Revisiting the US-led counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, we examine to what extent the concepts of legitimacy of the Taliban and the US counterinsurgents showed congruence with pre-existing Afghan notions of legitimacy. We move beyond dominant approaches of social contract theory and materialist legitimacy by using a threefold model of legitimacy to assess the different concepts of legitimacy. Both the Taliban and the US, we argue, diverged markedly from historically developed notions of legitimate rule. The article demonstrates that counterinsurgents need to be aware of and adapt to local norms. Moreover, we point towards relevant norms in the case of Afghanistan.