Taliban resistance in the last holdout of Panjshir Valley

The Panjshir Valley is Afghanistan’s last remaining holdout where anti-Taliban forces seem to be working on forming a guerrilla movement to take on the Islamic fundamentalist group.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021

Panjshir (also spelled as Panjsher and Panjsheer) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country containing the Panjshir Valley.

Bazarak serves as the provincial capital. It is currently controlled by the Second Resistance, and the only province not to be controlled by the Taliban since the 2021 Taliban offensive.

The region, located 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of the capital, Kabul, now hosts some senior members of the ousted government, like the deposed Vice President Amrullah Saleh and ex-Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi.

Famed for its natural defenses, the region tucked into the Hindu Kush mountains never fell to the Taliban during the civil war of the 1990s, nor was it conquered by the Soviets a decade earlier. The only access point to the region is through a narrow passage created by the Panjshir River, which can be easily defended militarily.

Most of the valley’s up to 150,000 inhabitants belong to the Tajik ethnic group, while the majority of the Taliban are Pashtuns.