In the past, too many plans for Afghanistan have been designed far from the people expected to live under them. On the surface, the Cambridge Afghanistan Series, organized by the Mosaic Global Foundation, may seem to be more of the same. But the series is genuinely attempting something different, which is not to hand people of Afghanistan another foreign-made political formula, but to create a space in which Afghans themselves can identify the principles, institutions, and sequence required to reclaim their political future.

On September 4 and 5, the Mosaic Global Foundation will convene the fifth Cambridge Afghanistan Series (CAS V) at Jesus College, Cambridge. It will bring together Afghan political voices, civil society actors, human rights advocates, academics, and other stakeholders to discuss pathways toward peace, inclusion, and prosperity. 

At CAS III in 2024, six major political factions, including two major armed resistance groups, presented their visions for Afghanistan. An independent examination found that, despite their public divisions, more than 90 percent of their proposals overlapped in substance. CAS IV in 2025 began a more open discussion of the remaining disagreements.

I participated in CAS IV in 2025. I did not see complete unity, nor did I expect it. Afghanistan’s political actors carry different histories, represent different constituencies, bear different grievances, and have different ideas about the state. What I saw was something more modest but genuinely hopeful as major political currents, civil society, and human rights advocates from different ethnic backgrounds and communities gathered to discuss the future of their country and search for an Afghan-led solution.

At a time when the Taliban has tried to erase political plurality inside Afghanistan, the sight of Afghans arguing across their differences, without denying one another a place in the conversation, offered a glimpse of another political culture. At CAS IV Afghans discussed a wide range of topics tied to the future of their country while celebrating their culture with traditional food and music on a night they named “Poetry Night.”     

A working group, facilitated by Mosaic, produced a Comprehensive Composite Roadmap, or CCR, at CAS IV in 2025.

The CCR emerged from a process that began at CAS III in 2024. Six major political groups were invited to present their strategic proposals, while an expert panel reviewed 12 roadmaps and proposals in total. The dialogue revealed more than 90 percent overlap among these initiatives in their strategic positions. An independent assessment commissioned by Mosaic subsequently confirmed this finding.

Following that assessment, an Independent Working Group was formed to consolidate the different proposals. It gathered in total 21 roadmaps and proposals from political groups, civil society organizations, and resistance groups and synthesized them into the CCR.

Ahead of CAS V in 2026, the consultation process is continuing and expanding to include specialists, human rights organizations, and religious scholars, or ulema. The aim is to ensure that the CCR incorporates contributions from all strata of Afghan society and reflects as comprehensive and inclusive a range of perspectives as possible.

The CCR rests on three non-negotiable commitments: Afghanistan must have a government chosen by its people, human rights must be respected, and equality – including gender equality – must be guaranteed. Around those commitments, it proposes a broader transition based on national dialogue, regional peace dialogues, and international consensus through a United Nations-led process.

Its central mechanism is a proposed Political Convergence Framework. This would bring together anti-Taliban armed resistance groups, political parties and platforms, civil society and human rights organizations, women’s movements, religious scholars, youth, journalists, professional groups, and diaspora representatives. Its initial responsibilities would include adopting a founding charter, creating a joint secretariat, drafting a detailed transition plan, coordinating internal resistance and civil action, and conducting regional and international diplomacy.

The roadmap then envisages an international conference, the creation of a preparatory committee, the formation of a representative Constituent Assembly, and a merit-based transitional government. The Constituent Assembly would help draft a new constitution and provide legal oversight during the transition. The transitional government would maintain order, build institutions, prepare free elections, and transfer authority to a government elected by the people.

The reason behind this sequencing is the belief that removing the Taliban, by itself, would not answer the fundamental questions that have repeatedly destabilized Afghanistan: Who possesses political authority? How is that authority distributed? How are citizens protected from domination by the state or by one another? How can ethnic, linguistic, religious, and gender diversity be reflected without reducing politics to permanent communal quotas?

To my knowledge, no other current Afghanistan initiative has undertaken this particular task at comparable breadth: placing competing roadmaps side by side, identifying their shared core, preserving the questions that remain disputed, and trying to convert overlapping principles into a common mechanism for action. 

Afghanistan’s own recent history provides the clearest warning of why such an initiative is necessary. In 2001, for instance, the Bonn process reduced political reconstruction to a mechanical redistribution of power and a quota system for elite rotation. This meant distributing government positions and political influence among a limited circle of established figures and groups, based on negotiated shares, rather than constructing a genuinely representative system grounded in broad citizen participation, public consent, and accountable institutions. Whatever institutions a conference may establish, an elite bargain is not the same as a durable social contract. CAS must not reproduce another closed agreement among familiar figures in a different foreign conference room. It must connect political negotiation to citizen rights, representative institutions, public accountability, and a fair process for deciding the country’s constitutional future.

Nor should the claim of 90 percent agreement be allowed to conceal the difficult 10 percent where groups disagree. The collected roadmaps still differ over centralization and decentralization, engagement with the Taliban versus struggle against it, the proper role of international actors, the meaning of territorial integrity, and the mechanisms required to correct structural inequality. These are not minor questions. They concern the distribution of power and the identity of the future Afghan state.

That is why CAS V must commit to show how representatives are selected, how women and communities inside Afghanistan influence decisions, how disagreements are recorded, and how the process will communicate with Afghans who cannot enter the Jesus College halls. Women cannot be present merely as symbols while established male politicians negotiate over authority. Civil society cannot be used to decorate a settlement reached elsewhere without them. Those exposed to repression inside Afghanistan must have secure and meaningful channels into the process. Without such commitments, CAS V will become another annual discussion. With them, Cambridge could become the place where the fragmented Afghanistan opposition begins to acquire institutional form.

A conference in Cambridge cannot, on its own, end Taliban rule. A roadmap cannot substitute for political organization inside Afghanistan, nor can international recognition manufacture domestic legitimacy. But the absence of a coherent alternative has long weakened Afghan democratic forces and enabled outside actors to treat Taliban rule as the only available reality. The CCR challenges that fatalism.

The true measure of CAS V will be whether those gathered can establish a fair process for acting together while continuing to disagree. Afghanistan does not need another self-appointed ruler or another elite pact build thousands of miles away. It needs a legitimate path through which its people can recover the right to choose. If the Cambridge Afghanistan Series can help build that path, then a conversation taking place thousands of miles away may still belong, unmistakably, to Afghanistan.