In September 2023, Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government held an elaborate ceremony to welcome a new Chinese ambassador to Kabul. This signalled its eagerness to build a closer relationship with China, one that might alleviate the economic hardship brought on by international sanctions against the Taliban government and its isolation from the rest of the world. Four months later, China received an Afghan ambassador, becoming the only country to do so since the Taliban’s seizure of power in August 2021. This falls short of Beijing formally recognising the Taliban government – no country in the world has done that so far – but in hosting an ambassador, China has done more than any other country in acknowledging Taliban authority.
Since the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in 2021, which came with the fall of a Western-backed government and a return to Taliban rule after two decades, the world has refused to acknowledge the fundamentalist group’s authority over Afghanistan or offer it a seat at the international table. This stems from legitimate concerns about the Taliban’s repressive and ultra-conservative policies, especially with regards to the rights of women. But three years into the Taliban’s rule this might be slowly changing: Russia, for instance, is considering the removal of the Taliban from its list of designated terror groups, although it is yet to take a formal step in that direction.
If global powers hoped that the lack of recognition, and the incentive of normalised ties if the Taliban mended its ways, would force Kabul to moderate its behaviour and take appropriate action against other such groups within Afghanistan, the strategy has thus far failed. Afghanistan’s isolation has only led to a proliferation of militant groups on its territory. The Taliban has been unable or unwilling to suppress them, and these groups are fast expanding, undeterred by a regime that has little to no international support and has been trying to govern an impoverished and starving population for three years. Now they threaten not just Afghanistan’s neighbours – Pakistan, Iran, China and Central Asia, including Russia – but also other parts of the world.
The time has come for the world to consider an alternative approach to Afghanistan and the Taliban. This would involve limited and conditional diplomatic engagement, and possibly financial and even military assistance, aimed at keeping the Taliban in check and forcing it to clamp down on other rival groups.
Pakistan, a country that kept deep ties to the Taliban throughout the United States’ twenty-year war in Afghanistan, has seen its relationship with Kabul deteriorate after August 2021. While Pakistan and some Gulf states recognised the Taliban as Afghanistan’s governing authority in the late 1990s, they have all refused to recognise the current regime. Simultaneously, Pakistan has moved to deport hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have found refuge on its territory back across the border, even though they might be vulnerable to repression by the Taliban government. Islamabad has justified the policy by making the case that numerous militant groups hammering Pakistan with attacks – prime among them the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban – have been sheltering among the refugee population.
A report from the United Nations Security Council in July stated that present-day Afghanistan is a haven for militant groups – including the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), with a network of almost 6000 fighters, and the TTP, with close to 6500 fighters. The report noted that the TTP’s growing cooperation with groups like al-Qaeda, which has a presence across several Afghan provinces, could turn the former into an “extraregional threat”. The report also stated that the IS-K was gradually infiltrating the TTP and other groups, a strategy that helped it camouflage its presence and could change the TTP into a much bigger and more deadly threat than it is currently.
The TTP, founded in 2007 within Pakistan to support the Taliban in Afghanistan, continues to have strong ties with the current Taliban regime. In the past, it was a shared Deobandi ideology of resisting dominion by outsiders that kept the two groups close. Now, the core reason for cooperation is the Taliban’s imperative to prevent the TTP from establishing too deep an alliance with the IS-K, according to the Security Council report. The IS-K, which espouses a different sectarian ideology that aims to establish an Islamic Caliphate, views the Taliban regime as un-Islamic. If Kabul were to act against the TTP, it could create an incentive for the TTP to find new allies – and an alliance between the TTP and the IS-K could create a formidable enemy for Kabul.
Kabul’s precarious standing is further undermined by Afghanistan’s economic problems. A World Bank report recently noted a massive 26-percent decrease in the country’s gross output over the last two years. According to the report, “the absence of GDP growth coupled with declining external financing avenues for off-budget expenditures paints a bleak picture of the nation’s economic prospects. Structural deficiencies in the private sector and waning international support for essential services are anticipated to impede any semblance of economic progress … This economic stagnation is poised to deepen poverty and unemployment, with job opportunities expected to fall, exacerbating food insecurity and widening social fissures.”
The Taliban is leading a country whose very foundations are quaking, crippling its ability to impose a decisive break with allied militant groups that have turned detrimental to its interests. Afghanistan’s worsening economic situation means the government does not have enough resources to take decisive military action against these groups. The world, including Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours, cannot afford to wait for the situation to worsen.
Of course legitimate concerns remain about the Taliban regime being too repressive to allow for meaningful cooperation between Kabul and the rest of the world. Yet it is increasingly apparent that there is no alternative to working with the Taliban as the de-facto authority in the country. The Taliban has managed to stabilise Afghanistan – even though this has included careful management of ties with terror groups, tolerating their existence and not taking strong military action against them. Further deterioration of the Taliban’s strength and control could lead to a civil war where other terror groups come to control large parts of the country – in effect replacing repressive and violent Taliban rule with something that would likely be even more repressive and violent. Politically, there is no organised opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan, so the option of pursuing democratic change is simply not available. If ignoring the regime so far has allowed groups like the TTP and the IS-K to grow, could cooperating with the Taliban regime, under certain conditions, produce a different outcome?
Conditional international cooperation, ending the regime’s isolation and strengthening it politically and economically, can create concrete incentives for the Taliban to make a decisive break with terror groups. Even limited integration with the world could help reduce the Taliban’s dependence on maintaining “good” ties with militant groups to ensure its political survival. Financial incentives – that is, unfreezing Afghanistan’s assets in the United States and providing additional aid and investment – could avoid a looming economic and social disaster, allowing the Taliban to focus more on security issues. A much riskier and understandably controversial option to also explore is providing military aid to help the Taliban outgun other rival groups, which are reported to have access to weapons left behind by US and NATO forces in 2021. The danger here is that, instead of eliminating all terror groups, the Taliban could use this support to buttress their position within Afghanistan by forcing these groups to submit to their authority. Such a course of action will not eliminate extremism per se. Strengthening the Taliban could also perpetuate their rule without electoral legitimacy, allowing them to become even more suppressive.
The way forward could be a strategic pact whereby other countries provide economic and possibly military support on the condition that the Taliban take appropriate action against terror groups. Formal recognition could then be made dependent on the successful elimination of militant groups from Afghan soil. Other conditions such as allowing girls to access education could also be part of the package. Starting such cooperation would not need prior formal recognition of the regime, and meaningful diplomatic engagement without such recognition could be sufficient at this stage to produce the desired results. The crucial thing is to establish strict compliance mechanisms, without which the concerns about financial and potential military aid unwittingly strengthening terror groups remain.
To this end, there would have to be a multi-national diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, tied to both the government and local civil society – including the media and political groups – that could monitor progress in combating terror groups. This should be in addition to the existing monitoring by the UN Security Council.
Will the Taliban government accept any such proposals? While it might resent the idea of outsiders dictating terms, it might also be desperate to bolster its strength – and to ensure that no other force in the country receives economic and military aid at its expense, which is a real possibility if foreign powers decide that the only way to pursue their interests in Afghanistan is via non-Taliban groups. If the world can craft a deal that would help it eliminate actual and potential rivals among terror groups, and to bring economic improvement for the country, the Taliban will have every reason to listen.