Assault rifle politics: The Taliban’s slow march towards diplomatic recognition

RU

Unrecognized but not quite isolated

On Nov. 10, for the first time ever, the Taliban were able to deploy a delegation to an international UN meeting. Their representatives, led by Muti-ul-Haq Khalis, head of the National Environmental Protection Agency, attended the climate change conference in Baku, albeit only as observers.

The Taliban’s government has not yet been recognised by any country and therefore does not receive formal invitations to international meetings. The main hurdle preventing recognition is represented by a series of decrees by the Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhund, preventing women from obtaining high and higher education, limiting their ability to seek employment, and imposing very strict dress and behavior codes on them. The Taliban regime is also criticized for its lack of ethnic and sectarian inclusiveness, with very few Shi’as and non-Pashtuns being part of the cabinet, and most of them in junior roles.

Despite the fact that no foreign government has so far ventured to recognize the Taliban, most countries in the region have in fact established links and are taking steps in the direction of future recognition. This is at odds with the stand taken by European and North American governments, which have largely stayed clear of any move that could be interpreted as warming up to Taliban rule over Afghanistan.

Under China’s belt

No country has gone further down the road to diplomatic recognition than China, which has exchanged ambassadors with Afghanistan and has started investing in the country. The Chinese government is clearly courting the Taliban’s favor. On Oct. 24, Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan Zhao Xing stated that his country would offer Afghanistan tariff-free access to its construction, energy, and consumer sectors — a status previously reserved for low-income countries whose governments are officially recognized by Beijing. Previously, China had agreed to include Afghanistan in China’s Belt and Road initiative, as the Chinese are interested in mining opportunities in Afghanistan — especially in its vast lithium deposits. The Taliban have not put mining rights for those deposits to tender yet, in part because preparing the tender involves real technical complexities, but in all likelihood also because they are trying to tie the granting of mining rights with official recognition. The Chinese government openly says that it encourages its companies to invest in Afghanistan, where Chinese firms are already active in mining gold and copper and extracting oil.

The Taliban are no isolationists when it comes to matters of business and economics. They welcome foreign investors, knowing that Afghanistan lacks the technical skills and resources to start large-scale mining in the country. The Taliban’s main motive, at least in the short term, is increasing its revenue.

The Iranian axis

Most other regional governments have followed China, albeit at some distance. At the Doha UN-sponsored meeting on Afghanistan of Feb. 18-19, the suspicious Taliban misconstrued the so-called Doha 2 meeting and the plan to appoint a special UN envoy to Afghanistan as a hostile move by Western countries. China and two other states supported the Taliban’s objection to the plan for appointing a Special UN Envoy to Afghanistan. Those states were Russia and Iran.

In the subsequent months, Iran was the most proactive of the two. Even before the meeting, Iranian diplomats were openly inviting the Taliban to join the so-called Axis of Resistance. Taliban officials rejected the invitation, but sources within the Taliban government say that there are divisions inside Kabul itself. The Amir and his faction favor closer relations with Iran, while the cabinet is mostly opposed.

The new reformist government in Tehran, elected in July, has little sympathy for the Taliban, but Iran’s foreign policy is largely driven by the Revolutionary Guards and by Supreme Leader Khamenei, and they feel that Iran needs to maintain friendly relations with Afghanistan while the Middle East is falling apart.

Russian hospitality

Divergent views have also been slowing the formulation of a long-term Afghan policy in Moscow. The Kremlin’s diplomats — especially Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s recently retired Special Representative for Afghanistan — have long been in favor of engaging closely with the Taliban in order to incentivize them to part ways with transnational jihadist groups. The other school of thought, strong among security services personnel, argues that the Taliban cannot be trusted and that they are unlikely to shed their connections with international jihadist groups completely. President Putin for a long time seemed to be deliberating between the two. Russia accredited a Taliban diplomat in Moscow as early as March 2022, but as of 2023, Russian diplomacy was trying to maintain a position equidistant between the Taliban and the National Resistance Forces (NRF), a northern anti-Taliban group that Russia supported from 1994-2001. Now Russia appears to support negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Tajikistan, which are aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries. If an agreement were reached, the NRF would likely lose any ability to operate from Tajik territory.

Moscow has recently been sending other signals that relations with Kabul are warming up. In May, a Taliban delegation was invited to an economic forum in Kazan — and then in June to one in St. Petersburg. Overall, the Russians are quite satisfied that the Taliban have been working to deactivate Uzbek and Tajik jihadist groups based in Afghanistan. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was neutralised in 2023, and in 2024 it has been the turn of the Tajik Jamaat Ansarullah. The Russians also seem to appreciate the Taliban’s constructive approach to talks with the Tajik government, which after 2021 had actively supported the armed opposition to the Taliban in north-eastern Afghanistan. Another 2024 development that is likely to have warmed Moscow up to closer relations with the Taliban regime was the April 2024 Crocus Hall attack outside the Russian capital. After trying to lay the blame on Ukraine, Russian prosecutors eventually acknowledged that the attack was indeed the work of the Islamic State. This decision might well have been influenced by political considerations: if Moscow wants to cooperate with the Taliban against the Islamic State, acknowledging its role in the Crocus Hall attack helps justify this policy.

