CABAR.asia experts believe that the current Taliban in Kabul differ from the previous ones only in their rhetoric and the scale of repressive measures. However, terror and intimidation are still the main approaches in their policy.
* The Islamist movement of the Taliban is banned in most Central Asian countries and is recognized as a terrorist movement.
Despite claims of being at peace with their neighbors, the Taliban, a movement banned in Tajikistan, has already managed to engage in armed clashes with the border guards of Iran and Turkmenistan. In recent days, threats have been heard from Kabul against Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The Taliban movement was founded in 1994 in Pakistan by Afghans who left the country during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war. The goal of the movement is to establish a state based on Sharia law in Afghanistan. From 1996 to 2001 the Taliban was the de facto ruling authority in Afghanistan.
In 2003 the Taliban was recognized as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council. Despite this UN Security Council decision, three states – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the first Taliban government.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on October 7, the U.S. began a military operation against the Taliban regime. Already by the end of the year the Taliban had abandoned major cities and started a guerrilla war.
The new authorities in Kabul, together with their NATO allies, failed to defeat the Taliban completely. The war was fought with shifting success. Neither was it possible to resolve the conflict through negotiations.
April 14, 2021 – U.S. President Joe Biden announced the start of a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan beginning May 1, 2021. The administration of President Ashraf Ghani left without foreign support, could not organize effective resistance against the Taliban. Already on August 15, the Taliban occupied Kabul and on September 7 they announced the establishment of the government.
The new Taliban government in Afghanistan has been refused official recognition by every country in the world, including Pakistan.
On December 2, 2021, a special UN committee decided that Afghanistan’s seat in the UN General Assembly should not yet be given to the new Afghan government.
Representatives of the Taliban called such a decision unfair.
Of the Central Asian countries, the Taliban is recognized as a terrorist organization in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In Uzbekistan, the movement is not recognized as a terrorist organization and is not banned. In June 2021, Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov stated that he does not personally consider the Taliban as terrorists.
Neighboring Turkmenistan has also never banned the Taliban and, even under the first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, offered parties to the Afghan conflict a solution through negotiations.
The Turkmen leadership welcomed the change in power in Afghanistan by conducting a meeting with the Taliban in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif three days after the capture of Kabul.
The Taliban also met with Kazakh and Kyrgyz officials. Representatives of the Taliban even made an official visit to Tashkent.
Tajikistan is the only country in the region that refuses to have contact with the Taliban and demands an inclusive government that includes representatives of all ethnic communities in the country. However, Tajik authorities are extraditing Afghan refugees to the Taliban, including members of the previous administration.
The Pakistani government openly supports the Taliban. Prime Minister Imran Khan spoke positively about the recent government takeover in Kabul, calling it “the liberation of Afghanistan” and calling on the international community to be more lenient toward the Taliban.
On December 12, 2021, however, the Taliban criticized Pakistan, saying that the “state system” in that country “is not Islamic, and Islam does not matter to Pakistani officials.”
Another longtime Taliban partner, Qatar, is now acting as an intermediary for the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan.
Russia has joined the ranks of countries that support the Taliban. President Vladimir Putin said in late October 2021 that Moscow would seek to remove the movement from the list of banned terrorist organizations.
Also lobbying for the Taliban are the Chinese and Uzbek authorities, who call on the U.S. to lift sanctions on Afghanistan and unfreeze the country’s assets in international banks.
The new government assured that they will not prohibit women from getting an education and working and from leaving the house unaccompanied by men. But then there were reports that the Taliban were in no hurry to comply with their promises, a fact that the international community also noted.
Women in Afghanistan are now banned from sports and sporting events and are in fact prohibited from government positions.
Immediately after the seizure of power, the Taliban promised an amnesty for government officials in order to reopen government institutions. However, according to human rights organizations, the massacres of former security personnel continue in Afghanistan.
The Taliban continues to carry out extrajudicial killings of the Hazaras and ethnic Tajiks in the Panjsher province.
The Taliban also uses forms of collective punishment by forcibly evicting Hazara Shiites and Afghans formerly associated with the fallen government from their homes.
With the Taliban in power, the country has not solved its security problems. They can’t suppress the activities of more radical terrorist groups. According to the UN, the Wilayat Khorasan (ISIS-Khorasan), an affiliate of the terrorist organization Islamic State (banned in Central Asia) in Afghanistan, has carried out 334 attacks in 2021 (60 in 2020) and is now present in almost all 34 provinces of the country.
Also, contrary to previous promises to live in peace with their neighbors, the Taliban has already clashed with Iranian and Turkmen border guards. Recently, the Taliban have made threats against Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, demanding the release of helicopters and planes that have been taken to those countries.
This publication was produced as part of the mentorship programme under the Development of New Media and Digital Journalism in Central Asia project delivered by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) with support from the UK Government. It does not necessarily reflect the official views of IWPR or the UK Government.