THERE IS NO AFGHANISTAN:

Everywhere you turn in Afghanistan, there are problems. The economic situation is apocalyptic, with poverty nearly universal. With no work to speak of, Afghans are literally selling their children to scrounge up what little cash they can. More than 22 million Afghans don't have enough to eat. Per capita incomes fell by one third in the months after the Taliban planted their flag in Kabul, canceling out all of the economic progress Afghanistan had made over the previous fourteen years (much of it thanks to a war economy).

The hundreds of thousands of young Afghans who enter the workforce every year don't have much work to do, forcing a critical choice: stay put and try to eke out a living at home or leave their families and migrate in the hope of greener pastures. By the end of this year, Afghanistan's $20 billion GDP will have contracted by a third. Of course, when a country is so reliant on foreign aid for so long, an economic depression is inevitable once that aid dries up.

The relative peace Afghans experienced in the first months after the end of the war is becoming more precarious. The Taliban have always thought of themselves as hard-edged security men who prize law and order, tolerate no dissent, and unapologetically punish anyone who dares to challenge their rule. A take-no-prisoners approach has helped the Taliban consolidate power; what was left of an organized opposition movement frittered early on, as Taliban forces squelched holdouts in the Panjshir Valley.

Bombings on soft targets, however, are more frequent today than they were last fall. The last two weeks have been especially bloody, with IS-K militants attacking multiple mosques and killing dozens of worshippers. Last Friday, fifty Afghans were killed after a suicide bomber struck a mosque in Kabul, which came a week after another strike against a Sunni mosque in Kunduz killed thirty-three. With every attack, confidence about the Taliban's strength is further called into question.

The Taliban is experiencing headaches on the diplomatic front as well. The group's nearly three-decade-long relationship with Pakistan is under strain, as Pakistani Taliban militants based in Afghanistan increase their pace of attacks across the border. Pakistani forces stationed in the tribal regions are finding themselves under fire, and Islamabad is getting irritated with the lack of cooperation from its former partners. Last month, Pakistan took matters into its own hands, conducting airstrikes against two Afghan villages. Those strikes killed dozens of civilians, eliciting an angry diplomatic protest from Taliban officials and threats from the Taliban defense minister.

The Taliban's relationship with its neighbor to the west, Iran, is also delicate. The stabbing of several Iranian clerics at one of Shia Islam's holiest mosques by an Afghan immigrant has resulted in a wave of anti-Afghan sentiment among Iranians. Afghan refugees and migrants in Iran have been beaten and assaulted in retaliation. Afghans have responded to these images with anger; the Iranian consulate in Herat was attacked by stone-throwing Afghans, forcing Tehran to suspend consular services in the country for ten days. Iran and the Taliban have sent additional reinforcements toward their shared border, even as diplomats on both sides seek a de-escalation.

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