For five years, the Taliban has attempted to present its return to power as the restoration of security in Afghanistan. Yet the question facing the region is increasingly different: security for whom, and at what cost to Afghanistan’s neighbours?
A recent Atlantic Council assessment offers an uncomfortable answer. Afghanistan remains an enabling environment for terrorist organisations, with groups such as al-Qaeda, TTP and IS-K continuing to operate from or around the country. The assessment argues that terrorism remains a reality in South Asia because of the resilience of groups such as TTP and IS-K and the environment created by Taliban rule.
Afghanistan’s Security Problem Did Not End With the Taliban’s Victory
The Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 changed the structure of Afghanistan’s conflict, but it did not erase the terrorist networks that had developed over decades.
Instead, Afghanistan entered a new phase in which several organisations operate alongside, against or in complicated relationships with the Taliban authorities.
The assessment identifies the Taliban as providing an enabling environment for terrorists organisations, while specifically describing TTP as one of the Taliban’s most dangerous allies. TTP uses bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan to conduct attacks in Pakistan, with its attacks frequently targeting Pakistani security forces.
This creates a fundamental security dilemma for Pakistan. Islamabad is not confronting terrorism solely from an organisation operating independently across an international border. It is confronting a terrorist network operating from Afghan territory while the authorities controlling that territory have repeatedly failed to eliminate the threat.
The result is a security environment in which the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is no longer merely a geographical boundary. It has become a contested security space.
TTP: The Most Immediate Threat to Pakistan
Among Afghanistan-based terrorist organisations, TTP represents the most direct threat to Pakistan.
The Atlantic Council explicitly describes TTP as one of the Taliban’s most dangerous allies and states that the group uses bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan to conduct attacks against Pakistan.
For Pakistan, this is not an abstract counterterrorism problem. TTP has attacked security personnel, civilians, police officers and other state institutions. Its campaign has imposed a continuing security burden on Pakistan’s western frontier and forced Islamabad to devote substantial military and intelligence resources to countering cross-border militant activity.
The deeper problem is the contradiction between Taliban assurances and the operational reality.
If Kabul claims that Afghan territory will not be used against another state, then the continued presence and activity of TTP demands more than political assurances. It requires measurable action: dismantling bases, restricting movement, disrupting recruitment and preventing Afghan territory from being used to plan and launch attacks.
Al-Qaeda’s Shadow Has Not Disappeared
The second major concern is al-Qaeda.
The return of the Taliban did not erase the historical relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Earlier Atlantic Council analysis warned that the interdependence between the two organisations complicated assumptions that the Taliban could simply prevent al-Qaeda from operating from Afghan territory.
The concern is not necessarily that Afghanistan has immediately returned to the pre-9/11 model. The more important point is that terrorist organisations require time and space to regenerate.
A terrorist network does not need to control an entire country to become dangerous. It needs leadership, communications, recruitment, training, financing, ideological infrastructure and enough freedom to survive.
That is precisely why Afghanistan’s terrorist ecosystem matters.
A group weakened by years of military operations can rebuild when pressure is reduced. Leadership can regenerate. Recruits can be indoctrinated. Networks can reconnect. Operational knowledge can be transferred to a new generation.
IS-K Complicates the Taliban’s Security Narrative
There is an important distinction that should not be ignored: IS-K is not a Taliban ally.
The Atlantic Council explicitly notes that the Taliban has conducted military offensives against IS-K and that these operations have contributed to a reduction in the group’s attacks inside Afghanistan. Yet the organisation has remained resilient and has developed a growing ability to project threats beyond South Asia.
That contradiction is crucial.
The Taliban can legitimately point to its campaign against IS-K as evidence that it is fighting terrorism. But the existence of one militant organisation’s conflict with another does not prove that Afghanistan has ceased to be a terrorist hub.
The relevant question is whether the territory is capable of supporting terrorism.
The answer remains yes.
Atlantic Council analysis has previously described Afghanistan as a renewed hub of extremist leadership, training and attack plotting, noting IS-K’s ability to recruit foreign nationals and coordinate operations beyond Afghanistan.
Therefore, the Taliban’s fight against IS-K cannot be treated as evidence that the broader terrorist ecosystem has disappeared.
From a Regional Problem to an International One
The most dangerous development is the internationalisation of Afghanistan’s terrorist ecosystem.
For years, terrorism in Afghanistan was primarily discussed as a domestic or regional problem. That assumption is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
IS-K’s recruitment of foreign nationals demonstrates how Afghanistan can function as more than a sanctuary for Afghan militants. It can become a meeting point for extremist networks from different countries.
The Atlantic Council has previously documented IS-K’s expansion of recruitment beyond Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns to third-country nationals and its ability to coordinate attacks beyond Afghanistan. Its analysis cited the March 2024 Moscow concert-hall attack and disrupted plots connected to the 2024 Paris Olympics as examples of the broader external threat associated with the Afghanistan-based extremist ecosystem.
This is why the security consequences cannot be measured only by the number of attacks occurring inside Afghanistan.
Central Asia Is Increasingly Exposed
The threat also extends northward.
Afghanistan’s geography places it directly beside Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, while its wider militant ecosystem has connections extending into Central Asia.
Atlantic Council analysis has previously noted that IS-K and other Islamic State elements seek to destabilise Afghanistan and its neighbours, while an Atlantic Council memorandum cited UN assessments indicating that multiple terrorist organisations had greater freedom of manoeuvre under Taliban rule. These included al-Qaeda, TTP, IS-K and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), among others.
For Central Asian states, the concern is not simply infiltration across borders.
It is the possibility of Afghanistan becoming a recruitment, training and operational environment from which extremist networks can develop capabilities directed against neighbouring states.
Afghanistan Is Becoming a Test of Counterterrorism Credibility
Ignoring Afghanistan’s terrorist ecosystem will not make it disappear. But treating the Taliban as the sole security solution is equally problematic.
The Atlantic Council has previously warned that over-the-horizon counterterrorism has serious limitations and argued that Afghanistan has again become a hub of extremist leadership, training and plotting.
The lesson is straightforward: counterterrorism cannot depend exclusively on assurances from the authorities controlling the territory where terrorist organisations operate.
It requires intelligence sharing, border security, financial monitoring, pressure on terrorist leadership and credible mechanisms for verifying whether terrorist networks are actually being dismantled.
For Pakistan, this means continuing to treat TTP as a national-security threat regardless of political developments in Kabul. For Central Asian states, it means strengthening border and intelligence cooperation. For the wider international community, it means recognising that Afghanistan’s terrorist problem does not stop at the country’s borders.
Taliban Rule Is Not the End of Afghanistan’s Terrorism Problem
Afghanistan under the Taliban is not simply a country struggling to rebuild after decades of war. It is also a security environment in which multiple terrorist organisations continue to operate, compete, recruit and adapt.
The Taliban has fought IS-K. That is a fact.
But the continued presence of TTP, the persistence of al-Qaeda-linked networks and the wider presence of foreign terrorist organisations demonstrate why the broader terrorist question remains unresolved. Atlantic Council’s latest assessment makes the point clearly: terrorism remains a reality in South Asia because resilient groups continue to operate and because Taliban rule provides an enabling environment for militant organisations.
The international community therefore needs to stop treating Afghanistan’s terrorism problem as a closed chapter of the post-9/11 era.
It is not.
Afghanistan has once again become a central node in a regional terrorist ecosystem whose effects extend into Pakistan, Central Asia and potentially much farther afield.
