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Author: Ornicha Daorueng Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, no country in the world has formally recognised them as the legitimate government. One of the strongest barriers to recognition has been the Taliban’s failure to meet certain informal conditions: forming an inclusive government and respecting human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. Diplomatic pressure intensified after the Taliban banned women from education and employment. The US Secretary of State warned that “there are going to be costs if this is not reversed.” The United Kingdom likewise declared that it “unequivocally condemns this ban and all others that restrict Afghan women’s and girls’ rights and fundamental freedoms.” India voiced concern over the Taliban’s university ban, urging the formation of an inclusive government in Kabul that guarantees equal rights for women and girls across Afghan society. At the 79th United Nations General Assembly, eighty-three countries issued a joint statement condemning the Taliban’s “institutionalised and systematic discrimination” against women and girls, and urged the regime to immediately reverse all edicts targeting them. On paper, the international community stands united in condemning the Taliban’s gender apartheid. In practice, however, the response has been weak and even contradictory. Many governments have opted for quiet “pragmatic engagement,” seeking common ground in the name of humanitarian access and regional stability. But is this truly the right path forward? The September 2025 earthquake revealed how Afghan women remain invisible even in tragedy, a stark reminder of what “engagement” has failed to change. Moreover, how can democracies founded on liberty, equality and human dignity remain passive in the face of Afghan women’s struggle? Engagement without conviction: how internationals justify engaging with the Taliban Beyond diplomatic isolation and conditional aid, no government has taken concrete steps to pressure the Taliban on women’s rights. Instead, a policy of “engagement without recognition” has emerged. The UK and US have not recognised the Taliban, but both maintain contact through third countries. The UK operates a “UK Mission to Afghanistan” inside its embassy in Doha, Qatar, and pursue a policy of “limited and pragmatic” engagement when it serves national interests. The US follows the same model, with officials meeting Taliban representatives in Doha whenever Washington deems it to be in its interest. India, too, has re-established a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan by sending a technical team to reopen its Kabul embassy. Most recently, in October 2025, Afghanistan’s Taliban Foreign Minister met with India’s External Affairs Minister, marking the highest-level visit by a Taliban official since the group took control in 2021.  During the trip, India announced plans to reopen its embassy in Kabul and to restore trade, investment, and humanitarian cooperation with Afghanistan. Even in the Muslim world, countries such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and several Central Asian states, while publicly criticising the Taliban regime, have nevertheless maintained ties, from reopening embassies in Kabul to hosting the Taliban’s political office. Governments justify this engagement on humanitarian, security, and geopolitical grounds, including aid delivery and economic stabilisation to narcotics control, counter-terrorism, and security assurances amid regional tensions. Officials insist that boycotting the Taliban would only deepen polarisation, whereas dialogue might create common ground and shape Afghanistan’s future. However, whatever the motive, whether humanitarian or strategic, the effect remains the same. Every meeting, mission, and handshake signals to the Taliban that the world still seeks their cooperation for access, stability, and control. As a result, Taliban representatives speak to the United Nations with confidence that they “do not wish to create obstacles” to its work, while declaring that their treatment of women is an internal matter that the international community should “respect.” Beyond rhetoric: acting on the courage of democratic values Every democracy, every member of the United Nations, especially those that signed the joint statement condemning the Taliban regime, claims to be built on liberty, equality, and human dignity. Yet the diplomatic practice of “engagement without recognition”, combined with a lack of real pressure or action, has reduced those values to rhetoric. Governments justify this approach by arguing that isolating the Taliban would only hurt ordinary Afghans, but in practice it allows diplomats to speak of women’s rights while sitting across from those who erase them. This is not pragmatic realism; it is a loss of democratic conviction.   There are actions that align principle with effectiveness. First, impose sanctions for gender apartheid. The existing sanctions regime, last substantively updated in 2011 with a focus on counter-terrorism, has never addressed gender-based persecution. The United Nations could reassert its credibility by enforcing and expanding targeted sanctions on Taliban leaders responsible for the systematic oppression of women and girls. Second, condition humanitarian aid on women’s rights. Under current humanitarian exemptions, billions of dollars in aid, including $4.4 billion in 2022, $4.6 billion in 2023, and more than $3.4 billion from the United States since its withdrawal, have kept Afghanistan afloat, covering food, health, and shelter. But the Taliban’s response to such generosity was to punish women further: in December 2022 they barred Afghan women from working for NGOs, and four months later, for the UN itself. The UN and donors should use existing humanitarian exemptions to make aid conditional on tangible progress in restoring women’s education, employment, and participation in public life. They should also channel funding to Afghan women-led organisations that quietly run underground schools, clinics, and community programmes, providing them with political protection and sustained support as rightful partners in rebuilding their country. Finally, governments could fast-track asylum and resettlement for Afghan women, not men, prioritising those most at risk: journalists, educators, activists, and judges. This is both to ensure their safety and to affirm the democratic values their struggle represents. These are only a few examples of how moral conviction can be translated into meaningful action, proof that defending values need not come at the expense of effectiveness. ** In dealing with extremists, polite engagement will never bring change. It is not their language, nor the conduct of a regime that has brutalised its own

