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hen Pakistan’s defense minister went on television at the end of February and spoke of an “open war” with the Taliban government in Kabul, he was not simply using a dramatic phrase for a familiar border clash. He was signaling that the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre – long managed through deniable strikes, proxy groups and quiet understandings – had entered a new and more dangerous phase.

His announcement came as Pakistani warplanes hit Taliban-controlled areas near the capital and along the eastern frontier, targeting what Islamabad describes as TTP safe havens that fuel attacks inside Pakistan. For people on both sides of the border, this looked less like the start of a brand-new conflict and more like a sharp escalation in a security problem that never really went away.

Islamabad said the strikes targeted militants of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) responsible for repeated attacks across the border and inside Pakistan. Taliban authorities in Kabul countered that civilians, including women and children, were among the dead, and that Afghan sovereignty had been violated yet again by a neighbor that long used their soil as a strategic area. Both sides accused each other of sheltering militants and of turning a porous line on the map into a revolving door for armed groups.

The first theatre of the “war on terror” is now moving toward an undeclared confrontation between two governments that once cooperated closely. As this front heats up, the question becomes more concrete: in a crowded and contested international agenda, who has both the interest and the capacity to help limit the damage? Middle powers such as Türkiye are increasingly part of the answer, but their real room for maneuver is still being tested.

From counterterrorism to open war

For years, Afghanistan-Pakistan borders sat in a grey zone. Pakistani jets and artillery occasionally hit suspected militant camps across the border. Taliban leaders quietly tolerated some of these strikes, publicly condemned others and tried to manage a relationship built on decades of covert cooperation, refugee flows and shared enemies. The line between a counterterrorism operation and a cross-border skirmish was kept deliberately vague.

Late February 2026 changed the atmosphere. Pakistani warplanes bombed Taliban-held areas near Kabul and in eastern provinces, while officials spoke openly about dismantling what they describe as TTP safe havens inside Afghanistan. Taliban spokesmen responded with their own casualty figures, allegations of civilian deaths and an ultimatum: respect Afghan territory or face consequences. When both sides use language such as “open war,” the space for quiet de-escalation narrows quickly.

This is not only a matter of public rhetoric. When armed groups move across borders, governments still have a certain flexibility in how they respond and how they explain their actions. Once capitals and regular forces are engaged in a declared confrontation, domestic audiences, rival factions and external partners all push for more rigid positions. Political costs rise for any actor who wants to step back.

A nuclear shadow over a crowded map

The Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier links two nuclear-armed states and sits close to a third, India, which has its own history of war with Pakistan. It also lies on top of the supply routes, smuggling lines and ideological networks that have sustained jihadist movements since the 1980s. In a relatively small space, tribal structures, armed groups and long-standing border disputes overlap and feed into each other.

In such an environment, escalation can move faster than intentions. A few days of airstrikes and retaliatory raids might remain limited; several weeks of miscalculation could start to affect stability in Central Asia, the Gulf and even China’s Xinjiang region. Pakistani security planners are clearly aware of these linkages. Taliban commanders understand as well that allowing TTP fighters extensive freedom of action from Afghan territory increases the chance of additional punitive strikes.

The timing of this crisis matters. It comes as the U.N. Security Council is already dealing with a crowded agenda dominated by the fourth year of the Ukraine war and the unresolved consequences of the Gaza genocide. Diplomatic bandwidth in many capitals is limited. Intelligence services and foreign ministries are managing several urgent files at once. Adding Afghanistan-Pakistan to this list makes coordination harder at the very moment when it is most needed.

Where middle powers step in

At this point, middle powers come into focus. States with regional reach, flexible diplomacy and no colonial baggage in Afghanistan-Pakistan have a specific advantage. Various reports and commentaries already point to regional mediators such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as Türkiye and possibly the UAE. All of them have channels to Islamabad, some degree of contact with the Taliban and a clear interest in avoiding a prolonged war on the edge of the Muslim world.

Türkiye enters this picture with a record that combines alliance ties and autonomous initiatives. As a NATO member that maintained dialogue with Moscow during the Ukraine war, Ankara helped build the Black Sea grain corridor when many saw little space for compromise. On Gaza, Turkish officials engaged in back-channel contacts involving Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the United States while keeping a critical public line. In Afghanistan, Türkiye sought a role at Kabul airport after the U.S. withdrawal, signaling that it did not intend to disappear from the file when Western militaries left.

This pattern has strengthened Ankara’s claim to a certain mediation capacity. Middle powers accumulate influence not only through defense sales or summit diplomacy, but also by repeatedly entering crisis management roles when larger powers are divided or simply tired. The Afghanistan-Pakistan confrontation is another test case. For Pakistan’s leaders, a Muslim-majority partner with established defense links and personal relationships is a good option. For Taliban figures who do not want to depend on a single patron, an interlocutor that talks about security, trade and political process at the same time has clear value.

This does not mean a middle power can impose a settlement between Pakistan’s security establishment and the Taliban leadership. It does mean expectations are shifting about which actors are asked to “do something” when escalation threatens to spin out of control.

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eavy fighting erupted along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border over the weekend, leaving dozens dead on both sides and prompting the closure of all major crossings, officials said on Sunday, in the most serious confrontation between the neighbors since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul four years ago.

Pakistan’s military said that 23 of its soldiers were killed and several others wounded in overnight clashes after Afghan forces attacked border posts. The Taliban government confirmed that nine of its fighters had died but claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties on Pakistani forces.

Each side said it had destroyed border positions of the other, but neither provided evidence, and the figures could not be independently verified. Pakistani officials said their forces killed more than 200 Afghan Taliban and allied fighters, while Afghan officials said 58 Pakistani soldiers were dead.

Escalating tensions

Tensions between Islamabad and Kabul have soared in recent months amid Pakistani accusations that militants behind a surge in attacks in Pakistan are operating from Afghan territory. The Taliban administration has repeatedly denied the allegation, insisting it does not allow any group to threaten neighboring countries.

The weekend clashes followed a series of Pakistani airstrikes on Thursday that reportedly hit targets in Kabul and in a marketplace in eastern Afghanistan. Taliban authorities and Pakistani security sources confirmed the strikes, though Islamabad has not officially acknowledged them.

In retaliation, Afghan troops launched attacks late Saturday on Pakistani border posts, triggering hours of heavy exchange involving artillery, rockets and small arms. Fighting was reported in multiple locations along the rugged frontier, including Kurram district in Pakistan’s northwest, where intermittent gunfire continued on Sunday, according to residents.

A Taliban defense ministry statement said their forces had targeted “enemy posts that had bombarded Afghan villages,” while Pakistan’s military said it was “responding decisively to unprovoked aggression.”

Regional mediation and calls for calm

By early Sunday, major exchanges had largely ceased. The Taliban’s defense ministry said it halted attacks at midnight local time following requests for restraint from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both of which issued statements expressing “grave concern” over the escalation.

“There is no kind of threat in any part of Afghanistan’s territory,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “The Islamic Emirate and the people of Afghanistan will defend their land and remain resolute and committed in this defense.”

Pakistani officials described the situation as “tense but under control” and said communications with Kabul had been established through diplomatic and military channels to prevent further escalation.

Border closures and humanitarian impact

Pakistan announced the closure of all crossings along the 2,600-kilometre (1,600-mile) border, a disputed frontier known as the Durand Line, drawn up by British colonial authorities in 1893.

The key trade routes at Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Chaman in Balochistan were sealed on Sunday morning, halting cross-border movement of people and goods. At least three smaller crossings — Kharlachi, Angoor Adda and Ghulam Khan — were also shut, Pakistani local officials said.

Video footage from Chaman showed long lines of stranded trucks and people carrying belongings, as Afghan nationals living in Pakistan sought to return home. “Thousands are stuck on both sides,” said a customs official in Balochistan. “Trade and daily wage work have completely stopped.”

The border closures threaten to deepen economic hardship for Afghanistan, which depends heavily on imports through Pakistan for food, fuel and medical supplies.

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powerful earthquake has devastated eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 610 people and injuring more than 1,300, according to a government spokesman, in one of the deadliest tremors to hit the country in recent years.

The 6.0-magnitude quake struck at 11:47 p.m. local time (19:17 GMT) on Sunday in Kunar province, near the city of Jalalabad in neighboring Nangarhar province, flattening mud and stone homes, destroying villages, and triggering landslides in the mountainous terrain, local officials and residents said.

Another 4.5-magnitude aftershock was recorded a short while later near Basawul in Nangarhar, further shaking already-damaged structures and sending residents scrambling for safety.

“The epicentre of the quake was recorded in Kunar province. Entire villages in Kunar have been badly hit,” said Mohsin Momand, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Kabul. “Emergency teams are being deployed from Kabul and nearby provinces. Officials are pledging to use all available resources to rescue people and support affected families.”

Remote villages, fragile homes

The disaster struck a region already struggling with poverty and limited infrastructure. Homes in Kunar and neighboring provinces are predominantly built of mud and rocks, unable to withstand the tremor’s force, especially given its shallow depth of just 8 kilometers (5 miles).

“Kunar is an impoverished and mountainous region,” said Kamal Hyder, reporting from Lahore, Pakistan. “The houses there are very vulnerable… It also happened late at night, when a lot of people were inside their homes.”

Rescue efforts have been hampered by rugged terrain, damaged roads, and widespread landslides that have blocked access to remote settlements. Local authorities warned that the death toll could rise significantly as more reports come in from outlying districts.

“Hundreds are feared dead,” Hyder added. “Access is very difficult, because such earthquakes would definitely have caused landslides. Whatever operation is going to be underway has to be within the critical hours to reach those remote locations.”

Regional tremors felt

The quake’s tremors were felt across vast areas of neighboring Pakistan, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, where residents were jolted awake late at night. No major damage was immediately reported there.

Afghanistan, straddling the collision zone of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, is highly prone to seismic activity. “It’s a very tectonically active area… the Indian plate is moving northwards and sliding past parts of Eurasia,” said Chris Elders, emeritus professor at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Western Australia.

He warned that earthquakes in the region often trigger secondary disasters. “It’s not only the buildings that will shake and become unstable, but the hillsides will also shake and become unstable, and that is what triggers the landslide,” he said.

Taliban officials said emergency relief convoys had been dispatched from Kabul, while local hospitals in Jalalabad and Kunar have been overwhelmed with casualties. Images showed volunteers carrying the wounded on stretchers and loading bodies into ambulances.

“We are mobilizing all available resources to rescue survivors and provide medical assistance,” a government spokesman said, calling on international aid agencies to assist in the response.

The United Nations and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said they were monitoring the situation and preparing to deploy emergency relief teams.

A history of deadly quakes

Afghanistan has experienced a series of devastating earthquakes in recent years, compounded by decades of conflict and underdevelopment that have left much of its housing stock weak and emergency response capacity limited.

In October 2023, a quake in western Afghanistan killed at least 2,400 people, while in June 2022, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake in Paktika province left over 1,100 dead.

Seismologists warned that the region remains vulnerable to further aftershocks in the coming days. Residents in affected provinces spent the night in open fields and makeshift shelters, fearing more tremors.

Condolences poured in from across the region, with Pakistan’s Prime Minister expressing “deep sorrow over the tragic loss of life” and pledging to send aid convoys. The European Union said it stood ready to provide humanitarian support.

Aid groups, however, cautioned that delivering assistance would be complicated by Afghanistan’s challenging topography and limited international engagement since the Taliban takeover in 2021.

“This is a race against time,” said a representative from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). “Landslides, blocked roads, and damaged infrastructure make it extremely difficult to reach those in need. The critical hours for rescuing people alive are already ticking away.”

The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan marks a pivotal moment in modern history, with far-reaching implications for both regional dynamics and global security. After nearly two decades of military involvement, the decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan raised critical questions about the future of the country, the stability of the region, and the legacy of American intervention.

The withdrawal process, which began in earnest in May 2021 and culminated in the complete evacuation of U.S. forces by August of the same year, unfolded against a backdrop of political, security, and humanitarian challenges. The decision to end America’s longest war was driven by a range of factors, including shifting domestic priorities, war fatigue among the American public, and a reevaluation of strategic objectives in an evolving geopolitical landscape.

The consequences of this withdrawal, however, extend far beyond the withdrawal itself. As the Taliban rapidly regained control of large swaths of territory, including the capital city of Kabul, the chaotic scenes of desperate Afghans seeking to flee and the subsequent collapse of the Afghan government reverberated across the globe. The vacuum left in the wake of the withdrawal has raised concerns about the potential for a resurgence of terrorism, the erosion of hard-fought gains in human rights and women’s rights, and the regional power dynamics as neighboring countries seek to assert influence in the aftermath of the U.S. departure.

In August in Kabul, Andrew Quilty, a Walkley award-winning journalist, presents a gripping account of the historic fall of Kabul. Through the eyes of witnesses on the ground, Quilty unveils the dramatic events that unfolded as the Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital, marking the abrupt and humiliating end of America’s longest mission.

Quilty’s narrative is powerful and illuminating, weaving together the personal stories of resilience, fear, and hope that unfolded amidst the chaos. He skillfully highlights the complexities of the situation, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of the larger geopolitical forces at play and the far-reaching consequences of foreign intervention in Afghanistan in chronological order.

August in Kabul captures the resilience and spirit of the Afghan people, who have endured decades of conflict and upheaval. It also serves as a stark reminder of the limitations and failures of foreign intervention. It is a vital contribution to the historical record, offering readers a remarkable and deeply human perspective on a pivotal moment in recent history. With meticulous research, powerful storytelling, Quilty crafts a narrative that will leave a lasting impact on readers, urging them to reflect on the complexities of war, its aftermath. August in Kabul is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of the Afghan conflict and the profound impact it has had on individuals and nations alike.

Andrew Quilty, August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) ISBN: 9781350370319, 272 pages

Written by Dilara Özer

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he Taliban unveiled their plan to build hundreds of religious schools across the country which would result in the raising of the third and fourth generations of radicals. Additionally, the group is turning educational institutions into religious schools and curricula into a fastidious form of religion. Strategically, this would help them fortify the bases of their regime. On the other hand, Afghans are fed up with the strict rules the Taliban impose on people without providing any services to the public. The sudden flip from freedom to a restricted life under the Taliban is worrisome for Afghans.

The group banned education and work for women, and millions of Afghans have either fled or strive to flee the country with some joining resistance forces against the group. Additionally, unemployment and poverty are at their peak. No single country has recognized the group. Reportedly, unknown aircraft circle above the Taliban daily and target Al Qaida and Daesh fighters. Will the Taliban survive? How long will their regime last?

The Taliban government could last more than five years

The Taliban’s harsh regime makes people obedient. When anyone protests them, they quickly disappear. Additionally, the Taliban systematically work to produce version three and four of the Taliban by building hundreds of religious schools across the country to expand the number of their fighters in the long run. The first religious school was founded by the Taliban’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, in Khost Province exactly where American Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was released in 2014 in a prisoner swap for five prominent Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay.

The Taliban Ministry of Education announced that there are around 6,000 religious schools in the country, and added that the group plans to build 34 large religious schools in each of the provinces to serve up to 34,000 students at a time. Such systematic production of the next Taliban generation would contribute to the length of their regime, which would continue for more than five years, at the least.

Importantly, there isn’t any strong domestic anti-Taliban armed force to match the Taliban in either quantity or quality. Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front (NRF), recently said that he has up to 4,000 fighters which is 4% of the Taliban’s force. This number is not enough to overthrow the Taliban regime in the next few years. At the same time, while the Taliban enjoy Pakistan’s support, no country so far has shown support for the NRF.

The Taliban, in fact, are similar to Iran’s religious regime, and despite the world being against the Islamic Republic of Iran, with heavy sanctions on it, the religious regime in Tehran continues to govern for 43 years. The Western world frequently meets the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and abroad, and since the Taliban took power, the U.S. alone has provided over $1.1 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan which ends up going to the Taliban.

Importantly, the Western world has other priorities which distract it from the Taliban such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which might be a protracted conflict, the U.S.-China trade war, the post COVID-19 disorder, and climate change, which causes severe food and resource crises and the spread of diseases. These global challenges would divert Afghanistan from the world’s eyes and leave the country to the hands of the Taliban.

The Taliban government would face drastic security challenges

Taliban fighters are not the only security threat to the country. Among others, Daesh’s fighters have conducted numerous attacks and have had several hard fights with the Taliban. It is estimated that Daesh has 4,000 to 5,000 fighters in Afghanistan. After the fall of Kabul, the so-called Islamic State published a commentary where the group accused the Taliban of betraying Jihadists by the peace agreement with the U.S., and vowed to continue fighting them.

