By STAFF
“Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980’s: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.” – Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
INTRODUCTION
Afghanistan has not shown up in our global trending news tags, despite the ongoing war with Pakistan. The war with Pakistan is sporadic, and is largely being drowned out by Iran, Ukraine, and Israel in general. Yet, Afghanistan might be shaping up to be the next war frontier born from the quest for AI power.
Destabilization efforts have accelerated in the last six months in Afghanistan, with new factions appearing, and old factions stepping up their effort to take down the Taliban. For China, this is not the news they want to hear; for everyone else, except Russia, this gives them opportunity to move back into contention for the prize many nations want, and many others simply want to prevent others from getting.
That prize is in the soil of Afghanistan. That prize could build the next generation of AI machines. That prize is minerals, trillions of dollars’ worth of minerals.
After the breakout of the war with Pakistan and following the increase in factional activity against the Taliban, we think Afghanistan is already preparing to become the next major focus in the AI wars. For this reason, we chose the state of Afghanistan as this week’s Deep Dive.
A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
We analyze the potential next major AI battleground, the mineral fields of Afghanistan. We assert that the resources of Afghanistan are making it an increasingly important region of the world which is sure to attract more superpower attention than it already has.
The emergence of the AI Wars is becoming an existential threat to the Taliban, and the greatest incentive for its strongest allies, Russia and China, to continue to support it, come what may. Now, the West, especially America, has significant reasons to re-engage with Afghanistan as the two main AI coalitions of power, America and China (with Europe trying to form a third power, but we are skeptical this will eventually emerge), look to secure access to the mineral-rich prize.
In this report, we look at that mineral prize in Afghanistan, the sudden war with Pakistan, the lessons of the Panjshir Valley, the factions currently threatening Taliban power, and an assessment of the current state of Afghanistan.
- THE AI RESOURCE PRIZE
Afghanistan is sitting on undeveloped gold in the form of AI resources. Its professional infrastructure is largely gone, with much of its professional classes killed, exiled, or engaging in action against the Taliban. The United States is not in great need of Afghanistan’s resources, but China is.
The CCP has been cozying up to the Taliban almost from the beginning of their return to power. They continue to cultivate that relationship with hopes of securing exclusive mineral mining rights, especially for AI resources (like lithium).
Other nations like Iran, India, and Turkey, are hoping to get in on the potential Afghanistan mining boom, should the nation ever stabilize enough to sustain such development. As of right now, nations of the west, especially the United States, find themselves on the outside looking in.
- TRADE PARTNERS – Under the Taliban, Afghanistan imports $13.9 billion in trade while exporting only $1.8 billion. Pakistan has been one of its major trade partners, but due to the ongoing war, trade has shifted towards India, China, Central Asia, the UA, and, until the breakout of another war, Iran.
India has been the biggest export winner after the start of the Pakistan War. India is Afghanistan’s new largest export market. The exports are mainly dried goods, spices, coal, carpets, and medicinal plants. While they export some mineral products, the scale is a fraction of the potential for the country.
Other major export markets of note include Iran, China, and Turkey.
Iran is Afghanistan’s largest importer, accounting for nearly 1/3 of Afghanistan’s imported goods. Iran mainly supplies fuel, food, and industrial goods. China, the UAE, and Russia are also major importers. China is looking to make deals with the Taliban to begin mine extraction in the country, specifically targeting AI-essential minerals.
- MINERALS – Afghanistan is sitting on roughly $1-3 trillion worth of AI-essential minerals according to surveys conducted from multiple nations, including the United States. Any hope of accessing these sites at present, and for the last half-century, has been dashed by continued instability in the land.
Afghanistan is rich in lithium, rare earth elements, iron ore, and copper. All of these are essential for AI production. Any nation-state that can secure exclusive rights to mineral development in Afghanistan could secure a major AI resource pipeline to feed its AI machines.
At present, China is currently on the inside track to gain that prize. So far, China’s mining operations in the land are small-scall, as lack of security still prohibits large-scale development. So far, there is little chance the situation on the ground will change anytime soon. If anything, it might get worse.
B. WAR WITH PAKISTAN
In the beginning of 2025, a group calling itself the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stepped up their operations on Pakistani soil. Militant attacks and bombings increased dramatically. The group was protected in Afghanistan by the Taliban government, which appears to be using the group as a destabilizer of an Islamist rival, Pakistan.
The Pakistanis began warning Afghanistan that continued operations by the TTP would be met with retaliation. In late February of this year, Pakistan carried out with its threat.
