The World Must Hold the Line on Non-Recognition of the Taliban

Four years to the day since the fall of Kabul, granting legitimacy to the terror group would cement a regime of gender apartheid—and abandon Afghanistan’s women and girls

In April, Russia removed the Taliban from its designated terrorist list. By July, it became the first country to formally recognize them as Afghanistan’s rulers, accepting a Taliban-appointed ambassador to Moscow—the culmination of steady engagement since they seized power four years ago today. It may have been the logical next step, but it is still a shocking blow, especially for the women and girls living under the brutality of gender apartheid.

Russia’s move is part of a quietly growing willingness to engage with Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers. China has had a Taliban appointed ambassador since 2023, has offered the Taliban tariff-free trade, and, like Russia, never closed its embassy in Kabul. By 2024, the Taliban controlled 39 embassies, including most embassies in its neighbouring countries like Iran, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, plus those in The Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and the consulate in Munich. Meanwhile, embassies in the United States, United Kingdom, Norway and India that diplomats from the former government led have shut down. In April, Indian special envoy Anand Prakash traveled to Kabul for talks with senior Taliban leaders on boosting political and trade links. Soon after, strict Indian visa restrictions put in place on Afghans since 2021 were eased.

Taliban members travel frequently to the Gulf countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia despite travel bans and sanctions. Lavish monthly stipends from providing construction equipment to build stadiums for the World Cup allowed Taliban members purchase real estate in Qatar. Taliban representatives have attended conferences and high-profile events in Norway and Germany.

And back in Afghanistan, Afghan women cannot travel even within their home provinces without a male chaperone, including for emergency medical care—causing a sharp increase in women’s deaths.

Russia stands alone in recognizing the Taliban, and it’s tempting to interpret this move as simply part and parcel of Russian realpolitik, its signature amoral foreign policy, or as yet another chapter of its destructive legacy in Afghanistan. But while Russia has gone the furthest, its recognition is indicative of expanding diplomatic and economic engagement between the Taliban among a growing list of countries. Collectively, this engagement supports the normalization of a regime that enforces gender apartheid and violently silences those demanding freedom and fundamental human rights—including through the calculated use of systemic sexual violence.

The willingness of too many governments to align themselves with a regime determined to strip women and girls en masse of their rights to education, work, and freedom of movement sends an alarming signal to Afghanistan’s women and girls. Despite all odds, they have held onto hope that the international community will find the moral courage to respond to the catastrophic loss of their rights. And we are letting them down.

Engagement with the Taliban, whether formally acknowledged or not, grants international recognition to a regime that lacks national support and undermines pressure on it to respect human rights and reopen social and political spaces. Recognition improves the Taliban’s access to financial resources. Economic transactions with Russia and its allies provides resources directly to the Taliban’s machinery of repression. It also sends a dangerous message to other extremist groups with territorial ambitions that international legitimacy is within reach, irrespective of gross human rights abuses. Abuses that the International Criminal Court has called crimes against humanity.

Russia’s embrace of the world’s most misogynistic regime could pave the way for more countries to follow suit, having mitigated the stigma of being the first mover. Or, countries can choose to respond by distancing themselves from both Afghanistan and Russia, using this event as an opportunity to assert a commitment to not engage with a regime inflicting mass suffering on women and girls, murdering dissenters, and imposing a dystopian reality on its citizens. UN member states should work together to heed UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett’s call for an “all tools approach”, activating the available measures to pursue accountability through international justice.

Adopting individual sanctions on Taliban leaders and supporting the inclusion of gender apartheid as a crime in the proposed global treaty on crimes against humanity currently advancing at the United Nations would be a start. Greater unity is urgently needed among UN member states to stand firmly against recognition. Through diplomatic and UN channels, countries in Afghanistan’s region such as India should be encouraged to reconsider their warming relations with the terror group.

We know this fight is not abstract because it is our daily work. Through Right to Learn Afghanistan, the organization we lead, we deliver education directly to Afghan women and girls who have been shut out of classrooms by Taliban decree. From creating digital platforms that beam lessons into homes across Afghanistan, to establishing learning centers for refugees and displaced students, to training teachers and equipping libraries—we are ensuring that the right to learn does not disappear under the crushing weight of tyranny. Every day, we see the determination of women and girls who have found alternative ways to study, log in to online classes despite constant fear, and refuse to let the Taliban define their futures.

This is what the world risks losing if it legitimizes a regime of gender apartheid: the courage, intellect, and potential of half a nation.

Recognition of the Taliban is an endorsement of their war on women, not a neutral diplomatic gesture. The international community must stand immovable on the principle that no government can be recognized while erasing women from public life. Our message is simple: hold the line. Stand with Afghan women and girls. Refuse to allow their oppressors the reward of legitimacy. Because if the world turns away now, history will remember not only the cruelty of the Taliban, but also the complicity of those who granted them power.

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