Since the Taliban took over the capital, Daesh has carried out deadly attacks. Last week, Daesh claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed five and wounded forty near the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry. In another incident this month, Daesh attacked the Taliban’s military airport in Kabul, killing 20 and wounding 30. Last month, Daesh also attacked a hotel in Kabul leaving behind 21 casualties.

In an interview with CNN, Abdul Munir, a Daesh commander, stated that he leads 600 fighters, including Indians, Pakistanis, and Central Asians. He added, “When the foreigners and the people of the world leave Afghanistan, we can resume our operations.” Apart from Daesh, the NRF is another challenge for the Taliban. Even though the Taliban fighters have seized the center of Panjshir, the NRF fights from the mountains of Panjshir.

Last week, Amrullah Saleh, former vice president and one of the leaders of the NRF, announced that their fighters arrested 300 Taliban in the eastern province of Nuristan. There are also other newly formed resistance groups including the Freedom Front of Afghanistan which consists of former military officers led by General Yasin Zia, the former military chief of staff, and the Islamic National Movement for Afghanistan’s Freedom led by General Abdul Matin Sulimankhil. These guerrilla groups might not topple the Taliban regime in the short run, but they could put the Taliban government in hardship.

Possible scenario for overturning the Taliban government  

Another incident like 9/11 in any one of the NATO member states would challenge the Taliban’s regime. This time NATO forces would intervene in Afghanistan in a different format than in 2001. NATO forces might use their over-the-horizon policy to topple the Taliban’s regime. Since the Taliban took over power, several jihadist organizations have returned to Afghanistan. These groups have fought the U.S. forces alongside the Taliban for the past twenty years. After the U.S. withdrawal, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri returned to Kabul and was killed by a U.S. drone.

There is a risk that such groups would be after revenge for the death or imprisonment of their fellow jihadists during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden who was killed in Islamabad, Pakistan and al-Zawahiri who was in Kabul. Since 9/11, the U.S. has detained roughly 780 Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Guantánamo Bay.

The return of these jihadist groups to Afghanistan could threaten the U.S. and its allies in the region and the world. During the Taliban’s previous tenure in the 1990s, Al Qaeda in one day carried out two attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 and wounding over 4,500 people. Should these groups carry out similar attacks to 9/11 in any of the NATO member states, the Taliban regime would abruptly come to an end.

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fghanistan was the hub of opium poppy cultivation in the 1990s. The Afghan government sought to meet the supply gap; however, the government’s inadequacy and the lack of law enforcement brought about the loss of control over the countryside.

The cultivation in the countryside reached its prime when its control by the state was lost. According to the World Bank’s 2004 Social Development Paper, this was an effect of the decline in “credible law enforcements hindering the growth of the opium economy.” The situation resembles the present-day Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

Since the Taliban’s recent takeover, “the group has been trying to amend its image in the hope of earning international recognition and the easing of sanctions” reported Dilara Ozer for Politics Today. She added, “Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi asked international donors for cooperation to help find alternative businesses for farmers and treat drug addicts.”

Given the poor economic circumstances, parents have resorted to sedating their hungry children by giving them medication, a report claims. Poverty reaching a record high with parents selling their daughters and organs for money. Drug consumption has become a preferred coping mechanism in the country, which cultivates 80 percent of the world’s opium.

The lack of social and public services meant that old buildings like the U.S military camps were being transformed into rehabilitation centers. In a recent documentary, Arte.tv reported the terrible conditions there as the centers lack any medical aid and safety.

The conditions reflect an inhumane treatment of patients and the poor social and economic structure of the country. Some patients are unable to leave the treatment centers, having no contact with their families, while others are unable to survive drug withdrawals due to lack of medicine and medical assistance. There are reports of infested blankets and lack of food.

Echoing the opium bans in 2000 and 2001, the Taliban’s ban, announced in 2022, aimed to earn international recognition. There were already sanctions and lack of humanitarian aid. The effect of the opium ban caused opium sales to triple from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022.

There is a 32 percent increase in opium cultivation for 2022, and what these figures will look like for the 2023 report will be a deciding factor for the reliability of the recent ban and Taliban’s efforts in administration

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) questioned whether the ban will be enforced by the Taliban as the cultivation season has approached, while other sources have cited that farmers have already began cultivation – but the Taliban turn a blind eye.

The Failure of the War on Terrorism as a War on Drugs

The opium economy because of opium’s addictive nature and demand is a booming endeavor that has been used to fund warlordism, state power, and narcoterrorism. The lack of law enforcement, and the limited economic stability and support of societal development have the potential to create further issues for the crackdown on opium trafficking, cultivation, and consumption. John F. Sopko wrote that the “eradication efforts had no lasting impact on opium poppy problem” while alternative cultivation programs that did not incorporate larger security and developmental strategies ultimately become short-lived for counternarcotic goals.

Between 2000 and 2020, the UK has provided £3.5 billion to Afghanistan as “humanitarian aid”; however, it was reported in the recent Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) that most of these funds had been used towards security agencies, such as the police.

Since the primary task of the police was not civilian policing but counterinsurgency operations, the appropriation of the UK aid funds was “unwilling to challenge the U.S. approach.” Furthermore, financial flows have been reported to serve a geostrategic and military agenda in the aftermath of the NATO-led occupation. According to Jean Shaoul, institutions like the World Bank, the United Nations, and various NGOs “mobilized in this endeavor” rather than providing humanitarian aid and relief.

Narcoterrorism

A distinction between criminal activity and terrorism is important. As Emma Bjornehed, senior lecturer at Swedish Defense University writes by referencing to the work of UNCRI member Tamara Makarenko stating that, “The most common criminal activity that terrorist organizations are involved in is the international drug trade, thus although organized crime may involve different criminal activity such as arms trade, human trafficking, racketeering, by viewing the crime aspect of the continuum as solely narcotics trade, the continuum can be used as a tool to view the concept of narcoterrorism.”

Afghanistan now faces with instabilities and increasing poverty due to insufficient control of the opium trade and other challenges. Alongside drug trafficking, the routes are also used for other illicit criminal activities. Given that the routes have been identified, Co-Chair of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals Csaba Kőrösi further mentions that the “threat from drug trafficking is linked with the threat of terrorism, regional and global security.”

The opium economy produces shocking effects on the states that oppose it. The opium economy has allowed Afghanistan to maintain its state power and the Taliban to remain warlords, but the strength of the opium economy has dismantled the state’s morality while it has remained a huge source of financial gain.

Prices have loomed and farmers are more prone to remain in the cultivation given its profit. Given this situation and the fact that the other means of production suggested for farmers have not shown to be successful under the assistance of other nations and organizations, the threat of narcoterrorism persists.

Pressure remains for counter efforts to manage the opium trade routes which vary from land, sea, and air. Given the recently announced ban and the poor law enforcement, opium prices have spiked and the Balkan Route is likely to be under more stress.

As the end of August marks a year since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban remain unrecognized and desperately craving legitimacy.

Ever since the Taliban seized Afghanistan in August 2021, there was much speculation on the consequences of their recognition by regional powers. Countries like Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan were considered the main beneficiaries of the U.S. withdrawal as they are more capable of filling the power vacuum.

But despite the hype, no country recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

“We call upon regional and other countries, the United Nations, international organizations, and especially Islamic countries and organizations to recognize the Islamic emirate as a legitimate government, to have a positive collaboration with it, and remove all the imposed sanctions,” Mujib-ul Rahman Ansari, an Afghan cleric said during a three-day gathering of Afghan leaders on July 2, 2022.

Afghanistan is currently facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history. As poverty and economic crisis sweep through Kabul, lack of recognition makes it harder for Afghan people to survive.

Who has recognized the Taliban?

As recognition of the Taliban would improve trade relationships and enhance security cooperations, Afghanistan’s neighbors and regional players have demonstrated more interest in engaging with the group. However, many of the regional players have abstained from recognition and instead focused more on diplomatic talks. Countries like Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, China, and Iran have quietly approved Taliban-appointed diplomats.

Being one of the first actors to take action, China expects the group to protect its interest in neighboring countries. It is also concerned about the Belt and Road Initiative which runs through Afghan territory. For other countries like Pakistan and Iran, security and commerce are the top priorities.

Who opposed the recognition?

The UAE along with Saudi Arabia were among the first to recognize the Taliban when they came to power in 1996. However, in 2021, these countries refrained from doing the same. Similarly, countries like the United States have been reluctant to recognize the Taliban and froze their assets, making things difficult for the Afghan economy.

In this context, Russia and China have accused the U.S. and its allies for the economic crisis in the country. Both have also demanded the release of frozen funds and the provision of assistance to the Afghans.

Better behavior matters

The Taliban are still on the terror list of many countries. Most countries abstain from recognizing them as they want the group to be more responsible and promote inclusivity. The international community urged the Taliban to provide more freedom for women and provide universal access to education.

A recent report by the UN Assistant Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has also highlighted the extra judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and violations of fundamental freedoms by the Taliban regime.

Last August, Mujahid told reporters, “There will be no prejudice against women.” However, most girls in Afghanistan have not been allowed to go to school after August 2021. In December 2021, the Taliban banned women from traveling alone unless they have a male companion, and all women have been ordered to cover their faces in public.

Almost a year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, many governments still tie their recognition of the Taliban to its actions on the ground, including the way the group view and treat women.

On Saturday, April 2, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid announced a ban on opium cultivation, opium use, and trade, and warned that crops would be destroyed, and perpetrators would be punished according to Sharia law. The new ban also covers illicit drugs and alcohol.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest opium poppy cultivator, and a significant portion of its GDP relies on the crop. Throughout the years of instability and war in the country, the numbers of opium poppy farmers reached millions.

The ban, taking place amidst the free fall of Afghanistan’s economy and cash shortage, sparks fears of livelihood and food insecurity. At the same time, the decision was met with praise from the international community which demanded drug control from the Taliban. Since their takeover, the group had been trying to amend its image in the hope of earning international recognition and the easing of sanctions.

Afghanistan’s rocky road with opium

Since the 1990s, Afghanistan became the world’s largest producer of opium. The trend started in the 1980s due to political, geo-strategic, and economic factors—mainly the lack of effective governance, and deterioration of the economic and agricultural infrastructure due to the civil war. Thus, the rural farming of opium poppies became a viable livelihood option.

Prior to the civil war that started in 1979, the Afghani government had already been struggling with the enforcement of opium production bans due to an unavailability of resources. Like other conflicts, illicit drug production and trade became a lucrative option for the fighting groups to fund arms when the war started.

After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban took control of most parts of the country. Most of the patronage of the fighting factions’ financial resources dried up leading them to turn to opium cultivation. There were insufficient resources for agricultural products like wheat accompanied by lack of coordination for existing resources.

Moreover, agricultural taxes including income from opium poppies were collected by mullahs and local authorities throughout the fighting period before the Taliban took control, which signaled a greenl ight for cultivation. When the Taliban took control, they banned the drug trade in 1994. The group made an attempt to end poppy cultivation by imposing restrictions rather than a full ban; however, in 1996, taxes similar to the ones formerly paid to mullahs where imposed on farmers and traffickers of opium. The production and consumption of opiate drugs were banned, but trade and heroin labs still remained.

What is more, the Taliban ascent to power caused the civil servants and skilled professionals to flee the country while economic collapse starved those who remain. Salaries are no longer paid as cash shortages prevail and finding employment is increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, food prices have skyrocketed, and Afghanistan endured one of its worst droughts in 2021.

Food insecurity in rural areas is aggravated and similar settings are increasingly visible in urban areas where the middle class resides, many resorting to selling their belongings to buy food. According to the UN, around 23 million people acutely struggle with food shortages in Afghanistan.

In December 2021, Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, alerted of the risk of increased migration and called for economic aid. Later that month, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution to make an exception on UN sanctions on humanitarian grounds if provided directly, bypassing the Taliban. The Taliban government has mainly been compliant, allowing the direct provision of aid.

Opium ban comes during harvest season, alternative plan yet to be made

Recently, opium cultivation in Afghanistan saw a surge with farmers seeking alleviation from the country’s dire economic situation. Opium products generate at least $1.8 billion in Afghanistan annually. The Taliban’s strategy regarding income alternatives to the lucrative crop is still uncertain. TOLO news, a local Afghani news outlet, reported that Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi asked international donors for cooperation to help find alternative businesses for farmers and treat drug addicts.

Ian McCary, the chief of mission for U.S. Embassy Kabul (currently based on Doha), praised the move in a tweet and pointed out that enforcement would be key for the positive outcome of a thriving licit agricultural sector. It is yet to be seen if drug control and an attempt at building a more temperate image will ease international sanctions for the Taliban or even contribute towards an official recognition by the international community.

March has proved to be a busy month for the Taliban as they crackdown on basic freedoms and announce dramatic changes for the Afghan people, particularly the women.

First, the Taliban banned education for girls beyond 6th grade, making a sudden U-turn decision that ignited concern and raised many questions around the world. Second, women can no longer travel without a male chaperone, whether it be by car or plane. Third, recreational parks have become segregated by gender allowing men to visit on four days and women on the other three days. Finally, international media outlets like the BBC and Voice of America have been banned, taking their news bulletins off the air.

These hasty decisions have made experts, officials, and those familiar with the group concerned about what it could mean for the future direction of the country, and rightfully so. But besides the obvious concerns, the Taliban’s crackdown on basic freedoms is a sign of their weakness and inability to address the myriad of problems Afghanistan faces. Simply put, the Taliban are shooting themselves in the foot, showing their severe short-sightedness and major handicaps.

The Taliban are pushing to return to the past

Months before the talk of the Taliban joining some sort of power-sharing deal in Kabul, many in Washington were suggesting that the Taliban have softened their extremist religious interpretations and brutal use of force.

The narrative of a Taliban 2.0. dominated western circles, officials and leaders expressed hope in the group’s change of course this time around. But for most Afghans, skepticism was always there. How can a group that has countlessly violated human rights ever be trusted again?

During its first stint in power in the 1990s, the Taliban deprived all girls and women of education, keeping them in the dark. Similarly, media and freedom of expression took a strong detour as journalists could not report the realities happening on the ground. Other tactics like moral policing, interrogations, and reprisals against government workers, activists, and important figures were a common part of life under Taliban rule.

The Taliban are inconsistent

Amid the onslaught of their recapture, experts were mostly unsure what the Taliban had in mind.

In an interview with BBC, Saad Mohseni, head of Tolo News, Afghanistan’s leading TV news channel asked the question that was on everyone’s minds, “will the real Taliban please stand up?”

He added, “we are getting different opinions and views from different quarters. Now is the time to make it clear to them [the Taliban] that if you go back to the mid 1990s, it’s not going to be acceptable to the world at large.”

It’s true. Since their takeover, the Taliban’s messaging has been inconsistent with ambiguous responses to the pressing concerns of education, media, and women’s rights. It is no wonder why the international community is walking on eggshells, still very reluctant to officially recognize a group that has little cohesion and a bad reputation on top of that.

Many experts believe that these inconsistencies reflect the deep friction between the Taliban’s political leaders and their hardline commanders and foot soldiers, whereas the abrupt backtrack on girls going to school acts as the biggest indicator of this.

It’s important to note that the Taliban are not a homogenous unit. Their political wing and military wing differ in terms of their degree in religious conviction. The problem with this is that neither wing can survive without the other, and for top tier Taliban heads like Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, they cannot afford to lose the loyalty of their foot soldiers who are holding everything down for them and therefore must appease them to prevent any further PR damage.

The Taliban cannot address the elephant in the room

Perhaps, the biggest handicap the Taliban faces is their inability to address the elephant in the room: the economic and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan.

In fact, many Taliban members have desperately called upon former Afghan government officials and other actors to return and assist them with technical expertise because they fail to have any skills themselves.

As the group focuses on the lengths of men’s beards, the dress code of women, and how to hoist their flag atop the hills of Kabul, meanwhile, Afghans are starving.

A UNDP study conducted in September stated that 97 percent of Afghans could plunge into poverty by mid 2022.

The just war doctrine debate goes back to the Middle Ages, when philosophers and theologians linked to the Roman Catholic Church, such as Augustine of Hippo in his encyclopedia on the city of God against the pagans (De civitate Dei contra paganos), commonly referred to as The City of God and Thomas Aquinas in his theological compendium Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology), provided theological justifications for waging wars. These wars were seen as a necessary evil by the Church to bring about better outcomes and justice, and to help those who the Church saw as worthy.

The reason the Church had to justify going to war was that as a pacifist institution being involved in wars was against its founding principles. Thus, the Church and its theologians introduced new concepts such as the theology of liberation, which was understood as the liberation of an oppressed people, justifying war as a last resort to achieve justice.

