Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front, aims to defeat the Taliban.
Afghanistan's neighbors want to avoid civil war and its economic consequences.
Afghanistan and Central Asian nations are collaborating on trade, infrastructure, and water management projects, but regional tensions are rising due to Afghanistan's controversial water diversion projects.
Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, recently declared he will defeat the Taliban “no matter the odds.”
For Massoud to mount a military threat to the Taliban, he would need the cooperation of the Central Asian republics, Iran or Pakistan (among others) to do the job. However, Afghanistan’s neighbors have no interest in another civil war in Afghanistan, as the violence and refugees would spill over their borders and cause economic dislocation and unrest all the way to Europe.
After two decades of U.S.-sponsored mayhem in the Hindu Kush, all the region wants is to recoup the missed opportunities of the “lost decades” of 2001-2021.
None of Afghanistan’s neighbors prefer the Taliban to any other group, and they object to the regime’s unrepresentative government and policies toward women. That said, their leaders must solve today’s problems despite their distaste for the Taliban’s retrograde ways.
The republics’ approach to Kabul has long been “neighbors forever” — or, for the pessimists, “captives of geography.” Kazakhstan removed the Taliban from its terrorist list in December 2023; Uzbekistan never declared the Taliban an extremist group, and in 2018 it publicly encouraged the Taliban to start negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Turkmenistan was mum on the topic of the Taliban in line with its policy of?permanent neutrality. In September 2024, the chief of Tajikistan’s security service visited Kabul for talks that were described as “productive,” and the same month the Kyrgyz Republic removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations.
Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors are collaborating to ease trade and transport; renovate Afghanistan’s roads and railroads; help Afghanistan improve irrigation projects; ship natural gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India; build a railroad from Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s seaports; and build a multi-modal transport corridor from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, terminating in the United Arab Emirates.
Economic growth depends on an adequate supply of water; Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains form the headwaters of the region’s basins.
In March 2022, the Taliban launched construction of the 285-km Qosh Tepa canal, which will divert 10 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Amu Darya River, relied on by water-starved Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. They will suffer a 15 percent cut in the current supply. The project will cost $684 million, but it will irrigate 2100 square miles and create 250,000 jobs. Kabul feels it is critical to ensure food security for the emirate.
Tashkent and Ashgabat are unhappy with the project, but the Uzbeks offered technical assistance to Afghanistan to ensure the construction is “in accordance with international norms.” Now is a good time to consider inviting Afghanistan to join Central Asia’s regional water management organization, the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia.
Afghanistan also has unresolved water issues with Iran and Pakistan; those projects would be endangered, or further delayed, by a civil war.
According to the United Nations, there are now 7.6 million Afghans in Iran and Pakistan, most of them refugees. In 2023, Pakistan expelled over 540,000 Afghan refugees, and the next phase of the plan may see 800,000 more Afghans deported. Increased violence will likely reverse these flows and burden Iran and Pakistan, who cannot afford to support the refugees they have now.
China recently warned Pakistan it must get control of the violence that is endangering the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor . More violence north of the Durand Line will further delay the corridor, which may be seen as a strategic “win” in Washington but will hurt Central and South Asia.
In April 2022, the Taliban banned poppy cultivation and methamphetamine production. This benefits Iran, which has the highest rate of opium abusers in the world, according to the World Health Organization. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “More than 3,700 national law enforcement officials have been killed and over 12,000 have been maimed in counter-narcotics operations over the last three decades.”
That’s good news, but if Afghanistan must fund a war against groups like the National Resistance Front (and its foreign confederates), the ban on drugs may go by the wayside.
In fact, if the Taliban suspect a foreign hand in an attack, will it encourage al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to strike foreign targets? Sure, that will violate the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, where the Taliban agreed “Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies,” but the Taliban will note the Americans pledged, “The United States and its allies will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”
Is the Taliban isolated? No, Seventeen countries, including every country that borders Afghanistan plus the European Union, maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul. Aaron Zelin reports “between August 2021 and February 22, 2024 the Taliban has publicly announced 1,382 diplomatic meetings with at least eighty countries.” China and the United Arab Emirates have accepted the credentials from Taliban ambassador to their capitals.
Pragmatism may be winning, regardless what governments or their citizens think of Taliban policies.
After Shohna ba Shohna (Shoulder to Shoulder) proved weak, it is time for the locals to lead, though Washington and Brussels can help by facilitating diplomatic and economic support of beneficial projects. The Americans, in particular, will need a broad aperture to understand the needs and opportunities of the region instead of obsessing about what might have been.
The defeat of the U.S. and NATO may have seen the end of the era of empires in Central Asia and Afghanistan, after the Russian Empire (1713-1917), the British interventions (1839-1919), the Soviet empire (1917-1991), and the American empire (2001-2021).
Some questionable characters will make a few bucks along the way, but that’s the price of repairing the damage caused by the crusade to reform Afghan culture as part of Washington’s post 9/11 war on terror, the “first grand global experiment of the twenty first century.”
