Five years after returning to power, the Taliban face less isolation than ever

Taliban gunmen shot (Opens in new window) people in the streets of Herat in early June during demonstrations against the regime’s brutal “morality police”, vindicating in the worst way possible warnings about how they would govern if permitted to return to power.

Five years after seizing Kabul and installing their second regime, the Taliban have proved their critics right, and exposed the wishful thinking of Western political and military leaders who insisted the movement had changed (Opens in new window).

Afghanistan is a land of poverty, fear, corruption, and cruelty, run by men whom the UN Security Council consistently warns (Opens in new window) maintain close ties to transnational terrorist organisations – many of them, including Al-Qaeda, now operating under Taliban protection.

Warnings of what a Taliban return would bring were neither rare nor ambiguous. Women, journalists, rights advocates, and many who lived through the Taliban's first regime were clear about what a return to power would mean. Their concerns were discounted and ignored by governments determined to end the war and eager to believe the Taliban’s promises, to justify withdrawal. Their scepticism collided with a political reality in Western capitals: getting out had become the overriding objective.

For days, women in Herat had been disappearing into Taliban detention, as “vice and virtue” agents picked them up for alleged dress code violations. It was the latest tightening of restrictions that have already banned women from much of public life. When people moved onto the streets to protest, Taliban gunmen fired directly into the crowd, many of whom were Hazara. Local media reported (Opens in new window) nearly 30 wounded. The UN confirmed one dead and is investigating a possible second death. Many of the wounded were reportedlytaken home rather than to medical centres, for fear of reprisals. Taliban operatives were said to be inside hospitals, detaining relatives of people seeking treatment for gunshot wounds.

The muted response – the UN’s Kabul office said it was “alarmed (Opens in new window)” – echoed how the international community has generally appeased the Taliban since their return.

Diplomatic engagement is expanding, as isolation gives way to accommodation. Western diplomats publish photographs of their meetings with Taliban figures in Kabul on social media platforms, which are quickly repurposed (Opens in new window) as legitimacy-building propaganda. UN bans are lifted so sanctioned terrorists can travel extensively, again boosting their legitimacy.

Investment is flowing in. The Taliban have diplomatic ties with dozens of countries, including formal recognition from Russia, and have just signed a defence arrangement with Moscow amid a border war with Pakistan.

US diplomats and intelligence officials regularly meet the group to discuss security and other issues. Republican lawmaker Tim Burchett says (Opens in new window) America has sent around US$5 billion to Afghanistan since 2021, including regular deliveries of tens of millions of dollars deposited in the Taliban-controlled central bank. His bill to stop the practice has passed the House of Representatives, although the State Department argues the money is humanitarian aid.

A wilful blindness to the reality of Taliban rule has taken hold, and the shift is increasingly visible beyond governments. Influential commentators, business figures (Opens in new window), and media personalities (Opens in new window) now speak of Afghanistan in terms of “normality,” stability, opportunity, and engagement. The Taliban’s repression is acknowledged but increasingly treated as a regrettable feature of an otherwise manageable situation.

Tellingly, the United Nations has begun referring (Opens in new window) to the Taliban as Afghanistan’s “relevant authorities,” instead of the previous “de facto authorities,” narrowing the linguistic difference between the regime and a recognised government.

That growing acceptance is also a reflection of the weakness of the Taliban’s opponents. Afghanistan’s exiled political class spends much of its time convening conferences and issuing road maps for a democratic future, but few offer a plausible route from aspiration to power. Most proposals begin with the Taliban’s departure rather than the far more difficult question of how it might be persuaded or pressured – or forced – to share power.

Others argue for renewed armed resistance, with some former Afghan commanders presenting military confrontation as the only answer to Taliban rule. But after four decades of almost uninterrupted war, there is little evidence that the people of Afghanistan or the international community have any appetite for more war.

Five years after the Taliban’s return, a double standard has emerged. Restrictions that would provoke outrage if imposed almost anywhere else are treated as cultural or political responses when applied to Afghanistan’s people.

The implication extends beyond Afghanistan. If the systematic exclusion of women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and religious and ethnic minorities from public life, the suppression of dissent, and tolerance of extremist groups cease to be barriers to engagement in Afghanistan, it becomes harder to argue that these standards are non-negotiable elsewhere.

The international community is quietly lowering the threshold of behaviour it is prepared to accept. In those circumstances, rights described as universal can become conditional – defended in some places, abandoned in others. The people most affected by Taliban rule are expected to live under conditions that few of the regime’s foreign interlocutors would tolerate for themselves.

The warnings about what the Taliban would bring to Afghanistan were accurate. What changed was the willingness of the world to act on them.