3 min readAug 17, 2026 06:04 PM IST
First published on: Aug 17, 2026 at 05:30 PM IST
Five years on, the Taliban govern Afghanistan with a confidence that would have been difficult to imagine in 2021, consolidating power and establishing a functioning — yet highly repressive — state. While the Taliban claim they have brought peace and security, absence of battlefield violence alone cannot guarantee long-term peace. Peace also requires the conditions for justice, inclusion, dignity, harmony and cohesion. A country in which half the population is systematically excluded from public life cannot meaningfully be described as at peace.
Afghan women remain the most visible casualties of the Taliban’s rule: As of 2026, an estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls remain excluded from secondary education. The Taliban’s restrictions have narrowed women’s access to employment, healthcare, public spaces, movement and political participation. More than 100 restrictive decrees and measures have been issued since 2021, increasingly institutionalising a system of gender-based exclusion. Excluding women from the economy deprives Afghanistan of the human resources it will need to rebuild, and restrictions on female humanitarian workers make it harder for aid to reach women and children, the most vulnerable groups in any fragile state, further exacerbating the plight of Afghan women.
Today, the international community faces a different dilemma: How to engage a regime you do not recognise without normalising the system it has created? Most countries still do not formally recognise the Taliban government, but diplomatic engagement has expanded over the past few years. China, Iran, Pakistan, India, Turkey and Central Asian states have maintained varying degrees of contact with Kabul, driven by security, trade, migration and regional interests. Russia went further and officially recognised the regime last year, becoming the first country to extend formal legitimacy to the Taliban since their return to power. In parallel, Western governments continue to maintain channels with the de facto authorities over humanitarian assistance and counterterrorism.
Regional states cannot simply ignore the security and migration consequences of isolating Afghanistan. Diplomatic engagement thus remains necessary to negotiate access, protect aid workers and exert whatever influence remains for regional stability. But if governments gradually deepen diplomatic and economic relations with Kabul while women’s exclusion becomes a permanent background condition, the Taliban receive a powerful message: Repression may attract condemnation, but not enough to fundamentally obstruct international engagement. This is why the international community needs to distinguish between engaging Afghanistan and legitimising Taliban rule.
The Taliban survived international isolation, consolidated power, steadily opened channels for international engagement, and demonstrated that military victory can be converted into political endurance. Yet the country remains economically fragile and heavily dependent on humanitarian support while simultaneously cut off from the human capital it could develop. The lesson of the past five years is neither that the international community should have remained in Afghanistan indefinitely nor that engagement with the Taliban should be rejected outright. But the growing temptation to treat Afghanistan as a settled case, and engage the Taliban simply because they control the state and because humanitarian aid is vital for its recovery, risks turning pragmatic engagement into de facto normalisation.
The writer is a contributing researcher with ORF who has previously taught at the University of Edinburgh
The growing temptation to treat Afghanistan as a settled case, and engage the Taliban simply because they control the state and because humanitarian aid is vital for its recovery, risks turning pragmatic engagement into de-facto normalisation (Photo/AP) 
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