Russia, SCO, BRICS: The normalization of Afghanistan

The whole Russia-Taliban affair involves a humongous package – encompassing oil, gas, minerals and loads of rail connectivity.

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This past Sunday in Doha, I had a meeting with three high-level representatives of the Taliban Political Office in Qatar, including a founding member of the body (in 2012) and a key official of the previous Taliban government of 1996-2001. By mutual consent, their names should not be made public.

The cordial meeting was brokered by Professor Sultan Barakat, who teaches at the College of Public Policy at Hamad bin Khalifa University – set in an outstanding, immaculate campus outside of Doha which attracts students from across the Global South. Prof. Barakat is one of those very few – discreet – players who knows everything that matters in West Asia, and in his case, also in the intersection of Central and South Asia.

With my three Taliban interlocutors, we talked extensively about the challenges of the new Taliban era, new development projects, the role of Russia-China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). They were particularly curious about Russia, and posed several questions.

Professor Barakat is working on a parallel angle. He is conducting the work of the Afghanistan Future Thought Forum, whose 9th session took place in Oslo in mid-May, and was attended by 28 Afghans – men and women – as well as an array of diplomats of Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, U.S., UK and EU, among others.

The key discussions at the forum revolve around the extremely complex issue of the Taliban engagement with that fuzzy entity, the “international community”. In Doha, I directly asked my three interlocutors what is the Taliban’s number one priority: “The end of sanctions”, they replied.

For that to happen, the UN Security Council must overturn its 2003 decision of designating several members of the Taliban as a terrorist organization; and simultaneously, discrimination/demonization/sanctions by Washington need to go. As it stands, that remains an immensely tall order.

The forum – the next session should be held in Kabul, possibly in the Fall – is patiently working step by step. It’s a matter of successive concessions from both sides, building trust, and for that it’s essential to appoint an UN-recognized mediator, or “adviser for normalization” to supervise the whole process.

In this case, full support by UNSC members Russia and China will be essential.

We’re the Taliban, and we mean business

I left the meeting in Qatar with the impression that positive steps ahead – in terms of the normalization of Afghanistan as a whole – are possible. And then some magical intervention turned the whole game around.

The day after our meeting, before I left Doha for Moscow, both the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice informed President Putin that the Taliban could be excluded from the Russian list of terrorist organizations.

The exceptionally competent Zamir Kabulov, Putin’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, went straight to the point: without the Taliban’s removal from the list, Russia cannot recognize the new administration in Kabul.

And just like clockwork, on the same day Moscow invited the Taliban to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which starts next Wednesday.

Kabulov noted how “traditionally, the Afghans are interested in continuing cooperation on the purchase of petroleum products in Russia and other goods of high demand. Of course, in the future it will be possible to talk about transit capabilities of Afghanistan to expand trade turnover.”

And then Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, also on the same day, in Tashkent during Putin’s official visit, all but clinched the deal, saying that the normalization of the Taliban reflects objective reality: “They are the real power. We are not indifferent to Afghanistan. Our allies, especially in Central Asia, are not indifferent to it either. So this process reflects an awareness of reality.”

Kazakhstan has already manifested its “awareness of reality”: the Taliban was out of Astana’s terror list last year. In Russia, in practice, the Taliban will be excluded from the terror list if the Supreme Court approves it. That may even happen within the next 2 months.

This love affair comes with a huge package

The normalization of Russia-Taliban ties is inevitable for several reasons. The main priority is certainly related to regional security – implying joint efforts to fight the hazy, dark, destabilizing role of ISIS-K, a terror ISIS spin-off that is actively supported, in the shade, by CIA/MI6 as a Divide and Rule tool. FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov is fully aware that a stable Afghanistan means a stable Taliban government.

And that sentiment is fully shared by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a whole. Afghanistan is a SCO observer. Inevitably, it will become a full member within the next two years at most – consolidating its normalization.

Then there’s the connectivity corridor bonanza ahead – which matters as much to Russia as to China. Beijing is building another road engineering marvel across the Wakhan corridor to connect Xinjiang to northeastern Afghanistan. And then the plan is to bring Kabul as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): lightning-speed geoeconomic integration.

Moscow – as well as New Delhi – are eyeing the spin-offs of the multimodal International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), linking Russia, Iran and India. The port of Chabahar in Iran is an essential node for the India Silk Road to connect it to Afghanistan and beyond to Central Asian markets.

Then there’s the still not exploited Afghan mineral wealth, worth at least $1 trillion. Lithium included.

Kabul is also planning to build no less than a Russian hub to export energy to Pakistan – all part of an upcoming Pak-Russian strategic energy deal.

What Putin told Pakistani Prime Minister Shebhaz Sharif on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Samarkand in 2022 is immensely significant: “The objective is to deliver pipeline gas from Russia to Pakistan (…) Some infrastructure is already in place in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.” Afghanistan now enters the picture.

As connectivity corridors go, there’s a new, huge kid on the block – according to a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Tashkent in November 2023 on the sidelines of the SCO International Transport Forum: that’s the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan transport corridor.

The missing piece in this fascinating puzzle is to connect what is already on – railways spanning Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan – with a brand new Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan railway. The last two sections of this Pak-Afghan-Uz project began construction only a few months ago.

It was exactly this project that was featured in the joint statement issued by Putin and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev earlier this week in Tashkent.

As TASS reported, “Putin and Mirziyoyev rated positively the first meeting of the working group on development of the multimodal transport corridor Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan that took place on April 23, 2024 in the Uzbek city of Termez.”

So the whole Russia-Taliban affair involves a humongous package – encompassing oil, gas, minerals and loads of rail connectivity.

There’s no doubt a lot of juicy extra details will emerge at the upcoming St. Petersburg forum – as a Taliban delegation including their Labor Minister and the head of the Chamber for Commerce and Industry will be there.

And there’s more: Afghanistan under Taliban 2.0 is bound to be invited to the upcoming BRICS+ summit next October in Kazan. Talk about a mega strategic convergence. The UNSC better hurry up to normalize Afghanistan for the “international community”. Oh, wait: who cares, when Russia-China, the SCO and BRICS are already doing it.

Original article: Russia, SCO, BRICS: The normalization of Afghanistan — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.su)