The theology of liberation manifested itself in the form of crusades—wars in the Middle East to save Jerusalem and Eastern Christians from what the Roman Catholic Church at the time saw as “oppression” by Muslims. For the Catholic Church, their crusades were “just,” but for people in the Levant, including large sectors of Christians, they were simply unjust.

It is important to note that when the crusaders arrived in the Levant, certain Christian groups fought alongside Muslims to repel the invading forces. Also, when the same Catholic Church revived the theology of liberation in the1960s in Latin America, in an attempt to explain the role, the Church should play in public life and politics, it was faced by a strong opposition by theologians linked to centers of power and government. Subsequently, when Pope John Paul II visited Nicaragua in 1983, he called for the removal of five priests from their jobs over their liberation theology advocacy.

The doctrine of just war

Michael Walzer, an American philosopher and the leading figure of the just war theory, outlines his approach in his well-known book Just and Unjust Wars, published in 1977, and still widely read today. Walzer speaks of two stages of war: jus ad bellum, the conditions leading to war, and jus in bello, the rules governing conduct during war. The first stage of just war requires meeting specific conditions before going to war, namely a just cause, a right intention, a legitimate authority, proportionality, and making war a last resort.

Still challenging, defining a just cause is subjective, and it could differ from one person and one actor to another (state or non-state). For the crusaders, waging a war was a just cause to “save” Christians. For the people of the Levant, including some Christians, these wars were unjust, and the crusaders had to be fought off.

We have seen how a spark can lead to a world war when the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand led to the outbreak of World War I. Of course, there were underlining reasons such as nationalism and expansionism, but nonetheless individual acts were also important to the buildup to war.

There are instances, especially in the context of anti-colonization struggles such as the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria, where all attempts at dialogue for the withdrawal of the French failed. This lack of will to end colonial rule peacefully has left the colonized people with no other option but to take up arms against their oppressors.

The concept of a war as a last resort is a matter of interpretation as state actors—in the above case, colonial authorities—can always claim the absence of a partner for reaching an agreement to prevent a war. A prime example of this is Israel which puts forth the “absence” of a Palestinian partner as its excuse for not engaging in the process to achieve a sustainable and long-term peace.

Proportional and indiscriminate war

Despite the principles of jus in bello, in almost all wars, whether waged by state or non-state actors, civilians have always, directly and indirectly, fallen victims of attacks carried out by parties that claim to be fighting a just war.

In many instances, the response of colonial authorities to the colonized people was so brutal that it left scars on civilians for years to come such as France’s response to the May 1945 protests, where nearly 45,000 Algerians and 86 European settlers/soldiers were killed.

Israel’s use of force against Palestinians is another example of this colonial violence where in all confrontations to this day, the number of Palestinian victims has always been unproportionally higher. In fact, in many instances, even a comparison is impossible. Equally important, attacks against military targets located in civilian areas have also been documented in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where the harm is undoubtably and disproportionately higher than the benefits.

The third way: justice as an end

It appears clear that the just war doctrine is not perfect and there is an urgent need for a third way debate that moves beyond the confines of a just war, on the one hand, and terrorism, on the other. This is true because the theory of a just war, despite including state and non-state actors, is still widely a state-centric theory. At the same time, many non-state actors seem on the defensive and don’t have the privilege of choosing their own designation. Both theories of just war and terrorism are western-centric, in as much as the agency of the colonized people is trivialized.

The third way theory should seek justice as an end, based on two important principles: people’s right to self-determination, and stressing the agency of non-state and state actors alike, by setting the rules of conduct during armed conflicts. The framework governing this theory of justice should be international law rather than national interests, history, or political calculations. This way, the theory becomes less subjective and not open to interpretation, power and interest relations.

Seeking justice should be the driving force of oppressed people. A balanced approach to peace and war is the only way to achieve justice. Non-state actors, with all their agency, are also responsible for making sure that injustice does not take place while seeking justice. For this reason, non-state actors must abide by the rules of conduct in wars in line with their right to self-determination, as defined by international law.

Moazzam Begg was a former detainee who was imprisoned by the U.S. government in Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2005. He is currently the Outreach Director at CAGE (a non-profit that conducts research and provides a platform for survivors of the war on terror), where he challenges the dominant narrative of suspecting minority communities and the threat of terrorism. Ayan Mohamed Ali spoke to him about how he overcame adversity and how, despite the hardships he endured, and he was not only able to not only reclaim his freedom but also empower and educate marginalized British Muslims.

Q. For people who may be hearing about you for the first time, could you tell our readers about yourself and what you do?

I am the director for an advocacy group called CAGE, which campaigns against ‘war on terror’ policies. I’m an author and former Guantanamo prisoner, media commentator and lecturer.

Q. Could you perhaps elaborate on the events surrounding your arrests and subsequent release?

I’ve been arrested a couple of times. One, the main one, of course, was in Pakistan in 2001, in January. That was by the U.S., CIA and the Pakistani intelligence services. I always say it wasn’t an arrest, it was a kidnapping because there were no uniformed officers. Nobody showed me an identification card, everybody was in plain clothes, and there was no warrant. They took me from my house in the middle of the night in Pakistan, which is where I was living.

Our friend evacuated from Afghanistan, where I had been working on a project to build schools and wells in Afghanistan. From there, they took me to secret locations in Pakistan, then into Afghanistan into Kandahar, Bagram, and then ultimately Guantanamo, where I was held in total, between Afghanistan and Guantanamo, for three years without charge or trial, and released in January 2005.

The ultimate thing about why I was taken into custody was primarily because of the role of British intelligence that offered false and fake information to the Americans, suggesting that I was a member of al-Qaeda, which I was not. That was used to hold me, as I said, without charge or trial. Eventually when I did return, I had a case against the British government and MI5 for complicity in my torture, and in 2010 I won an out of court settlement against them.

Q. What impact has your experience had on today’s young British Muslims? Has it gotten to the point that people don’t know what is and isn’t legal?

I think the impact really has spanned over the past 20 years, so you’ve seen Muslims targeted intentionally by anti- terror legislation almost with a new form every year and people are living in a state of being afraid of not knowing what they can or can’t say, what they can or can’t post on social media out of fear of being branded a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer, having views on Palestine or similarly Afghanistan or a number of things around that.

I grew up in a generation where there was open racism and hatred towards all people of color. Whereas the past 20 years, there’s been very specific anti-Muslim hatred, Islamophobia that will target you even if you were white, it doesn’t matter. The effects of this has been only seen a generation that has been raised on the ‘war on terrorism’ and the result of legislation.

Q. What advice would you provide to young British Muslims who disagree with the assumption that Islam is synonymous with terrorism?

Well, first of all, terminology, because the terminology that’s used to describe terrorism in the Muslim world actually comes from the word ‘to frighten those who are the enemies of Allah’ but this is in a war context with frightening those people who are involved in killing, raping, oppression, and torture. In the western context, terrorism is the use of violence for a political or ideological goal and of course we can see that translates in some places to people that the government is not happy with and in other places where the government itself would fit that definition, but it’s involved in the use of violence for political aims, for example in Iraq, Afghanistan and so forth.

But Islam is not a religion of terrorism, it’s a religion of human beings, it’s a religion of submission to God. It’s not a part of our faith to be connected to violence for political aims but neither are we a passive religion, we’re not a religion of pacifism – we’re in between. Speaking truth to power from a religious perspective should never be synonymous with terrorism, and we must reject it at every level.

Afghanistan is facing the collapse of essential services as food aid runs out, according to U.N. agencies, who released a rapid appeal for more than $600 million on October 5, 2021 to sustain approximately 11 million people across the crisis-plagued country until the end of the year.

Due to security concerns, staff evacuations, closures, and legal difficulties, most of the former Afghan government is no longer operating due to the recent Taliban takeover. Humanitarian relief and other assistance given by the U.N. agencies and civilian groups as a result have been severely restricted. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on August 31, 2021 that “a humanitarian catastrophe looms” in Afghanistan and asked donor countries to “dig deep” to support an emergency flash appeal. The United States and the European Union have declared that humanitarian help will continue to be provided to Afghanistan.

Following the Taliban’s takeover, the U.S. froze $7 billion in Afghan reserves, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) froze  funding to the country, including hundreds of millions of dollars in Special Drawing Rights, which may be turned into currency during times of crisis, according to the IOM. The Central Bank of Afghanistan can only get a fraction of the money it needs. As a result, Afghan banks’ coffers are unable to be easily replenished, resulting in ATMs running out of cash and the imposition of withdrawal limitations.

The developing situation has created a significant disturbance and threatens Afghanistan’s critical winter wheat season, which is about to start.

An IMF spokesperson stated, “As is always the case, the IMF is guided by the views of the international community. There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan, as a consequence of which the country cannot access SDRs [special drawing rights] or other IMF resources.”

The developing situation has created a significant disturbance and threatens Afghanistan’s critical winter wheat season, which is about to start, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned of a major fundraising conference.

The complex set of sanctions imposed on the Taliban by the United Nations Security Council, as well as sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union, and many other governments, should be reviewed to ensure that they do not obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid by nongovernmental organizations.

Uncertainty looms about the type of administration the Taliban will form; it’s a crucial concern for both international actors holding Afghanistan’s reserves and humanitarian organizations halting programs and financing. However, at what cost will withholding the Taliban monetary assets negatively impact Afghan food scarcity and a growing humanitarian crisis?

As Afghanistan enters a new era with the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, its potential political preferences in internal and international affairs have raised concerns. The Taliban’s rule strengthens Saudi Arabia’s position over Afghanistan. However, Iran is also trying to prevent the formation of a regime that doesn’t serve its interests in the future. The two states have always tried to establish a foothold on each other’s borders. Saudi Arabia attaches great importance to Afghanistan as it encouraged jihad in the 1980s and supported the Taliban in the 1990s. Likewise, Yemen is important to Iran, which has been supporting the Houthis in the last decades.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the 1990s, some were fearing that Saudi Arabia would spread its religious model not only in Afghanistan but also in newly independent Central Asian countries. The danger increased when the Taliban killed Iranian diplomats in 1998. In response, Iran deployed its forces on the eastern borders and conducted military drills.

Iran, which had just come out of a devastating Saudi-backed war with Iraq, called the killing of its diplomats a Saudi plot to plunge Iran into another war. Iran, therefore, didn’t want to fall into the trap that Saudi Arabia and others had planned for it. Instead of a direct military intervention in Afghanistan, Iran decided to deal with the Taliban threat by supporting the Northern Alliance. This policy continued until 2001 and with the 9/11 terror attacks and the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban threat for Iran was eliminated, and Iran’s allies gained political power in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

However, the Taliban was replaced by American forces, which posed another, perhaps bigger, threat to Iran. Thereafter, Iran’s strategy was to expel the United States from its eastern borders, namely Afghanistan, and from its western borders, namely Iraq. Both objectives also intersected with those of the Taliban.

Iran and Saudi Arabia came into conflict in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. Initially, Iran supported the Afghan central government and Saudi Arabia in retaliation supported the Taliban in order to attack and weaken the Afghan central government, which then had close ties with Iran. However, due to the increasing threat from the United States, Iran abandoned its ideological differences and approached the Taliban to push away the U.S. forces. This was a challenging move by Iran and Saudi Arabia constantly tried to push the Taliban away from Iran’s influence.

The rise of ISIS-K pushed Iran more towards the Taliban. Iran’s purpose was to use the Taliban to suppress ISIS-K on its eastern borders.

The rise of ISIS-K pushed Iran more towards the Taliban. Iran’s purpose was to use the Taliban to suppress ISIS-K on its eastern borders. The Taliban is regarded by Iran as a local force that could manage insecurity in Afghanistan with the least consequences for Iran. In addition, Iranian officials may have thought that this rapprochement with the Taliban could balance Saudi Arabia’s influence in Afghanistan as Saudi Arabia and the Taliban share common interests.

The Taliban’s recent takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 is different than in 1996. Some argue that Saudi Arabia will dominate Afghan domestic and foreign policy soon; however, a look at the past ten years and the recent events after the Taliban’s victory, show that Iran and the Taliban will not be on bad terms and the Taliban leaders seem to take Iran’s expectations into consideration as well.

Iran’s support for the Taliban is no secret. More interestingly, both Iran and Saudi Arabia support the new Afghan government, and expect the Taliban to establish stability following 40 years of devastating conflicts and war. Despite the Taliban’s takeover providing an opportunity for cooperation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the rivalry between the two depends on their ideological rivalry in the region, which seems to have softened recently but which will continue nonetheless in the short term? Competition between the two in Afghanistan may continue in social, cultural, and economic fields. Afghanistan is closely linked to Iran in all three respects, while Saudi Arabia is mostly investing in the establishment or funding of religious schools.

Given the dire financial need of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia may use financial resources to exercise a certain influence over the group. In contrast, some claim that Iran could be a source of inspiration for the Taliban and the mutual enmity towards the U.S. could be a basis for a rapprochement between the two.

Controlling the influx of Afghan migrants to Iran, establishing political stability, continuing trade with Iran, and suppressing terrorist groups such as ISIS-K are the most important expectations that Iran has from the Taliban. For Saudi Arabia, however, having a regime in Afghanistan that could isolate Iran is a strategic goal, which seems difficult given the new geopolitical realities in the region and Afghanistan.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and its reluctant policy to support or launch a new war in the region, and especially the Iran-Taliban close relations make it hard for Saudi Arabia to achieve its goal. The Taliban need to be internationally recognized which highlights Iran’s role.

Today, despite the two countries’ deep distrust of each other, Tehran and Riyadh have common interests in establishing peace in the region and especially in Afghanistan. The U.S. withdrawal is the starting point for both countries, as there was no strong supporter of Saudi Arabia than the U.S. in Afghanistan. At the same time, there is currently no U.S. threat against Tehran in Afghanistan.

Establishing relative stability in Afghanistan during the Taliban era is Tehran’s favourite option. The Taliban need Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s recognition and their assistance in reconstructing Afghanistan’s devastated infrastructure. Ultimately, it seems that the Taliban will benefit from the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in their country.

In the midst of the sudden political changes in Afghanistan, the disastrous withdrawal of the U.S. forces, the rapid Taliban takeover, and the narrow escape of the American-installed Afghan government, Pakistan sees itself once again trying to carefully handle the mess left by the Americans on its western border. International pressure is mounting, time is short, the internal situation of Afghanistan is fragile, and Pakistan is once again at crossroads to tackle the American leftovers.

“So, we then left Pakistan. We said okay, fine, you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country. You deal with the mines that are along the border. And, by the way, we don’t want to have anything to do with you, in fact we’re sanctioning you. So, we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.”

These were the words uttered by then U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in the congressional hearings of April 2009, on the Obama administration’s foreign policy. She categorically highlighted that the U.S. had a share in plaguing Pakistan. She criticized the role of the U.S. in the post-Soviet scenario for leaving Afghanistan prematurely and never looking back. Importantly, the U.S. not only left the mess in Afghanistan for Pakistan, but to add salt to injury, Pakistan was sanctioned by the United States.

Today’s Pakistan once again is being blamed by the U.S. for American failures in the region. The Pakistani military and intelligence are being targeted by the West. The U.S., as always, is trying to look for a scapegoat in Pakistan. The Biden administration is not only criticizing Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan but U.S. senators have introduced a bill seeking to probe its alleged role in the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan.

Today’s Pakistan once again is being blamed by the U.S. for American failures in the region.

One wonders if the U.S. will ever learn from its past mistakes. Will it ever put a full stop to its hegemonic stance towards the countries that do not accept its influence while designing their foreign policy?

It’s time for the U.S. to realize that scapegoating and pressurizing Pakistan will not work at all in its favor. It will neither help Pakistan nor will it bring any good to the people of Afghanistan. It is not the time for diplomatic confrontation.  Rather, it’s time for seeking long-lasting resolutions by extending a helping hand to the ultimate shareholders of Afghanistan, the Taliban. As highlighted by Pakistani Premier Imran Khan in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, the world must come forward to help Afghanistan before it turns into a humanitarian crisis.

If the U.S. is genuinely concerned about the well-being of the people of Afghanistan, then it must shun the idea of enjoying unipolar superpower stature in the world. The U.S. needs to turn itself into a cooperative state that believes in mutual benefits based on bilateral relations, rather than acting as an agitating and aggressive state towards other nations.

Sadly, the Americans did not pay any heed to Pakistan’s concerns and Pakistan had to fight against terrorism on its own. Pakistan paid an enormous cost in a war on terror that initially had nothing to do with Pakistan. Nearly 80,000 people lost their lives, with almost the same number losing limbs, and more than $200 billion was lost owing to the fragility of the western front.

