Before Pakistan struck the Afghan Taliban regime’s installations in Kabul and Kandahar in February 2026, a quieter transformation was already reshaping the Afghan state from within. In January, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada approved a 119-article criminal procedure code — circulated to courts without public announcement — that stratifies Afghan society into four legal classes, authorises vigilante punishment, and criminalises criticism of Taliban policy. The code was the centrepiece of the most concentrated period of authoritarian consolidation since the Taliban's return to power. This article traces that consolidation: the decree cluster, the personnel reshuffles, the deepening Kandahar-Kabul rift, and the criminal code's most alarming provisions — from class-based justice and slave terminology to the effective criminalisation of dissent on women's education. With International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants unheeded, internal fractures widening, and open war now at the Durand Line, the architecture of control Akhundzada has built faces its most consequential test.

Before the world's attention shifted to the unfolding Afghanistan-Pakistan war, a quieter but no less consequential transformation was taking place inside Afghanistan. While cross-border strikes and diplomatic ruptures dominated headlines, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's reclusive supreme leader, was moving to reshape the Afghan state from within — not through military action, but through decree.

On January 4, 2026, Hibatullah Akhundzada quietly approved a 119-article criminal procedure code that divided Afghan society into four legal classes, authorised citizens to punish perceived sinners on sight, and criminalised criticism of the Taliban's ban on women's education. The document was circulated to provincial courts without public announcement, its existence came to light seventeen days later, when the Afghan human rights organisation Rawadari published a leaked copy.

The code was not an isolated action nor out of the pattern of Taliban ‘legislation.’ It arrived amid the most concentrated period of authoritarian consolidation since the Taliban's return to power — a two-month span in which Akhundzada reshuffled over 25 officials, extended detention powers, banned public criticism of the government, and issued a 14-point directive warning his own movement that it faced a "major test." Each measure tightened the Kandahar faction's grip on the Afghan state. Each also revealed the depth of the internal crisis that made such measures necessary.

This article examines that crisis — not through the lens of rivalling factions, (which the Durand Dispatch has analyzed elsewhere), but an evaluation of how authoritarian consolidation materializes. It traces the escalating concentration of power in Kandahar, analyzes the criminal procedure code's most consequential provisions, considers the international legal response to the code itself, and asks what the scale of this legislative project reveals about the regime's durability — and its vulnerabilities.

The Internal Landscape: Context for Consolidation

The internal tensions within the Taliban leadership have been escalating since at least late 2024, and now form the essential backdrop to Akhundzada's legislative drive. The rift between the Kandahar-based faction loyal to Akhundzada and the Kabul-based coalition anchored by the Haqqani Network has moved from private grievance to public confrontation — a trajectory that helps explain the urgency of the January 2026 decree cluster.

On December 11, 2024, Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban's Minister for Refugees and Repatriation, was killed in a suicide bombing at his ministry in Kabul. Islamic State claimed responsibility, but the attack's timing — days after Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani gave a speech widely interpreted as criticising Akhundzada — fuelled speculation about possible internal complicity. Haqqani’s death, which was condemned by friends and foe alike, was officially labelled a “martyrdom” by Taliban leadership. However, Akhundzada himself was reported as having been absent from the condolence prayers. 

In January 2025, three senior Taliban figures — Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanikzai — left Afghanistan separately. One Afghan journalist reported that their departures suggested they "seriously fear for their lives." Less than a month later, reports emerged of Akhundzada reportedly having deployed Kandahari fighters to several key sites around Kabul- including Bala Hissar Fort and Kabul International Airport.

The internet shutdown, supposedly ordered to “prevent immoral behavior” within Afghan society, began at the provincial level in mid-September of 2025 before escalating to the national level. It also hurtled the factional standoff back into public view. Akhundzada — someone who (according to an assessment based on over 100 interviews) does not use the internet himself, relying instead on aides who read him daily summaries, ordered a nationwide internet shutdown. The order was not backed by any rationale but was communicated as being indefinite. Within days however, Prime Minister Hasan Akhund restored access under pressure from Kabul-based ministers. Afghanistan International described the episode as a direct confrontation between the two camps, a clash between the isolationalist ideologies of the Akhundzada-loyal Kandahar group and the Kabul camp’s comparatively greater want for connection with the outside world. Multiple reports noted that the shutdown directly threatened the Kabul coalition's financial interests — an issue on which they could not remain silent, even though they had not previously defied orders on other contested policies in such a manner.

By December, the disagreement had moved into open verbal conflict. On December 12, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani publicly stated at a gathering in Khost that a government which rules through "fear and force" is "not a real government." The same day, Higher Education Minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem — a close Akhundzada ally — warned about "circles" within the government seeking to sow discord. Neither man named the other; observers interpreted the synchronised speeches as a public airing of a fundamental governance dispute.

