Afghanistan
Reports
Vanda Felbab-Brown
Director - Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors
Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
![Afghan Islamic Taliban fighters fire a Soviet-made cannon against former government forces on the front line, 30 km north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, November 5. [The dismissal of the Pakistan's government of Prime Minister Benazir-Bhutto could have important ramifications for Afghanistan's Taleban militia, now locked in war with a northern alliance.]](https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Afghan-Islamic-Taliban-fighters-fire-a-Soviet-made-cannon-against-former-government-forces.jpg?w=617&crop=0%2C28px%2C100%2C347px&ssl=1)
[Airstrikes by Pakistani forces inside Afghanistan will carry] significant risks, particularly that of accidental civilian casualties, and there are the obvious sovereignty issues, which could lead to open conflict with the Afghan Taliban.
For the past year, you've seen that perhaps no leverage that the US and the West thought it had — aid, sanctions, the freezing of Afghanistan's reserves — has really had an effect on Taliban behavior. The Taliban has essentially done what they had always done. The Afghan people have been in a humanitarian crisis because the Taliban hasn't budged.