One might question how is India to be blamed for terrorism in Pakistan for the last 18 years? Well, interestingly enough, the current national security advisor to the Indian premier, Ajit Doval, while delivering a lecture at SASTRA University in 2014, highlighted the “defensive offense” doctrine that India followed to engage with Pakistan. The doctrine revolves around Indian tactics to engage with Pakistan on two fronts. Doval boasted about how India exploited Pakistan’s fault lines to invest in proxies against Pakistan from its western front.

Pakistan continued showing its concerns related to India about issues such as India financing and facilitating terrorism in the country through supporting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). Pakistan captured an in-service commander of the Indian Navy, Kulbhushan Jhadev, from Balochistan. Hindu by faith, commander Jhadev held a passport with the Muslim name “Hussein Mubarak Patel” and clandestinely entered Pakistan via the Pakistani-Iranian border. The case is still sub judice in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

India believes that Pakistan’s military has always focused on its eastern front with India. To engage Pakistan through an Afghanistan ruled by an anti-Pakistan regime was the most suitable solution for India as it would force Pakistan to split its military’s strategic focus. As a nation, Pakistan fought valiantly and tirelessly against the Indian “defensive offense.”

Currently, Pakistan’s supreme focus is on the sustainability of the Taliban setup in Kabul knowing that the Taliban, time and again, have stated that they will never allow their land to be used against any of their immediate neighbors. Pakistan not only wants sustainable peace in Afghanistan, but to ensure that Afghanistan gains momentum economically. It is an uncontested fact that Afghanistan will be self-reliant in securing itself under the rule of the Taliban, but whether they can ensure the country’s economic security is debatable.

Linking the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan and eventually to the Central Asian Republics (CARs) from Pakistan is the only viable solution to the clouds hanging over economic security in Afghanistan. Only an economically active and self-reliant Afghanistan under the Taliban can ensure regional peace.

Any political change in Afghanistan can trigger broader geopolitical transformations in south Central and West Asia. Thus, the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan has disturbed many geopolitical calculations. Iran had played a vital role in overthrowing the Taliban in 2001 by sharing key intelligence input with the United States and showing its full support for the Northern Alliance, the main group opposing the Taliban. However, Iran is now facing a serious dilemma.

In the past, Iran competed with Pakistan by providing support to the Taliban’s opponents in Afghanistan during the 1990s. In particular, the Iranian regime supported the Shia Muslim minority’s participation of the larger anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Iranian assistance was the bedrock of the Northern Alliance’s resistance to the Taliban. Other nations like Russia, India, and Turkey also joined Iran in backing the alliance.

The visit of Faiz Hameed, the chief of Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), to Kabul to help finalize the composition of the interim government setup under the Taliban was not taken lightly by Iran. Iran’s foreign ministry statement criticizing Pakistan and the anti-Pakistan protests that followed in Tehran indicate that the nascent Taliban-Iran bonhomie, which was generated after Tehran recently participated in some conciliatory negotiations with the Taliban, is not going to last long.

Iran’s Discomfiture with Pakistan 

When the Taliban were busy taking control of the last Northern Alliance stronghold, the Panjshir Valley, the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece Tehran Times cited a United States Central Command (CENTCOM) source, which told FOX news that the Pakistan military was assisting the Taliban offensive in Panjshir. The report said that Pakistani assistance included 27 choppers loaded with Pakistani Special Forces, and that they were backed by Pakistani drones. Interestingly, in 2019, the Iranian Parliament had voted to put CENTCOM on its list of terrorist groups.

Iran’s former conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview on August 3, 2021 with WION, an Indian news channel, heavily criticized Pakistan. He alleged, “Pakistani officers directly got involved in the war for Panjshir. I have a piece of advice for Pakistan. What happened in Afghanistan will soon expand and engulf Pakistan too. The countries which supported and designed this plot will face the consequences.”

Ahmadinejad called the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan an international anti-human “satanic plot” by a few world powers – referring to the U.S. and the West in general. He further stated that the entire Taliban project is a violation of international law. According to him, the U.S., Russia, China, and Pakistan helped the Taliban. Ahmadinejad’s choice of an Indian media outlet to speak against Pakistan demonstrates Iran’s frustration about not getting a share in post-NATO Afghanistan as it had hoped.

Following this, Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Pakistani militaries launched their first-ever joint exercises in Baku on September 12, 2021. The drills were named “Three Brothers – 2021.” The joint exercises emphasized Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan’s roles in building peace, stability, and development in the Caspian Sea region.

Iran reacted with a sharp criticism and claimed that this would pose a danger to regional stability. In response, Iran held its own military drill on the Azerbaijan border on September 28. Now, Iran has worries that Afghanistan might join the “Three Brothers” in the future.

In fact, most of Iran’s harsh criticism in recent weeks has been directed at Pakistan and not against the Taliban. The selective attacks on Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan signify Iran’s displeasure with Pakistan’s growing profile both in geopolitics and diplomacy resulting from the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

Potential Troubles for Iran

Iran’s support of the overthrowing of the Taliban in Kabul in 2001 was due to its ideological rivalry with the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Iran also wanted to ensure that U.S. forces could not operate against it from Afghan soil. Tehran tried its best to help establish a friendly government in Afghanistan and avoided any semblance of a coalition with other regional actors, especially Pakistan and its arch-rival Saudi Arabia.

From 2017 onwards, Iran diverged from its initial anti-Taliban policy and started developing cordial ties with them in order to maintain pressure on the U.S. military forces on Iran’s borders, and to gain leverage against the U.S. forces and deter their efforts to intimidate their country.

It is true that the Taliban seem to have evolved from their first stint in power and their relations with Iran have improved markedly. Iran’s embassy remained functional after the Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15. Iran is now among the few countries that the Taliban invited to their government inauguration ceremony.

Unlike Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan have directly defeated the U.S. in an open battle and emerged victorious. Iran’s anti-American rhetoric perhaps lost some of its competitive sheen in the Muslim world. Above all, the gravest challenge to Islamist Iran will be Islamist Afghanistan. A Sunni emirate under the Taliban will posit itself as an ideological rival to the Shia imamate in Iran.

Iran fears that the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after the stabilization phase will pose a challenge to the politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region. Unlike the previous Kabul regime, the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate will not hesitate to criticize Iran’s regional policies.

The Chabahar Port in Iran, in which India had made considerable investments, will no longer be an alternative seaport to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, built and controlled by the Chinese, as it was anticipated by Iranians some years ago. It was supposed to provide passage to Afghanistan by bypassing Pakistan. However, the current situation in Afghanistan has changed the game. The Taliban leadership seems more interested in utilizing the infrastructure built under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in western Pakistan to link up the Afghan infrastructure network with the CPEC. This decision will definitely not sit well with the Iranians.

The Taliban have openly announced their preference for the CPEC extension to Afghanistan, which is both economically and logistically better from Afghanistan’s point of view. Kabul is very close to Peshawar, Kandahar is very close to Quetta. Herat remains the only major Afghan city close to Iran.

Iran’s endorsement of the Taliban, which started with the 2015 visit of a Taliban delegation, actually emanated from Tehran’s political compulsion as none of Afghanistan’s neighbors was willing to antagonize the Taliban by supporting the militias of the erstwhile Northern Alliance. Iran’s outcry started only after the fall of the Panjshir Valley.

The Taliban will make sure that powerful warlords will have no political future in Afghanistan. With this, Iran will lose its proxies on the ground, especially the Shia Hazara militia in Afghanistan. Unlike the period of the previous Kabul regime, when patrons of Afghan warlords enjoyed a huge sway in the government, the Taliban will not allow warlordism and will most certainly disarm all the militias. There is also the question of the existence of the Iranian-backed Fatemiyoun Brigade before the Tehran rulers. The Fatemiyoun Brigade mainly comprises the Hazara Shia minority of Afghanistan. Hazaras currently make up around 10% of Afghanistan’s total population of 38 million. It is highly possible that the Taliban will not tolerate the recruitment of their Hazara population for Iran’s proxy wars.

Although there is no immediate and direct threat to Iran from the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the Taliban takeover of Kabul has in fact strengthened Pakistan’s geopolitical ascendance, which in turn will pose a direct challenge to Iran’s influence in many adjoining regions. New Afghanistan will tilt the balance of power in Pakistan’s favor and it will deepen Iran’s already tumultuous relations with Pakistan.

Sources reported that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was badly wounded in gunfire in Kabul over a disagreement among the Taliban leaders on how to resolve the Panjshir situation and government structure. The Taliban later denied that Baradar was wounded. Nevertheless, a source asserted that the Deputy Afghan PM Mullah Baradar is upset with the current face of the Taliban government.

The Taliban formed the government and appointed ministers after 20 years of fighting the U.S. and the Afghan government. Last month, the Taliban swiftly reached the capital and took over 33 of the 34 provinces in the country without major impediment. However, despite a massive aerial and ground encroachment on Panjshir, the resistance against the Taliban is still alive.

The Taliban are going through a transition from guerilla fighting to governance, bringing order to a multiethnic nation, and adjusting within the contemporary world. War and governance are two distinct issues. Now that the Taliban must govern, they face numerous challenges.

Governance: No single institution is functional

The Taliban had vowed that the group would form an inclusive government where all political parties, ethnicities, and classes see themselves in the government. Nevertheless, last week, they announced their first cabinet where only their leaders and commanders are appointed. The announcement faced massive criticism since it did not include a single woman or any Hazara ethnics, whereas Afghanistan is home to millions of Hazaras.

The appointed ministers lack governmental experience, and no minister has a PhD, master’s, or undergraduate degree, while all the cabinet members, including its chief minister, are religious scholars. In addition, many of the skillful, well-educated, and experienced Afghans have already left Afghanistan and those who remain are striving to get out.

Human rights and the Taliban

The Taliban’s fastidious form of Islam has been met with deep concerns by human rights organizations and movements across the globe. In a democratic and liberal society, the Taliban apply an interpretation of Sharia law where music is banned, and women’s rights to education and work are limited or completely halted. This decision has brought the group face-to-face with criticism by the international community.

For the past 20 years, women enjoyed access to education and work – rights that they are now denied to them by the Taliban. Concurrently, Afghans have been posting on social media videos of Taliban flogging women on the streets and searching houses for affiliates of the previous government.

Such actions have led to women’s demonstrations in Kabul and a massive protest in Kandahar against the Taliban. The social media campaigns and attacks on them have discomforted the Taliban to the extent that the group couldn’t fully comprehend and mark its victory. Afghans and their sympathizers across the globe have been actively engaged in publicizing the Taliban’s actions. Relying on social media, the global media formulate news and update policy-makers across the world about the Taliban. The Taliban are monitored by ordinary Afghans’ cell phones, who record their moves and in one click inform the entire world.

The Taliban and the economy

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that Afghanistan faces a dramatic humanitarian crisis. The warning comes after international aid to Afghanistan has dried up, businesses are closed, investments have fled, unemployment has reached an all-time high, and poverty is rife. The protracted conflict and drought have exacerbated the humanitarian catastrophe. The UN reports that in 2021 alone, over half a million people have been internally displaced in Afghanistan.

The Taliban now manage revenue sources such as customs; however, in the absence of trades, investments, and businesses, the customs do not generate enough revenue. In fact, they do not even cover the daily expenses of the Taliban’s sustenance and fuel expenses. The Taliban also do not have access to the $9.5 billion in assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank, which have been frozen by the United States. The country’s economic situation and the humanitarian catastrophe are causing genuine hardship to the Taliban.

Security challenges: National Resistance Front and ISIS-K  

In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters were not the only security threat to the country. Among others, the fighters of the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K) have conducted numerous attacks and have fought hard against the Taliban. After the fall of Kabul, ISIS-K published a commentary where the group accused the Taliban of betraying Jihadists with the peace agreement with the U.S., and the group vowed to continue fighting the Taliban. Since the Taliban took over the capital, ISIS-K has carried out deadly attacks.

Among others, the fighters of the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K) have conducted numerous attacks and have fought hard against the Taliban.

Last month, ISIS-K fired rockets in Kabul followed by a statement which read, “By the grace of God Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate targeted Kabul International Airport with six Katyusha rockets.” In another incident, the group carried out twin suicide attacks against a crowd outside of the Kabul airport killing 85 people, including 13 Americans. It is estimated that the group has 4,000 to 5,000 fighters in Afghanistan. In an interview with CNN, Abdul Munir, a commander of the so-called Islamic State stated that he leads 600 fighters, including Indians, Pakistanis, and Central Asians. He added, “When the foreigners and the people of the world leave Afghanistan, we can resume our operations.”

Apart from the so-called Islamic State, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) is another headache for the Taliban. Even though the Taliban fighters have seized the center of Panjshir, the NRF fights from the mountains of Panjshir. The majority of the commanders of the Northern Alliance (officially the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan), including Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, Atta Mohammad Noor, and Hazara leaders have fought heavily against the Taliban.

Ismail Khan, another prominent commander in the  Panjshir resistance, asserted that the Taliban’s rule will not last and that Panjshir resistance is expanding. These commanders have opposed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Should they begin a resistance, they would put the Taliban’s government in hardship.

International isolation and the Taliban

The previous Afghan government was recognized worldwide; however, despite the Taliban having appointed their cabinet and chief minister, no country is amenable to recognizing their government – even the countries that have supported them in fighting the U.S. Despite Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, the country has not recognized their government. Iran and Russia, once amicable to the Taliban, now move in a different direction. Tehran slammed attacks on Panjshir Valley and urged the Taliban to honor commitments. It also slammed Pakistan’s aerial attacks on Panjshir and said it will probe into the attacks.

On the other side, Moscow has sent its military to Tajikistan to block potential threats from Afghanistan. The Taliban also face international isolation. The European Union had already threatened the Taliban with isolation if they seize power. In addition, Germany’s foreign minister stated, “A transitional government that does not include other groups is not the signal for more international cooperation and stability in the country.”

The E.U.’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said in a statement that the Taliban would face international isolation. NATO, the UN, and Britain warned that the Taliban will be isolated should they continue to take power by force, and that the international community will not recognize the group. Importantly, the president of the United Nations Security Council for September warned that the Taliban must sever ties with all international terrorist organizations or continue to face sanctions and isolation.

Should the Taliban not dramatically change their ideas and actions, the group might face extinction as it cannot govern a complicated country in a complicated region. To govern, the Taliban need legitimacy from the people, international recognition, and monetary resources. Meanwhile, they halted political dialogue and encroached on the National Resistance Front in Panjshir. Yet, a good lesson to be learned in Afghanistan today is that when the Taliban were toppled in 2001, they soon resurfaced in Bahramcha in the Helmand Province.

Should the Taliban not genuinely engage with the world and Afghan parties on the issues of concern, there are risks of facing international sanctions and of the emergence of national confrontations.

Despite being a fundamentalist Shia Islamist power, some may have been surprised to see Iran hosting the Sunni Islamist Taliban in Tehran and congratulating them over their victory in their 20-year war against the United States that finally saw Kabul back in the hands of the insurgents and the Joe Biden administration withdrawing all forces not long after. But it is precisely the Taliban’s military successes and their ability to inflict humiliating defeats against the U.S. that has Iran so overjoyed, rather than any particular affinity for the Taliban themselves.

Iran played a role in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

It is easy to forget considering Iran’s incessant rhetoric on being the spearhead of the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, but Tehran played a significant role in facilitating the invasions of both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Far from being warm friends, Iran once considered going to war against Afghanistan in 1998 after the Taliban massacred not only hundreds of Hazara Shia but also managed to kill eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist at Tehran’s consulate in Mazar-i Sharif. Seeing an opportunity to avenge themselves against the Taliban, the Iranian regime provided military and intelligence support to the George W. Bush administration, helped the United States to topple the Taliban and force them out of power.

The Iranian regime then spent the better part of the first decade of the War on Terror agitating against drawing any distinction between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, insisting that the two ought to be considered inseparable from one another and deserving of the same powerful military response from Western powers.

However, once Tehran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons came under the spotlight and international pressure began to mount against them led by Washington, they suddenly changed their tune. Iran began to host Taliban fighters and commanders in Iran, extended some weapons and other supplies to the militants, and even tried to insert themselves into the Afghan peace process brokered by the Donald Trump administration in 2019.

It suddenly became in Iran’s interests to support the Taliban if only to ensure that the Afghan group could inflict continued losses against the United States and to apply pressure against Washington in the nuclear talks that were first started by Barack Obama, abandoned by Trump, and now being courted once again by Obama’s protégé and ideological successor Joe Biden. By supporting the Taliban’s military activities and providing shelter to its leadership and commanders, Iran was using the group to humiliate the Americans in Afghanistan and weaken their resolve against Tehran.

