Moscow’s recognition of the Emirate depicts the second step in a process of state normalisation within the international framework, which began with the liberation of the capital from foreign occupation. A High School of Advanced Studies for Western diplomats in Kandahār?
by Glauco D’Agostino
Tālibān “allies in the fight against terrorism”
That diplomatic discussions are more fruitful than battles fought with bombs and high-tech weapons was evident since the bitter West and NATO defeat in Afghanistan in 2021. Confirmation came four years later, with the Islamic Emirate’s recognition by the Russian Federation, the first state in the world to break the Tālibān’s international isolation.
Tālibān fighters take control of the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul, August 15th, 2021
In truth, the isolation has been and is only formally declared by the so-called international community, for the Tālibān have built active and effective relationships in the region in numerous fields, with many neighbouring countries and beyond. After most foreign embassies, with the notable exception of Russia, closed their doors in August 2021, Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates, China, and, more recently, Pakistan, have nevertheless appointed ambassadors to Kabul, despite not officially recognising the state. Incidentally, in 2024, Beijing accepted the credentials of Afghan diplomat Mawlawi Bilal Karimi as Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. A few months later, the U.A.E and Uzbekistan followed suit. Currently, 25 other states maintain de facto diplomatic relations with the Islamic Emirate.
The resumption of relations with Kabul has progressed fairly rapidly. In 2022, Moscow signed economic agreements in the energy and food sectors with the Tālibān (still declared terrorists since 2003) and welcomed them to St. Petersburg at the main Russian economic forum. Last April, following a meeting held in Moscow a few months earlier between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (photo below, in Moscow with a Tālibān delegation, May 28th, 2019) and his Afghan counterpart Mawlawi Amīr Khan Muttaqi (below), the Kremlin took steps to “rehabilitate” the Tālibān, removing them from the terrorist list and envisioning “a full-fledged partnership with Kabul in the interests of the Russian and Afghan peoples.” Lavrov acknowledged that “the new authorities in Kabul are a reality,” calling for Moscow to pursue a “pragmatic, not ideologised policy,” thereby reiterating President Putin’s option to consider the Tālibān “allies in the fight against terrorism.”
The white flag with the Kalima, symbol of the Emirate (opening photo), flying over the Embassy in Moscow, conveys at least three important reflections:
- The history of an independent Afghanistan in the international context resumes today, after the setback that had reduced it to the dependence of unscrupulous foreign aggressors who, strong in their firepower, occupied it to exploit its resources and for geopolitical interests in Central Asia, disguised under the noble intentions to fix violated human rights in the country. All this coincided with the concentration camps at Guantánamo Bay and the atrocities by the occupation forces in Iraq, as most analysts and media networks raged against the defeated, carrying out their servile work in the shadow of the powerful.
- Political Islam, even though the West has mala fide confused with Islamic terrorism (which exists or has existed, see ISIS, al-Qāʿida and their fringes often difficult to identify as proxies of respectable states), cannot be eradicated either by bombs or ideologically, because it has been part of the Islam history since its origins, with movements offering very different political and social facets, often in conflict each other, and yet expressions of claims coming from the deep roots of societies. A lack of awareness of this phenomenon, or its exploitation for political or even personal gain, leads, in the medium to long term, to a decline in the capacity for interpretation and governance, which is currently the most serious symptom of the disease afflicting Western countries.
- Global geopolitics cannot be anchored to balances deemed immutable, because geopolitics itself, as a discipline, indicates new balances and the resulting international legal principles to be adhered to. When George Bush Jr. and his entourage of oligarchs were exercising their role as world absolute rulers, China was in the midst of a reform era; Putin had just arrived at the Kremlin to revive the fate inherited from a disastrous Soviet Union; Indian President Narayanan was leading a country reeling from constitutional crises and the precariousness of its governments; and, in Iran, President Moḥammad Khatami was supporting a Dialogue Among Civilizations idea, in response to Bush-beloved Clash of Civilizations Today, these four giants surrounding Afghanistan are all BRICS member countries, and other neighbouring Central Asian countries are linked to them as “partner states.”
Geopolitical considerations at all suggest that yesterday’s enemies can be today’s allies, and vice versa. The United States has historically been accustomed to exercising the latter option, abandoning its allies along the way, often to disastrous ends: this was the case with South Vietnam, which had resisted communist expansion in Southeast Asia; the Afghan jihādists, who had opposed the Soviet occupation; Ṣaddām Ḥusayn, who had fought against the Iranian theocracy; Qaddāfī, who, during the 2000s, had become a champion of the fight against Islamic terrorism, highly regarded by the White House; and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which in 2012 was designated by Washington as its “major non-NATO ally”. Who will be next?
