Afghanistan is not only unstable at present. It has since turned out to be a very dangerous overcrowded land with terrorist groups, foreign fighters, hard line ideology, weaker governance and criminals’ economies all superimposing each other. It is in any actual sense a pressure chamber. Pakistan on the other hand has been playing the role of the lid, maintaining that pressure on it and containing an eruption of the region far wider. That is a very costly, misunderstood and mishandled stand abroad. Yet the reality is plain. Pakistan would already be facing a far greater failure of security, had it not been to receive, relieve and encircle the shock spilling out of Afghanistan.

This needs to be said clearly. Sources of danger are ordinary Afghans. Their sufferings are war, hunger, collapse and abandonment. The very danger is the political order established since 2021, the combination of armed absolutism, and ideological control and offers breathing space to transnational terrorist actors. The Afghanistan ruled by Taliban has been turned into a free haven of terror. The United Nations monitoring has repeatedly reported that there are more than 20 international terror groups other than thousands of foreign fighters. Broad estimates put the number of terrorists at the range between 20,000 and 23,000 of which more than 50 have been regarded to be foreign nationals. 

Even the Global Terrorism Index 2026 only contributes to the making of the image even harder to disregard. Ever since the Taliban conquered Afghanistan, Afghanistan has become the epicenter of the terror spillover in the region and Pakistan has paid the initial and the most expensive price. By 2025, the attacks and deaths in Pakistan were more than 74 percent and 67 percent respectively along the Afghanistan Pakistan boundary. The Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan was the deadliest organization murdering 56 percent of people in terrorism. It also conducted 595 attacks and killed 637 individuals, and this represents a 13 percent lethality and capacity increase. These are not spontaneous events of mad militants. They signal a properly organized refuge on the other side of the border, where they could organize, get fit, plan, and relocate.

What is even more problematic is that the war on terrorism in Afghanistan is not a one-camp no-weapon and no-hideout war at the moment. It is an ideology that is also of mass production. As of August 2021, the madrassa network began expanding and reached more than 23,000 schools in comparison to an estimated 13,000 schools in 2021 in Taliban leadership. The student enrolment has been boosted by 1.5 million to nearly 3 million. It is an enormous social engineering program. Such seminaries are not the side-lined religious spaces any more, in the society. They are currently being applied as the primary means of administration, political communications and social policing. When a ruling order goes so vigorous in the doctrinal education by closing pluralism, employment, and dissent, it is not establishing a state. It is adherence of production.

This ideology of the same reasoning runs through the Taliban Criminal Procedure Code 2026 which entrenches the hierarchy, criminalizes dissent, and makes obedience a legal system. Together, the spread of madrassas and the new juridical order is a closed system of indoctrination. This is significant because it constitutes an uninterrupted line between ideological brainwashing, and active militancy. Companies such as TTP, Al Qaeda, and ISIL K do not need to operate in secluded areas because the surrounding environment has already harmonized the intolerance, absolutism and violent exclusion. This is what makes the order that is present in Afghanistan inadmissible to the discussion of the local experiment of the governance. It has transnational implications in its midst.

The 37th United Nations report of February 2026 is categorical in this regard. It confirms that terrorist networks have not been disrupted by the Taliban rule. It has enabled them. TTP is estimated to have between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters within the field alone with even more freedom of movement and cross border attacks on Pakistan. The Taliban organizations have also been reported to have been infiltrated with the elements of ETIM, with about 250 members joining the police. It should act as an eye opener to the individuals who are still set on the idea to make a clean cut between the state force and the terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda continues to possess safe houses and a force multiplier and trainer. The ISIL K has stayed entrenched in the north of Afghanistan. This is not active co-existence. It is an ecosystem which strengthens itself.

Herein history gives us a warning, and it is a warning not to be disregarded the second time. In 1996, Osama bin laden abandoned Sudan and settled in Afghanistan under the shelter of Taliban which allowed Al Qaeda to include thousands of other foreign militants. This was not the result within the borders of Afghanistan. It brought about the bombing of the embassies in 1998 and later 9/11. The system currently witnessable is too commonplace: safe haven, ideological brainwashing, the existence of the foreign fighters and the possibility to work outside. The names can be changed in other instances but the trend is similar. After transforming Afghanistan into the nest of armed doctrine and transnational militancy, the damage does not stay within the borders of Afghanistan.

© Eurasia Review