In January 2026,  a leaked audio recording of Akhundzada addressing officials at a jihadi seminary in Kandahar in January 2025, showed him giving the following warning: "As a result of these divisions, the emirate will collapse and end." Akhundzada’s fear appears to be that the disturbances present between the factions and echelons of the Taliban power structure could undermine the regime from within. The divide is an open secret, and Akhundzada knows that its visibility only weakens the Taliban's already faltering pursuit of regional and international recognition. Pakistan's defence minister, Khwaja Muhammad Asif, has publicly referenced the Kabul-Kandahar split as a source of regional instability: "One faction wants to slightly open space, while the other wants to impose complete suppression of freedoms."

A detailed analysis outlined the structural contours: as of November 2025, seven of 25 Taliban cabinet ministers were from Kandahar, and all key leadership positions (Supreme Leader, chief minister, deputy chief minister, central bank governor, and chief justice)  were held by Kandahari figures. The Kabul faction, anchored by the Haqqani Network, controls the interior ministry and intelligence apparatus but reportedly feels increasingly marginalised. Evidence of fraying internal discipline extended beyond rhetoric: in November, a Taliban-appointed district chief in Baghlan had been detained by the group's own intelligence.

It is against this backdrop — a leadership under visible strain — that the January consolidation must be understood.

The January Consolidation: Reshuffles and Decrees

Between January 1 and January 9, 2026, Akhundzada executed a concentrated sequence of personnel and policy actions that, taken together, represent the most significant tightening of executive authority since the Taliban's return to power.

The January 2026 consolidation cannot be read as routine administration. Its logic is better understood as crisis management — a leadership responding to visible internal fracture through accelerated centralisation. On January 3, Akhundzada issued a  14-point directive urging Taliban members to avoid mistrust and interference, warning that the movement faced a “major test.” The directive  re​iterated the importance of unity and “an environment of trust and brotherhood.” That Akhundzada felt compelled to issue such an appeal at all, and to couple it with warnings of collapse, was itself a signal of how strained the internal environment had become. Reports suggest that  strategic sites in Kandahar — including Mandigak Palace, the historic complex where Mullah Mohammad Omar once held office — had been heavily fortified in the same period.

The personnel reshuffles that opened the year reflected the same impulse. On January 1, Akhundzada  reshuffled over 25 officials, including provincial governors, corps commanders, and senior security figures.  The appointments largely involved rotating existing officials between posts — a pattern consistent with loyalty-testing rather than administrative reform. What gave the reshuffles their sharper edge was the parallel evidence that Akhundzada was issuing direct orders to local police units, bypassing Kabul-based ministers entirely — a dynamic documented as early as May 2025, when police chiefs under Haqqani’s nominal authority were reassigned without his consultation. The January 8  rotation of two further cabinet ministers, and the February appointment of Mohammad Fazil Mazloum — a close confidant of Mullah Omar — as  Minister of Transport and Aviation, continued the same pattern: consolidating trusted figures in key roles while shuffling others laterally to prevent the accumulation of independent institutional power.

The legislative actions of that same week extended the same consolidation logic from personnel to policy. A January 5 decree extended the maximum detention period for criminal suspects from 72 hours to 10 days, with the stipulation that only Taliban security and intelligence personnel could authorize a detention or release — concentrating enforcement authority in institutions loyal to Kandahar.

On the same day, Akhundzada  banned public criticism of Taliban officials, threatening punishment under “Islamic law” for any criticism deemed “baseless” or “detached from reality” — a formulation broad enough to encompass virtually any dissent. On January 9, the existing ban on images of “living beings” was  expanded to 24 of Afghanistan’s provinces, further tightening restrictions on already-minimal journalistic freedom. Each measure followed the same internal logic: constraining the institutional space through which rival factions  or the public might constrain Kandahar’s authority.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Taliban have issued at least 470 decrees since returning to power, including 79 directly targeting women and girls. The January 2026 cluster stands out not only for its pace but for the coherence of its logic: personnel reshuffles, detention powers, speech restrictions, and — as the following section shows — a comprehensive penal code, all within a single week, each instrument reinforcing the others.

The Criminal Procedure Code: Codifying Control

The most consequential governance action of this period was arguably the least publicised at the time. On January 4, Akhundzada approved the Criminal Procedure Code for Courts — a 119-article, 58-page document circulated to provincial courts for immediate implementation with no public announcement or debate. Its existence only came to light on January 21, when Rawadari published a copy. The code bears the signature of Mufti Abdul Rashid Saeed, head of the secretariat of the Taliban Supreme Court, and was issued pursuant to Decree No. 12 of Akhundzada, according to Independent Persian.

