The Pakistan Playbook's new Strategic Assessment Paper tests the commitments the Taliban made in 2021 against five years of the public record.
In August 2021, days after taking Kabul, the Taliban set out a series of public commitments to Afghans and to the international community. They addressed security, the treatment of former officials, the rights of women and girls, the media, the character of the new government, narcotics, weapons and the freedom to leave the country. Separately, the Taliban gave direct assurances to the United States and to China.
The Kabul Assurances takes eleven of those commitments and sets each against the record from 15 August 2021 to September 2026. Each commitment is quoted from the record of the time: the Taliban's first press conference in Kabul, the Taliban statement recorded by the UN Security Council in resolution 2593, the text of the 2020 Doha Agreement, and the Chinese foreign ministry's account of the Tianjin meeting of July 2021.
Each commitment is assessed against a single stated standard, set out in the paper's method: whether documented conduct materially contradicts it. Where the Taliban have made progress on part of a commitment, that progress is recorded alongside the evidence against it.
The evidence is drawn first from the United Nations, including the reports of the Security Council's sanctions Monitoring Team, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the human rights office, UNESCO and UN Women. Court records, government documents and established international reporting follow. No finding rests on Pakistani government sources. Where the Taliban have responded on the record, their response is included.
The paper also sets out, in sequence, the international engagement with the Taliban administration over the same period. It closes with a scorecard of each commitment and its status today.
All 73 sources are listed in the bibliography, each linked, for readers who wish to check the record for themselves.