The war began with airstrikes by the Pakistani Air Force. They claimed to have killed dozens of militants, while Afghanistan claimed they only killed civilians, including women and children. Afghanistan responded with border attacks on Pakistani border posts, claiming they killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers as a result.
The war continues to mostly be Pakistani air strikes, border raids by both sides, and civilian-targeted bombings. There have been various partial ceasefires, with China serving as the main mediator, while Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have also contributed.
Countries mostly taking the side of the Taliban’s Afghanistan include China, India, Iran, and, most aggressively, Russia, the only nation to formally recognize the Taliban state of Afghanistan.
C. PANJSHIR VALLEY
The Panjshir Valley remains a symbol of effective resistance to unwanted rule that was already alive and well when the Soviets attempted to subdue the land.
When the Taliban took power, Panjshir valley was the last territory to conventionally resist them. That resistance would not last, so the people of the land reverted to the tactics they learned under many would-be conquerors.
Under the Soviet Union’s yolk, Ahmad Shah Massoud sustained an effective resistance by relying on an awareness of the terrain to protect him and his men. They engaged in disruptive, morale-killing action by exploiting side valleys and the high terrain. They pounced in small groups no larger than 40 fighters before melting back into the many mountains of the region.
They disrupted troop movements, resource extraction, commerce, and, more importantly, ate at the morale of the Russian soldiers. The Soviets countered with heavy bombardments and raids into the region targeting strategic passes even the Afghanis would have to travel through. They won every battle but failed to hold the land.
In late Summer of 2021, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Ahmad Massoud, led an effort to resist the Taliban advances conventionally. If possible, he intended to physically hold the Panjshir Valley. Unfortunately for him, he soon realized he could not hold the land, so he retreated into the mountains.
Soon, a group formed under Massoud calling itself the National Resistance Front. It adopted the Panjshir Valley tactics that had once targeted Soviet Troops. Now, it would be targeting the Taliban.
The leadership of the group exiled themselves to Tajikistan, while the fighters melted back into the side valleys and high places. The Taliban’s use of drones unchallenged by an enemy air presence has kept the group from holding onto any territory in the region.
While the drones prevent the NRF from openly holding land, they do little to track down fighters or prevent hit-and-run operations. The NRF is intending to wear down the enemy, demoralize their fighters, and cost the Taliban resources they can ill afford to use, especially while facing a war with Pakistan (a war they mostly started).
D. THE FACTIONS
There are roughly 22 semi-effective to effective anti-Taliban factions in Afghanistan, and one faction that opposes all others, and violently so.
Most of the members of the 22 anti-Taliban factions come from members of the past government and military, along with a large portion of the professional class that began to emerge under U.S. occupation.
We are covering the six most significant factions. Those factions outside of the ones covered here have little to no measurable influence on the reality of power as of the creation of this report.
Most of the 22 factions continue to join Islam and the state. None of them, outside the Islamic State, are seeking to control human action more, or even as much, as the Taliban does. The rest of the factions we cover here claim to want to decrease the power of the state. One faction seeks to create a secular republic.
We are dividing the factions into two groups, the Islamic State and the Northern Alliance, since the Islamic State is not only ideationally antithetical to the other groups, but it also sees them as a greater enemy than it does the Taliban.
The Northern Alliance grew from the same historical font that made its legend in the Soviet Union resistance days; but it has now become four major factions that mostly agree with one another and mostly work well with one another.
- THE ISLAMIC STATE – Of all the factional challenges to the Taliban, this one is the most dangerous, not because of its material threat, but its idealistic one. The Islamic State, or the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), views the Taliban as being too moderate. They accuse the Taliban of not fully living out Sharia in their government.
Their goal is nothing short of establishing a worldwide caliphate where their version of Sharia is the global law of the planet. They have zero tolerance for any deviation from their mullahs’ interpretations of the Quran and the group’s accepted hadiths. The penalty for apostacy is death.
By most estimates, the group consists of 2,000 fighters largely supplied through conquest and local extortion. Their operational capacity has been recently degraded by Taliban operations, but the war in Pakistan is drawing resources away from ongoing operations.
While they have no fixed base of operations, their effective regions are limited to northern and northeastern Afghanistan. They serve as a threat not just to the Taliban, but to all the other factions in the country as well.
- NORTHERN ALLIANCE (JAMIAT-E-ISLAMI) – The Northern Alliance can be thought of as three groups working in cooperation with one another, until recently. The other two major factions in this group are the National Resistance Front (NRF) and the National Resistance Council. A fourth group has only recently emerged.
The NRF had represented the armed resistance part of the group. The Jamiat represented the political and organizational network. The NRC was attempting to be the umbrella between the other two.
