Five years after Taliban takeover: Can the West find leverage in Afghanistan?

Five years have passed since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, and the question haunting Western capitals has shifted from whether to engage with them to how. In a whitewashed basement workshop south of Kabul, a dozen young women stir enormous pots of cherries and plums, labeling jam jars by hand. This small enterprise, run by Najia, a 47-year-old entrepreneur and mother of nine, represents one of the last remaining spaces where Afghan women can learn a trade and earn income. Najia was married at fourteen. She never finished school. Her daughters would have studied for something different had the Taliban not barred girls from secondary education and universities entirely.

But even this fragile foothold is shrinking. New Taliban rules require women to ask men to transport their products to market. Only men can staff trade fair booths. The Taliban justifies these restrictions by claiming women aren't wearing proper hijab, though the real intent is clear: to erase women from economic life. "The world has to talk to the Taliban in a different way because it's just not working," Najia says. "The lives of Afghan women have to change because we're losing hope."

The international community faces a genuine dilemma. Nearly twenty-two million Afghans—almost half the population—depend on foreign aid to survive. The country has been hammered by economic collapse, natural disasters, border clashes with Pakistan, and the arrival of millions of deported Afghans from neighboring countries. Absolute isolation is not an option when people are starving. Yet the Taliban have consolidated power with remarkable speed. They collect taxes, sign mining and energy deals with Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, and Tashkent. They control more than forty Afghan embassies worldwide. They've survived attacks from armed opposition groups and Islamic State fighters. Only Russia has formally recognized their government, and they remain barred from taking Afghanistan's UN seat, but increasingly that matters less. Countries are extending de facto recognition through diplomatic presence, trade agreements, and operational embassies. The Taliban see this as vindication.

The West is fractured on how to proceed. Some argue for continued engagement—that dialogue, however slow and frustrating, keeps channels open and creates space for incremental progress on prisoner treatment, humanitarian access, and the brutal enforcement of the Taliban's morality code. The UN's approach, formalized in a process called Mosaic, structures negotiations around six core issues: human rights, inclusive governance, counterterrorism on one side; sanctions relief, asset unfreezing, and diplomatic recognition on the other. "A stalled process is better than no process," says Georgette Gagnon, the acting head of the UN mission in Kabul. Progress is glacial. Reversals are frequent. But the UN insists it must stay.

Others see this as capitulation dressed in diplomatic language. When EU officials hosted a Taliban foreign ministry delegation in Brussels in June for the first time since 2021, critics called it "creeping normalisation." The EU framed it as technical-level talks about deportations. The Taliban saw it as trust-building and a step toward consular presence in Europe. Rina Amiri, who served as the US special envoy for Afghan women from 2022 to 2025, was blunt: "Meeting in Brussels was clearly a decision that was about politics, not logistics." Activists and human rights groups argue that dialogue has been one-way—the Taliban make demands while offering nothing in return. "We need to keep talking, but now we need to set conditions," Najia insists.

On the ground, aid agencies navigate what they call "workarounds." Women work from home, or in separate rooms, or on different floors, or in different buildings from men. These arrangements are verbal and fragile, dependent on relationships with local Taliban officials who sometimes seek pragmatic solutions and sometimes remain deeply suspicious of any foreign presence. "Everything in Afghanistan is relationships," says Chris Kinder of Afghanaid, a British charity operating there for over forty years. "Day-to-day that can help make things easier." But Mahbouba Seraj, an Afghan activist who runs a shelter for women fleeing domestic abuse, has lost faith. Her last shelter, which protected more than thirty women, was shut down in December. She is seventy-eight years old and preparing to leave the country she vowed to stay and fight for. "These small windows that the world sees, the little openings here and there including secret schools for girls, are just meant to fool everybody," she says with visible sadness.

Yet even Seraj calls on the international community to keep talking—but with purpose, not theater. Some Taliban officials have quietly dissented from the emir's harshest orders. Last year, a nationwide internet shutdown that paralyzed daily life was reversed after internal pressure. The emir's edicts are treated as absolute, and the movement prizes unity above all else, but cracks exist. Real change, analysts now agree, cannot come from Western pressure or clever diplomacy. It can only come from within Taliban ranks. At Najia's workshop, framed training certificates line a table—from Afghan institutes, from the now-defunct USAID—evidence of her determination to build something larger despite cascading restrictions. Year by year, a new society takes shape. Many Afghans keep pushing and praying for a different future, hoping the world will not forget them.