14 months later: Five conclusions on Afghanistan withdrawal

More than a year after the United States withdrew its troops from Afghanistan and left Afghanistan to the Taliban, no government has recognized the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, but no government is supporting a proxy war against it either. Such a war would create a power vacuum that could provide opportunities for both the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and the U.S., the two entities that the most powerful neighboring countries consider preeminent threats. Among the concerns of neighboring countries are an influx of international terrorist groups into Afghanistan, the narrow and fragile power base of the government, retrograde social policies, the economic and humanitarian crisis resulting from the cutoff of aid, the freeze of Afghanistan’s foreign assets, sanctions against Taliban leaders, and the government’s inability or unwillingness to address these challenges.

Afghanistan’s neighbors had wanted a U.S. military withdrawal as part of a political settlement. With no high-level diplomatic or political effort to reach a settlement that would have incorporated the Taliban into a larger framework, the U.S. allowed the Taliban to seize power by default when the government collapsed. For all of its occasional rhetoric about regional and global stability, the U.S. remained focused on threats to the U.S. “homeland” and U.S. geopolitical interests.

Concerns over international terrorist groups topped the agenda of Afghanistan’s neighbors, all of whom are more at risk than the distant U.S. The U.S. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan pursuant to the Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020, between the U.S. and the Taliban. In return for troop withdrawal by the U.S., the Taliban agreed not to “host” or assist any individuals or groups threatening the U.S. and its allies. The killing by U.S. drone of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31, 2022, cast a harsh light on the failure by the Taliban to honor the deal. Zawahiri was targeted while on the veranda of his home in the upscale Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul, which belonged to a relative of Minister of Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Zawahiri’s presence in a house belonging to an extended family member of the Taliban leadership violated their commitment not to “host” those threatening the security of the United States. This event, as well as others, assured that on August 23, 2022, the U.S. voted in the United Nations Security Council against extending the travel ban exemption for peacemaking activities for thirteen Taliban members. China and Russia voted in favor of extending the exemptions, as unlike the U.S., they are actively engaged in negotiations and business deals with the Taliban. Nonetheless both have indicated that the Taliban’s harboring of terrorists is a nonnegotiable obstacle to recognition.

Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi led a delegation to Kabul on March 24, 2022. According to the Chinese foreign ministry’s official account of the meeting:

Wang Yi hopes that Afghanistan will take effective measures to provide necessary conditions for normal exchanges between various countries and Afghanistan. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a terrorist organization designated by the UN Security Council and listed by the Chinese government in accordance with the law. China hopes that the Afghan side will earnestly fulfill its commitment and take effective measures to resolutely crack down on all terrorist forces, including the ETIM.

Scholars from institutes working for the presidency in Tajikistan whom I met in Dushanbe in mid-September estimated that there are 1,400 to 2,000 militants from Tajikistan in Northern Afghanistan, and a larger number of Uyghurs from China. In an attempt to appease China, the Taliban have moved the Uyghurs out of Badakhshan province, away from the Chinese border, but Tajikistan think-tank officials report that Uyghurs have been given Afghan passports (in violation of the Doha Agreement) and are being employed to train the Taliban’s special forces.

At least publicly, Russia indicates approval of the Taliban stance toward terrorism. In a recent interview with Sputnik, Russian Presidential Special Representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said, “In foreign affairs, we do not complain to [the Taliban], because they are fulfilling the promise they made to fight terrorism,” by which he meant ISKP. For years the greatest terrorism concern that Russia expressed over Afghanistan was ISKP, and Russia charged that the U.S. was ferrying Islamic State Central Asian fighters from Syria to Afghanistan. 

