Five years after the Taliban swept to power, does the West have any influence?

Five years after the Taliban swept to power, does the West have any influence?

In a whitewashed basement in a village south of Kabul, a dozen young women bustle about, stirring cauldrons of bubbling cherries and plums, and sticking labels on glass jam jars. Ventures like this are one of the rare spaces where women are still able to gain skills and employment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

It is run by Najia, a 47-year-old Afghan entrepreneur and mother of nine children who was married at the age of 14.

If the authorities hadn't barred girls and young women from secondary schools and universities, many of the women in this workshop, including Naija's daughters, would be studying for a different kind of future.

But now, even this is being squeezed too. Recent rules say women have to ask men to take their products to market, and only men can sit at their stalls to show their wares at trade fairs. The Taliban gives various reasons for this, including claiming that women aren't wearing proper hijab or head covering.

"The world has to talk to the Taliban in a different way because it's just not working," says Najia. "The lives of Afghan women have to change because we're losing hope."

Five years after this ultra-conservative Islamist movement took charge, women are banned from much of the public sphere and girls are prohibited from going to school over the age of 12. Many inside and outside Afghanistan are asking the same pressing question: what's the best way to engage the Taliban to try to achieve meaningful change?

The issue is deeply divisive. There are fissures between many groups, with a huge array of conflicting issues at stake. These include women's rights, unpredictable Taliban edicts, international sanctions and aid cuts during a spiralling humanitarian crisis. The international response is split between Western countries often focused on human rights and others more interested in investment opportunities. And the West itself is divided on the best response.

Many now accept that whatever they're doing, it's not working.

Engage, not isolate

Few voices call for absolute isolation, not when the United Nations warns that 22 million Afghans – nearly half the of the population – rely on some form of foreign assistance to help them survive.

The country has been battered by multiple shocks: an agonising economic crisis; devastating natural disasters; clashes with neighbouring Pakistan, and the influx of millions of Afghans deported from countries near and far into this impoverished land.

And there's no avoiding it – the Taliban are in charge now.

In the years since their fighters swept into Kabul on 15 August 2021, they've grown in confidence and consolidated control despite intermittent attacks by armed opposition groups based abroad, as well as Islamic State fighters.

The Taliban are collecting tax revenues and signing deals in mining, energy and more with Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, and Tashkent, along with other neighbours.

But they're still strangled by international sanctions linked to terrorism and human rights. Russia is the only country to formally recognise their rule, and they haven't been allowed to take up what they see as their rightful seat at the UN in New York.

But formal diplomatic recognition is no longer the focal point.

"The West is losing the argument over recognition," says a former senior UN official who requested anonymity because they continue to work in Afghanistan. They point to the growing number of countries which have conferred de facto recognition by clinching deals, accrediting diplomats, operating embassies, and more.

"There's no doubt the Taliban would like to be recognised at the UN but it's no longer as potent a bargaining chip as it was at the beginning," they assess.

Behind the soaring blast walls of the foreign ministry in Kabul, in the sprawling compound of manicured lawns and graceful historic buildings, Taliban diplomats keep adding names and flags to the growing collection of Afghan embassies worldwide which are now under their control, rather than the last holdouts of the government they ousted. The current tally is more than 40.

"We need to come closer diplomatically rather than talking from a distance if we want to make progress in our relationship," says Zabihullah Mujahid, the main Taliban spokesman.

We meet in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the real seat of power. This is where the Taliban's reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has been steadily building his political and military base and issuing hundreds of edicts, many of them focused on erasing women and girls from public life – what he portrays as an Islamic obligation to protect them.

This five-year mark is widely seen as an inflection point.

"An unstable and potentially dangerous equilibrium," is how the situation was described in closed-door remarks by a senior UN official at a recent international gathering.

And, yet, Afghanistan has fallen far under the world's radar. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East absorb international attention, and Europe's burning issue is how to stop so many Afghans fleeing towards their shores. It's a startling reversal.

"It's extraordinary given the scale of Western effort from 2001-2021 how ignored Afghanistan is now," remarks a Western diplomat who recently served as an envoy to the country. They did not want to be named because they're still in the diplomatic service.

"The real diplomatic gap is the US," they added, in reference to the current US administration's decision to eliminate their special envoy position and dismantle many agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which once led the world's approach on almost every Afghan issue.

Even within Taliban ranks, especially among those known to differ with some of the strictest edicts handed down by their emir, there is frustration that the world doesn't seem willing or able to forge a different kind of relationship.

"We want to be part of the international community," emphasises Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban who now runs a madrasa for boys and girls on the outskirts of Kabul. Unlike mainstream schools, madrasas take girls of all ages and some, especially those run privately, are teaching more than religious classes.

"Just putting pressure won't work," he tells us. He takes the long view of Afghanistan's history of resisting foreign invaders. "We didn't surrender to the Russians, to the Americans, so why would the Taliban surrender now?"

Open dialogue

UN officials believe their presence in Afghanistan makes a difference, however limited. They point to progress on issues such as the treatment of prisoners, their detailed discussions on the harsh implementation of the morality code known as the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as well as efforts to improve humanitarian access.

"Engagement is slow, progress is incremental, and reversals are frequent," is the UN's sober summary of the past five years of on-off dialogue.

But it still insists it needs to stay the course.

"A stalled process is better than no process," emphasises Georgette Gagnon, a deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, who is now the acting head of the UN mission in Kabul.

The UN has been criticised for not pushing back enough against the Taliban, including for holding forums such as the so-called Doha Process , in which a Taliban delegation travelled to the Qatari capital in 2024 to discuss a range of issues, on condition that no Afghan women's representatives were at the table. UN officials insist all issues were discussed, and that subsequent meetings included their participation.

A new process called Mosaic approaches negotiations in a more structured format, on six core issues. On one side there are human rights including women's rights, inclusive governance, and counterterrorism. On the other, there are Taliban demands – sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, diplomatic representation.

"Confidence and reciprocity are beginning to take shape to open the door to engagement on the most difficult issues," says Gagnon whom we meet inside the UN's vast, heavily fortified compound. She calls them "small steps on the long road".

She insists it has to be done through a collective effort, not only through discussions by individual governments. "Pressure has not worked so far, threats have not worked; our best chance lies in consistent and common messaging and action."

For some sceptics, even inside the UN, there's worry that the Mosaic approach isn't going to work either.

But just keeping the lights on, preventing a slide into isolation, and continuing protection work with vulnerable communities, especially women, is seen as essential.

Talk quietly

In dusty provincial capitals and farmers' fields, where international and Afghan aid agencies wrestle with ways to work on the ground, the conversations continue day in day out.

It's there that edicts handed down by the reclusive emir are translated into what are known as workarounds. These workarounds can mean women are able to work in some agency sectors from home, or in different rooms, on different floors, or even in different buildings to men.

"Everything in Afghanistan is relationships, and day-to-day that can help make things easier," says Chris Kinder, the chairman of Afghanaid, a British charity which has been working in Afghanistan for more than 40 years. He emphasises that most of these conversations on access and implementation are conducted by experienced Afghan staff.