Author: Ornicha Daorueng A magnitude 6 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan on the night of 31 August, killing at least 2,200 people, injuring more than 3,600, and destroying over 5,000 homes. More than half a million people have been affected, with hundreds of families displaced to temporary camps, while medical teams continue to treat the injured amid ongoing aftershocks. Amid this humanitarian catastrophe, one striking reality stands out: the absence of women. In nearly all the images and footage emerging from the earthquake zone, women are nowhere to be seen, not in rescue operations, not in relief camps, not even among the wounded in hospitals. This absence is tragic, though not surprising. Under Taliban rule, both before and after its return to power in 2021, Afghan women have been systematically erased from public life, banned from education, barred from employment, and excluded from almost every sphere of social participation. This gender apartheid is so absolute that even a natural disaster could not shake its walls. The fact that women remain invisible amid mass death and destruction is more than a tragedy to mourn or a “cultural difference” to excuse. It is a moral alarm to the world, a call to act. For non-Muslims, it is a demand to stop excusing injustice in the name of culture; for Muslims, it is an urgent duty to reclaim Islam’s true image from those who have distorted it. The Taliban’s regime: a “gender apartheid” The Taliban is an Islamist militant movement that emerged in the early 1990s with the aim of turning Afghanistan into an Islamic state. They captured Kabul in 1996 and ruled the country until 2001, before returning to power in 2021 following the US withdrawal. The Taliban are Islamist fundamentalists who enforce a rigid interpretation of Islamic law and are notorious for widespread human rights abuses. Under their version of Sharia, women and girls are banned from attending school, working, leaving the house without a male guardian, showing their skin in public, receiving medical care from male doctors, engaging in politics, or even speaking publicly. In other words, women have been erased from public life and confined within the home, with no control over their own lives. These are not isolated incidents of discrimination but a systemic denial of the most basic rights, simply because they are women. UN human rights officials have reported that these policies “seek to completely erase women’s presence in public.” Ashraf Ghani, the former Afghan president who fled the country as the Taliban seized power in August 2021, described it as “a vivid sign of gender apartheid in the 21st century.” Muslim world rejects the Taliban’s interpretation The Taliban claim their bans reflect Islamic law and teachings. Yet Afghanistan remains the only Muslim country in the world where girls are barred from secondary school and university. Across the Muslim world, leaders and scholars have rejected this as un-Islamic. From Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, to Indonesia and many other governments and religious authorities have publicly condemned the Taliban’s ban, especially on women’s education.  Turkey: “The ban is neither Islamic nor humane… Islam encourages education and science.” United Arab Emirates: “Bans on girls’ and women’s education violate fundamental human rights, contradict the teachings of Islam, and must be swiftly reversed.” Qatar: “It is very disappointing to see steps backwards… In Qatar’s Islamic system, women outnumber men in government, the workforce, and higher education.” Indonesia: “Education is a fundamental right for all men and women. Indonesia urges the Taliban to ensure uninterrupted access to education for women.” Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam (Cairo): “Banning Afghan women from university contradicts Sharia and Islam’s call for both men and women to seek knowledge.” In an interview with the ICfS, Paul Salahuddin Armstrong, Managing Director (Amir) of the Association of British Muslims, reflected: “the Prophet himself empowered women and encouraged women’s education. Within Islam, the woman is the first teacher of her children and her family.” He added, “the Taliban are Islamists who use the excuse of Islam to impose policies and actions aimed at controlling society.” Taken together, these statements show a clear consensus across the Muslim world: the Taliban’s treatment of women is fundamentally wrong. Their edicts are not a defence of Islam, but a pursuit of political control disguised in religious language. Neither the holy texts nor Islam’s mainstream traditions endorse this kind of oppression imposed on women in Afghanistan today. Reclaiming human rights and Islam from the Taliban’s ideology Religion is not monolithic. Islam, like Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism, is not a fixed block of belief but a living tradition, shaped by multiple schools of thought, interpretations, and cultural expressions. As Paul Salahuddin Armstrong remarked, “As Islam spread around the world, it absorbed different cultures.” Many practices now labelled “Islamic” may, in fact, stem from local customs that merged with the faith as it expanded across regions. In pluralistic democracies, people are free to worship and live according to their faith. Yet liberty, equality, and human dignity form a universal baseline that no religion or culture can override. If we believe in liberty, equality, and human dignity as universal rights, then we must uphold them consistently, not only within our own borders but wherever they are denied. That means having the moral clarity to critique the Taliban’s ideology without fear of being labelled as “Islamophobic.” Defending universal rights is not an attack on faith; it is an affirmation of our shared humanity, and a way of shaping faith into a force for compassion, not oppression. Ultimately, the most powerful rejection of the Taliban’s ideology will not come from outsiders but from Muslims themselves. Muslims around the world must speak out for their own faith and against those who exploit and distort it. The strongest voices, and the best starting point, may come from Muslims living in democracies such as the US, the UK and India. They are among those who most deeply understand and live by the values of freedom, equality and dignity, in sharp contrast to the