The reason for the Taliban's failure to gain international legitimacy after 2021

Following the US decision to withdraw its military contingent, the armed group Taliban occupied Kabul in 2021. Since that moment, the Taliban has been trying to gain international legitimacy, but it is failing in this endeavor. This implies the need to identify the reason for the Taliban's failure in its pursuit of legitimacy after 2021. This thesis addresses precisely this issue. For this purpose, the shift in the focus of the international community's attention among Afghanistan's problems between the years 2001-2021 and from 2021 onwards is considered. At the beginning of the research, thanks to sentiment analysis of the UN Secretary-General's reports, an escalation of concern over the Taliban's worsening restrictive policy towards women becomes evident. This narrows the spectrum of obstacles to successful legitimation from the security domain to the internal sphere, encompassing the humanitarian situation and gender equality in society. The next step is the analysis of the modality of the highest UN representative's rhetoric. Its result is apparent in the increased degree of excessive (strong), moderate, and soft rhetoric – focused on calling on the de facto government of Afghanistan to abolish gender-based restrictive measures. In conclusion, this thesis confirms the stated hypothesis that the worsening restrictive policy is one of the significant reasons for the Taliban's failure in its effort to gain legitimacy in the international environment following the withdrawal of American troops in 2021