Choose Your Path
Afghanistan after the withdrawal, the Taliban, resistance, terrorist safe haven, and unfinished consequences.
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Twenty-five years after 9/11, Sarah Adams discusses the danger of counterterrorism gaps as U.S. attention shifts toward great-power competition and al-Qaida rebuilds in Afghanistan.
Read the interviewBriefing work
Current assessments and intelligence-style work connected to this subject.
Al-Qaeda held footage of Hamza bin Laden recorded as Afghanistan was falling in August 2021 and waited more than five years to release it. The timing…
Read briefFive years after the Abbey Gate bombing, this brief reconstructs the twelve days before the attack: the authorization, the bomber’s release and movement, the network around…
Read briefFive years after Kabul fell, Afghanistan should not be understood simply as the end of America’s longest war. It marked the beginning of another cycle in…
Read briefGrowing anti-Taliban resistance in northern Afghanistan is doing more than testing the battlefield. It is exposing tensions between the movement’s southern Pashtun leadership and influential Tajik,…
Read briefAQIS released a six-minute video on December 6th titled From Dasht-e-Leili to the Victory of Kabul. Most people will focus on the usual imagery—martyrs, battlefield losses,…
Read briefHamza bin Laden, the current leader of Al-Qaeda, continues to direct the group’s plotting and operations from Afghanistan with apparent impunity. Under his leadership, Al-Qaeda has…
Read briefThe concept of an "Islamic Army" or "Army of Imam Mahdi" traces back to Osama bin Laden’s vision of uniting global terrorist groups under a singular…
Read briefThe Taliban has systematically covered up the survival of multiple senior Islamic State-Khorasan (ISKP) figures while staging fake operations that falsely claim to target the group.…
Read briefThe U.S. government's acknowledgment of the Taliban's purported counterterrorism efforts against the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) has become a cornerstone of its post-withdrawal policy in Afghanistan.…
Read briefIslamic State leadership is interestingly making plans to relocate detainees from several detention camps in northeastern Syria, including the Al-Hol and Al-Roj camps. These plans reflect…
Read briefThe withdrawal of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) from Afghanistan in 2021 has left behind a network of military and intelligence bases that offer…
Read briefThe merging of al-Qaeda and the Taliban into a single, cohesive entity is a reality that U.S. policy and assessments have yet to fully acknowledge. From…
Read briefResearch & source work
Investigations, reports, letters, source work, and earlier research that add context.
A visual target deck mapping key non-Pashtun Taliban commanders, their networks, command structures, and foreign-jihadist connections.
Read on the siteOutside publications
Magazine, journal, and outside publication work that belongs on this path.
A reconstruction of the Taliban intelligence operation that penetrated resistance contacts, tracked Hasib Panjshiri’s movement, and led to the August 20 ambush in Salang.
Read investigationThe Commons
Practical guidance from The Commons for turning lessons into capability.
A Commons companion to the collaborative book—focused on endurance, service, memory, and what communities owe one another after a long war.
Enter the conversationBooks & enduring work
Books, collaborations, and other enduring material that helps round out the subject.
Two days before September 11, al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud. Sarah joins Ahmad Massoud to examine why his father posed such a threat to al-Qaeda and…
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