RASC News Agency: Rahmatullah Nabil, the former Director of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), has issued a grave and wide-ranging warning over what he describes as Afghanistan’s accelerating descent toward a multidimensional social, security, and regional crisis under Taliban rule.
In an analytical commentary published on his official Facebook page, Nabil stresses that his intervention does not seek to provoke hostility toward any individual or group, but rather constitutes a strategic warning about the dangerous consequences of allowing the current trajectory to persist unchallenged. He argues that silence and complacency at this stage would amount to complicity in Afghanistan’s unraveling.
At the core of Nabil’s warning lies a concrete security case that, in his assessment, exemplifies a far broader and more alarming pattern. He alleges that Dr. Muzaffar Ahmed, an Indian national reportedly implicated in the November 2025 terrorist attack on Delhi’s historic Red Fort, entered Afghanistan via transit routes through Gulf states following the attack. Based on what Nabil describes as credible and verified intelligence, the individual is believed to be residing in a religious seminary in Giro District, Ghazni Province.
Nabil underscores that this case cannot be dismissed as an isolated lapse, but should instead be understood as a symptom of Afghanistan’s reversion to its pre-2001 role as a permissive environment for transnational extremist networks. He implicitly places responsibility on the Taliban’s failure or unwillingness to establish transparent security accountability, warning that Afghanistan is once again becoming a safe rear base for regional and global terrorism.
According to Nabil, these developments make clear that Afghanistan’s crisis is no longer an internal Afghan matter. In the absence of legitimate, accountable governance structures and amid the Taliban’s systematic rejection of meaningful international engagement the country is steadily transforming into a generator of cross-border insecurity.
He warns that a regime operating without legal recognition, institutional oversight, or inclusive legitimacy cannot prevent the instrumentalization of Afghanistan’s territory by extremist actors. Instead, Taliban governance practices are actively eroding regional trust and increasing the likelihood of international security spillovers.
Drawing on data from the United Nations and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Nabil highlights the devastating socioeconomic toll of Taliban rule. An overwhelming majority of Afghanistanis now live below the poverty line, while millions face chronic food insecurity.
He argues that the Taliban’s economic mismanagement combined with international isolation, sanctions pressure, and the dismantling of state institutions has shrunk the economy to a survival level. Widespread dependence on humanitarian aid, the near-total collapse of formal employment, and the exclusion of women from the workforce have transformed poverty into a structural, long-term condition rather than a temporary crisis.
“This is not merely a humanitarian emergency,” Nabil writes, “but a strategic failure with security implications.” A society locked in daily survival, he warns, loses its capacity to envision stability, resist radicalization, or invest in a peaceful future.
Nabil describes the Taliban’s governing model as rigidly ideological and fundamentally exclusionary. The systematic removal of women, ethnic minorities, professionals, intellectuals, and alternative political voices from public life has, in his view, hollowed out the very concept of national ownership and citizenship.
Such governance, he argues, destroys internal legitimacy and forecloses the possibility of organic reform. By ruling through coercion, fear, and exclusion, the Taliban have reduced the state to a narrow factional instrument rather than a shared national institution.
Nabil poses a critical question: Can a diverse and pluralistic society be ruled indefinitely through force and erasure? He warns that the continuation of this model risks pushing Afghanistani society toward a slow-burning but inevitable social rupture.
Turning to education, Nabil cites reports from UNESCO and international human rights organizations, condemning the Taliban’s severe restrictions on girls’ education and the aggressive expansion of ideologically driven religious schools.
He warns that the systematic dismantling of modern education and its replacement with narrow, dogmatic instruction is producing a generation deprived of scientific literacy, critical thinking, civic awareness, and national consciousness. This deliberate intellectual impoverishment, he argues, represents a long-term strategic threat to Afghanistan’s capacity for development, innovation, and peaceful state-building.
“The collapse of education,” Nabil cautions, “is not only the collapse of schools, but the collapse of hope and with it, the future of the nation.”
Citing data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Nabil draws attention to the sharp rise in forced migration among Afghanistanis. He emphasizes that the mass departure of doctors, engineers, teachers, academics, and skilled professionals is draining the country of its most critical human capital.
This brain drain, he warns, is not a reversible phenomenon in the short term. It undermines essential services, weakens institutional memory, and leaves Afghanistan increasingly incapable of managing even basic governance functions let alone complex security or economic challenges.
Referencing assessments by the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism, Nabil warns that the growing presence and mobility of extremist networks in and around Afghanistan significantly increase the risk of the country becoming a fully re-established terrorist sanctuary.
Such a development, he argues, would intensify regional insecurity, expose neighboring states to cross-border threats, and deepen Afghanistan’s international isolation. It would also increase the likelihood of Afghanistan becoming a theater for proxy conflicts, with devastating consequences for its already exhausted population.
In the final section of his analysis, Nabil addresses systematic human rights violations, particularly the institutionalized oppression of women and girls, the suppression of civil liberties, and the persecution of political dissent.
He argues that these practices have placed Afghanistan in severe legal and moral isolation, making diplomatic normalization and economic engagement increasingly untenable. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan is not only losing its place in the international system but also squandering the moral credibility necessary for reintegration.
In conclusion, Rahmatullah Nabil outlines three realistic scenarios for Afghanistan’s near future:
• The continuation of the current Taliban-led status quo, resulting in gradual but systemic collapse;
• Cosmetic and short-lived reforms designed to deflect pressure without addressing root causes; or
• A broad-based popular uprising triggered by accumulated social, economic, and political pressures.
He makes clear that only the first two scenarios serve the interests of the Taliban while the costs of all three will ultimately be borne by the Afghanistani people and the wider region.
