As the Taliban cement their total victory in Afghanistan, the message coming out from their leaders is one of conciliation and moderation. On Sunday, one of their top leaders, Sher Mohammed Stanikzai, confirmed the Taliban’s commitment of not allowing their territory to be used against any country in the world. Specifically, he said they would not allow India and Pakistan to play out their rivalry in Afghanistan.
Indeed, Taliban leaders Zabiullah Mujahid, Suhail Shaheen and Stanikzai have spoken of their expectations that India will continue to maintain its ‘cultural, economic and trade ties’ with the new Emirate of Afghanistan and retain its invaluable ‘air freight corridor’ with it.
But these are still early days. The Taliban may have taken over power in Afghanistan, but now they are figuring out how to run it. The Taliban are warriors and have zero administrative experience, leave alone a cadre that can manage a city of the size of Kabul. The cities they ran in their brief reign between 1996-2001 lacked running water, electricity, telephones, and existence there was basic. But in the last 20 years, there has been a sea change, with cities having modern facilities, ranging from cafés to schools, malls and gyms.
The big question before any putative Taliban administration is: Who will pay for the import of food, oil, salaries of government personnel, and the running of even a rudimentary administration? Hence, the rational calculation would be for them to moderate their extreme views and get assistance from abroad. The economy of their closest friend and mentor, Pakistan is down in the dumps and so are those of Russia and Iran. That leaves the US and its European allies and maybe the Gulf states.
The US and the Europeans are unlikely to unbelt aid to an unreconstructed Taliban. The issue is not the Sharia or democracy, considering that Saudi Arabia and Israel are close American allies. But they would be affected by the optics of a Taliban chopping off hands or banning women’s education.
Trying to understand how things could unfold is not easy. This new Taliban is a decentralised outfit which has expanded beyond its original tribal remit, hence its success in the northern part of the country dominated by the Uzbek and Tajik ethnicities. No one is clear as to their power structure, yes, there is a supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the emir-ul-momineen, and a shura in Quetta, there are also figures like Abdul Ghani Baradar and Stanikzai who seem to be their ‘secular’ leaders, as well as people like Khalil and Sirajuddin Haqqani who have uncomfortably close links to Pakistan. There are other centres of power that are not quite visible — the Mashhad shura comprising Taliban leaders sheltering in Iran.
The Taliban may have prevailed over the Americans and Europeans, but there remains a dangerous and volatile mix of Islamist radicals and other forces that have significant roots in Afghanistan. Among these are the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K), Al- Qaeda and the Panjshiris. They are concentrated in the north-eastern part of the country where the Afghan-Pakistani cadre of the ISIS-K has about 2,000 fighters. The Panjishiris say they also have thousands of fighters. This is also an area close to Xinjiang and will generate concern in Beijing.
All estimates place the armed component of the Taliban at around 60-70,000, which is simply not enough to hold the country by force and take on their domestic opposition. In other words, the outfit needs to have some form of legitimacy. Just how they will manage—through western style elections, or some kind of a Loya Jirga — remains to be seen. The ISIS-K bomb attack in Kabul was aimed as much at the US as the Taliban, to show that the latter are not capable of controlling the country.
In recent weeks, we have seen distinct signs of accommodation between the Taliban and the US. Though insistent on the August 31 deadline, the Taliban have cooperated with the American evacuation and reportedly also sought to prevent last Thursday’s ISIS-K bomb attack. They have criticised the American action and condemned the Americans for not informing them before ordering the strike.
The primary concern of Afghanistan’s interlocutors — the US, Europe, China, India, Central Asian Republics, Russia, Iran and even Pakistan — is that the country stabilises at the earliest.
In all this, where should India stand? In the UPA period, India committed significant sums of money as part of the project of building modern Afghanistan. But today, the Indian economy is faltering and New Delhi desperately needs all it has for meeting the Chinese geopolitical challenges closer home, in our immediate neighbourhood.
However, it is in our interest to help the emergence of a stable Taliban regime. They have never sought to export their medieval version of Islam; their fault was in allowing others to use their territory to train terrorists. If they are committed to prevent this, the world would be ready to do business with them.
India may not be able to fund projects in Afghanistan, but it could, and should, promote trade which currently stands at around $1.5 billion. This will be a more sustainable way of helping the country. Though Chabahar is there, more could be gained if Islamabad removed its blockade of overland Indian exports to the country. Maybe the new Taliban government can prove to be more persuasive in this area than the earlier government was.
The Tribune 31 August 2021
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/talibans-charm-offensive-304306
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