The Mosco Format. Taliban are knocking on the Wrong Doors

 

The Taliban Are Knocking on the Wrong Doors

Recognition can bring a regime money and standing. It cannot bring consent.

When a Taliban delegation led by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in Moscow for the eighth round of the Moscow Format talks, the irony was hard to miss. Moscow's 1979 invasion began one of Afghanistan's longest wars. Now it was hosting the movement that governs the country. Russia formally recognized the Taliban government in July 2025, the first state to do so, and China and the United Arab Emirates have deepened ties short of recognition.

None of that is an Afghan verdict on Taliban rule. Russia wants a quiet southern flank and a Kabul that won't host its rivals, so it needs a relationship with whoever holds the capital, not the consent of the governed. Recognition is mostly a deal between states. Nobody in the room is asking whether Afghans agree.

Every government has to answer that question sooner or later:

By what right do you rule?

I mean consent in a minimal sense: a peaceful way for citizens to challenge their rulers and, in the end, remove them. Elections are the familiar version. Councils or other bodies rooted in Afghan tradition could do the job if they allowed real contestation. The Taliban have built none.

They do control the country. They got there after the U.S. withdrawal, the collapse of the Afghan government, and an insurgency that enjoyed sanctuary in Pakistan. They also ended two decades of large-scale fighting, and many Afghans value that. But there has been no national vote, and no other process, through which Afghans could accept or reject them. That doesn't prove the Taliban are unpopular. It means no one can know, and nothing exists to find out. Silence may be support. It may also be fear or exhaustion.

The Taliban say their authority comes from enforcing God's law. That claim has deep roots in Islamic political thought. But who decides what God's law requires, and who may challenge the rulers' reading of it? A system needs some way to question authority and withdraw it. This one has none.

Afghanistan's own elections were badly flawed, and the 2019 vote was marred by fraud and violence. That is a reason to build better institutions, not to give up on consent. A vote asks losers to accept the result and winners to accept limits. The Taliban offer neither.

So should the world simply engage? Diplomats say isolation hurts ordinary Afghans, and contact has produced some progress on aid. The harder problem is the record. Sanctions, frozen reserves and years of diplomacy, including the Doha process, did not stop the Taliban from closing girls' secondary schools, barring women from universities and restricting women's work.

That shows pressure failed, but I think it shows a particular kind failed: broad demands, unclear rewards, and governments free to undercut one another. Engagement with no conditions is worse, because it strengthens a government that never won a mandate. What's left is conditional engagement, with specific demands and rewards that arrive in stages.

Leverage is limited. Russia, China and Pakistan have no interest in tying relations to women's rights or inclusion. But Washington and its partners still control access to international financial institutions, reconstruction aid, sanctions relief and frozen reserves, and Moscow and Beijing can't fully replace those. This works only if partners coordinate and the goal is realistic. Demanding that the Taliban surrender power would invite more war. The goal is a path from de facto rule to legitimate government.

Start with steps anyone can verify: secondary schools and universities open to girls and women, women allowed to work, independent monitoring of aid. Schools are open or they are not. In return, partners offer targeted sanctions relief, more development money and gradual access to reserves under independent oversight.

Next, an inclusive political process. The Taliban would begin a structured dialogue on how Afghanistan's government is chosen, constrained and changed, with women, minorities, civil society, religious scholars and exiled politicians at the table and their safety guaranteed. Partners would respond with broader diplomatic engagement and access to international financial institutions.

Only then, institutions: elections, representative councils, or a distinctly Afghan hybrid that lets citizens hold rulers accountable. Recognition and large-scale reconstruction aid belong here.

And if the Taliban refuse? The benefits don't arrive, and partners say so up front. That won't move every faction, but it forces a choice. None of this imposes an American model. Afghans should shape their own system. The one fixed point is this:

Afghans must have a peaceful way to participate in government, challenge those who rule them, and eventually replace them.

The Taliban have spent years knocking on foreign doors. Russia can recognize them and China can trade with them. Neither can give them what only Afghans can.

Consent.