Revision of historical stances on the Tālibān
Today, Russia, but also India and Iran, are rethinking their historic aversion to the Islamic Emirate in a positive light. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and maintained control for ten years, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and its dissolution two years later. Among the US-backed fighters against the Soviet occupation was a movement composed mainly of Sunni militants of Pashtun ethnicity, the Tālibān. It is noteworthy that since 1993, the Tālibān had found excellent liaison with the Pakistani government of Benazir Bhutto, whose husband was Asif Ali Zardari, the current President of Pakistan; And when between 1994 and 1996 the movement acquired political overtones within the framework of civil war and conquered Kabul, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, officially founded by them the following year, received diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Of course, as an anti-Pakistan geopolitical measure, India closed its embassy in Kabul, and the Islamic Republic of Iran did the same, considering both the Tālibān and the three countries recognising their international legitimacy as adversaries.
Photo by Sebastian Backhaus for Zenith
Immediately after the capture of Kabul, dissident non-Pashtun mujāhidīn formed the so-called Northern Alliance, under the presidency of the pro-Western Burhānuddīn Rabbānī and the military command of the Tajik General Aḥmad Shāh Mas‘ūd. Russia has since sided against the Islamic Emirate. On October 7th, 2001, NATO, supported by the armed forces of 26 countries, most unrelated to the region, intervened in the Afghan civil war against the Tālibān with the first Operation Enduring Freedom. By invading the country, it would remain under foreign occupation for the next 20 years. Putin then and for many years to come provided assistance to Washington and its allies, opening Russian airspace to them, convincing allies in Central Asia to grant the US air bases, and sharing intelligence.
Tālibān diplomacy has been at play since 2012. On June 18th, the “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” was established in Dōḥa, Qatar, to open a dialogue with the international community and Afghan groups for a “peaceful solution” in Afghanistan. Barack Obama and Hāmid Karzai, then President of the US-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, expressed “support for an office in Dōḥa for negotiations between the High Peace Council [a government body established by Karzai to try to bring the insurgents to peace] and Tālibān officials.” This initial recognition, while certainly not immediate, would pave the way for negotiations leading to the 2020 Dōḥa Peace Accords between the United States and the Tālibān. Anything but international isolation!
International controversies and the ambiguous role of the US on terrorism
However, with the Islamic Emirate’s rebirth in Kabul and the introduction of sanctions by many countries not recognising its legitimacy, the issue of freezing Afghan financial assets abroad (approximately $9 billion) has arisen. These assets are held in trust primarily in the U.S., but also in financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and the U.A.E. This is an attempt to intimidate the Emirate’s government and the population owning those reserves. However, Afghan people are not the main victims of this ingenious mechanism invented by rapacious global finance, considering that the same mechanism conceived by the international community keeps approximately $300 billion in Russian assets frozen in Western banks. These are veritable manoeuvres of legalised theft, bordering on, and perhaps beyond, the representation of a burglary.
These events have perhaps contributed to the Moscow-Kabul rapprochement, regarding the awareness of who are friends and who are enemies. And this also concerns the Kremlin’s repentance regarding its role in the so-called “war on terror,” tied to the White House bandwagon, which designated as terrorists all movements not subservient to the Western will, with a few exceptions — and what exceptions!
The undersigned wrote in November 2015:
“An authorization to a direct military engagement against the Afghan Tālibān and not against the Islamic State militias of Ḥāfiz Saīd Khān would be very strange, since the latter have been waging fierce battles to counter the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, particularly in the north-eastern Nangarhār Province, along the Pakistani border. A slogan which tells us the Islamic State in Khorāsān (how the group operating in Afghanistan calls itself) does not have operational links with the government in Raqqa would appear free of credit, either, because it’s evident that this would avail covering a certain Washington acquiescence towards the Islamic State expansion at the Afghan Tālibān’s expense.”
Moscow would only realise it to its cost in 2024, when the armed group ISIS-K (Islamic State-Khorasan), which the Tālibān had been fighting on the ground for years, committed a massacre in a concert hall of the Russian capital. This led to the Kremlin’s openness to the Tālibān and its appropriate reference to them as allies in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.
