This book analyses the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan post-2021, examining how the group’s governance strategies and international relationships have evolved. It offers a comprehensive look at the Taliban’s interaction with global and regional powers and the implications for Afghanistan’s future.

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States followed its longest military engagement in Afghanistan, lasting 20 years. While the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was quickly dismantled by the US-led NATO mission in 2001, the Taliban soon emerged as a strong insurgent group. The group’s revival made many regional and other actors, for example China, Pakistan, Russia, and Qatar, support a political settlement with the Taliban. Hence, all regional actors backed peace negotiations between the Taliban and the US and thus endorsed the US–Taliban peace deal signed in Doha in 2020. This peace deal, which did not include the Ashraf Ghani government, obligated the US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan. With the US leadership change, the Biden administration announced a complete withdrawal by the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.

As US troops were departing (between July–August 2021), the Taliban began an offensive, seizing more territories in Afghanistan. Notably, the Taliban encountered no significant resistance from the Afghan National Army. This left many observers in shock and with many questions: What happened to the Afghan National Army? How did the Ghani administration disappear so quickly? How did the intra-Afghan peace process fail? This book by Hassan Abbas answers these and many other questions to understand the return of the Taliban and how the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will behave internally and externally. In this scholarly piece of work, the author uses important insights gained from wide-ranging interviews, including Taliban members.

The book is structured around six chapters, excluding the introduction and conclusion. The first three chapters are very crucial to understanding how the Taliban became an important political force after the collapse of the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 2001. The second chapter focuses on the Taliban as an organisation or as an insurgent group by providing details of intra-group dynamics and governance. The third chapter examines the Taliban’s policies in a range of areas, including women’s and minority rights. Chapter four analyses the Taliban’s ideology and worldviews, and therefore is significant in understanding the group’s ideological contradictions. This follows a chapter on the Taliban’s relationships with the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State of Khorasan. The final chapter focuses on relations of the Taliban with some selected countries.

The introduction chapter does an excellent job in terms of setting the scene. The author not only talks about the need for the book but also focuses on some rather unknown internal dynamics within Afghanistan; for example, the alliance between Ashraf Ghani and the Haqqani network. It also goes into detail on how Ghani adopted a filtered information system that made him believe that the US would never let Afghanistan fall into the hands of the Taliban. Because of this, Ghani kept promising the US that “he would fight to the death.” This did not happen, and he was quick to run away when the Taliban got close. The author provides in-depth accounts of basically small group dynamics concerning Ghani and people close to him, like Hamdullah Mohib, his deputy chief of staff. Leading up to the Taliban’s takeover, there remained differences between Ghani and Mohib. Moreover, Mohib never enjoyed a cordial relationship with Zalmany Khalilzad, then US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation.

How did the Taliban become so strong, and so quickly, and secure their return in 2021? As the author examines, the intra-Afghan peace process played a role in that roughly 5,000 Taliban fighters were released. This happened despite the serious reservations of Ashraf Ghani, and at the insistence oft the Trump administration, who was adamant about fulfilling its commitments under the Doha peace deal. In this process, the Taliban had the upper hand since they had already released approximately 1,000 Afghan security personnel.

Khalilzad was against the idea of withdrawing before the conclusion of the intra-Afghan peace process. This, of course, did not happen because of the Trump and Biden administrations’ insistence on following the timeline. I believe the author could have examined other domestic factors like domestic political dynamics within the US vis-à-vis the economic costs of this war to explain a sudden decline in the political will in Washington to continue fighting the Taliban. The author, however, focuses on domestic problems within Afghanistan, such as nepotism and corruption, that were largely ignored by the US. Here again, there was an opportunity to investigate how massive corruption had played a role in the Taliban’s narrative against Western-backed governments in Kabul.

After examining the Taliban’s response to the US troop withdrawal, the author delves into the group’s governance. Here, he explains the Taliban’s hierarchy of power and the role of the ameer (chief). An attempt was made to examine the Taliban’s religious ideology, but the effort mainly focused on the group’s understanding of the role of women in society.

Chapter three throws the focus onto women’s rights, minority rights, and severe financial crisis. These topics are very important to understand the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s position on key issues of international interest. The author also does an excellent job discussing the challenges of reconciling their interpretation of Islam with modern governance. Here, the author argues that the Taliban cannot be trusted, pointing for instance to their track record on women’s rights. Similarly, chapter four examines the Taliban’s religious beliefs by also discussing the history of Sufism in Afghanistan. In terms of the Taliban’s narratives, the author explains the rigidity of the Taliban.

In chapter five, the author focuses on what remains a key area of international interest–the presence of terrorist organisations in the country. This is important because the US and its NATO allies spent twenty years and trillions of dollars trying to eliminate terrorism or the risk of it to other countries. Currently, the Taliban enjoys friendly relations with an anti-Pakistan group called “Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)” and faces a somewhat serious challenge from IS-KP. While the Taliban has fought against IS-KP, it has resisted Pakistan’s pressure to act against TTP. This chapter is important to understand the historical relationship between the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, and TTP.

The final chapter focuses on the international relations of the Taliban, but in a limited manner. It focuses on key regional and other actors, such as China, Qatar, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and India. For some reason Pakistan has been left out of this analysis. It seems like a rushed attempt that needed in-depth examination to understand how the Taliban have changed from their erstwhile diplomatic approach. For example, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s external linkages were limited from 1996 to 2001. Now this has changed because of its active diplomacy, especially through its Qatar office and allies, and also because of the geopolitical interests of actors like China and India.

Overall, The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan after the Americans Left is a timely and scholarly work that examines a range of factors to help us understand the internal and external dynamics that led to the return of the Taliban in 2021. The author has skillfully used primary data, such as interviews, to support his claims, and that makes this work valuable. This book will certainly be useful for students and scholars interested in Afghanistan and peace and conflict studies.

This is a review of Hassan Abbas’s The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan after the Americans Left (London: Yale University Press, 2023). ISBN: 9780300267884 (hardcover).

Dr Zahid Shahab Ahmed, Associate Professor, National Defence College, United Arab Emirates, and Honorary Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Australia.