Up until that point in time, however, it is clear that Iran has never harbored any real love for the Taliban and has in fact fought them and opposed them since the 1990s.

The Iran-Taliban honeymoon didn’t last

It is perhaps unsurprising that a fundamentalist Shia regime would view the existence of a fundamentalist Sunni regime right across its border as being anathema to its national security interests. After all, and until very recently where they showed some softening, the Taliban have shown a very low tolerance to Shia minorities in Afghanistan and have perpetrated massacres against them.

Additionally, there is an ethnic element to Persian Iran’s dislike of the Taliban. While they do recruit from across the ethnic divide, the Taliban are predominantly Pashtuns and they have disputes with Persian-speaking nationalist groups, particularly the Tajiks of the Panjshir valley and surrounding areas. Only recently, Ahmad Massoud, the son of famed Soviet-era Afghan militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, launched a rebellion against Taliban rule with the assistance and urging of the Tajik former Vice President Amrullah Saleh.

That rebellion was swiftly crushed after offers by the Taliban to power share were rebuffed by Massoud and Saleh, but while the operation was still underway, Iran repeatedly made announcements that the Taliban’s campaign breached international law (without explaining how) and that the Taliban conquest of Panjshir was to be “condemned in the strongest terms”. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went so far as to implicate Pakistan in the Panjshir campaign and accused the U.S. of concocting a “Satanic plot” by surrendering power to the Taliban.

While it is still too early to get a precise read on what Iran intends for the Taliban, it knows that the new Afghan government is in dire need of international aid and recognition and so it may try to leverage this weakness against them. However, Iran’s allies in Panjshir have been all but wiped out, and its Shia Hazara militia proxies in the Fatemiyoun Brigades who served with such bloody distinction in killing Syrian civilians are also in no position to fight Afghanistan’s new rulers – at least not yet.

Tehran will therefore likely try to patiently wait for an opportunity to undermine the Taliban again, precisely as they did when they facilitated the U.S. invasion in 2001. They will agitate against them diplomatically by encouraging other states not to engage with them, and will attempt to foment domestic discord by pushing Afghanistan’s Shia minority to rebel while simultaneously offer political and military support to Persian-speaking ethnic minorities.

Obviously, the Taliban are not going to forget who the Iranians fundamentally are and their approach toward them since 1996. The marriage of convenience in order to eliminate the U.S.-led Western presence in Afghanistan is now at its end, and the honeymoon period did not last long at all. The Taliban will now be wary of Iranian subterfuge and will crackdown vigorously against any plot against them, perhaps forming a flashpoint for future conflict between the neighbouring countries.

An urgent task is awaiting us: considering the progression of events, we must quickly liberate ourselves from the limits and confines placed on the Afghanistan discourse, which have been imposed by US-centered Western propaganda for over 20 years, and counting. A first step is that we must not allow the future political discourse pertaining to this very subject to remain hostage to American priorities – successes, failures and geostrategic interests.

For this to happen, the language itself must be confronted. This is critical if we are to truly glean valuable lessons from Afghanistan and to avoid a repeat of the previous failure of comprehending the U.S. defeat in Vietnam (1955-1975), the way it should have been understood, not the way Washington wanted Americans – in fact, the whole world – to understand. Vietnam was not merely an American ‘debacle’, and did not only culminate in an American ‘defeat’. It was also a Vietnamese victory and the triumph of the will of the people over the U.S. imperialist war machine.

In U.S. mainstream media and, to a large extent, academia, the Vietnam War history was almost entirely written from an American point of view. Even the anti-Vietnam war version of that history remained American-centric.

Alas, in the case of Afghanistan, many of us, whether in journalism or academia, whether wittingly or otherwise, remain committed to the U.S.-based discourse, partly because the primary sources from which our information is gleaned are either American or pro-American. Al Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, former United Nations Peace Envoy to Afghanistan, from 1997 to 1999, and again from 2001 to 2004, had recently, in an interview with French newspaper, Le Monde, reminded us of the importance of using proper language to describe the unfolding events in Afghanistan.

The Rise and fall of the ‘Terrorists’ Discourse

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a massive impact, not only on the geopolitical map of the world but also on relevant global political discourses. As the USSR, its Warsaw Pact and global alliances began to disintegrate, the U.S. quickly moved into action, asserting its dominance from Panama (1989) to Iraq (1991) to elsewhere. The American objective was not merely a violent declaration of its triumph in the Cold War, but a message to the rest of the world that the ‘American century’ had begun and that no form of resistance to U.S. stratagem could be tolerated.

In the Middle East, in particular, the new narrative was in full display, with clear and repeated distinctions between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’, friends and enemies, allies and those marked for ‘regime change’. And, per this new logic, anti-colonial forces that were celebrated as liberation movements for decades fell into the category of the ‘terrorists’. This definition included Palestinian resistance groups, Lebanese and others, though these groups sought liberation from illegal foreign occupation.

Years later, the discourse on terrorism – summed up by George W. Bush’s statement in September, 2001, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” – became the yardstick in which the world, according to Washington, was to be divided: freedom-loving nations and terrorists, extremist regimes. The latter category was eventually expanded to include Iraq, Iran and Syria. On January 29, 2002, North Korea was also added to Washington’s so-called ‘axes of evil’.

Afghanistan, of course, topped the American list of terrorist states, under various pretenses: initially the harboring of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda and, later, the mistreatment of women, and so on. Eventually, the Taliban became a ‘terrorist’ group, leading an ‘insurgency’ against the ‘democratically-elected’ Afghan government in Kabul. The last 20 years were spent in the construction of this false paradigm.

In the absence of any strong voices in the media demanding an American withdrawal and defending the Afghan people’s right to resist foreign occupation, there was a near-complete absence of an alternative political discourse that even attempted to raise the possibility that the Taliban, despite all of their questionable strategies and practices, may, in fact, be a national liberation movement.

The reason we were discouraged from considering such a possibility is the same reason why U.S.-Western-Israeli propaganda insisted on removing any distinction between ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Houthis and many other such groups. On the one hand, discussing the particularities of each movement requires real knowledge of the history and formation of these groups separately, and the political circumstances through which they continue to operate. This kind of knowledge is simply non-existent in the cliche, soundbite-driven mainstream media.

On the other hand, such understanding is inconvenient, as it complicates the deception and half-truths necessary for the U.S., Israel and others, to depict their military occupations, unlawful military interventions and repeated wars as fundamental to some imagined global ‘war on terror’ and, as some European intellectual circles prefer to dub it, a war on ‘radical Islam’.

However, unlike al-Qaeda and ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban are not trans-border militant groups fighting a global agenda, but national liberation movements which, despite their emphasis on religious discourses, are political actors with specific political objectives confined largely within the borders of their own countries – Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, respectively.

Regarding Hamas, London-based author, Daud Abdullah wrote in his just-released volume, ‘Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas Foreign Policy’ that “Hamas sees foreign relations as an integral and important part of its political ideology and liberation strategy. Soon after the Movement emerged, foreign policies were developed to help its leaders and members navigate this tension between idealism and realism. This pragmatism is evident in the fact that Hamas was able to establish relations with the regimes of Muammar Gaddhafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, both of whom were fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Consequently, it was also Abdullah who became one of the first to draw the parallels between Palestine and Afghanistan as soon as the Taliban declared victory in Kabul. In a recent article in the Middle East Monitor, Abdullah wrote, “Palestine and Afghanistan are salient examples. Throughout history, their peoples have witnessed numerous invasions and occupations. After two decades the U.S. has finally run out of stamina. Similarly, they will eventually realize the futility of supporting the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”

Prior to the terror attacks outside Kabul Airport that took the lives of 170 people and at least 200 wounded which included Afghan civilians and American military personnel. Western countries were warned of an impending strike. The attack on August 26, 2021, did not surprise the Pentagon, and neither did their perpetrators. The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) was ready to inflict devastation by taking advantage of the chaos at Kabul Airport.

The U.K, New Zealand and the U.S. were warned; as stated by a senior U.K. defense official James Heappey, who told the media prior to the bombing of an ‘imminent, lethal attack’. The U.S. embassy in Kabul sent a warning on August 28th warning US citizens in Afghanistan at many airport gates to “leave immediately” due to security risks. President Joe Biden has highlighted the possibility of an assault many times during the last week, using it as justification for not delaying the August 31 deadline for military withdrawals.

In response, President Joe Biden vowed to track down the perpetrators and instructed his military chiefs to devise counter-plans against the terror group and later on stated “And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet”.

ISIS-K and their objectives

The Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as Daesh Khorasan, ISIS-K, ISKP, is an official affiliate of the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan, as acknowledged by its central leadership in Iraq and Syria. ISIS-K was established in January of 2015. It was able to establish territorial authority in numerous rural areas in north and northeast Afghanistan in a short period of time, and it started a deadly campaign across Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ISIS-K perpetrated assaults against minority groups, public spaces and institutions, and government offices in major cities in Afghanistan and Pakistan in its first three years. Emboldened by America’s withdrawal, ISIS-K initially appeared in 2015, a year after ISIS — originally a branch of Al-Qaeda that developed into a competitor — captured tracts of territory across Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate.

Both ISIS-K and the Taliban are religious fundamentalist groups who aim to govern via an authoritarian system based on their radical interpretation of the Sharia law.

Both ISIS-K and the Taliban are religious fundamentalist groups who aim to govern via an authoritarian system based on their radical interpretation of the Sharia law. Though both employ violence to maintain their regimes, the distinctions between the extreme organizations – as well as others like Al-Qaeda – basically boil down to significant strategic disparities, ISIS-K’s goal is to establish a caliphate in Central and South Asia; outside the borders of Afghanistan whereas the Taliban’s focus is establishing an Islamic governing state within Afghanistan.

The ideological interpretation and enforcement of the Sharia law is one of the vital differences between the most important Daesh and the Taliban. One element is how women are treated in their interpretation of Islamic law. Reuters Institute of Journalism published a lengthy paper on this topic stating that “ISIS heavily sexualizes females as an object… whereas Taliban portray women in one consistent role.”

What happens next?

International experts are afraid that the humanitarian situation will worsen in the coming weeks and months, despite the fact that comprehensive evaluations will take time and require much enhanced humanitarian access. In the first half of 2021, civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan hit new highs, with a particularly significant spike in killings and injuries since May 2021, when international military forces began to depart, and combat increased following the Taliban onslaught.

On July 26th, UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), released a new study, in which it predicts that unless violence is significantly reduced, Afghanistan will see the greatest number of documented civilian fatalities in a single year since UNAMA records began in 2021.

The research warns that if the rising violence is not stopped, an unprecedented number of Afghan civilians will die or be wounded this year. According to the head of UNAMA, Deborah Lyons, “The data shows a very disturbing trend, particularly since early May, of ever-increasing numbers of Afghan civilians being killed and injured due to the expanding conflict”.

This will most certainly continue to spread terror and confusion, delay the withdrawal process, and demonstrate that the Taliban are unable to provide security to the populace in the short term. If the organization can reestablish some kind of territorial control in the long run and recruit additional fighters, it is likely to make a resurgence and represent a danger on a national, regional, and worldwide scale and the attack on Kabul Airport would be small in comparison to what they’re capable of doing, and will further exacerbate a Central Asian refugee crisis.

Once again, turmoil in Afghanistan forces us to face the contradiction between the world we are creating and the world we want to leave our descendants. As the Great Game between the United States and China unfolds on a global scale, it seems both ironic and fitting that our attention should return to a land that has endured so many deadly dances between Great Powers and ruined empires.

The more we ponder the Afghan tragedy the more we see it as a metaphor for our global predicament and as a warning for the future. American and Chinese leaders have to make a choice—will they clash more openly in a struggle to dominate Afghanistan and its neighboring regions or will they rein in their ambitions and jealousies to accomplish goals that benefit themselves and many others? The answer will go a long way toward promoting war or peace not merely in Eurasia but in the Pacific and the world at large.

The current trend is not encouraging. Washington and Beijing are locked in a classic security dilemma—a self-sustaining cycle of mistrust and belligerence in which rivals cast one another as enemies who are pitted in a fight to the finish on nearly all issues and in every region. In this sense, Afghanistan is a microcosm of the Great Game writ large—a planetary duel of encirclement and counter-maneuver, with each side carving out spheres of influence and enclosing once open seas, aiming to control choke points that can deny access to vital routes and resources.

Such unremitting brinkmanship invites miscalculation and escalation because political and military leaders consistently underestimate risk and convince one another they can control the next sequence of moves.

Under different circumstances, the path ahead for Afghanistan and its neighbors would seem straightforward. The country abounds in untapped resources, both natural and human, that can fuel post-war recovery while spurring development in surrounding regions and far beyond. Its vast and varied mineral wealth is a prize for any multinational mining company and a potential lifeline for battered supply chains struggling to support factories and construction sites on every continent.

Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan lies at the intersection of at least two planned energy corridors that can carry oil and natural gas from Iran to China in one direction and from Turkmenistan to India in another. Transit fees from these routes alone could transform Afghanistan’s economy and society within a single generation. On top of this, there is future role for Afghanistan as a land bridge linking the commerce of the Indian Ocean with Central Asia and, from there, to growing transcontinental railroads and highways reaching all the way to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

As usual, impressions in Washington and Beijing are increasingly at odds concerning the likely consequences for peace and development.

All of these enterprises fit perfectly with China’s ongoing efforts to build a New Silk Road, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Led by Chinese finance and engineering, the New Silk Road seeks to turn most of Eurasia and Africa into a single, integrated market held together with overlapping networks of infrastructure and connectivity that will span the oceans and continents. Such a vision can be both inspiring and terrifying, depending on one’s perspective. As usual, impressions in Washington and Beijing are increasingly at odds concerning the likely consequences for peace and development.

The Biden administration’s responses to Chinese ambitions have been glib and unsubstantial. Instead of a grand vision for economic development, they are floating a public relations campaign to Build Back Better Globally (3BG for short). The core members are supposed to be the advanced industrial democracies who will also promote high standards in human rights and anti-corruption.

This network is invited to partner with a new coalition of liberal democracies—The Summit for Democracy—supporting freedom and independence against authoritarian trends backed by China and Russia. The league of democracies, in turn, will overlap with an emerging naval alliance—The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—committed to preserving free and open seas in the combined waters of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific.

The anti-China tone of these initiatives is self-evident, but Biden’s team has sharpened the message by adding Taiwan to the mix in ways that are bound to provoke Beijing’s anger. Washington is elevating Taiwan’s diplomatic standing, increasing arms sales, and stepping up naval and air operations around the island and in nearby zones of contested territories. Biden feels the need to display American strength and resolve in a time of diminishing confidence in Washington’s protective umbrella. But he misreads the prevailing sentiments of East Asian leaders who worry that the U.S. might be inviting a fight it cannot win unless it is willing to widen the battlefield and wage all-out war in their backyards.

The Biden administration needs to abandon its chosen course of confrontation, ideological posturing, and rhetorical bluster. The last thing we need is an American version of China’s wolf warrior diplomacy. Pundits may argue that the world abhors power vacuums, but, today, what it hates even more are would-be hegemons that try to exploit them. If the U.S. insists on competing with China for the title of most benevolent hegemon, both sides will fail. No nation can provide any set of public goods—economic or military—that will earn legitimacy and acquiescence from independent states or from the newly assertive movements of global civil society.

With Afghanistan or without it, the New Silk Road offers a compelling vision for cooperation and progress on a scale that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. It is utopian in the best sense of the word. It is China’s brainchild, but it is not Beijing’s puppet or Trojan horse.

All the partners have wills of their own and their citizens are determined to recast the projects to suit local needs instead of foreign and elite interests. American leaders are wavering between trying to subvert the venture and mounting a rival effort on a smaller scale. Sadly, Washington is missing out on the best option of all—joining the emergent transnational community and taking its turn in steering the common enterprise in positive directions. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. Share in the credit, avoid being a spoiler, and don’t have sour grapes.

Mercenaries have been a part of war since humans first started to coordinate and live amongst each other in societies. In the classical era, Xenophon of Athens recounted how his mercenary force, “The Ten Thousand”, helped Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger in his failed attempt to usurp the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II. This extended through to the famous mercenary armies of the Renaissance period, famously criticized by writer and philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli for being a threat to their employers.

However, and despite numerous national laws forbidding mercenary activity in the militarily advanced Western world, mercenaries have continued to flourish and thrive in the battlefields and cities of Iraq and Afghanistan – the two countries who suffered the most from the American imperial footprint in the 21^st century.

With the United States now openly stating that it intends to disengage from both countries, it is likely that, rather than reduce the number of mercenaries deployed, it will instead increasingly rely on its army of private military contractors to secure its interests.

