U.N. must not honor Taliban’s leadership
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, President Joe Biden issued a necessary call for international cooperation against climate change and pandemics, coupled with a welcome promise of full U.S. engagement.
Turning the page on the war in Afghanistan, which culminated last month in Taliban victory and a bloody U.S-led evacuation from Kabul, he added: “We’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy.”
As Biden spoke, the representative of the deposed U.S.-backed Afghan republic sat listening, haunting the U.N. chamber like Banquo’s ghost. He personifies a crucial piece of unfinished political and diplomatic business of the 20-year conflict — whether and when the U.S. should recognize the new Taliban regime. Biden must move carefully on this matter, driving the hardest possible bargain with the Taliban, lest U.S. interests — and the people of Afghanistan — suffer.
The Taliban sought to precipitate the matter this week by requesting that the United Nations allow its spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, to address the body. This implies a contest for Afghanistan’s seat with the incumbent representative, Ghulam Isaczai, who is scheduled to address the body next Monday. The Taliban’s move is unlikely to be favored by the U.N. Credentials Committee, which includes the U.S., and which will not formally meet until later this fall. The request does, however, signal Taliban intent to upgrade its international status now that it has apparently crushed the last vestiges of armed resistance and nominated a de facto government.
The State Department demurred, which is the right approach, since the Taliban has hardly met conditions for greater international recognition, much less the release of billions of dollars in assets, property of the former republic, that the U.S. has frozen. The Taliban’s promised “inclusive” government consists of hard-line Pashtun men, including several still subject to U.N. sanctions, and a terrorist wanted by the U.S., Sirajuddin Haqqani. There was no room in it for any women, though the Taliban did add a token member of the country’s Shiite minority on Tuesday.
One way to assemble an inclusive government, of course, would be through free and fair elections, internationally supervised, but the Taliban has already declared its opposition to democracy. It has also imposed restrictions on the education of girls, including a de facto ban on their attendance in school beyond sixth grade.
The facts on the ground admittedly favor the Taliban: With or without the consent of the people, the Taliban dominates all Afghan territory. That means that the world, including the United States, will have to deal with the Taliban at some point. Yet no country has recognized the Taliban’s purported Islamic Emirate, in part because even nations less concerned than the U.S. about human rights in Afghanistan, such as Russia and China — even Pakistan, the Taliban’s erstwhile sponsors — don’t yet trust the Taliban to deny terrorists a haven. This is an interest they have in common with Washington and, as such, a rare basis for cooperation.
Meanwhile, the United States has been able to work through Qatar for its essential purposes, such as the evacuation of the last few U.S. citizens left behind. U.S. diplomacy must be relentless but also patient if the Biden administration is to hold the Taliban to international standards of governance — and its own promises.