In recent months, I have come across various initiatives aimed at building consensus among Afghanistan’s political and civic forces. Many of them, despite good intentions, have remained at the level of slogans or symbolic unity. In this context, the Mosaic Foundation’s Comprehensive Composite Roadmap (CCR) stood out to me because it approaches Afghanistan’s crisis in a deeper, more structural way and seeks to move beyond simple opposition to the Taliban.
CCR is an attempt to combine several roadmaps into a common minimum framework. It is built on three core principles: the Afghan people’s right to determine their political future, respect for human rights, and equality, including gender equality. It also seeks to create a common vision for the future through dialogue among political groups, resistance forces, civil society, women, religious scholars, and other national actors. Its importance lies in recognizing that without overcoming fragmentation, neither hope within the country nor a credible regional and international alternative can emerge.
One of CCR’s key features is its emphasis on a three-level consensus-building mechanism: national dialogue, regional dialogue, and international consensus through the United Nations. In this sense, it presents Afghanistan’s transition not simply as a domestic issue, but as a process tied to regional and global dynamics. To advance this process, it also relies on the Political Convergence Framework (PCF), intended to bring fragmented actors together, coordinate dialogue and diplomacy, and prepare the ground for transition.
CCR also goes beyond general principles by outlining stages for political transition: beginning with national and regional dialogue, followed by efforts to secure regional and international support for a transitional conference, and then the proposal of a constituent assembly as an alternative to traditional mechanisms such as the Loya Jirga. The importance of a constituent assembly lies in the fact that it is based on popular representation and helps shape the foundations of a future political order. This would be followed by a transitional government, a new constitution, and preparations for elections.
It should also be noted that CCR is not merely a technical or legal document. It speaks of a paradigm shift in how the state, power, and politics are understood, and points toward a broader historical political settlement. In other words, it is not only about managing a transfer of power, but about enabling a deeper transformation of Afghanistan’s political order. This matters because it shows that the authors understand the depth of Afghanistan’s crisis and want to avoid repeating the failures of the past.
That said, if we approach CCR in a constructive spirit, it may be argued that, alongside political consensus, the way transition itself is understood and explained is equally important. CCR has taken an important step in defining values, goals, and a broad alternative vision. At the same time, it would be stronger if it showed more clearly how Afghanistan is meant to move from the current situation to a new order. In many such plans, the destination is clearer than the path: there is talk of a new constitution, a transitional government, and elections, but less clarity on what mechanisms, social forces, and balance of power could make such a transition viable and lasting.
At this point, an important distinction may be useful. Transition does not mean only a political shift from one order to another. What stands out to me is something deeper and more historical: the unfinished transition of Afghan society itself, a transition that for centuries has remained suspended between pre-modern social forms and civility, tribal solidarity and citizenship, personal domination and institutional order, and between historical fragmentation and a modern political society. From this perspective, the issue is not simply replacing the Taliban with a new order. The deeper question is why Afghan society has repeatedly moved toward change but failed to complete the transition, falling back into new forms of disorder, exclusion, and institutional weakness.
Seen in this light, if transition is reduced to the removal of the Taliban, a transitional government, a new constitution, or elections, then a large part of Afghanistan’s problem may remain untouched. The problem is not merely a change of government, but the persistence of a historical logic: tribe, asabiyyah (group solidarity), tradition, monopolization of power, concentration of power, weak institutions, and the failure to build a shared civic horizon. The Taliban are the harshest and most visible expression of this logic, but not its only form. Any serious discussion of transition must therefore pay greater attention to this deeper historical and social layer.
I should stress that this does not mean ignoring the document’s strengths. On the contrary, CCR does address important sociological and identity-based issues, as well as several key national disputes. In its accompanying materials, it identifies questions such as national identity, the model of government, the path of change, and the role of external actors. In some places, it also tries to move beyond purely elite-centered politics and to understand resistance in a broader sense. These are real achievements and should be recognized as part of the initiative’s political and intellectual strength.
