by Mikhail Moshkin and Mikhail Zakharov
[REGNUM] On September 29, a delegation of the ruling Taliban movement in Afghanistan (recognized as terrorist by a decision of the Russian Supreme Court in March 2003) arrived in Russia for international negotiations.
At the time of their ban in the Russian Federation, the Taliban were an armed group fighting with the American contingent, US partners in Operation Enduring Freedom and the pro-Western Kabul government. As you know, the US-NATO operations “Freedom Sentinel” and “Resolute Support” ended in August 2021 with the hasty flight of the remnants of the Western contingent - and the restoration of the Taliban “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, seemingly “defeated” by the Americans back in 2001.
One of the Taliban leaders, former bodyguard Amir Khan Muttaqi, who now heads the emirate’s Foreign Ministry, also headed the Afghan delegation at the Moscow format negotiations, which this time are taking place in Kazan. The “Moscow format,” we recall, appeared in 2017 as a platform for peace negotiations on Afghanistan (which was then de jure ruled by the pro-American regime of Ashraf Ghani). The “format” now includes Russia, the main regional powers of the Middle East - Iran, Pakistan and India, and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia.
As for the Taliban, as the organizers explained, the ruling group in Kabul is present at the conference on Afghanistan as guests, but not participants. “This is a fundamental difference,” emphasized Zamir Kabulov, the President’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Director of the Second Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with RTVI.
Let us note once again that a representative delegation of an organization banned in Russia came, for example, to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum 2022. In March last year, Moscow issued accreditation to the first Afghan diplomat representing the new authorities (read: the Taliban).
Before the current negotiations in Kazan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that he does not plan to meet with the Taliban delegation in Kazan. “It was not Sergei Viktorovich who invited them, but I, as the president’s special representative. The minister does not bear any obligations to the guests I invited,” Kabulov explained.
Russia may recognize the interim Taliban government in the future,
| ...at some time when all have acknowledged that interim in this sense is better translated as permanent... |
TWO CONDITIONS FOR LEAVING THE BLACKLIST
The emirate’s authorities will need to resolve two key issues, Nikita Mendkovich, head of the Eurasian Analytical Club, told IA Regnum. In his opinion, this is, firstly, strengthening the fight against drug trafficking
| ...how are the Taliban to fight against drug trafficking when that’s their major non-donor income stream... |
| Terrorism is integral to their raison d’être. And all the terror groups in the country except for ISIS are boxes in the Taliban table of organization, so how are they to fight against them? |
| *shrug* Ain’t gonna happen. |
But first of all, a decision must be made at the international level.
Back in 2021, Kabulov said that Russia could launch the procedure for removing the Taliban from the terrorist list only after the organization was removed from the relevant list by the UN Security Council. In June 2022, Russian Presidential Assistant for International Affairs Yuri Ushakov spoke in the same spirit: the Taliban could be removed from the UN Security Council sanctions list provided the fight against terrorism is intensified and human rights are respected.
The main thing is that the president also expressed a corresponding opinion. The decision to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations should be made at the UN level, Vladimir Putin explained at the 2021 Valdai Forum. “Depending on this, we stand in solidarity and will make a decision on exclusion from the list of terrorist organizations. It seems to me that we are approaching this... Russia’s position will be to move in this direction,” Putin was quoted as saying by RT.
“We don't consider them terrorists per se. This has been proven by the very course of life,” Zamir Kabulov explained the other day, adding that “the Taliban announced that they are not going to engage in global jihad or transfer their ideology and way of thinking to neighboring states.”
| Huh. I never expected to see Russians pretend to be gullible. |
Nevertheless, in the future, Russia will continue to maintain contacts with the Taliban - at least taking into account the new reality - and both sides are interested in this.
| Russia demonstrating they are the alternative to America an the West, though in this case it doesn’t mesh well with their posture of protecting Christianity. |
Another issue that our Foreign Ministry also mentions and which is clearly slowing down the process is the creation (instead of the current temporary governing bodies) of what is called an “inclusive government.” Simply put, a government that includes various ethno-religious, regional, clan and purely political forces in Afghanistan.
| Seriously? Why on earth would the Taliban, who believe they just reconquered Afghanistan in order to reestablish their caliphate, accept accommodating those they believe they’ve conquered? |
The Taliban understand inclusivity in their own way - as the inclusion in the leadership of the country of representatives of the same Taliban, but from different regions and peoples of the country. “Now in the Taliban government, as they say, there are Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras. This is true. But all these ethnic representatives are all Taliban in political terms,” the Russian Foreign Ministry website quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying.
| As we’ve already seen, non-Pashtun Talibs are still second class citizens in the Talib caliphate. Still, non-Talib non-Pashtuns are third class citizens... or worse. |
WE'LL HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WOMEN'S LIBERATION
The prospect of sharing power hardly attracts the Taliban, but they cannot completely ignore such calls and refuse to visit Kazan. Last time, the Taliban obviously did not listen to Moscow’s opinion on an inclusive government, so the fourth meeting of the mechanism was held in November 2022 in Moscow without their participation.
| The food is good, the beds are soft, and the unbeliever women are pretty, so long as the Taliban pretend to consider the negotiating points. And there is also the possibility that the other side will renew throwing money at the problem. |
For Moscow, this is a diplomatic plus - both from the point of view of the fact that other formats of dialogue, except for Moscow, have gone into the shadows, and from the desire to demonstrate the effectiveness of Russian diplomacy, taking into account Moscow’s known relations with the West. “The Taliban really need this meeting, since they are virtually isolated. Over the past year, even high-ranking foreign diplomats have stopped visiting them. Therefore, this is a good opportunity for them to once again demonstrate that they are not isolated, communicate with the outside world and try to solve problems,” Nessar notes.
The Taliban will have to navigate between the wishes of the countries surrounding Afghanistan (on which humanitarian aid depends) and local realities, where the Taliban are unlikely to want to include anyone other than brothers in arms in the government or give women the right to secondary education, experts conclude.
| Oh good — someone understands the dynamic here. |