Recently, Russia announced that it was taking the Taliban off the list of proscribed terrorist organisations. Speaking to journalists in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, Russia’s top diplomat reasoned that “Kazakhstan had recently taken a similar decision, something that we also intend to take, which is removing (the Taliban) from the list of terrorist organisations.”
Lavrov also pointed out that the UN Security Council had never announced the Taliban to be a terrorist organisation; only a few of its members, i.e., around 12-15 names from the Taliban were on the list of terrorists.
Russia's decision has been a long time coming. Earlier, Zamir Kabulov, the special envoy of the Russian President for Afghanistan and Director of the Asian Second Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, had said that the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice had completed working out the modalities of revoking the Taliban's status of a terrorist organisation, and the proposal had been forwarded to the Kremlin.
The final decision would be taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin but that is more of a formality.
Since the time of the Ashraf Ghani government, as the countdown began for the withdrawal of US troops, Russia has been batting for the Taliban. Strategists then explained that their analysis was based on the imminent collapse of the Ghani government and that the Taliban was the only group capable of effectively countering the increasing footprint of the ISIS-KP in Afghanistan.
There had, in fact, been many allegations and counter-allegations by the US and Russia of arming and supporting the Taliban and the ISIS-KP respectively. Apart from ISIS and terrorism, another fear was the narcotics trade which had earlier wreaked havoc in Central Asia and Russia.
Security for Business and Trade in Central Asia
Russia's prognosis was vindicated when the Ghani government collapsed, and he himself fled the country with loads of cash, and the Taliban almost waltzed into Kabul without encountering any challenge in August 2021.
Since then, of course, Russia has cultivated close ties with the Taliban through the Moscow Format talks, a round of which was recently convened in Tehran, Iran. While other embassies, India's included, had shut down and evacuated their staff in anticipation, the Russian embassy continued to function in Afghanistan, with officials even congratulating the Taliban.
Russia, however, was not alone in this. The Central Asian countries, especially Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (direct neighbours of Afghanistan), had simultaneously been engaging with the Taliban before they took over Kabul. Turkmenistan even sold energy to Taliban-held border regions of Afghanistan while the Ghani government held sway.
In fact, Lavrov's announcement in Tashkent was quite symbolic. It was in Uzbekistan that the first intra-Afghan dialogue with the Taliban was held in 2018 when the international community came to accept that the Taliban was a stakeholder in Afghanistan's peace process.
Zamir Kabulov, soon after Lavrov's announcement, further explained at a media briefing the drivers of Russia's decision. If the original reason for supporting the Taliban was to foil the ISIS menace, then it still stands. The gory terror bombings at the Crocus Theatre in Moscow in March this year pointed to the clear threat ISIS constituted.
While this was the most horrific attack to date, there have been tell-tale signs earlier too. In 2022, the Russian authorities arrested a man of Central Asian origins who swore allegiance to ISIS and was planning to carry out terror activities in India. Earlier this year, Iran was struck by a suicide bomber from Central Asia, at a gathering to honour the memory of its top slain general Qasem Soleimani. That attack was claimed by ISIS.
ISIS is not just a threat to Russia or Afghanistan, the entire Central Asian region is threatened by it. Russia, while continuing to wage war against ISIS in Syria, can't neglect the fact that Russian-speaking fighters constituted the third-largest force of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq.
The decimation of the group in Iraq has heightened the danger in Central and South Asia as the residual recruits have flocked to Afghanistan. This is the main reason that the Central Asian countries, except for Tajikistan, have been quick to establish contacts and ties with the Taliban.
If the Taliban could effectively deal with ISIS and other terror groups on its territory, then it would not only ensure security for the region but also security for business and trade opportunities that Afghanistan opens up for Central Asia. Engaging with the Taliban would ensure some security for these countries.
Apart from Afghanistan's coveted minerals, which China has already begun mining, its location in the heart of Asia makes it strategic as all major trade routes to and from Central Asia to South Asia would have to pass through Afghan territory. This is why Kazakhstan removed the ban on the Taliban from its list of proscribed organisations, though, of course, it has been informally dealing with it since its advent into Kabul.
For Russia, under unprecedented Western sanctions due to the war in Ukraine, alternative markets and trade routes have acquired heightened urgency. Much before the Ukraine war, Russia had been investing in and developing the International North-South Trade Corridor for speed and cost-effectiveness of moving freight from its territory to South Asia. Afghanistan, connecting Central and South Asia, is ideally placed to serve as a regional trade and transit hub.
In fact, the Taliban has recently entered into an agreement with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to build a logistics hub in western Afghanistan for regional exports. A major export commodity is Russian oil, which both Afghanistan and Pakistan have also been buying.
And even more recently, the Taliban were feted guests at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, often billed as the "Russian Davos".
Even Uzbekistan has long been mulling a similar decision to establish official ties with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Integrating the country into the regional economy would also advance President Vladimir Putin's concept of a "Greater Eurasia Partnership". The only country in the region still refusing to speak to the Taliban is Tajikistan.
What Does All of This Imply for India?
Though it took India longer than the others, it too now understands that the Taliban is here to stay and has begun its own outreach to the group. India has dispatched humanitarian aid to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.
In 2022, India reopened its embassy in Kabul, with a "technical team" operating there. Quietly, a couple of Taliban officials have also taken up residence in the Afghan diplomatic complex, as per reports in the Afghan media.
The Taliban, in turn, has also been making overtures to India, and has, on a number of occasions, stated that it would not allow its territory to be used against India. A regional consensus is building up, and slowly but surely, an official recognition of the Taliban is becoming imminent.
(Aditi Bhaduri is a journalist and political analyst. She tweets @aditijan. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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