The NRF is the faction that led the last resistance in the Panjshir Valley. It is becoming the historical successor to the Northern Alliance.
Three of the four groups in one way, shape, or form, want to overthrow the Taliban and replace it with something approaching a republican or democratic model that still relies on Islam as its legitimization of power. The NRF calls this rational Islam.
The Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) has increasingly been working with the NRF. Their stated goals are also aligned with the NRF’s. They are also intentionally multi-ethnic.
While it has little real power in Afghanistan today, the National Resistance Council preserves a socio-political network of anti-Taliban factions both in country and exiled abroad. It is this group that could be the source for initial organizing after a theoretical Taliban collapse.
The Afghanistan United Front (AUF) is a new faction that appeared in 2023. The faction is led by Lt. General Sami Sadat, who has great favor with the Trump administration. This faction is small but comprised of former elite Afghan forces and intelligence officers. While most of the military proved to be feckless for Afghanistan, the elite forces comported themselves well.
This group has already begun operations, expanding them in 2025. This year, 2026, has only seen that trend continue. Their operations have demonstrated discipline and strategic sophistication not often seen from other factions.
They seek to restore the constitution that existed before the Taliban overthrew the government. They do not seek to preserve Afghanistan as an Islamic emirate. This is where they depart from the others in this informal alliance.
Unlike the rest of the Northern Alliance, the AUF has a national geographical focus. They also have a multi-ethnic approach like the AFF.
They are far and away the most professional, but also the least entrenched in tribal politics. They also have the most open outside support from the west, including from the U.S.
ASSESSMENT
This report was intended to give you a general sense of the state of Afghanistan at the ten-thousand-foot level. On the ground, the story is of one slain soul at a time, with little major engagements to report. The real stories are clandestine and come in the form of secret help from competing nation-states, both regionally and globally.
The real stories are the ways the leaders of the various factions (outside the Islamic State, which is playing its own unique game) navigate the tribal politics that still dominates Afghanistan.
For most of its existence, Afghanistan has been under the thumb of conquerors who could never quite seal the deal. Its hope of achieving sovereign power in light of the jewels beneath its soil is slim to none, no matter which power, America or China, were to secure access to Afghanistan’s AI prize.
We assess that America as the hegemon will offer greater opportunity for shared flourishing for self-stewarding people than China as hegemon ever would, for China would continue to support the Taliban if they ever broke the factions.
The Islamic State has no allies, for its endgame is world domination, even over China, even over America. The other factions have strong ties to India, Russia, and some to Iran, but all have ties to America and the West as well.
The alliance of China, Russia, and Iran coming out in open support of the Taliban against Pakistan has strained those relations with the factions we featured in our report. Even Pakistan is finding itself gravitating back towards the West as it sees China’s closeness with India and Afghanistan as working against its own interests.
The war with Afghanistan has only accelerated that re-engagement with the West both from Pakistan and the major factions we cover in this report (sans the Islamic State, of course).
We intend on adding news watches from Afghanistan and Pakistan to our monitoring efforts as we assume things are just beginning to become very interesting in the land with the AI prize.
From an American perspective, should the U.S. achieve America-friendly regime change in Iran, this will enable an America-friendly Iran to offer real material support to U.S. allies in opposition to the Taliban.
We have reported in the past we suspect President Trump is not interested in telegraphing the war against China’s AI powers, for rightful fear it will force China to openly engage, risking potential apocalyptic outcomes, up to and including nuclear war.
It is this real threat that prevents the President from rallying the troops, the citizens, at home, most of whom still believe Israel is making us change the regime in Iran. There is little, if any, talk of what Iran means geopolitically for America, even outside the parameters of the AI wars.
There is no talk about the ramifications on AI power if China were to lose its favored status in Iran. There is less than no talk about a pro-American Iran’s ability to bring to power a group like the AUF, which might be closer to an Iran that adopts a more American republican form of government.
The potential for a Central Asian renaissance is real, even if it might still cost Afghanistan any hope of having real sovereign power (though its citizens would be infinitely freer than they are now, or would be under China’s thumb).
We shall be monitoring Afghanistan more thoroughly in preparation for the AI Wars that are already coming its way.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
The Panjshir Valley 1980-1986: The Lion Tames the Bear in Afghanistan – Dokumen Pub
How Taliban 2.0’s Subnational Governance is Managing Resistance in Northeastern Afghanistan – The Diplomat
Before and After Panjshir: How Anti-Taliban Forces Adapting to a Long Insurgency – South Asia Times