On the eve of the Taliban’s fourth year in power, Russia has become the first country to officially recognize them. According to the Taliban’s foreign minister, this has opened the path for them to gain international legitimacy. However, Russia’s action was not unexpected. It is among the few countries that have maintained close relations with the Taliban in recent years. After the Taliban regained control, Russia kept its embassy in Kabul open and handed over the Afghan embassy in Moscow to them. In July of last year, President Putin called the Taliban an ally in the fight against terrorism. This year in April, Russia removed the Taliban from its terrorist list, paving the way for official recognition.
Nevertheless, Russia’s recognition of the Taliban has sparked widespread national and international reactions and raised a number of pressing questions: Has Russia turned its back on the people of Afghanistan? Will this recognition pave the way for the Taliban to gain international legitimacy? Or will it lead to an escalation of regional and global power rivalries playing out once again on Afghan soil?
Ignoring the Afghan people
It appears that Russia has equated the Taliban’s coercive control over Afghanistan’s territory with legitimate sovereignty, thereby recognizing the group as the governing authority of the country. As Nikita Mendkovich, head of the Eurasian Analytical Club, stated in defense of Moscow’s decision: “We have no other Afghanistan.” But denying the existence of a non-Taliban Afghanistan is an insult to common sense and the history of Afghan people’s suffering. The Taliban Emirate is a tyranny of a small clique that cannot represent the political, cultural, religious, linguistic, or ethnic diversity of the majority of the population. While the Taliban have largely emerged from within the Pashtun community, they do not represent all Pashtuns. Ethnic groups such as the Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, and others not only lack meaningful representation in the Taliban government, but are also subject to repression and purges.
Moreover, half of the population—Afghan women—have been entirely erased from public life and stripped of their basic rights. In this light, the Taliban cannot be considered the embodiment of Afghan people’s will. Aware that they lack legitimacy in the eyes of people, the group instead seeks validation from external powers. By choosing to recognize the Taliban, Russia has disregarded the Afghan people and abandoned its prior rhetoric of advocating for an “inclusive government” in Afghanistan. The widespread negative reactions from people from different walks in life to Russia’s decision clearly reflect this sentiment.
Such an approach, given the authoritarian nature of Russia’s political system and President Putin’s record of suppressing internal dissent, is not unexpected. It appears that, in the current context—and under the pressure Russia feels in its confrontation with NATO—a convergence of interests has emerged between the Taliban and Russian leadership.
Of course, political despotism and the cult of personality are the rule in our region, and even governments that appear to be elected are undemocratic. Thus, the closeness of Putin and others like him to an emirate where a leader stands above the law and rules by decree is not surprising—since he himself, along with most leaders in our region, sits atop unelected regimes.
Both Putin’s Russia and the Taliban Emirate, despite their differences, are internationally isolated. In this context, Russia’s move to be the first to legitimize a regime imposed upon the people of Afghanistan is a blatant dismissal of the Afghan people’s will. It adds yet another bitter moment to the long history of foreign betrayals. After four decades, the Afghan people were trying to move past the trauma of the Soviet invasion in December 1979 and the nine years of atrocities that followed, but with this latest act, Russia has once again burned the bridges of trust between the two nations, and thrown salt on old wounds.
Legitimacy or global confrontation
It is expected that following Russia, other regional powers—such as China—may also recognize the Taliban as legitimate government. These are countries that, for nearly four years, have informally considered the Taliban their main interlocutor. However, the assumption that recognition by a few countries will grant the Taliban international legitimacy and make the group more tolerable to the Afghan people seems overly optimistic.
Afghanistan’s modern history—particularly developments of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st—shows that political stability in the country, which has long served as a geopolitical buffer, depends on both international balance and domestic legitimacy. Any political system that can establish and maintain balanced international relations is more likely to endure. Conversely, the more a regime’s foreign relations become imbalanced—by aligning too closely with one global bloc—the stronger the incentive for the rival bloc to work toward its downfall.
The Soviet Union was among the first countries to recognize Afghanistan’s independence under King Amanullah Khan in 1919. It was also the first to recognize the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan following the coup of April 1978. Both regimes faced fierce domestic opposition and external resistance from rival powers—and both eventually collapsed. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, reliant on the Western bloc for two decades, also failed to survive.
Although the Taliban have been diplomatically isolated over the past four years, a fragile balance in their international relations—with none of the global powers overtly supporting anti-Taliban factions—has helped prevent a major external push against their regime. However, recognition from Russia, and potentially China and other regional countries, could disrupt this delicate balance. As the Taliban move closer to one side of the global power divide, the likelihood increases that the United States and NATO members might begin supporting armed opposition groups.
Such a development would not only endanger the prospect of stability in Afghanistan and the wider region, but could also empower Taliban opponents to open new fronts against the group—leveraging both internal discontent and external support. Therefore, recognizing the Taliban without the establishment of an inclusive government, without acknowledging women’s rights, and without broad international coordination would amount to a unilateral act that risks escalating global power competition on Afghanistan’s soil.
*Omid Sharafat is the pseudonym of a former university professor in Kabul and an international relations researcher.