The case of Iraq

As one of the world’s most fossil fuel-rich nations, Iraq has been blessed (and cursed) with bountiful natural resources. This has obviously attracted the avarice and attention of massive international energy companies who wish to exploit Iraq’s oil stocks and also its burgeoning natural gas fields.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies headquartered in Texas, operates two subsidiaries in Iraq, one of which deals with the Northern Iraq Region and one of which specializes in contracts relating to the richer oil fields in the Iraqi south. ExxonMobil is currently the lead contractor at the West Qurnah oilfield in cooperation with China’s PetroChina.

ExxonMobil’s operations have been targeted several times by pro-Iran Shia jihadist groups who were seeking to make the U.S. presence in Iraq as inhospitable as possible in order to give Tehran the diplomatic leverage it needed against Washington elsewhere. The American oil giant had to evacuate its employees on several occasions, including after rocket attacks struck their compound near Basra in 2019.

This will have the effect of emboldening mercenary companies as they know they can acquire billions in contracts while operating in a murky world devoid of accountability in a corporate war environment where violence equals profit.

The Iraqi experience is largely replicated in the Afghan theatre, with mercenary companies running logistics to various American and NATO bases.

The case of Afghanistan

The Iraqi experience is largely replicated in the Afghan theatre, with mercenary companies running logistics to various American and NATO bases, providing highway security for supply routes, guarding embassies and government installations, and even providing training to the Afghan police.

However, a series of scandals involving contractors using deadly force and engaging in corruption and black market smuggling operations caused enough of an uproar to force then-President Hamid Karzai to ban several mercenary companies, including Blackwater.

However, and commensurate with Karzai’s status as a president of an occupied country, international pressure forced the Afghan government to backtrack and they decided to allow mercenaries to simply rebrand themselves not as private security but as “risk management” companies. This was after NATO countries doubted the Afghan Public Protection Force’s capabilities of providing security in the country they were apparently sovereign over.

With the Taliban currently ascendant and the U.S.-installed Afghan government facing an existential threat, it is highly doubtful that the United States will entirely cut their losses and withdraw from Afghanistan. China has recently made a number of overtures by formally hosting Taliban officials and this will raise concerns in Washington as they already face off against Beijing in other strategic theaters around the globe.

It is therefore likely that the U.S. will want to secure the Afghan government by allowing international mercenary companies to continue to operate as “advisers” who will provide training. This may have the effect of allowing the Afghan government to maintain control over Kabul and other major population centers, effectively controlling islets surrounded by a sea of Taliban control in rural Afghanistan. Naturally, Kabul will pay through the nose for the pleasure of hosting mercenaries to ensure their survival.

Across Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed that, as at the fourth fiscal quarter of 2020, it had engaged the services of 27,388 contractors in these three theaters. Considering there are around 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, 2,500 in Iraq, and around 900 or so in Syria, one begins to appreciate the sheer scale of the “contractor” economy and how reliant the U.S. and its allies are on it.

While the approximately 30,000 contractors will obviously not all be combat oriented (about 10-20 percent are in combat roles while the rest offer support functions), a significant proportion of them will be armed and will be protected under U.S. federal laws that allows them to use “deadly force against enemy armed forces only in self-defense”.

This means that, with the U.S. drawing down uniformed personnel, this already extant addiction to hiring soldiers of fortune is not going to reduce, but in fact the U.S. will become ever more dependent on them to remain relevant in theaters of war they have been forced to abandon.

If the sum of New Delhi’s fears is a Taliban take-over of Afghan government in Kabul, then those anxieties received a further jolt on 26 July when Pakistan reopened a major southwestern border crossing that is currently under Taliban control on the Afghan side.

Islamabad has said the border crossing will be used only for the transportation of food and other goods, the Afghan government has accused Pakistan of backing the Taliban, an accusation that invites the Indian government to imagine future teams of violent jihadists flowing across Pakistan into India and Kashmir.

New Delhi is also acutely aware that a destabilized Afghanistan, or one controlled by the Taliban is totally fine with Islamabad, particularly because friendly relations between the Indian government and Kabul is the sum of Islamabad’s fears. What Pakistan fears most is being wedged between two hostile states – India on its eastern border and an Indian friendly Kabul on its western frontier.

It’s for these reasons, Pakistan has a close or cordial relationship with the Taliban, and India with the Afghan government, thus posing a strategic problem for New Delhi as the militants make their seemingly unstoppable march towards the Afghan capital.

New Delhi is now planning for the inevitable by reaching out to the Taliban, an effort made complicated by the military support it has long provided the Afghan government in its war against the militants. India has already invested $3 billion in aid and reconstruction activities in the country, including providing Kabul with combat helicopters, artillery platforms, small arms, surveillance and targeting technologies and ammunition.

Kabul has been pleading with New Delhi for more military assistance and sent Afghan Army chief Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai to India on 27 July for a 3-day series of meetings with his Indian military counterparts, but requests for more weapons and Indian soldiers have fallen largely upon deaf ears because the Taliban appear set for total victory.

India’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Syed Akbaruddin, said in a recent interview that there’s no chance of India sending troops to Afghanistan, saying, “We have challenges on our own frontiers too. In the current situation I don’t think there is any political or public acceptance for it.”

Instead, New Delhi is “scrambling” to open diplomatic channels with the Taliban, with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar signalling his country’s interest in engaging with the Taliban during a video conference held in September of last year.

But to date, this effort has also fallen upon deaf ears because of India’s hitherto military partnership with the Afghan government.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson for the Taliban, accused India of “siding with the government installed by foreigners” during a recent interview with Foreign Policy.

“They are not with us. If they stick to their policy of supporting a government imposed on Afghans, then maybe they should be worried. That is a wrong policy which will not serve them,” he said, before adding, “We have reports from our commanders that India is providing weapons to the other side.”

“How is it possible that they want to talk to the Taliban but practically they are providing weapons, drones, everything to Kabul? This is contradictory.”

This – a starkly contrasting tone to the one struck five years ago, when a former Taliban spokesperson said the group had “no problem with Hindustan…In fact, we want to send them a message of peace and friendship.”

But now that the Taliban anticipates victory, it sees little or no advantage in forging close diplomatic ties with New Delhi, especially given neighboring Pakistan, China and Iran, along with Russia have each expressed a willingness to accept and normalize a future Taliban controlled Afghan government.

From the Taliban’s perspective, it’s fledgling relationship with China offers the most upside, given the Asian country’s status as a regional and global superpower, and its desire to include Afghanistan as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, having expressed interest to construct a motorway connecting Kabul to Peshawar, Pakistan, as reported by the Daily Beast.

That said, any future relationship China, Pakistan, Russia, and Iran strikes with the Taliban will not come without unwanted complications and blowback, a reality that gives India room to pause and breathe, particularly because each of these countries has ongoing security issues with what they deem to be Islamic extremists and separatists within their own borders.

“This explains why not only India but several Asian countries consider the return of Taliban as a security headache despite Pakistan and China reportedly looking for an advantageous role in Afghanistan, the strategic heart of Asia,” observes India Today columnist Prabhash K. Dutta.

India will take heart from the fact that the Taliban is likely to incite fear and a sense of insecurity among non-Pashtun ethnic communities along the Afghan-Pak border, which might spark conflict within Pakistan’s borders.

India will also see value in persisting with backchannel diplomacy with the Taliban, knowing the militant group will need significant outside help to reconstruct the country in a post-civil war environment. The Taliban will also see upside in establishing a security guarantee with India to allow it space to focus almost exclusively on domestic concerns.

But for now, New Delhi is adopting a multilateral approach to unfolding events in Afghanistan by calling for peaceful reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban, while at the same time urging its geopolitical allies, including the United States, to avoid presuming the insurgent group has secured victory, and to not rush into “normalizing” a Taliban takeover of the country.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced last week that the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan will end by August 31. He called on the leaders of Afghanistan to come together to prevent a possible civil war after the U.S. withdrawal. The U.S. president asserted that “after 20 years of American valor and sacrifice, it’s time to bring those troops home.” In April, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, made a similar statement, stating, “The choice that the Afghans face is between a negotiated political settlement or a long war.”

After 9/11, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban’s regime and annihilate Al-Qaeda. With the current withdrawal of U.S. troops, have these objectives been achieved?

To examine the first objective, it is widely believed that Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. The UN Security Council report dated February 3, 2021 states that Al-Qaeda has 200 to 500 fighters in about 11 provinces of Afghanistan. According to the report, Al-Qaeda media chief Abu Muhsin al-Masri was killed in Ghazni province on October 20, 2020, and a deputy of Al-Qaeda, Mohammad Hanif, was killed in Farah province on November 10, 2020.

The Taliban commanders have also acknowledged the presence of Al-Qaeda in the country. Two Taliban commanders told NBC News that the Taliban have asked foreign militants and Al-Qaeda not to execute any terrorist attack against the United States. The U.S. and NATO forces achieved a splinter of their objective when they killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. However, the ideology, legacy, and adherents of Al-Qaeda are still present in Afghanistan.

As far as the Taliban are concerned, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan did not lead to their defeat.

In his speech, Biden stated that Al-Qaeda has been downgraded, which is true. Nonetheless, the Taliban were also severely downgraded after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. However, the group soon remerged and now governs more than half of the country. Should Al-Qaeda expand its presence in Afghanistan, the group might consider vengeance for the killing of their leader and his immediate circle. Hence, without a proper political settlement, the withdrawal of U.S. troops will imperil the country as Al-Qaeda will be strengthened and other militant groups will possibly emerge.

As far as the Taliban are concerned, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan did not lead to their defeat. Despite the fact that the Taliban were downgraded at first, at a later stage, they made a triumphant comeback. After the September 11 terrorist attack, an international coalition force was able to topple the Taliban regime and entrench the Afghan government.

The United States is preparing to leave Afghanistan soon and “from the moment they leave, the only reliable country to maintain the process over there is obviously Turkey,” stated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the recent NATO summit in Brussels. President Erdoğan met U.S. President Joe Biden during the NATO summit. Erdoğan stated that Turkey would need “diplomatic, logistic, and financial assistance” from the United States to maintain troops in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of NATO troops.

The NATO summit decided to continue its economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. Turkey is the only Muslim member country of NATO, which has 500 troops in Afghanistan. Should Ankara decide to stay in Afghanistan, it might increase the number of troops to guard the Kabul airport as the international community’s main gateway to the country. After 20 years of combat with the Taliban, President Biden announced the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Afghanistan and asserts that there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict. However, why would Turkey become engaged in post-U.S. Afghanistan?

Efforts to revive relationship with the new U.S. administration

Washington-Ankara relations have been tense in recent years. The U.S. support for the YPG in Syria has infuriated Turkey. Ankara asserts that the YPG is the Syrian branch of the PKK, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Moreover, Washington has sanctioned Turkey over its purchase of S-400 advanced Russian missile defense systems, which the U.S. claims are a threat to NATO, and has asked Ankara to abandon the $2.5 billion system. Thus, President Erdoğan wants to turn a new page with the Biden administration. By concurring with Washington to stay in Afghanistan, Turkey aims to alleviate the U.S.-Turkey tension significantly.

The pursuit of a prominent mediating role in peace talks

In April of this year, a high-level peace summit was planned to take place in Turkey co-hosted with the United Nations to bring the Afghan conflict to an end. However, the Taliban refrained from attending and demanded that the conference does not produce any decisive action. Turkey is a prominent and influential Muslim country in the Greater Middle East, a NATO member, and a notable constituent of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

In addition, Turkey has a friendly relationship with the Afghan government and the Taliban. The movement views Ankara as a friend of Afghanistan. The Taliban spokesperson once said that “Turkey is an important country, which can positively influence regional themes. Both the Afghan government and the Taliban have friendly relations with Ankara.” Turkey also has a salient relationship with other Afghan protagonists.

Turkey has a protracted relationship with the Northern Alliance, a coalition of mujahideen movements from the north of Afghanistan, and particularly with Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of the Uzbeks in Afghanistan. Most likely the Afghan government and the Northern Alliance will welcome Turkey’s role in post-U.S. Afghanistan.

India, on the other hand, would embrace the remaining Turkish troops in Afghanistan. It would see Turkey’s troops as a continuation of NATO’s presence and as a substitute for the U.S. forces. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has imperiled Delhi since it feels the return of the Taliban is backed by Pakistan.

Although Ankara has an intimate relationship with Islamabad, this does not mean the Turkey-India relationship is cold. It is, in fact, perceived as normal. Albeit it is early for Delhi to react on Turkey’s presence in Afghanistan, it would embrace the move.

On the contrary, both Russia and Iran want U.S. troops to pull out of their neighbor (Afghanistan). In addition to the U.S. bases in Erbil, Northern Iraq, and across the Middle East, it is arduous for Tehran to tolerate U.S. bases in Afghanistan. Similarly, Russia asserts that the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) in Afghanistan emerged during the presence of the NATO forces which are seen as a threat by Russia.

Should Afghanistan descend into another civil war, new insurgents would emerge, which could spill over both to Iran and Central Asia. Hence, Iran and Russia see Turkey’s troops through two lenses. First, they see them as a continuation of NATO’s presence in Afghanistan since Turkey is a member of NATO.

Second, Ankara, as a neutral and trustworthy mediator, would facilitate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Turkey can prevent Afghanistan from descending into a civil war and rescue the country from being the center of regional terrorism. Hence, it is up to Ankara’s diplomacy to transpose Russia and Iran’s perspective from the first view to the second.

Taliban calls its fight against the U.S. and NATO a jihad, a holy war. Following the U.S. withdrawal, Turkey’s troops in Afghanistan put the Taliban in a dilemma. If the Taliban agree to the presence of Turkish troops, Turkey will prevent the Taliban from taking power militarily, and will play a prominent role in Afghan peace talks in order to bring the protracted conflict to an end. If the Taliban oppose the Turkish troops, however, the troops would remain in Afghanistan as a Muslim army in an agreement with Kabul, and the Taliban’s license for jihad will be revoked.

Q. In your book, Reconciliation and Social Healing in Afghanistan (2017), you shed light on the different attempts of peace-building in Afghanistan, particularly during the 1980s and the 1990s. What was different back then and why does it matter today?

The National Reconciliation Policy (NRP) was adopted in 1986 under the leadership of my father, Najibullah, and his government. At the international level, as the Cold War reached its peak, the NRP started gaining momentum in light of Perestroika. The new leadership in the Soviet Union was keen to end their “bleeding wound,” which is how they referred to their war in Afghanistan. The Soviet leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev was determined to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and found a natural ally in the cadres of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), who supported the idea of an independent, free, neutral, and sovereign Afghanistan.

Hence, the NRP as an evolving process was composed of international instruments such as the Geneva Accords in 1988 and the UN Five-Point Peace Plan in 1991. Recognizing the role of Pakistan in backing the Mujahideen groups, the Geneva Accords ensured an agreement between the Republic of Afghanistan and Pakistan with the Soviet Union and the United States as guarantors, which is still binding.

Q. Regarding past and present approaches to peace in Afghanistan, are there any major challenges that have persisted to this day?

The conflict in Afghanistan has been ongoing for more than 40 years. The division lines are no longer only ideological like they were during the Cold War, they are also ethnic and religious. The illegal trade of arms, drugs, and precious stones has also created strong and deep-rooted networks of criminals that also feed the conflict.

While the Geneva Accords guaranteed the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, they failed to achieve their main purpose of non-intervention and non-interference between two neighbors. Additionally, the agreement could not prevent the continuation of arms supplies from regional countries such as Saudi Arabia to the Mujahideen despite the two superpowers agreeing not to supply arms to their benefactors.

Q. What were the major loopholes in previous approaches to peace in Afghanistan in terms of their design and implementation?

The main loopholes of the peace process of the 1980s-1990s include: the lack of consensus amongst regional countries and the main conflict stakeholders in Afghanistan, the continued supply of arms to different parties in the absence of an international legal mechanism to oversee disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and the end of the war despite the government’s call and eagerness for such a mechanism to be established, the lack of accountable mechanisms on the part of the guarantors, the lack of independent, neutral monitoring mechanisms overseeing and documenting the developments and implementation of the accords/peace process, the refusal of the Security Council upon the request of the Afghan government to provide peacekeeping troops for the duration of the interim government until the elections took place and the continuing double games by the Afghan conflict stakeholders vis-à-vis their geopolitical interests.

Q. In this respect, how do you evaluate the continuing peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Qatar, Russia, and later in Turkey?