Critics have condemned the code on multiple, overlapping grounds. At the broadest level, Professor Freya Baetens, writing in the Oxford Human Rights Hub, argued that the code’s very existence is antithetical to the foundational human rights principle of equality before the law. Overall, the picture that emerges is of a legal framework that formally stratifies Afghan society rather than governing it equally. As alluded to above, Article 9 divides the population into four categories — ulama (religious scholars), ashraf (elites), the middle class, and the lower class — with punishment severity determined by social rank rather than the nature of the offence. Punishments range from a formal warning for the ulema to beatings and lashings for those at the bottom, severity rising as status falls. The code compounds this stratification with explicit slave terminology: the term ghulam (variously translated as “slave,” “servant,” or “dependent”) appears throughout. Article 15 states that discretionary punishment applies “whether the criminal is free or a slave,” while Article 4 permits a “husband” or “master” (badaar) to carry out certain punishments personally. Some reports noted that nowhere else in the world are citizens stratified in this manner — not even in “any of the 56 Muslim-majority countries.”

The code’s treatment of religious identity and the scope of state-sanctioned violence are equally alarming. Article 26 imposes two years’ imprisonment on Hanafi adherents who abandon their belief, while Clause 8 of Article 2 designates followers of sects differing from “Ahle-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah” as mubtadeh (“heretics”) — placing Salafis, Ahl-e-Hadith, Jafari Shias, and Ismailis at particular legal risk, and elevating the Hanafi school to the exclusive standard of Islamic orthodoxy. Clause 11 of Article 2 further designates any opponent of the state as baaghi (rebel), subject to the death penalty. Article 14 authorises lethal punishment for those who “defend false beliefs contrary to Islam” with the permission of the undefined “Imam” — widely understood to mean Akhundzada. Most expansively, Article 16 allows for  “discretionary execution” across at least 11 broad offence categories, including armed opposition, promoting beliefs deemed un-Islamic, and sorcery — with all executions requiring only Akhundzada’s personal approval. Clause 6 of Article 4 extends punitive authority beyond the state entirely, granting ordinary citizens the right to personally punish individuals they witness committing a “sin” — a provision Faiz  warned risks legitimising vigilantism on a mass scale.

The code’s most politically targeted provisions concern the suppression of dissent. Article 19 criminalises performing a “permissible act” that has been prohibited by the Taliban leader, or criticising “permissible matters” — a formulation that effectively makes it illegal to object to the ban on women’s education, or to any other policy Akhundzada has decreed. The penalty is specified in Article 23: 20 lashes and six months’ imprisonment for anyone who “insults Taliban leaders.” Article 24 extends this logic further, mandating up to two years’ imprisonment for anyone who witnesses a “subversive” meeting and fails to report it to the relevant Taliban authorities. Taken together, these articles do not merely restrict speech — they conscript the population into the enforcement of silence.

An Afghan legal expert  argued that the code "lacks even the most basic formal and substantive standards of legal rules" and cannot be considered law, since Akhundzada "is not an institution but the leader of a ruling group.” The analysis highlighted the absence of proportionality: execution is prescribed for political opponents and alleged "sorcerers," while only five years' imprisonment is given for murder by poisoning, and a judge who knowingly issues a ruling contrary to the facts faces merely ten days in jail. It also highlights the recurring mention of hierarchical ranking of society members, stating that nowhere else in the world were citizens stratified in such a manner, not even in “any of the 56 Muslim-majority countries.”

It is worth noting that some analysts have urged caution in interpreting specific provisions. A counter-analysis  argued that the term ghulam reflects traditional Hanafi juristic categories rather than the creation of a new legal institution of slavery, and that the code's most serious problems lie in "the breadth of judicial authority, the absence of due process, the reliance on uncodified jurisprudence, and the lack of institutional checks on interpretation or enforcement."

UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett stated in January that "it is already very clear that the implications for Afghans are extremely concerning." The Supreme Council of National Resistance condemned the code as setting conditions "far worse than the Middle Ages”, stating that the Taliban was “distorting the image of Islam in the eyes of global public opinion.” By February, reactions had intensified further: JURIST reported that the code had drawn global condemnation, while the Feminist Majority Foundation described it as formalising "gender apartheid." Higher Education Minister Nadeem dismissed critics of the code as "infidels," stating: "These laws are not written for infidels to object to."

 The Women's Rights Dimension

The criminal procedure code did not emerge in a vacuum. It landed amid what has been  described as the worst period for women in Afghanistan since the Taliban's return to power. 

The restrictions are being actively enforced. In Herat, Taliban morality officers have intensified arrests of women for dress code violations, with witnesses reporting officers beating women in public. These restrictions reached new heights in November 2025, when the Taliban explicitly barred entry to Herat Regional Hospital for any woman not clothed in a burqa, regardless of whether she was a patient or a healthcare worker. These bans were subsequently extended to other public hospitals, further severing women’s access to basic healthcare.

