The broken promise of Doha | The Express Tribune

PUBLISHED
November 09, 2025

The story of Afghanistan’s political deceit began not on the battlefield but at a negotiation table in Doha, where the world placed its faith in diplomacy, and the Taliban mastered the art of deception. When the Doha Agreement was signed in February 2020 between the United States and the Taliban, it was hailed as a framework for peace, promising the end of America’s longest war and the beginning of Afghan reconciliation. Yet five years later, what stands before the world is a shattered accord, a destabilised region, and a regime that thrives on repression, radicalism, and lies. The Taliban exploited peace to prepare for war, used diplomacy to consolidate terror, and turned Afghanistan into a rogue state sustained by drugs, fear, and militancy.

The Doha Agreement had four main pillars. The first and most foundational pillar of the Doha Accord required that Afghan soil would not be used to threaten the security of the US or its allies. This clause demanded a clear severance from terrorist organisations, notably al-Qaeda and its affiliates. However, empirical evidence from the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team’s 35th report (S/2025/71) reveals the opposite. The Taliban not only retained but deepened their operational and ideological collaboration with terrorist networks including TTP, ISKP, and al-Qaeda.

The report explicitly names Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as “the largest terrorist group in Afghanistan,” sustained through financial and logistical support from the Kabul regime. It confirms that the Taliban provide monthly payments of 3 million Afghanis (USD 43,000) to the family of TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud, while TTP maintains training centres in Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost, and Paktika.

These camps, once the breeding ground for Taliban fighters, have evolved into regional hubs of militancy where suicide operations and ideological indoctrination are jointly managed by TTP and al-Qaeda operatives. The data paints a stark picture: Afghanistan has reverted into the terrorism epicentre the Doha framework sought to dismantle.

The second commitment of the accord was to foster intra-Afghan negotiations and establish an inclusive political structure representing all ethnic and political groups. The Taliban publicly agreed to this principle, yet in practice they annihilated it. The collapse of intra-Afghan dialogue in 2021 was followed by a military takeover that imposed an authoritarian rule devoid of diversity or democracy. Governance today remains the monopoly of Kandahari hardliners, with no representation for women, minorities, or opposition groups. The Taliban’s so-called “Islamic Emirate” is sustained not through consent but through coercion. Their repression has been particularly brutal towards women, the first victims of their ideological regression. A 2025 UN Women report, developed with EU support, ranks Afghanistan as having the second-widest gender gap in the world, with a 76 per cent disparity in health, education, and employment outcomes between men and women. The Afghanistan Gender Index reveals that women are realizing only 17 per cent of their potential, compared to a global average of 60.7 per cent. Seventy-eight per cent of young Afghan women are now excluded from education, employment, or training, and the secondary school completion rate for girls is collapsing to zero due to education bans. The Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has reintroduced gender apartheid, criminalising women’s visibility in public life. These facts empirically disprove the Taliban’s claim to inclusive governance and confirm their systematic violation of the second Doha pillar.

The third pillar, the prisoner release clause, has proved to be the most catastrophic for regional security. The agreement mandated the freeing of thousands of Taliban detainees as a “confidence-building measure.” Yet, this mass release became the resurrection of militancy. Among those freed were several hardened TTP commanders who swiftly rejoined the battlefield, reigniting the networks that Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaigns had dismantled through immense sacrifice. The results are quantifiable. In 2025 alone, Pakistan conducted 62,113 intelligence-based operations (IBOs), averaging 208 operations daily, against terrorist threats emanating from Afghan sanctuaries. These operations resulted in 1,667 terrorists killed and 4,373 incidents neutralised, but at a steep human cost: 1,073 martyrs, including 584 soldiers, 133 law enforcement personnel, and 356 civilians. In Khyber District, which remains the frontline of this asymmetric war, 514 incidents occurred in 2025, causing 198 casualties, with 36 Army and FC personnel martyred and 138 injured. These numbers expose the direct consequences of Taliban duplicity. Their promise of counterterrorism cooperation has been replaced by facilitation of terror. The Taliban’s unfulfilled obligations have forced Pakistan into a perpetual defensive posture, spending lives and resources to contain a menace that should have been neutralised under Doha’s first and third clauses.

The fourth and final commitment of the Doha Agreement required the Taliban to normalise relations with the international community and demonstrate responsible governance. Instead, Afghanistan stands isolated, unrecognised by any major power, economically crippled, and morally bankrupt. The regime thrives on narcotics and illicit trade, transforming the country into the world’s largest producer of opium.

Recent anti-narcotics operations in Pakistan’s Tirah Valley revealed a disturbing nexus: local poppy crops, grown over 12,000 acres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with profits of Rs 1.8 to 3.2 million per acre, are trafficked into Afghanistan under Taliban protection, where they are refined into heroin and methamphetamine (ice). Even local politicians and tribal intermediaries are complicit in this network, revealing how the Afghan economy has fused with the criminal underworld. This is not governance; it is state capture by crime.

The Taliban’s conduct at the third UN-facilitated Doha meeting in October 2025 further exposed their hostility to global norms. During the session, which gathered key international stakeholders to review humanitarian aid and counterterrorism compliance, the Taliban delegation refused to engage with Afghan civil society, women’s representatives, or human rights advocates. Their delegates walked out of sessions that raised questions on inclusivity and education bans, dismissing appeals by the UN and Qatari facilitators. This pattern repeated at the Istanbul consultations, where Turkish mediators reported the same grumbling attitude and arrogance. Their refusal to cooperate with even their traditional allies underscored a dangerous isolationism and an unwillingness to reform. Together, these two meetings demonstrated that the Taliban regime not only flouts its earlier commitments but also rejects any effort to bring it back to a rules-based order.

Afghanistan today exists as a rogue state, unaccountable, unrepentant, and unreformed. Its regime violates international agreements, sponsors terrorism, and tramples the rights of its own citizens, all while pleading legitimacy before the same world it deceives. The Doha experiment has failed, not because diplomacy failed, but because the Taliban never intended to honour diplomacy. Their governance is not born of faith but fear; their laws are not Islamic but despotic. Even as Pakistan continues to pay the price, with over a thousand martyrs in 2025 alone, the international community must confront the reality that appeasement has emboldened an extremist state at the heart of Asia. The Istanbul dialogue, like the Doha talks before it, has exposed the futility of negotiating with actors who exploit diplomacy as camouflage for aggression. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime stands today as a case study in how peace without accountability breeds perpetual conflict. The world can no longer afford illusions; it must choose between containment and complicity. And for Pakistan, the message is even clearer: stability cannot be outsourced to a neighbour that thrives on chaos, nor can peace be negotiated with those who sanctify deceit as statecraft.

All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer

The author is an independent researcher with a background in Political Science, specialising in national and regional security with a focus on critical strategic affairs. She can be contacted at omayaimen333@gmail.com and followed on X @OmayAimen