The current peace talks started with a lot of optimism in 2017; however, the process proved to have shortcomings in terms of following through. For example, the two-year process leading to the Doha Agreement excluded the Afghan government from negotiations and reduced its position to a passive observer while legitimizing the Taliban as a political group. The process was not transparent – neither the Afghan government nor the Afghan people know the so-called secret annexes of the Doha Agreement.

The mediator in negotiating peace, i.e., the United States, remains as one of the main conflict stakeholders in Afghanistan. The meeting in Moscow confirmed the fact that the participating countries and the stakeholders from outside and inside Afghanistan did not want the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan.

Q. How do you think the perspectives of the Taliban and the Afghan government can be reconciled so as to bring peace to Afghanistan?

The parties need to see the commonalities in their positions and desires for a shared future in their country. Currently, positions of power dominate the discussions and the focus is on who will be the winners or the losers. It is a tit-for-tat moment in which the Taliban want to assert themselves as the winners of the war against the U.S. and the Afghan government.

What is common between the Taliban and the Afghan government is their desire for power; however, it must be explored if their wishes for a ceasefire, disarmament, integration of their forces into the Afghan security forces, truth commission, and other forms of transitional justice can be shared. Unless the two sides show flexibilities in moving away from their explicit and implicit “red-lines”, meaningful engagement ending in a peace agreement will not materialize.

I believe that the U.S. asked Turkey to host the conference not only because Turkey is a NATO member, but also because of its unique position as an Islamic country in the region and its historical friendship with Afghanistan.

In addition, reconciliation between the two sides will not be possible unless the Taliban get out of the influence of Pakistani security establishment. This can only be possible when the fuel for fighting is extinguished by the regional and the global powers providing guarantees for a ceasefire, peacekeeping forces, and no-interference and non-intervention on the part of the regional stakeholders.

Q. How should the international community approach the peace resolutions in Afghanistan?

The way the international community can approach the peace process is to stand by the Afghan democratic institutions and design a multilayered mechanism whereby guarantees must be made including peacekeeping forces for the upcoming years, which will allow the Afghan government to build consensus through democratic means, develop its economy, and give voice to the marginalized.

Islam was, is, and will remain the main religion of Afghanistan, the way Islam is the main religion in Turkey, but Muslim countries can also adopt progressive, democratic visions for their citizens instead of promoting religious extremism or handing power to such extremist religious groups. Afghanistan can find this balance if its current institutions are safeguarded, and international guarantees end the proxy wars.

So far, every conference about the future of Afghanistan that has been held since Bonn 2001 has brought together elites that have negotiated their way to power instead of bringing people-centered issues to the agenda such as transitional justice, a truth commission, the demands of the victims of the war, DDR, the rights of women, and, above all, the sovereignty and unity of Afghanistan as a nation.

Q. You have just highlighted the importance of the efforts to bring a people-centered vision into the existing approaches to peace in Afghanistan. Could you elaborate on this?

In my book, Reconciliation and Social Healing in Afghanistan: A Transrational and Elicitive Analysis towards Transformation, I have analyzed at length how countries that have embarked on a peace process have established countrywide mechanisms to engage with non-governmental organizations, civil society, and people impacted by war at the social, economic, and political levels.

Najibullah’s government had established a successful mechanism called the “National Reconciliation Commission” that was present with offices and staff at the district level. However, they did not have time on their side and were in a constant state of emergency. Today, Afghanistan is in a worse situation because it lacks a nationwide peace structure, mechanism, and narrative. The government’s efforts in this process are neither people-centric, strategic, or inclusive.

Q. What role do you think civil society and women can play in the peace process?

The role women groups and civil society have in Afghanistan is key in bringing sustainable reconciliation because women have been the survivors of the 40 years of Afghan conflict. They often bring issues to the table that are related to their survival and the future of their children, i.e., the future generations of Afghanistan. Therefore, their inclusion on the negotiation table is a necessity for peace.

Since the start of the intra-Afghan negotiations on September 12, 2020, there is a genuine excitement among ordinary Afghans regarding peace talks and a possible reconciliation with the Taliban. The high level of optimism is partly driven by the fact that the U.S. and the international community are supporting the peace negotiations. On matters that allow it, the international community, led by the U.S., has been persuading both sides to offer a compromise to speed up the reconciliation process and end the tragic war in Afghanistan.

It is important to note that the United States’ role as a global power has been crucial in the intra-Afghan negotiations. Previously, the U.S. had no intention to engage directly with the Taliban and similarly the Taliban refused to negotiate with the Kabul government, considering it a puppet regime. The result has been a deadly stalemate and prolongation of a senseless war.

However, all sides of the conflict in Afghanistan are talking now, which is a very encouraging sign for peace and reconciliation in the war-ravaged country. One clear issue is that the Afghan conflict has no military solution. Fortunately, the U.S. has realized this vital fact. Most American generals, politicians, and military analysts agree that the Afghan conflict is in a stalemate with no military solution in sight.

Most American military leaders like retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc agree that it would be hard for the Kabul government to survive in the case of a U.S. pullout. Another positive development is that the Biden administration appears to be eager to find a political solution to the Afghan conflict.

On the other hand, to convince Biden to withdraw U.S. forces fully from Afghanistan and to honor the U.S.-Taliban Doha Agreement, the Taliban’s leadership on February 16, 2021 issued an open letter addressed to the American people. In this letter, the Taliban called on Washington to remain fully committed to the agreement that was reached in Qatar a year ago and paved the way for ongoing intra-Afghan peace talks.

In fact, the intra-Afghan negotiation which started on September 12, 2020 in Doha, Qatar seemed a failed attempt to find an agreed solution to the current Afghan war. In five months of consecutive talks, the Taliban and the Afghan government were not able to move forward with solving the current dilemma of Afghanistan. Here is why.

The intra-Afghan negotiations in Doha were not instigated according to the expected schedule, but even with their late commencement, so far, the Taliban and the Afghan government have only been able to work on the agenda of the dialogue. In addition, the talks were later affected by the results of U.S. elections which were won by the Democrats and which saw Joe Biden elected as the president of the United States.

In fact, both the Afghan government and the Taliban used delaying tactics to wait for the new U.S. foreign policy regarding the Afghan peace process. The United States’ new government announced that the Doha Agreement will be reviewed and reevaluated.

This announcement apparently indicated that the agreement may face challenges. As a result, the Taliban retreated from the talks and visited countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan, and even Russia while the delegation of the Afghan government was still in Qatar.

Recently, the Taliban political representatives in Doha have admitted that the monopoly of power is not a solution to the current stalemate. They have been willing to share power with other political groups inside Afghanistan. The Taliban have been in contact with various political groups in Afghanistan to work together on a post-peace plan for Afghanistan.

On March 18, the delegates of Afghan political groups including the Afghan government and the Taliban attended the “Troika” conference in Moscow. The one-day conference was part of larger efforts by regional powers to reach peace between Afghan political groups, the government, and the Taliban.

The conference aimed to attract regional support for the Afghan peace process and make Afghans discuss the current political and military stalemate.

The Taliban once more emphasized that the U.S. should honor the Doha Agreement and withdraw by May 1, 2021; they claimed that if Afghans sit around a table, they can easily find a solution to the current crisis in their country.

On the other hand, in March 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah who leads the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) in which he signaled displeasure at the slow pace of peace negotiations.

Colm Quinn, a foreign policy journalist, rightly reports that the letter indicates three ways for future endeavors to bring peace to Afghanistan: to “move matters more fundamentally and quickly” towards peace, holding ministerial-level talks between representatives from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and India together with the United States to discuss a “unified approach”; a senior-level meeting between the Taliban and the Afghan government hosted by Turkey to take place “in the coming weeks”; and a proposal to implement a 90-day reduction in violence intended to prevent a spring offensive by the Taliban.

A peaceful outcome for Afghanistan can only be reached with a deal between the Taliban and the remaining Afghan political parties including the Afghan government. The upcoming conference in Turkey plays an important role in putting an end to the conflict in Afghanistan and the United States.

Under U.S. President Biden, the Americans will support diplomacy, even if the ultimate goal of the U.S. national security strategy is to ensure that Afghanistan never becomes a safe haven for terrorists to attack the United States. In addition to the aforementioned conditions in Blinken’s leaked letter to Ghani and Abdullah, the Taliban is asking the U.S. to release their remaining prisoners, estimated at 7,000, and remove them off its blacklist.

Similarly, the American public is sick and tired of the Afghan war. Recent public surveys show that most Americans want U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. Among the American veterans, almost 70% favor the U.S. forces withdrawing from Afghanistan.

On the Afghan side, the desire for peace is obvious. Afghans have suffered enormously during the past 20 years of conflict. Almost, all Afghans across the country support peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Fortunately, there is growing regional support for a negotiated settlement. U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad’s trip to Pakistan, Russia demonstrated that Pakistan and Moscow and other regional countries will cooperate with the U.S. and Afghans regarding the intra-Afghan peace talks with the Taliban in Turkey. This is a sign of the region’s commitment to assist all Afghan parties to end the senseless war.

More than 60% of Afghanistan’s population is below the age of 30 as per the report by the International Organization for Migration. Thus, the role and responsibility of the Afghan youth within the context of the peace process cannot be ignored. The Afghan youth must be part of the process and must be consulted.

Finally, Afghans have a historical perspective. In their recent history of winning a war and losing peace, they have experienced both the Geneva Accords in 1988 and the Bonn Conference in 2001. Afghans and their representatives in Kabul know that if they don’t participate in the conference on Afghanistan in Turkey, foreign powers will chart their destiny. They know that if they don’t take charge of events, foreign powers (international and regional) will form a government which will not be in their best interests. Together, let’s make 2021 the year of peace for Afghans and Afghanistan.

During the second half of the twentieth century, numerous transformational changes took place in the socio-economic structure of the Pashtun tribes living across the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan due to forced or labor-influenced migration, civil war, foreign invasions, and the effects of modernity.

The Pashtun tribal belt, formerly known as the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” (FATA), is known today as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is located in the northwest of Pakistan. It shared its borders with the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). FATA comprised seven agencies (tribal districts), namely Mohmand, Khyber, Kurram, North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Bajaur, and Orakzai. In fact, some Frontier Regions of Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, and Tank were also included in FATA.

The Durand Line in KP stretches approximately for 1,360 kilometers and cuts through the lands inhabited by the tribes of the Salarzai, Mamund, Mohmand, Afridi, Shinwari, Turi, Bangash, Wazir, Mehsud, Dawar, and Aurkazai, while the Achekzai, Nurzai and Kakar also live on the Durand Line and, in fact, dwell almost equally on both sides of the border. This deplorable state of affairs does not conform with the right of peoples to choose their fate nor is it aligned with the 21^st-century politics of peace, public welfare, political and civil justice, and economic development.

Fazal Wahid, a researcher and lecture at Peshawer University indicates that the inability of the United States to apply the carrot and stick strategy effectively in Afghanistan prompted Pakistan in 2003 to move its armed forces into KP in an impetuous manner, resulting in failure and the militarization of the tribal belt. This simultaneously caused the tribes to be more proactively involved in the fight against the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and to defend themselves from the atrocities of Pakistan’s army in the region.

The Pashtun tribal belt goes back to the nineteenth century. Even then, the so-called Durand Line region between Afghanistan and Pakistan had begun to play a role in world politics.

The Pashtun tribal belt goes back to the nineteenth century. Even then, the so-called Durand Line region between Afghanistan and Pakistan had begun to play a role in world politics. Conrad Schetter, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Development Studies (ZEF) of the University of Bonn discusses the struggle that was referred to by contemporaries as the “Great Game” and which saw Great Britain and Russia struggle for power and influence in the region between the the Amu River (known historically as the Oxus River) in the north and the Indus in the south. The fact that the Durand Line runs right through the Pashtun tribal areas indicates the significance of the line for the conception of Afghanistan as a nation state.

Schetter and other academics argue that the tribal areas on either side of the Durand Line did not possess any particular status on their own. However, neither state ever succeeded in dominating the tribes. With the exception of the urban centers such as Jalalabad, Gardez, or Khost, Afghanistan could not exercise its powers in the tribal areas.

In the current context, with cross-border terrorism a major regional feature, the region is once again of huge – even essential – importance to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. On the one hand, it is central to the territorial integrity and Muslim identity of newly independent Pakistan. On the other hand, it is necessary to the completion of Afghanistan’s nation-state theorem. In fact, what had been a colonial periphery under the Raj was actively developed and slowly integrated by Pakistani leaders.

Meanwhile for the Afghan royal family, who turned to social, economic, and political modernization in an era of free-flowing international aid and declining British influence, the land across the Durand Line presented the opportunity for expanded influence among the largely Pashtun population which shared ethnic, cultural, and religious roots with much of Afghanistan’s own people.

Despite their seemingly peripheral location in the world, the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands exercised remarkable influence on politics in South Asia and beyond. In these borderlands, ethnic, religious, and political networks interlinked, creating a site both molded by events in faraway metropoles and capable of impacting decision-making across the globe.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after September 11 highlighted the Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary region in a way that had not happened since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The region was the safe haven and retreat of the Taliban and their Al Qaeda affiliates. Schetter correctly argues that this was an area where state power had far less influence and less impact than elsewhere. From 2001 onward, violence in the tribal region escalated. The border tribal region became the heart of the resistance to U.S. invasion and to the Afghan and Pakistani armies. In fact, every attempt from outside to wield influence that impacts on the local order is a source of irritation to the local tribal leaders.

Wahid argues that the tribal economy is mainly based on individual enterprises and irregular activities. On both sides of the Durand Line, the states have maintained minimal intervention in terms of creating the resources necessary for the local people to be able to generate a basic income.

This lack of a state economy and authority makes smuggling easy. Furthermore, it is common for those living in wide-open areas to be involved in the transport of goods. It should be noted that the other main economic activity here is animal husbandry. People living close to the Durand Line carry out small cross-border trade and sustain their families quite comfortably. Remittance economy is another source of income for the tribal people who work as laborers in Gulf countries.

Mullah Fazal, a leader of the Taliban, and Abdul Rashid Dostum confronted a verbal clash when Mullah Fazal called Dostum a “traitor” and “killer” during the Moscow conference on Afghanistan last week. Russia hosted a two-day summit on Afghan peace with the participation of Afghanistan (Taliban and the government), China, Pakistan, and the United States. Another higher-level international conference is set to occur in Ankara next month to quest a political solution to the Afghan conflict.

Amid these peace talks, Afghans are worried about the future of Afghanistan and their destiny whether the Taliban and the Afghan government peace negotiations would prevail. The concerns also include the retaliations between influential Afghans and former commanders who had fought each other for several years; if they would reconcile or the country would descend to another civil war.

Here are the three scenarios:

Scenario 1: Peace negotiations produce a flawed compromise.

The Taliban’s vowed Islamic system is entrenched as a so-called inclusive government where the Taliban would have more power. The Taliban would filter politicians and some government officials before merging them into an inclusive government. As a result, U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan. Later, the Taliban would rectify the Afghanistan constitution and will bring dramatic amendments to it, which might not be acceptable to some of the castes and political parties. The revision will include adding and exercising fastidious Islamic law placing restrictions on women’s liberty, free media, public speech, and music which is already prohibited under the territory of the Taliban control.

This might create social and political disorder, and in the absence of strong security forces, the country will lead to vast insurrections. Since the Taliban have already vowed they would restore Islamic rule, it would raise the concerns and voices of the national and international human rights organizations over the rights of women and freedom of speech. The international community’s assistance is mostly contingent on human rights.

Thus, the international aid to Afghanistan would dry, and the Taliban (future government of Afghanistan) will not be able to carry the high costs of its military, which is currently $3.75 billion annually, to fight any future resistances against their administration. In addition, the Taliban would not recognize new titles given to their former foes with whom they have fought for several years. This includes deceased commander Ahmad Shah Masoud as the national hero of Afghanistan and Abdul Rashid Dostum as Marshal, who is also the leader of the Uzbeks in Afghanistan. This would create fractions, and resistances would emerge in different corners of Afghanistan.

Scenario 2: Peace talks fail

The peace talks would break when the parties stand on their ego, increase violence in order to gain more on the negotiation table, or run the talks based on pure sharia law. The Taliban will try to take power by force and will engage in a heavy fight with the national security forces across the country. A senior Taliban official told CBC News the Taliban’s options in Afghanistan. He stated, “at the moment the U.S. and Afghan governments have no plan B, only the Taliban have a plan A and B. Our plan A is a peaceful political solution, and Plan B, definitely a military takeover.”

Scenario 3: Peace negotiations prevail.

