Taliban ‘conundrum’ is forcing strange bedfellows
After al-qaeda attacked the twin towers in New York 20 years ago, the US, Europe, China, Russia and even Iran rallied around a rare common cause: To topple a Taliban regime in Kabul that had made Afghanistan a base for international terrorism.
Now that unlikely group of geopolitical rivals find their interests aligned once more, only this time to see those same Taliban leaders restore order in a nation of 38 million whose economic collapse could trigger destabilizing humanitarian and refugee crises.
In the weeks since Kabul fell to Taliban fighters on August 16, world leaders one after another have called for international cooperation even as they jockey to gain influence in the great power vacuum that the US departure has left behind.
That’s in large part because they face a common dilemma: How to shore up a nation at risk of famine, without strengthening a Taliban government that includes designated terrorists and whose intentions — from the treatment of foreign citizens and women, to its support for al-qaeda — remain unclear or worse, unpalatable.
French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would do “everything we can to help Russia, the United States and Europe to cooperate effectively, because we share the same interests” in deterring irregular migration and terrorism.
France, together with Germany, is now proposing an European Union-led platform for some of Afghanistan’s neighbours to coordinate a response, according to a document seen by Bloomberg last week. The plan suggests inviting international organisations, as well as countries such as the US, Norway and Turkey to help finance the effort, and to give “special thought’’ to including China and Russia.
“The key priorities are to prevent a humanitarian crisis & to take steps to prevent economic meltdown,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote on Twitter last week, after meeting counterparts from China, Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. That, he added, “requires enhanced engagement of the international community.”
The US and other nations have leverage they can use to try to press the Taliban to share power, sideline terrorists, permit the education of women and forgo revenge against those who worked and fought alongside the US and its allies. That includes the potential withholding diplomatic recognition, as well as economic sanctions.