By the fall of 2024, Moscow was processing the delisting of the Taliban as a terrorist organization, but formal recognition will not automatically follow. Moscow has aligned with the criticism against the Taliban’s treatment of women and of their lack of inclusiveness. Perhaps more importantly, by recognizing the Taliban Moscow would surrender much of its leverage vis-à-vis Kabul — unlike China, Russia cannot entice the Taliban with offers of investment.

Kind and mean neighbors

Central Asian governments have mostly tried to engage constructively with the Taliban. This is particularly the case with regards to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but also to Kazakhstan, which in December 2023 decided to delist the Taliban as a terrorist organization. Tajikistan, the only country in the region to have initially refused engagement with the Kabul regime, is now negotiating with them over some form of normalization.

Tajikistan is motivated by both the failure of the opposition to the Taliban and by the prospect of financial gain. The NRF, which Dushanbe has been supporting since 2021, has failed to make significant inroads. Instead, data-cabling infrastructure through Afghanistan is almost ready to go live and only the lack of cooperation between the two governments prevents it from being completed. Both Tajikistan and the Taliban would gain significant amounts of cash once the connection is operational. The current talks are about banning each other’s opposition groups from operating on the two countries’ territory and about figuring out a way for the Taliban regime to have access to the royalties. The discussions revolve around a trust fund, where the royalties would be deposited until the Taliban are allowed to access them, presumably after receiving diplomatic recognition.

Paradoxically, the country that has the worst relations with the Taliban is now Pakistan, once a keen supporter of the Taliban. Even India, which was close to the previous Afghan government, has maintained rather cordial relations with the Emirate. But despite efforts by the Taliban’s leadership to restrain the Pakistani Taliban from launching attacks against the Pakistani authorities and to mediate between Islamabad and the Pakistani Taliban, the situation has deteriorated. Pakistan’s expulsion of illegal Afghan and Pakistani groups via air strikes on Afghan territory has turned Pakistan into the pet object of hatred for many Afghans, especially Pashtuns. At the moment, no Taliban officials see much to gain by supporting Pakistan’s cause.

Western indifference as a facade

The picture is different with regard to Western countries. All regional states have embassies in Kabul, but despite some Western talk of reopening diplomatic missions in Kabul, no European or American embassy is open. For now, only the EU has a presence on the ground.

The Europeans are worried about the risk of a new wave of Afghan migrants hitting their shores should the Afghan economy implode, and the number of aid projects in the country is growing as a result. The World Bank, for example, decided to unlock Afghan funds in February. The majority of the Taliban cabinet is in favor of closer relations with the West in order to obtain more much-needed aid, but also to offset the rapidly growing influence of neighbors like China. Efforts to reach out to the Americans in particular have taken place regularly, but they have always been sabotaged by those hostile to enhanced relations with Western powers — first and foremost by the Amir himself.

Internal turmoil

The Taliban’s internal divisions indeed remain a salient aspect of the regime, which has not been able to produce a constitution or equivalent document laying out the distribution of power within the Emirate. While the majority of the cabinet in Kabul is only willing to recognize the Amir’s role in supervising the implementation of Islamic Law, the Amir and his supporters insist he should also concentrate in his hands control over executive powers and also over the security forces. In 2021-22 the Amir’s position was very weak, and he lacked the ability to compel his colleagues to bow to his will. As a result, he resorted to using decisions concerning the implementation of Islamic Law — a power no one within the Taliban contested — to undermine his rivals’ outreach to Western countries. He targeted women’s education, employment, and freedom of movement, in the knowledge that this would have blocked any ongoing discussions with Western diplomats. During 2023-24 the Amir was able to gradually gain power, but there is still a large pocket of opposition to his personal rule.

The Taliban’s internal divisions have not impacted the Taliban’s efforts to stabilize the economy and raise enough revenue to keep the state machinery going — and all factions in Kabul agree that this is vital. Revenue has risen to around $2.5 billion per year, but this figure is still barely enough to keep the state afloat. The civil service has been kept largely as it was, only with the addition of the Taliban at the top. The Taliban have prioritized rebuilding the state’s armed forces, replete with a Special Guard directly controlled by the Amir, and they have re-established a moral police last seen during the period of the first Emirate (1996-2001). While it is clear that the regime considers Islamic Law to be the only legitimate source of legislation, the status of laws, decrees, and regulations issued in the past remains uncertain.

The pragmatists gathered around the cabinet see the monarchy — which was abolished in 1973 — as their model for the new system of government, while the Amir and his supporters aspire to a new type of regime loosely inspired by the Islamic Republic of Iran — even if they reject the idea that they might be looking at that as a model. These divergent approaches are making it hard for Western governments to figure out how to handle the new regime, even if they clearly favor the pragmatists over the Amir and his faction. At the same time, it is clear that, in the present geopolitical environment, Afghanistan matters mainly to its neighbors, and that for Europeans and Americans, it is a relatively minor dimension of their foreign policy. Given the unpopularity of any engagement with the Taliban in Western public opinion, Washington and Brussels have not seriously attempted to take actions that might strengthen Kabul’s cadre of pragmatists, instead allowing China and other regional countries to take the lead.