September 4, 2024

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The Taliban Succeed in Broadening Regional and Global Engagement

WAM via AP

Since capturing control of Afghanistan and ousting the U.S.-backed government in August 2021, Taliban leaders have sought to end their regional and global isolation. While insisting on enforcement of Islamic law domestically, the group’s leaders are trying to chart a different foreign policy course than that which led to the movement’s ostracism and overthrow by U.S.-led operations following al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. While the Taliban regime, including officials who served at low levels or in peripheral positions during the group's earlier period of rule (1996-2001), has made commitments to the U.S. and other powers not to harbor terrorist groups of global reach, including al-Qaeda, reporting from the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team suggests that there are al-Qaeda training camps throughout Afghanistan.

The leaders of 16 countries decided to maintain embassies in Kabul under the Taliban regime. Still, the global community has held back recognition of the Taliban government mainly because it is not inclusive and severely restricts the rights of women and girls in the country. The regime’s policies on women and girls have been accused by human rights organizations and UN experts as likely amounting to gender apartheid. A third round of UN-led talks to explore engagement with Afghanistan took place in late June, drawing representatives from nearly two dozen countries to meet with Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar, over two days. The talks excluded the participation of Afghan women. Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Undersecretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, who presided over the event, called the talks "constructive" and "useful." However, she ruled out UN support for UN member states to formally recognize the Taliban regime as the legitimate Afghanistan rulers unless the movement ended edicts banning women's education and effectively erasing their participation in public life. The Doha meetings concluded without the Taliban making any reform pledges or winning public concessions from the international community.

The movement has also benefitted diplomatically from the fact that a branch of Islamic State, Islamic State – Khorasan (IS-K), has emerged as the Taliban’s most potent domestic opposition group and metastasizing global threat. Russia, in particular, has predicated its engagement with the Taliban on cooperation against IS-K and ISIS more broadly. The major March 2024 terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow, which killed nearly 140 persons, has been attributed to IS-K. As a clear indication Moscow wants to work with the Taliban on counterterrorism, the Russian foreign and justice ministries submitted a formal proposal to President Vladimir Putin to remove the Taliban from Russia’s list of designated terrorist organizations in June. The Taliban has been on that list since 2003, along with groups like al-Qaeda, for backing separatists in the North Caucasus back then. Kazakhstan took a similar decision in December 2023, and Uzbekistan, which at no time designated the Taliban as an extremist organization, has taken a leading role in pushing for the Taliban to be recognized as a regional power.

Countering terrorist movements is one of the motivations for the influential Gulf state United Arab Emirates (UAE) to broaden its ties to the Taliban. Beyond security ties, UAE leaders reportedly want to explore cooperation with the Taliban on key topics such as Afghanistan’s lucrative and largely untapped minerals sector. Of particular interest is Afghanistan’s deposits of critical minerals such as lithium, critical to electric vehicle batteries and other technologies vital to tackling climate change. In late August, UAE leaders accepted the credentials of a Taliban diplomat as ambassador of Afghanistan, continuing the shift in Abu Dhabi’s approach to Taliban rule. As have governments worldwide, Abu Dhabi made clear the diplomatic accreditation did not represent a recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, but the move was nonetheless hailed by Taliban supporters as furthering the group’s international legitimacy.

Yet, the UAE move was more an evolution of policy than a sharp departure. Following the failure of talks with Qatar and Türkiye, Taliban authorities in May 2022 signed a deal with UAE-based GAAC Solutions to manage Afghanistan’s airports in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar. Low-cost airline FlyDubai resumed flights to Kabul in November 2023, two years after ceasing operations. In June, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) received an Afghan delegation led by Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, a clear signal of a shift toward formal bilateral ties. During the 1996-2001 Taliban rule, the UAE was one of only three countries to recognize the movement (the others were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan), and the UAE reportedly maintained some ties to the hardline Islamist network of Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Haqqani Network has been a backbone of the Taliban during all its periods as rulers and as anti-U.S. insurgents.

A major global power, China, has also leaned forward to expand diplomatic, economic, and commercial ties to the Taliban leadership. As does the UAE, China seeks to cooperate with the Taliban on counter-terrorism issues. In China’s case, Beijing wants to combat hardline Islamists operating in China’s northwest who might seek safe haven across the border in Afghanistan. Leaders of China’s vibrant electric vehicle sector and other industrial sectors also see Afghanistan as a major source of mineral resources. In 2023, several Chinese companies signed multiple business deals with the Taliban government. The most prominent among them was a 25-year-long, multimillion-dollar oil extraction contract with an estimated investment value of $150m in the first year, and up to $540m over the next three years.

In September 2023, the Taliban hailed the arrival of China’s ambassador to Afghanistan with fanfare, saying his arrival is a sign for other nations to come forward and establish relations with them. An accompanying statement from China’s embassy in Kabul urged the international community to maintain its dialogue and encourage the country to put in place an inclusive political framework, adopt moderate policies, combat terrorism and develop friendly external relations. In January 2024, after over two years of negotiations, China recognized Bilal Karimi, a former Taliban spokesman, as an official envoy to Beijing, making Xi’s government the first in the world to do so since the group regained power in 2021. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs balanced the ceremony with a statement clarifying that the acceptance of diplomatic credentials did not signal Beijing’s official recognition of Afghanistan’s current rulers.

Taliban leaders want not only diplomatic acceptance, but concrete economic and financial benefits to help alleviate the severe humanitarian crisis in the country. Even at the height of the U.S.-led multilateral presence in Afghanistan, the Afghan people remained primarily dependent on foreign assistance, including humanitarian aid. The situation has worsened since the Taliban takeover, which resulted in foreign firms leaving the country, assistance drying up, and the impoundment of state assets held in banks abroad.

At UN-brokered and bilateral meetings, including the June UN-led meeting in Doha, Taliban officials have insisted that “restrictions on banking and economic avenues should be lifted." Although Afghanistan’s banks are not subject to international sanctions, experts say the country is disconnected from the global banking system and the dominant Belgium-based SWIFT financial transaction network because Western banks are wary of doing business with Afghan banks and exposing themselves to the reputational and financial risks they pose. Even though Taliban officials and some global diplomats support easing sanctions, no new policy or sanctions easing was announced by any of the countries in attendance in Doha, according to Western diplomats privy to the talks. Still, if the Taliban ever institutes even modest reforms that ease the severe restrictions on and oppression of women, and uphold other basic human rights practices, it is likely the Taliban will enjoy some measure of sanctions relief in the not-too-distant future, despite how odious many consider its regime to be.