Afghanistan’s neighbours are preparing for life with the Taliban
Regional powers are not looking forward to it. But they cannot agree on what to do about it
Two decades after Western forces helped sweep the Taliban from power, and four months after President Joe Biden announced his intention to end America’s permanent military presence in Afghanistan, the government in Kabul is losing control. Having captured swathes of the countryside since the spring, the Taliban have in the past week overrun ten of the country’s 34 provincial capitals. Significantly, most are in the north (see map), a region historically hostile to the insurgents. With government forces surrendering en masse and the army chief sacked, the group’s fighters have seized weapons and lucrative border crossings. Afghanistan’s four biggest cities, including Kabul, the capital, are now swamped with refugees and effectively under siege. American intelligence officials hint it may be only weeks before they fall.
For much of the past 20 years of simmering internal conflict and nato military involvement, Afghanistan’s neighbours either shunned the country or meddled in pursuit of their own interests. Some encouraged Afghan proxies as a way to score points against each other. Others found Afghanistan a convenient place to kick sand in America’s face. But now, as the spectre looms of either a full takeover by a radical Islamist group with a well-earned reputation for nastiness, or a descent into all-out civil war, it is dawning upon regional players that they may have to step in.
“All of Afghanistan’s neighbours have already, in a soft manner, accepted that there will be a Taliban takeover,” says Umer Karim of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London. The trouble is that while few in the region relish having the Taliban move in next door, they cannot agree what to do about it. Instead, each of the neighbours is gingerly positioning for its own advantage.
A long, remote finger of Afghanistan, the Wakhan Corridor, abuts China. Asia’s rising superpower has largely kept aloof from its unruliest neighbour, contenting itself with moralising about the failings of Western intervention. As a close ally of Pakistan, however, Beijing has drawn warily closer to the Taliban, hosting a senior delegation from the group in July with the pomp afforded to visiting foreign ministers. Its main concern is that Afghanistan should not become a rear base for ethnic Uyghur separatists.
With a diplomatic savvy that belies their supposed commitment to a shared Muslim faith, the Taliban did indeed promise that their territory would not be used “against the security of any country”. The Chinese, however, will be aware of reports that Uyghurs count among thousands of foreign jihadists active in Afghanistan, mostly enlisted in Taliban ranks—and also that America was given a similar promise about al Qaeda, shortly before the attacks of September 11th 2001.
Having thrown a million Uyghurs into prison camps, China is probably pretty safe. This cannot be said of Afghanistan’s three smaller Central Asian neighbours, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Islamist radicals from all three former Soviet republics have taken refuge in Afghanistan. With the entire border now in Taliban hands they understandably fear that some militants will infiltrate back. All three countries have embraced closer military ties with Russia. To underscore renewed regional influence and send a warning shot to the Taliban, Russian forces have in the past week undertaken large-scale joint manoeuvres with Tajik and Uzbek troops along their Afghan borders.
Whatever their shared interest in preventing a full-blown catastrophe, Afghanistan’s neighbours have not, so far, proved helpful. At a un Security Council meeting last week, India as chair kept out Pakistan, because Pakistan has in the past lobbied to exclude India from other meetings on Afghanistan. A series of parleys that brought regional players to Doha, the Qatari capital, on August 10th looked only slightly more positive. American negotiators attempted to press the Taliban to slow their offensive, threatening diplomatic isolation if they took over Kabul by force. Accustomed to drone strikes and cluster bombs, the Taliban delegates may have looked around the room and decided that this was a price worth paying.