In Kandahar, morality officers instructed men in mosques to hand over women who "disobey" them so they can be "corrected" by Taliban authorities — locking mosque doors to prevent worshippers from leaving until the instructions were delivered. According to the Taliban, behaviours warranting such “correction” include going to the market without permission, failing to listen to male family members, or not observing ‘full hijab’. On September 8, 2025, at least 672 individuals had been subjected to judicially sanctioned public flogging during the year, more than double the figure recorded in the same period in 2024. By year's end, the Taliban Supreme Court reported that at least six people had been executed and 1,118 flogged in 2025.

The code's implications for women proved particularly severe. In particular, Article 32 sets a maximum penalty of 15 days' imprisonment for husbands who inflict "excessive beating resulting in fracture, injury, or bruising" on their wives — less than the five months' imprisonment mandated for forcing animals to fight under Article 70. Punishments for violence against women beyond physical abuse, such as psychological and sexual violence have not been mentioned. Article 34 stipulates that a woman who repeatedly visits relatives without her husband's consent faces a three-month prison sentence — criminalising the very act of seeking refuge from domestic violence. Moreover, Clause 5 of Article 4 differentiates between hadd (those that are outlined by Sharia) and ta’zeer punishments (discretionary punishments that may be left up to a judge), dictating that a husband or “master” may enforce ta’zeer punishments. The GIWPS also noted that this is in blatant opposition to key human rights documents that Afghanistan is a signatory to, such as the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which champions the equal treatment of all before the law.

These developments occur against the backdrop of the ICC's July 2025 decision to issue arrest warrants against Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds — the first time an international tribunal confirmed gender persecution as a crime against humanity. On December 11, 2025, the Permanent People's Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan in The Hague ruled that the Taliban's authorities have committed crimes against humanity, characterising their actions as a "coordinated, State-level campaign" to "erase women from public life." The criminal procedure code, issued after both the ICC warrants and the Tribunal ruling, appears to codify into law the very practices these bodies identified, all whilst dismissing the Taliban’s need for any international approval.

The women's rights question is also a key axis of the internal divide. In February 2025, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai publicly criticised the education ban, declaring that "we are committing an injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million, depriving them of all their rights." He further stated that “in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), the doors of knowledge were open to both men and women”, essentially invoking the un-Islamic roots of the education ban. This is not in Islamic law, but our personal choice or nature." Stanikzai subsequently had to leave the country. The criminal procedure code — with its provisions on spousal authority, its classification of women's autonomy as subject to male oversight, and its criminalisation of dissent on the education ban — codifies the Kandahari position into formal law.

Implications

The convergence of internal tensions and authoritarian consolidation produces a paradox for outside actors. The repressive decrees and the criminal code appear designed not only to control the Afghan population, but to limit the Kabul coalition's room for manoeuvre. Banning criticism of officials targets Haqqani's allies as much as the general public, while Article 19 effectively forecloses internal debate on policies like the education ban. The pattern is consistent with what analysts have described as Akhundzada's strategy of gradually stripping rival figures of their operational autonomy. The UN Security Council's February 2026 monthly forecast noted that while the Taliban leadership has managed these disagreements sufficiently to remain unified, the dynamics are fragile — with terrorism representing the greatest short-term threat to Taliban stability, and the Pakistani Taliban issue posing the most significant challenge to its external relations.

That external challenge has since arrived. In February 2026, Pakistan declared "open war" with Afghanistan, striking Taliban military installations in Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktia under Operation Ghazab Lil Haq — crossing the threshold from targeting non-state militants to putting Taliban-governed Afghanistan's assets directly on the table. The escalation represents the culmination of a bargaining failure years in the making: months of indirect cost imposition through border closures, trade restrictions, and limited strikes on TTP camps failed to shift Taliban behaviour, making direct military pressure a logical next step in Pakistan's hybrid coercion strategy. A regime in which Akhundzada's hardline camp is ascendant — insulated by the very legislative architecture described in this article — is unlikely to prove more responsive to diplomatic pressure now than it was before the bombs fell.

Meanwhile, armed resistance to the Taliban — though limited in strategic impact — has continued. The Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) claimed attacks in Kunduz and Badakhshan in late 2025, including a strike on a Taliban morality enforcement headquarters in Faryab. An assessment from February 2026 found that while resistance groups lack the capacity to shift the balance of power, the Taliban's evolving approach to managing dissent in the northeast from outright suppression to more complex subnational governance tacitly acknowledges that the threat persists.

The criminal procedure code, the reshuffles, and the decree cluster all point in the same direction: a leadership legislating from insecurity, not strength. The ICC warrants have not deterred the trajectory. Now, with Pakistani jets overhead and internal fractures deepening, whether that architecture of control holds — or becomes the very rigidity that accelerates the regime's unravelling — is the central question for 2026.

Read more of our Durand Dispatch: Perspectives articles here:

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