The Taliban, the jihadist organization that has ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist since August 2021, is now demanding official representation at the United Nations. Their argument? Four years of uncontested rule over the Afghan people entitles them to a seat at the global table.

Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s envoy in Qatar and longtime spokesman, told Afghan media that recognition by the U.N. is a “necessity and a right.” Shaheen claimed that Taliban representation would allow the group to “pursue solutions” to global and regional issues — a stunning assertion from a regime best known for executing women’s rights advocates and sheltering al-Qaeda terrorists.

Since the Taliban seized Kabul in the chaotic aftermath of President Biden’s hasty withdrawal in 2021, the group has steadily tightened its grip on the country. Though no government formally recognizes them as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers, several rogue regimes — including Iran and China — have established trade ties with the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the name the Taliban uses for its sharia-based regime.

Currently, Afghanistan’s official U.N. seat is held by diplomats loyal to the pre-Taliban government of President Ashraf Ghani, who fled during the 2021 collapse. These diplomats have warned repeatedly that granting Taliban officials control of the U.N. mission would legitimize a group that is, by all accounts, a theocratic terror state.

Nevertheless, momentum may be building within some U.N. circles for increased “engagement” with the Taliban. The U.N.’s own mission in Afghanistan — UNAMA — is developing what it calls a “mosaic” plan to normalize relations with the Taliban regime. That plan includes lifting sanctions, unlocking billions in frozen assets, and possibly even handing the U.N. seat over to Taliban representatives.

Human rights activists and Afghan opposition voices are sounding the alarm. Nasir Ahmad Faiq, who currently represents Afghanistan at the U.N., warned that any framework granting legitimacy to the Taliban without clear reforms or accountability would be “unacceptable to the Afghan people.” He emphasized that there has been no transparency in the drafting of the U.N.’s engagement strategy — nor any proof that the Taliban has moderated its brutal policies.

Critics point out that Taliban leaders still have close ties to al-Qaeda, the terror group responsible for 9/11. In 2022, al-Qaeda’s top commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a U.S. drone strike while living openly in Kabul — reportedly housed by the Taliban’s own “Interior Minister,” Sirajuddin Haqqani, who remains one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists.

Yet the U.N. appears undeterred. In one of the more surreal moments of 2024, Taliban officials were invited to COP29, the U.N.’s annual climate summit, to discuss the impact of global warming on Afghanistan — a country where girls are banned from school and public executions are still carried out in soccer stadiums.

Shaheen’s demand for U.N. recognition is only the latest example of the Taliban’s bid for global legitimacy. But behind the headlines lies a chilling truth: the Taliban hasn’t changed. They are not a government; they are an extremist militia that won power through terror and continues to enforce a medieval theocracy with the help of foreign sponsors like Beijing and Tehran.

While the Biden administration failed to prevent Afghanistan from falling into the Taliban’s hands, it now falls to the international community — including the United States under President Trump — to ensure that the world doesn’t reward tyranny with legitimacy.

To hand the Taliban a U.N. seat would be to invite terrorists into the heart of the global system they once plotted to destroy. The victims of Taliban oppression — especially the women, minorities, and dissenters now trapped under sharia law — deserve better. And so does the United Nations, if it still claims to stand for peace and human rights.