Pakistan, which provided the Afghan Taliban with a secure safe haven and rear base from which to fight against the U.S.-led forces and the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, has now expressed concern about safe havens for terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan for years has charged that the Afghan government with the support of India was providing support for the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch nationalists. The Taliban government has hosted talks between Pakistan and the TTP in Kabul, but the talks have gone nowhere. Instead, the alliance between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban seems stronger than ever. In his September 23, 2022, address to the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif opined that Pakistan shared international concerns about "the threat posed by the major terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan, especially Islamic State, ISIL-K [another name for ISKP] and TTP, as well as Al Qaeda, ETIM, and IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan]." 

In 2001, Iran under reformist President Mohammad Khatami gambled that an American presence in Afghanistan would be less of a threat than Sunni extremists like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. More than two decades of experience have convinced Khatami’s hardline successors that this was a bad bet. Former Foreign Minister and advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Akbar Velayati has welcomed the Taliban into Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” against the United States. President Ebrahim Raisi’s special representative for Afghanistan, former Qods commander Hassan Kazemi Qomi, repeated the longstanding accusation that the Islamic State, including ISKP, was a creation of the Americans. He also charged that “America is organizing a group under the name ‘Resistance Front,’ which is a lie; they seek to create internal chaos in the name of resistance.” Iran’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Mohammad Reza Bahrami, publicly contradicted him, and Qomi backtracked, claiming he had been misunderstood. Iranians are satisfied with the Taliban’s opposition to ISKP but wary of their attempts to improve relations with the U.S. and concerned about their mistreatment of Shi‘a populations.

All of Afghanistan’s neighbors — China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan — have stated publicly that the Taliban government must become more “inclusive.” In his most recent interview, Kabulov said that “inclusive government is the first step towards normalizing society, which includes education for girls and jobs and work opportunities for Afghan women and others.” Iran went so far as to hold a meeting in Mashhad between representatives of the Taliban and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan but neither of the Afghan sides was prepared to negotiate. Chinese diplomats say that the formation of an “inclusive” government is a necessary condition for recognition. The reason for this common stance is the belief that any government monopolized by one group will not bring stability to Afghanistan.

Both Russia and China are leading separate regional processes aimed at achieving common goals in Afghanistan, in particular effective action by the Taliban against terrorist groups and formation of an inclusive government. Kabulov is hoping that a coordinated effort by Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and India (pointedly omitting the U.S.) will be able to persuade the Taliban to agree to form a more inclusive government and is convening a “Moscow format” meeting to that end on November 16, 2022. China is counting on the recurrent meetings it convenes of Foreign Ministers of the Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan, including China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The third and last such meeting took place in Tanxi, China, on March 31, 2022.

Conclusions:

— The Taliban will not respond to more sanctions and boycotts after they have, in their view, defeated the United States after more than 20 years of war.

— The Taliban are equally unlikely to respond to engagement that is unaccompanied by a credible, even if conditional, offer of recognition. They would be more likely to respond to it if the offer were made by a coalition led by the U.S., but such an offer by such a coalition is now virtually impossible.

— If the sole goal of U.S. foreign policy were to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, the best policy would be to engage with China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, and the UN to seek a common platform for engagement with the Taliban on the basis of a road map for recognition. For obvious reasons, it is now completely impossible for the U.S. to engage or cooperate with Russia and Iran, and only slightly less difficult with China and Pakistan. India is already performing a delicate balancing act between the U.S. and Russia on Ukraine and is unlikely to want to complicate it further.

— In addition, even the near-term futures of Russia, Iran, and the U.S. are very uncertain. Of all the countries with influence in Afghanistan, China — despite its many challenges — is the only reasonably stable country experiencing an apparently untroubled leadership transition. China’s aversion to risk is such, however, that a reporter for Iran’s FARS news agency in Dushanbe compared it to someone who takes a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and then blows on it in case it’s still hot.

— For the first time in nearly five decades, a national, regional, and global consensus against supporting further armed struggle in Afghanistan provides an opportunity for peace. Unfortunately, neither a preoccupied and wounded U.S., neighbors undergoing their own internal crises, nor a weakened and divided United Nations is likely to exercise the leadership needed to make this opportunity a reality.

This piece has been republished with permission from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.