zone with reinforcements, cut off local access to internet, arrest any complicit local commanders, and employ senior Badakhshi Taliban leaders like Fitrat and others to mediate. Little has been done to address core grievances in Badakhshan, so additional violence next May, June, and July is likely as Taliban forces again eradicate poppy ahead of the harvest.
Leaders of the anti-Taliban resistance, like General Jalaluddin Yaftali and Vice President Amrullah Saleh, were quick to encourage Badakhshan’s population to expand the revolt. It was not to be. The geographic and social conditions that make Badakhshan difficult for the Taliban to control make it difficult for any widespread unrest to spill out from the region. Badakhshan will remain turbulent, though it might be possible for unrest to challenge the regime’s ability to control the neighboring portions of Takhar and Panjshir provinces. Unless there is a substantial deterioration in conditions, it is likely the Taliban will do just enough to keep northeastern Afghanistan under control. However, Badakhshan should be watched closely for any further challenges to Taliban authority.
