Fire From the Sky: The Afghan Taliban’s Drones Despite ongoing peace negotiations, the Taliban continue their attacks, recently incorporating weaponized commercially available drones into their arsenal. December 22, 2020 A commercially available quadcopter drone raises a Taliban flag reportedly somewhere in the southern Afghan province of Helmand; date unknown, shared on Twitter on November 9, 2020 Credit: Twitter Advertisement SAYED KARAM, PAKTIA, AFGHANISTAN — While the Taliban have since at least 2016 used camera-equipped commercial drones to film propaganda footage, it was, as far as it could be determined, only in early October 2020 that they began to use such unmanned aerial vehicles for attacks. Although, as of writing, there have been few such attacks with weaponized commercial drones, they are significant for several reasons. They exemplify that the Taliban remain — despite engaging the Afghan government and other Afghan stakeholders in peace negotiations — intent on fighting the Afghan government and employ new, ingenuous tactics to do so. Furthermore, and even though the impact of such drone attacks has so far remained limited, they threaten to demoralize Afghan government forces who perceive themselves to face a better-equipped enemy.