Fighting between the Taliban and government forces in Afghanistan escalated in 2015, with the Taliban seizing control of Kunduz and holding the city for nearly two weeks before Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), with United States air and ground support, regained control. The Taliban also seized a number of district centers and threatened other provincial capitals. The United Nations deemed nearly half of the country's provinces as being at high or extreme risk.

The upsurge in violence had devastating consequences for civilians, with suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and targeted attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents causing 70 percent of all civilian casualties. The number of civilians killed during government military operations, particularly ground offensives, increased too.

While both President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah publicly affirmed the government's commitment to human rights, their National Unity Government (NUG) failed to address longstanding concerns, including violations of women's rights and attacks on journalists. The government launched an action plan to curb torture and enacted legislation criminalizing the recruitment of child soldiers, but impunity for both continued.

Parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 2015 were postponed indefinitely pending contested electoral reforms. More people became internally displaced due to conflict than in any previous year since 2002; the 100,000 new IDPs in 2015 brought the nationwide total to almost 1 million.

Armed Conflict

IEDs planted by insurgents remained a leading cause of civilian casualties. Such weapons function as anti-personnel landmines, and their indiscriminate use violates international humanitarian law. Hundreds of Afghan civilians were also killed and injured in suicide attacks.

With the Taliban insurgency appearing increasingly splintered—particularly following revelations that senior Taliban officials had kept the 2013 death of Mullah Omar, the movement's spiritual leader, a secret—it was impossible to attribute responsibility for many acts of violence.

In Nangarhar province, a group saying it was affiliated with the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for some attacks, although such claims were hard to verify, including an April 18 suicide attack on the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad that killed at least 30 people and injured more than 100. On August 7, insurgent attacks killed 50 people and injured 350 in Kabul, the bloodiest single day in the capital since 2001.