Protests in Badakhshan Province

Resistance to opium poppy eradication or local Taliban discontent?

On Sunday, 25 May 2025, the Taliban forces clashed with local farmers over the destruction of opium poppy fields in the Jurm district of Badakhshan, leaving one local resident dead and seven wounded. The local residents initially wanted to transport the victim’s body to the provincial center, Faizabad, in protest against the killing. However, after mediation by Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat, the Taliban’s chief of army staff, who is from Badakhshan province, they buried the victim. The Taliban have since withdrawn from the area and returned to Qala-Tak (see this 27 May 2025 report by Radio Azadi here).

Citing local sources, the media reported that a Taliban delegation led by Fitrat travelled from Kabul to Jurm district and met the protestors. They promised the protestors that the person responsible for the killing would be tried in a military court and the victim’s family would be compensated with blood money (see this 27 May 2025 report by Afghanistan International here).

Echoes of the 2024 protests

For the second consecutive year, poppy eradication has led to deadly clashes between the Taliban and local farmers in Badakhshan. Last year, similar confrontations in Darayim and Argo districts of Badakhshan resulted in the deaths of two local people (one from each district) and injuries to several others. On 3 May 2024, the Taliban personnel who were destroying opium poppy fields clashed with local farmers in the Darayim district of Badakhshan, resulting in casualties, including the death of one local resident. Consequently, the district residents waged a protest and chanted “death to Emirate” (the Taliban’s government) while carrying a coffin. The spokesman for the Taliban’s police chief in Badakhshan claimed that the locals “threw stones and sticks at mujahedin, attempting to set fire to their vehicles and equipment, resulting in the death of one local” (see this 3 May 2024 report by BBC Farsi here).

While the protests in Darayim continued the following day, on 4 May 2024, residents of the Argo district also held protests against the Taliban after a clash between the Taliban personnel and local farmers in the Qarluq village. Zabihullah Amiri, the head of the Taliban’s Information and Culture Department in Badakhshan, told the BBC at the time that the people in Argo district rushed the Taliban forces during the destruction of poppy cultivation, intending to set fire to their equipment and vehicles. This led to tension and shooting by the Taliban personnel, killing one person and wounding another (see this 4 May 2024 report by the BBC Farsi here).

After two days of protests, the Taliban dispatched a delegation led by Fitrat to the province.¹ In a voice message, Fitrat said: “I [want to] tell all the officials that the Islamic Emirate [Taliban government] is serious about destroying poppy cultivation and will not [stop] with these demonstrations.” He added that "if demonstrations are allowed, perhaps in the future, people will demonstrate for other things as well" (see this 5 May 2024 report by BBC Farsi here).

On 13 May 2024, the protests resumed in the Argo district after a clash between the Taliban forces and local farmers in Barlas village resulted in three deaths and five injuries (see Etilaat Roz’s report here).

Local resistance

The Taliban leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, banned opium poppy cultivation in April 2022. It seems that the local resistance to the destruction of poppy cultivation in Badakhshan stems from two major reasons: (1) a perception that the Taliban are enforcing the ban selectively; (2) a desire for alternative livelihoods before their poppy farms are destroyed. A local resident articulated this sentiment to Radio Azadi (cited above): “We should have an alternative to poppy. Our area, being mountainous, has little level land. If we cultivate something else, it will not yield profit….” He added that the local farmers were not against the eradication of poppy cultivation, but the Taliban’s failure to destroy it in the adjacent provinces showed their discriminatory approach to the issue.

The protestors have also accused the Taliban of mistreating the local population. For example, a local source told the media last year: “Under the pretext of eradicating poppy cultivation, the forces of the Islamic Emirate [Taliban] have begun house-to-house searches and patrols in the villages and towns of Darayim district, and have caused fear and panic among the people with aerial gunfire.” The source also claimed that the Taliban personnel had broken into local houses and infringed upon their privacy (see this Rukhshan Media’s 4 May 2024 report here).

Division between local and non-local Taliban?

While the clashes between the Taliban and local farmers echo those of 2024, a new dimension has emerged this year: the local Taliban are showing growing dissatisfaction with the control exerted by non-Badakhshani Pashutn Taliban, and appear to be seeking to assert their influence in the provincial affairs.

