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(Hassan Al-Rushdie)
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December 24, 1445
June 30, 2024 AD
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Why did Russia change its position on the Taliban as a movement on the terrorist list and recognize it as the de facto authority in Afghanistan? Is it a change in the nature of the movement, or a change in the nature of geopolitics and existing politics? The conflict forced Russia to take such a step?
A few days ago, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in a surprising press statement that Russia will remove the Taliban from the Russian list of terrorist organizations.
Russian News Agency reported Russian Lavrov said: Kazakhstan recently made a decision, which we will also take, to remove the Taliban from the Russian list of terrorist organizations.
Lavrov, continuing a speech he made during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, defended the decision, saying: They (referring to the Taliban) represent the actual power in Afghanistan.
Can this new position be considered a development at this level? relation Russian Afghanistan?
Since the Taliban recently returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Russia’s position has been one of passivity, while after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and especially since the US left the Taliban to expand its control across the country, Russia’s position has been one of caution and anticipation.
But recently, after the movement’s name was removed from the list of terrorist organizations, questions have arisen about the secrecy of Russia’s sudden development and the timing of its occurrence, three years after the Taliban returned to power?
How can we understand this change in Russia’s position? To answer this question, we must first trace the history of Russia-Taliban relations, then examine how much the nature of the political system led by the Taliban has changed, and finally examine the development of international conflicts and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In March 2022, Russia allowed the appointment of the first diplomat to represent the Taliban government. In June of the same year, the movement sent a delegation to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The Taliban and Russia… From distrust to open doors
Afghanistan is politically and geographically classified as a landlocked country, which means it has no sea access and is surrounded by land on all sides.
Abdul Rahman Shalgam, Libyan Foreign Minister and former UN ambassador, believes that the fate of Afghanistan is closely linked to the fate of the empires that entered Afghanistan by force and the calculations determined by the conflict between the great powers.
Shalgam went on to explain: However, geography makes the landlocked country a door that opens with the force of the next occupier’s weapons, closes with the force of jihad ignited by the power of Islam, and closes with the force brought by the rulers. If they are destined to escape the fate of being killed, the occupiers will flee.
Now the major powers have concluded that they cannot occupy the country and must contain it by other means.
Russia is one of the major powers that shares these beliefs.
Russia sees Afghanistan as an extension of its vision for Central Asia, which it considers its backyard, especially since the largest part of Central Asia was once part of Russian geography during the rise of the Soviet Union.
Given the importance of Central Asia, Russia seeks to build and strengthen regional alliances, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other multilateral security, political, and economic arrangements. Russia also seeks to strengthen bilateral security relations to prevent threats from Afghanistan from reaching its strategic depth and penetrating to its borders, and to limit U.S. influence in Central Asia.
The Taliban, in particular, did not participate as an organization in the anti-Soviet jihad that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as the movement was only formed in the mid-1990s, about five or six years after the Soviet withdrawal from the country.
But individuals within the movement, many Taliban leaders fought in that war, and there are even reports that the movement’s founder, Mullah Omar, lost an eye in that war.
When the Taliban movement was first established, two factors influenced… relation Russian With the Taliban:
The first factor is the policy shift Russian After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it succumbed to the West, which viewed Islamic groups as its main enemy.
As for the second factor, the outbreak of the Chechen war in Russia was a demand for independence, and many Islamic groups flocked to Chechen jihad. True, the Taliban was not yet established at the beginning of the war, or it was in the establishment stage when the Chechen war was still going on, but the Russian regime was classified, and all Islamic groups at that time were considered terrorists, and he considered himself to be at war with them.
In 2003, Russia’s Supreme Court decided to ban the Taliban movement.
It is worth noting that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan occurred months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an invasion that the US forced Russia to conduct, exhausting it and hinting at its joining the Western fleet.
In 2021, the Taliban movement returned to power in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, and both Russia and China, as competing powers to the United States, tried to fill the vacuum in the region with important geopolitics.
China has adopted a policy of filling this vacuum using Afghanistan’s economic mechanisms, development programs, and infrastructure investments, while Russia has sought to fill this vacuum by strengthening its presence and influence through political mechanisms and security pathways.
Russia justified this position in a statement to security chiefs Russian Alexander Bortnikov estimates that the Taliban will be able to rearrange its internal affairs if external forces do not prevent it.
Therefore, Russia implemented an open-door strategy with the movement, and Russia began to continue the work of its embassy in Kabul as usual, while Russia allowed the appointment of the first diplomat representing the Taliban government in March 2022. In the same year, the movement sent a delegation to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and this year the movement was also invited to participate in the same forum held from June 5 to 8.
The New Taliban!
Have the Taliban changed? Are the Taliban that have returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 the same Taliban that were there in 2001, during the September 11 attacks, and during the collapse of the US occupation?
There are two tendencies among those who follow Afghan affairs: one group believes that the ideology and policies of the Taliban movement have not changed, and the other group believes that the Taliban has actually changed due to the change of leadership. Twenty years will inevitably infect thoughts, actions and strategies with maturity, knowledge and experience.
In the new version of the Taliban, the movement does not seem to have given up its Islamic state. It may have transcended the naming issue and not called it an “emirate”, but it has not given up its dream or strategic goal, which is to establish the core of an Islamic state. The stated goal is still to be within Afghanistan and not beyond its borders, and this state will not pose a threat to any other country.
In fact, after the Taliban entered Kabul after the US withdrawal three years ago, there were two paths for the Taliban to form a new regime:
The first: extensive discussions within the Taliban, with its members and affiliated groups, and consultations with scholars and jurists to ensure that its vision does not violate Islamic law and that the mass bloc accepts its choice and ensures cohesion and unity of the movement.
As for the second way, it is to use political and social forces to incorporate the largest group of people into the system formed after the Taliban.
Overall, the movement has become more open in its legal options or political engagements, whether with local forces within Afghanistan or with regional and international powers.
Afghanistan and Distraction
Croatian geopolitical news bulletin confirms the fact that the US presence in Afghanistan is creating stability in the region, which is beneficial to Russia and China. The war that the US is waging in Afghanistan is not their war, and the focus now is on chaos. Instability has shifted to Central Asia, to the borders of Russia and China.
It is noteworthy that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan took place a few months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the United States forced Russia to carry out with the aim of exhausting its forces and implicating it in joining and uniting with Western fleets. According to the American vision, the greatest threat to the West is China.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan achieved two U.S. goals at the geopolitical level:
One is that the US government is focusing on the most important issue and trying to suppress Russia in the Sino-Russian conflict; the other is that Russia is bent on creating new hotbeds of tension in its Central Asian backyard, which has always been a headache for Russia since the 1970s, namely Afghanistan.
Therefore, Russia seeks to remove the US card of trying to accommodate the Taliban regime, which will not only not pose a threat to Russia, but at least maintain neutrality.
Russia has adopted a gradual, slow strategy in dealing with the Taliban to test whether there is real change since the Taliban leadership announced that it would not interfere in the affairs of its neighbors and had stopped dealing with the Islamist movement. A global orientation like al-Qaeda?
This allows you to set the step length Russian The latter removed the Taliban from its terrorist list Russian In this context.
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