At the same time, the analytical question remains whether merely naming these issues is enough or whether they need to be explained more clearly and linked to more concrete solutions. In other words, identifying a problem is not the same as solving it. Speaking of paradigm change and sociological understanding is important, but the next step is to show how these ideas are translated into a transition strategy and practical mechanism.
Here, the reality of Afghan society becomes decisive. One of the strengths of this initiative is that it tries to bring in the voices of actors inside the country. Even so, building a meaningful connection with society, especially under current Afghan conditions, is difficult and time-consuming. Afghan society lives under poverty, fear, repression, and psychological exhaustion, while the divide between city and village, center and periphery, and elite language and lived experience remains wide. If CCR can incorporate this social dimension more clearly and practically, it will stand a better chance of becoming not just an important document, but one more deeply rooted in Afghan society.
In this regard, one way to make CCR more socially grounded and operational may be to engage more deeply with Afghanistan’s local social structures, especially its villages. CCR rightly emphasizes structural justice, paradigm change, and rethinking governance. But for these ideas to move closer to practice, a more precise understanding of conditions across different parts of Afghanistan may be needed. This could come through structured listening and low-risk field research, so that issues such as land, livelihoods, education, services, and local power networks are better understood. This would not contradict CCR’s logic; rather, it would strengthen it by narrowing the gap between theory and implementation, and by making ideas such as justice, participation, and decentralization more concrete.
Another important dimension of transition is the condition of Afghanistan’s rural majority. Afghanistan remains largely rural, and much of its population lives in villages and remote areas, with livelihoods tied to land, agriculture, and local economies. For that reason, transition cannot be complete if it operates only at the level of the state and political institutions. It must also address rural life, land and income, education, services, and the divide between village life and civility. As long as most people remain far from education, institutions, and opportunity, the ground will remain fertile for traditional power networks and mobilization against any civic order. Any serious transition plan must therefore address both rural transformation and the planned development of cities and secondary towns. Otherwise, political change at the top may remain socially rootless.
Another important point is that although CCR rightly acknowledges ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, it could go further on nation-building and shared citizenship. Recognizing differences is important, but it may not be enough. A shared sense of citizenship must also be built, so that people, despite their differences, see themselves as part of a common destiny and a shared political community. Without such a common horizon, even major political agreements may remain confined to elites and fail to produce a durable political society.
For this reason, the issue of resistance is also central. In Afghanistan, resistance is not limited to armed struggle. It also includes the defense of education, women’s rights, human dignity, freedom of thought, language, civil society, and the preservation of the memory of oppression and injustice. If this broader understanding is missing from the discussion of transition, then either politics is reduced to diplomacy,y and the people’s resistance is ignored, or everything is reduced to force and war. It may therefore be useful for CCR to define more clearly the relationship between civil, political, and cultural resistance, on the one hand, and diplomacy, on the other.
Here again, I want to stress that my discussion of CCR comes not from rejection, but from a desire to strengthen it. The document has already moved beyond the fragmentation of competing roadmaps and toward a meaningful consensus, which is itself a major achievement. But the next step is no longer simply to gather views; it is to connect politics, society, and transition. If CCR is to become truly effective, it should show more clearly how its three-level consensus model, stages of transition, constituent assembly, and idea of paradigm change can become a practical and socially grounded path.
For this to happen, several issues deserve sharper focus: a precise definition of the transition phase; a clearer mechanism for genuine representation; a practical connection to society inside Afghanistan; the link between resistance, civil society, and diplomacy; mechanisms for transitional justice and preventing renewed monopoly; a clear horizon of equal citizenship and nation-building; and a program for cultural, educational, and religious transformation. Afghanistan’s crisis is not only a crisis of power; it is also a crisis of unfinished civility.
In conclusion, CCR is one of the most serious and promising efforts to formulate political consensus among opponents of the Taliban. It represents an important step toward overcoming fragmentation and moving closer to a shared horizon. If this path is further linked to a deeper understanding of society, greater attention to the social dimensions of transition, a broader understanding of resistance, and a stronger horizon of shared citizenship and civility, CCR could become a far more effective roadmap for Afghanistan’s future.