Media reports suggested that local Taliban backed the farmers this time around (see this 27 May 2025 report by Afghanistan International here). Salahuddin Salar, known as Mullah Salahuddin, a 30-year-old Tajik commander from the Jurm district and the deputy minister of defense for intelligence, was central to this internal division, according to Afghanistan International reporting on 25 May 2025 here. Salar travelled to the province and held consultative meetings without coordination with the provincial governor, Qari Muhammad Ayub Khaled, a Pashtun from Qandahar who reportedly was close to former Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund. In a voice message, Salar called the chiefs of district police, district governors, and heads of local departments to attend a meeting to review “the problems of the people of Badakhshan.”²

In response to Salar’s call for the meeting, Mullah Asad, the governor’s chief of staff, issued a voice message to local departments, saying that no one should participate in such a meeting without the governor’s official permission. He also warned that no department in Badakhshan had the right to convene “arbitrary” meetings, stressing that all meetings should be reported to the governor’s office in advance. Qari Khaled assumed his role as the Badakhshan governor in September 2003. He had previously served as the governor of Kunar province.

Simultaneously, Abdul Rahman, the commander of the Taliban brigade in Badakhshan, also said in a voice message that the governor should change his behavior toward the people of Badakhshan. He claimed that he had been unable to meet the Taliban governor and had been repeatedly turned away at the gate. He said, “Here the ruler is king, while he should be the servant” (see this May 25 report by Afghanistan International here).³

The protestors demanded the dismissal of the current governor and called for the appointment of a new governor from among the local residents, a demand supported by disgruntled Badakshani Taliban. They reportedly issued a one-week ultimatum to the Taliban for this change. The protestors also called for the removal of the non-local Taliban from the province (see this 26 May 2025 report by Afghanistan International here and 27 May 2025 report by Radio Azadi here). The protestors last year had also called for the removal of non-Badakhshani Taliban from the province (see this Rukhshan Media’s 4 May 2024 report here).⁴

In a separate incident, the Taliban killed Mawlawi Zaidullah, along with his wife and children, in the Shohada district of Badakhshan on 26 May 2025, according to media reports here and here. He had personal animosity with Imanuddin Mansur, the Taliban’s military corps commander in Kunduz, or was accused of affiliation with Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP).

It seems that the situation in Badakhshan has been a relatively significant concern for the Taliban. Just two days after the protests, Abdul Haq Wasiq, the director of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), visited Badakhshan on Tuesday, 27 May 2025, to meet local officials. Media interpreted Wasiq’s visit to Badakhshan both as a reflection of the Taliban’s concern about the situation in the province and as a sign that Taliban leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, no longer trusts Fitrat and Imamuddin (see this 27 May 2025 report by Afghanistan International here).

From optimism to guardedness

The anti-Taliban figures and groups expressed solidarity with the protesters in Badakhshan during last year’s demonstrations. For example, Fawzia Koofi, former MP from Badakhshan, said last year, “The resistance of the free and honorable people of Badakhshan, under any guise, is commendable. This uprising will be the beginning of freedom.” Similarly, Rahmatullah Nabil, former chief of NDS, said last year that the people in Badakhshan had taken the lead in the struggle for the “liberation from the grip of extremism and tyranny of the Taliban.” The Assembly of Afghanistan’s Federalists, a movement that calls for the establishment of a federal system in Afghanistan, called the protests a “clear and prominent example of the people’s dissatisfaction with the Taliban’s autocratic and tribal regime.”

This year, they, however, appeared more guarded in their reactions. For example, Koofi said in a Facebook post that the Badakhshani Taliban members were instrumental in the Taliban’s return to power. Yet, she noted that currently, everything from “land, climate, pastures, mines, and even the breath of the people of Badakhshan” was controlled by non-Badakhshani Taliban, which she said was not acceptable to the local people.

1. The delegation included Shamsuddin Shariati, General Directorate of Supervision and Implementation of Leadership Decrees and Orders; Abdul Haq Akhund, deputy minister for for counternarcotics at the Taliban’s interior ministry; Mullah Rahmatullah Najib, the deputy director of intelligence at GDI; and Abdul Momin Hazem, the head of Badakhshan’s Provincial Ulema Council (see this 5 May 2024 report by BBC Farsi here and a copy of statement by the Taliban’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, in Pashto here and English here).

2. Other disgruntled local Taliban included: Mawlawi Jamaluddin Haqjo; Islamuddin known as Karimi Badakhshani; Qari Wasel; Mawlawi Abdul Rab Arshad, and Shamsullah. Qari Wasel was the Taliban’s shadow district governor of Jurm during their insurgency (see this AAN’s report here).

3. An audio recording attributed to Mawlawi Abdul Rahman circulating on social media (see, for example, here) says that the dispute is not over mines.

4. The findings of a study by the author of local Hazara commanders who joined the Taliban, either during their insurgency or takeover of Afghanistan, found that the Taliban were averse to granting these commanders local autonomy or voice. Instead, the Taliban tried to bring them to Kabul to hold them in check. Given these findings, it’s unlikely the Taliban will accept the demand by Badakhshani protestors.