And on the other hand, President Trump’s claim of responsibility for the instigation of the brutal “targeted killing” of Iranian General Qāsim Sulaimānī, a hero of the fight against ISIS, is all too well known. The motives for that act remain a mystery to this day and can perhaps be speculated within the context of Washington’s ambiguity that we are discussing. The same can be said of its proxy, Israel, considered a Western-style democracy, when, in the clashes between the Ḥamās liberation movement and ISIS terrorists in Palestinian territory, it naturally protected the latter, perhaps out of elective affinities in terms of massacres. What a strange pairing! Or maybe not so weird…
Afghanistan’s role as a regional geopolitical hub
Therefore, since last July 4th, “a new phase of positive relations, mutual respect, and constructive engagement” has begun between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Federation, as Afghan Foreign Minister Muttaqi was keen to point out, adding: “We value this courageous step taken by Russia, and, God willing, it will serve as an example for others as well.”
On the Russian side, Foreign Minister Lavrov, after receiving the credentials of the Afghan Ambassador to Moscow, in turn said: “We believe that the act of official recognition of the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will give impetus to the development of productive bilateral cooperation between our countries in various fields.”
Afghanistan is a crucial hub for Moscow along the routes of oil pipelines originating in Russia, as are Mongolia to the Pacific, Iran, India and Sri Lanka to the Indian Ocean, and Belarus to the Baltic. Thus, since 2017, it has strengthened “good neighbourly” relations with these countries and their governments, specifically with the Tālibān, who that year were already moving swiftly toward the Dōḥa Peace Accords and reestablishing the Emirate, which they have claimed continuously since 1997.
Meanwhile, on the path to recognition advocated by Muttaqi, the list of countries intending to establish relations with the Emirate through agreements on specific matters is growing, despite not officially recognising that state. It was the path indicated immediately after the Tālibān took Kabul by Josep Borrell, at the time High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who had said: “The Tālibān have won the war, so we will have to talk with them.”
For example, already on July 4th, the Bavarian Christian Social Alexander Dobrindt, the new German Interior Minister in Friedrich Merz’s cabinet, declared his intention to enter into “direct agreements” with the Kabul authorities to resume the expulsions of convicted Afghan criminals, which had been interrupted after the reintroduction of the Emirate.
New openings also come from Pakistan, whose relations with the Tālibān, despite the support expressed at the time by Prime Minister Imran Khan towards the reborn Emirate, had soon after become frayed over the long-standing issue of Pakistani Pashtuns-Afghan Tālibān connections. In late May this year, under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s new administration, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar announced he would elevate his diplomatic representation in Afghanistan from the level of chargé d’affaires to that of ambassador, adding: “I am confident this step would further contribute towards enhanced engagement, deepen Pak-Afghan cooperation in economic, security, CT [counterterrorism] & trade areas and promote further exchanges between two fraternal countries.”
It is certainly no coincidence that a few days earlier, Beijing hosted the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan for a meeting with their Chinese counterpart, State Councillor Wáng Yì. At the meeting, China and Pakistan “reiterated their support for extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan under the broader framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation.” This is the broad umbrella of Chinese diplomacy through the Belt and Road Initiative, under Xi Jinping’s grand geopolitical vision adopted in 2017, often overlooked or underestimated by the West. According to the World Bank, 155 countries are now participating in this major long-term strategic program that links them in partnership with Chinese initiatives.
When Jason Campbell, the former Director for Afghanistan at the U.S. Office of Defense and Military Policies, said in 2022 that “China, Russia, and even Iran could benefit from the new political order in Kabul,” he correctly underlined a possibility from an American perspective, without considering the prospects opening up for Central Asian countries. For example, in 2023, Beijing, interested in extracting oil from the Central Asian Āmū Daryā River basin, signed a 25-year contract with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan through a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Company.
Will Pakistan and China be the next governments to recognise the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? It’s likely, but the list of willing parties is long, from the U.A.E. to Uzbekistan, from India to the Islamic Republic of Iran, to Qatar. We will soon see. Even if, as Kabir Taneja, a deputy director at the New Delhī-based Observer Research Foundation, foresees, “most would not be doing so out of choice, but enforced realities that the Taliban will be in Afghanistan for some time to come at least.”
The time is ripe. The idea of a High School of Advanced Studies for Western diplomats in Kandahār is gaining ground…
Kandahār