Taliban and the Afghan government produce satisfactory outcomes of the talks and agree upon forming a government acceptable to all parties. Both parties show flexibility and give sacrifices. For instance, the Taliban agree to equal power-sharing rather than surpassing. In addition, they abstain from implementing Sharia law; however, both sides’ demands are met to a possible extent which would lead to a win-win situation. The deal will also include a perpetual ceasefire that the Afghans yearn for for several years and would move toward strengthening the security forces and building a strong state.

In this scenario, the prospective government would decide about its relationship with the international community and the support of the US and NATO to the future government of Afghanistan. In this scenario, the Taliban and Afghan government deal would not bring nationwide peace. The low-in-rank commanders and militants would not accept the deal unless the Taliban are fully in power and the Sharia law is exercised in Afghanistan. Therefore, these militants would remerge under a different flag and brand with the patrons of some neighbor intelligence.

Last week, in an interview with Vice News, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan warns the US new administration. He asserts “we are totally ready to fight. We do not get tired of Jihad. Injuries do not sadden us. Martyrdom does not pain our hearts. We win if we get martyred. If we are tired, that is a success. We succeed by just being at war. We will enter Kabul in victory. This is our way.” On the other hand, ISIS will remain, and some of the lingering insurgents might join them. It is also possible that some new insurgent groups would form.

The third scenario is obviously ideal since the violence will drastically reduce. Neither the ISIS nor the newly formed insurgents would be strong enough to challenge the new government formed by the Taliban and the current government. Under this scenario, the international community would continue supporting Afghanistan. The new government will further strengthen the security apparatus and would gradually turn the country economically and security-wise stable, self-reliant, and ultimately at a permanent peace.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is making many headlines. In this letter, Blinken proposed steps to put momentum behind talks between the government in Kabul and the Taliban. Washington’s chief diplomat also confirmed the US administration’s consideration of a “full withdrawal” of approximately 2,500 American military forces from Afghanistan by May 1 and he called for new peace efforts under UN auspices.

Perhaps this letter is an important indicator of how President Joe Biden’s administration will approach the security crises plaguing Afghanistan at a time in which the US public remains weary of Washington making further commitments to this war-ravaged country.

Interestingly, Blinken called for the foreign ministers and envoys from Iran plus a number of other countries (China, India, Pakistan, and Russia) to join the US in discussing a “unified approach to supporting peace in Afghanistan”. It will be critical to see whether the US and Iran could find some common cause in Afghanistan, particularly regarding the threat posed by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).

Realistically, however, the Biden administration will likely also perceive a need to confront Iranian influence in Afghanistan, especially in areas where Tehran undermines Washington’s interests.

Historical Background (2001-Present)

Since the George W. Bush administration launched “Operation Enduring Freedom” in 2001, Afghanistan has played a complicated role in US-Iran relations. Early on in the war, the Americans and Iranians fought alongside each other against the Taliban in Herat, located in western Afghanistan next to Iran and Turkmenistan. However, the nature of Iran-US relations in Afghanistan gradually worsened, especially after Bush’s 2002 “axis of evil” speech.

From the Islamic Republic’s perspective, the massive US military presence along Iran’s eastern border is a major threat.

After a while, both Tehran and Washington found themselves on hostile terms vis-à-vis Afghanistan. From the Islamic Republic’s perspective, the massive US military presence along Iran’s eastern border is a major threat. Meanwhile, the US has remained cautiously observant of developments in Iran-Taliban relations and Tehran’s attempts to undermine NATO forces in Afghanistan.

In more recent times, disturbing developments and dynamics—chiefly ISKP’s rise and the Afghan government’s inability to meaningfully confront this force—have prompted both the US and Iran to reassess their perceptions of the Taliban. Put simply, both Tehran and Washington began seeing a need to help this Sunni fundamentalist political movement and military organization against ISKP, which officialdom in the Islamic Republic and the US have both deemed more dangerous and extreme than the Taliban.

Within this context, Tehran and Washington parallelly advanced their negotiations with Taliban representatives with Qatar serving as a diplomatic bridge between the US and the Taliban. In January 2021, less than a year after the US-Taliban deal, Iran officially hosted the Taliban to exchange views on the peace process. The timing of both Tehran and Washington’s unilateral talks with Taliban stokes suspicion about Iran and the US competing over a détente with the Taliban.

As the US soon enters the third decade of the “Global War on Terrorism”, Biden is inheriting a complicated situation in Afghanistan and the rest of Southern Central Asia. His administration should not overlook the fact that the US and Iran share certain interests in relation to Afghanistan such as the ISKP menace.

While US and Afghan military operations led to ISKP losing significant amounts of territory and becoming weaker in 2019, the extremist group remains a major threat to Afghan security and that of the region. ISKP maintains a presence in parts of areas such as Kunar and Nangarhar and has sleeper cells in Kabul. To be sure, the Afghan branch of Da’esh has retained its ability to carry out terrorism even without controlling territories like it did years ago, and there is no guarantee that ISKP would necessarily fail in future efforts to regain control of Afghan land.

If history is any guide, organizations in Afghanistan which are violent and extreme can easily bounce back after initial defeats.

If history is any guide, organizations in Afghanistan which are violent and extreme can easily bounce back after initial defeats. To the point, if Afghanistan’s Islamic State franchise becomes more deadly in upcoming months or years, the Biden administration might find itself being more open to considering the merits of working with Iran against ISKP, even if tacitly or unofficially so.

Fighting for the Regional Order

Regardless of ISKP and its activities, there is no denying that the US and Iran have major conflicts of interest concerning Afghanistan. At the heart of Washington and Tehran’s disputes over this war-torn country is the struggle for the regional order. Iran’s leadership seeks to challenge the status quo and empower the so-called “Axis of Resistance” in its struggle against the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

In this vein, Iran relies on its proxies such as Liwa Fatemiyoun, which operates under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah’s patronage. With roots in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the Soviet-Afghanistan war (1979-1989), this phantom force of 10,000–50,000 Afghan Shi’a militants, who mostly come from Afghanistan’s Hazara community, emerged as an actor in the Syrian civil war early on in 2012-2013. As a pro-Assad paramilitary force, Liwa Fatemiyoun contributed to Syrian government forces’ victories in major battles throughout the conflict (Aleppo, Palmyra, etc.).

Sometimes referred to as “Afghan Hezbollah”, Liwa Fatemiyoun has raised concerns in Washington, where in 2019 the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the group for its relationship with the IRGC-Quds Force. Officials in the US worry about what Liwa Fatemiyoun’s uncertain future may entail, especially if Tehran decides to leverage this militia against American interests to the east of Iran.

According to a United States Institute of Peace publication from last year, “Tehran has laid the groundwork to strike US interests across its 500-mile border with Afghanistan and significantly raise the cost of American deployment in the country.”

If US-Iran tensions do not ease under Biden, Iran could potentially use Liwa Fatemiyoun as a proxy in Afghanistan to counter Washington and/or NATO designs for the conflict-ridden country. Abdul Qayoum Rahimi, the former governor of Herat province, warned: “Iran and the United States are already at odds with each other, and if things get worse between them, Afghanistan would be the most natural battleground for them.”

The International Criminal Court is taking a visible role in dealing with war crimes, to the plaudits of victims, and to the horror of perpetrators. These initiatives have brought a nervous reaction in Washington, which has been trying to undermine the court ever since it was created. Two situations in particular are justifying to Washington the fears it has felt about the court all along.

The court’s prosecutor is beginning an investigation of the interrogations conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency at clandestine detention facilities popularly known as “black sites” it operated in various countries in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. At the same time, the prosecutor is beginning an investigation that could lead to prosecution of officials of America’s ally Israel over Israel’s wars in Gaza and its civilian settlements in Palestine territory.

Both investigations have brought sharp rebukes from the White House. The Afghanistan investigation could reach to the highest levels of Washington officialdom of the 2002-2003 era. The interrogations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency are universally acknowledged to have constituted torture.

Even former President Barack Obama has said that techniques like “water-boarding” are torture. And a committee of the United States Senate issued a report detailing the use of such techniques. So the prosecutor will not have a difficult time showing torture.

Torture is one of the acts defined to be a war crime in the court’s statute. And to the dismay of Washington, the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate, because some of the “black sites” happened to be in the territory of states that have signed up to the International Criminal Court. That gives the court jurisdiction to investigate.

That also highlights the main criticism the United States has of the court. The U.S. Government takes the position that the International Criminal Court should have jurisdiction only over persons who are nationals of states that sign up to the court, that is, unless the U.N. Security Council decides that a particular situation merits investigation.

The Security Council can refer a situation to the prosecutor for investigation. Of course, the United States has control over such referrals, because it wields a veto in the Security Council to stop any referral it opposes. And the United States has not signed up to the court, so the prosecutor doesn’t have jurisdiction over U.S. persons in that way.

The interrogation techniques were approved at the highest level of government in the United States. The International Criminal Court focuses on high-level officials who set policy for the commission of war crimes. So top officials from the 2002-2003 period could be in the prosecutor’s cross hairs.

When President Obama took office, he said that no one would be prosecuted for the interrogation practices, even though they constituted torture. That opens the way to prosecution at the International Criminal Court. If prosecutions occur in a particular country, the International Criminal Court backs off. But Obama’s refusal to prosecute means there is no obstacle to prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

The other situation that is causing consternation in Washington is an investigation of war crimes in Palestine territory that could lead to prosecution of top Israeli officials. Here too the jurisdictional rules are key. Palestine has signed up to the International Criminal Court.

That means that war crimes in its territory can be investigated. One of the acts that is defined by the court as a war crime is the transfer of civilians into settlements in territory under belligerent occupation. Israel does not disguise the fact that it promotes settlements in the West Bank territory of Palestine. The prosecutor has said that this action involves war crimes committed by Israeli officials.

Within recent weeks, the Israeli government has warned many of its highest-level officials that they may be indicted by the International Criminal Court. The United States has already criticized the court over the Palestine investigation. That criticism came in February, when the court confirmed that the prosecutor may proceed with investigations.

These two investigations are far from the only ones now in process at the court. Myanmar officials, for example, may find themselves indicted for the treatment of members of Myanmar’s Rohingya population. But the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction everywhere. It does not have jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the territory of states that have not signed up to the court. For that reasons, the International Criminal Court has not become a truly international court. A number of major countries have stayed out of the court’s jurisdiction by refusing to join.

The fact that major states have declined to join feeds the criticism levelled by the United States that the International Criminal Court practices selective justice. But the selection is not made by the court’s prosecutor. It is made by the countries that decline to join. The only way the International Criminal Court can fully counter the criticism is if other states decide to join. Those states would, of course, be opening the possibility that their own officials could be prosecuted. And that is why they do not join.

The investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine may lead some of these countries to re-consider and to join the court. The court’s prosecutor has not been overly vindictive. She has been careful to prosecute only where clear war crimes are committed.

Officials who stay on the right side of the law have nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court. On the contrary, prosecution of war crimes by the International Criminal Court raises the prospect of suppressing the atrocities that have been all too common in the international and civil wars of recent years.

One could list numerous examples of war crimes that have gone unpunished. The International Criminal Court aims less at those who commit war crimes at the tactical level than at those who occupy high military or civilian positions who set the policy that allows for war crimes at the tactical level. Universal acceptance by the countries of the world of the International Criminal Court would have a salutary effect.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared Washington’s stand on Afghanistan, “my administration strongly supports the diplomatic process that’s underway, and to bring an end to this war that is closing out 20 years.” This was the statement of the president at 2021 Munich Security Conference last week. Afghans were concerned about the U.S. new administration whether it would abandon the peace talks, withdraw its troops, or choose a third option as the target killings, magnitude bombs, and the Taliban offense has spiked across Afghanistan.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 5,939 civilian casualties between January and September 2020. Since last September 2020, 11 human rights activists, prominent journalists were killed in targeted attacks. Despite the U.S.-Taliban agreement and ongoing intra-Afghan peace talks, it is vital to understand how the violence spiked.

Since the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement inked on February 29, 2020, followed by the Taliban’s three-day ceasefire in May 2020, Afghans were hopeful that the violence would gradually reduce. Taliban also slow down violence in winter since the group curb due to cold weather conditions on the mountains from where they fight. Nonetheless, this winter, Afghans did not get a respite from target killings and magnitude bombs on the streets of Afghanistan.

There several rationales for the returning of violence. First, the Taliban have undertaken the strategy of talks and attacks. The group believes that augmenting attacks will give them an upper hand in intra-Afghan peace negotiations. Second, the violence spiked due to differences in the definitions of peace talks. The international community and the Afghans’ definition of peace talks with the Taliban is questing a political solution to the conflict and drawing a roadmap on the future administration.

Nonetheless, the Taliban’s perception of talks isn’t peace but convincing Washington to pullout its troops from Afghanistan through negotiations instead of the Taliban’s continued attacks on the troops.

Despite the Afghan government, religious scholars, and civil society, and community leaders calling on the Taliban for a ceasefire or reduction in violence, the Taliban are reluctant for several reasons to declare a ceasefire. Nevertheless, the Taliban would use the ceasefire as a playing card during the intra-Afghan talks for releasing of all their around 20,000 lingering prisoners and removing their names from the United Nations blacklist.

The Afghan government is dubious that the Taliban are intrinsically not after peace but after taking power. Despite the Afghan political leaders and civil society blame the Afghan government for corruption and inabilities in providing security, they repeatedly call upon the Taliban to declare a ceasefire or reduce violence.

The civil society activists and the rest of Afghans are in the middle of violence by the Taliban and failures of the Afghan government. Civil society activists, prominent journalists, famous religious scholars are being assassinated one after another. This implying that those who raise their voice for ceasefire or reduction in violence are being targeted.

The U.S. new administration announced that it is reviewing the U.S.-Taliban agreement. The international community and the United Nations reported that the Taliban do not adhere to the U.S.-Taliban agreement since the group is maintaining an affinity with Al-Qaeda and has not reduced violence. Thus, Washington might propose some tweaks to the agreement and add a verification mechanism to make sure that the Taliban eschew its relationship with Al-Qaeda and reduce violence. The U.S. Defense secretary called for an immediate reduction in violence last week. This means that the U.S.-Taliban agreement is going toward a breaking point should the Taliban do not reduce violence.

For the U.S. new administration, the urgent issue is the 14-month deadline to pullout its troops according to the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement which ends on April 30^th. In a meeting with the political analysts, the Taliban political leaders in Qatar said that if the U.S. troops do not pullout by the due date, the group will give a few more days, and then the Taliban will resume its attacks on the U.S. This is implying that whether the U.S. forces leave or stay, the violence will continue spiking later in spring. If the U.S. troops withdraw, the Taliban will exacerbate the situation in order to overthrow the government of Afghanistan and return their regime.

Suhail Shaheen, Taliban’s negotiating team members in Qatar tweeted last week saying, “The aim of our Jihadic struggles is establishment of an Islamic government.” Implying that the U.S. perception of the Taliban was incorrect that they are after the U.S. to leave the country, but it is after taking power. If the U.S. troops stay post the 14-moth deadline, obviously the Taliban would resume their attacks.

After reviewing the U.S.-Taliban agreement, Washington together with NATO member states will decide about their troops in Afghanistan. Extending NATO mission and U.S. troops presence in Afghanistan will obviously dispel the thoughts that the U.S. is in a rush for withdrawal and abandoning the country to the Taliban.

It would also give a message to the group to intrinsically prepare for peace, an inclusive government, and a permanent ceasefire. Such a decision would also impact the region. The remaining NATO troops would be unpleasant for some countries of the region since the proxy war in Afghanistan is turning into a proxy peace.

Implying that neighboring countries have their definition of peace for Afghanistan. Peace for Iran means withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Afghanistan since it feels threat having U.S. military bases in its eastern flank. For Russia, peace means the U.S. to face dramatic human and treasure losses. The New York Times reported that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to kill U.S. troops.

For Pakistan, peace means that the U.S. to pullout its troops and subcontracts the Afghanistan affairs to Islamabad to administer for U.S. Islamabad might also offer to Washington to have a small number of counterterrorism forces on Pakistan’s soil in return for dollars who can engage in Afghanistan in cases of threats from the country to the U.S. However, the U.S. hasty withdrawal will inflame violence in Afghanistan.

Violence, target killings, and magnitude bombs only deteriorate the situation which will not be conducive for Afghanistan nor the region. It will ultimately deteriorate the ongoing peace process. In order to have a peaceful Afghanistan and peaceful region, countries of the region should influence the Taliban for the reduction in violence, followed by a ceasefire which would pave the way for lasting peace in Afghanistan with itself, with region, and the world. Otherwise, the spike of violence will spillover to the region, and a hasty NATO withdrawal amid increased violence will let the country to become a hotbed of international terrorism.