Since the last American soldier left the U.S. base in Afghanistan, the Taliban have been celebrating the creation of their new government. But away from the media spotlight, the war continues.

The Taliban is fighting two wars, crisscrossing Afghanistan and still ongoing in the U.S. Army’s absence. The first is against the I.S.K., which is the Afghan piece of I.S.I.S. This is the group guilty of sending their men packed with explosives into Kabul airport as desperate people were trying to board the last available flights out of the country. The second is against the opposition represented by the Afghanistan National Resistance Front (N.R.F.), based in the Panjshir region. This part of Afghanistan is located in the north of Kabul and consists of high bare mountains, lush river valleys, and narrow rocky canyons. Villages are located along the valley floor, and the mountains are a traditional place of refuge during times of conflict.

The Taliban killed politician Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2001. His son is carrying on the fight against the oppressors as the face of the N.R.F.

“The armed resistance against the Taliban in the provinces of Panjshir… and other provinces of the country is actively in place,” Hamid Saifi, a commanding officer of the Afghan National Army and current member of the Afghanistan National Resistance, said in an interview for SpecialEurasia on October 17^th. “And every day, with the increased cruelty of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan, inside and outside the country, are mobilizing against this group. The political activities of the N.R.F. have had positive developments both at the national and international levels.”

Soon after the fall of the previous Afghan government, fighters took refuge in the mountains to plan attacks against Taliban patrols. But in mid-August, the first rounds of arrests began, with men being seized in the Darah region and taken to mosques to be tortured and interrogated. Amnesty International reports that, in its attempts to fight the Resistance Front, the Taliban has committed a series of violations of international humanitarian law including hostage-taking, deprivation of liberty, extrajudicial executions, and deliberate burning.

“The Resistance Front believes that stability in the country requires establishing an inclusive government based on the people’s legitimate votes and that Afghanistan has a system acceptable to the people of Afghanistan and the world,” Saifi said. “The past 20 years’ achievements have been crucial developments in the country’s history.” But the Taliban’s rule threatens those achievements. “At no cost [must we] allow any group to eliminate those developments in every walks [sic] of life for the people of Afghanistan. A stable Afghanistan requires an inclusive and accepted government that is legitimate to the country’s people and the international community.”

Having the international community recognize the N.R.F. is easier said than done, however, because it is difficult to get a good understanding of the war. The media are not in Afghanistan to report news, but to make whichever camp they represent look like the victorious one, and researchers from Amnesty International were forced to work remotely – via encrypted messaging and satellite images – to interview survivors and witnesses who fled the province in the process of compiling their report on crimes in Panjshir.

The main problem lies in the West’s inability to support this insurgency in a concrete way. On the one hand, these countries feel extreme sympathy for the N.R.F. – partly because it is deeply anti-Taliban, which is to say, an enemy of their enemy. Failing to support this group would mean not only being indifferent in the face of the ongoing massacres, but also confirming to the whole world that there are indeed first- and second-class conflicts. On the other hand, intervening would be making the revolutionaries accomplices in a new civil war (even though that war is, willingly or unwillingly, already underway). Therefore, the solution thus far adopted by the so-called “strong powers” is to again ignore an ongoing conflict and refuse to support the only force capable of confronting Islamist fundamentalists.

In discussing this ongoing conflict, it is important that we emphasize the repercussions of inactivity. Refusing to become involved in the war or to support N.R.F. forces will not keep anyone’s hands clean. The West is already partly responsible for the brimming tensions in Afghanistan, and avoiding the realization of its own culpability will not prevent thousands of innocents, in the Panjshir region and in Afghanistan, from becoming victims.