At the last SCO summit in Dushanbe, President Xi Jinping, for the first time and very emphatically, began to talk about inclusiveness in relation to the prospects of the government in Kabul, formed by the Taliban *. It seems that before that all Chinese representatives preferred to talk about a "fair" and "stable" government, falling into some dissonance with the statements of Russian or Iranian speakers, with the positions of a fairly wide range of countries. It seems to be not such a significant nuance, but nevertheless.
The desire of the PRC leadership, with the participation of Islamabad, to create a strong government in Afghanistan capable of quickly and by any means stabilizing the situation in the country, would not ensure the desired stability, even in the medium term. The country is too fragmented, centrifugal tendencies are burdened by various and multilevel contradictions, the history of each of which goes back more than one decade.
In the context of everything that is happening in Afghanistan, the separatist tendency is clearly gaining strength and, without a doubt, its carriers will be primarily Afghan Tajiks. “They [the Taliban] left us no options other than dividing the country,” says Bismillah Mohammadi, former and. O. Minister of Defense under the administration of Ashraf Ghani, by the way, de facto surrendered the country and Kabul to the Taliban by the actions of the army entrusted to him ...
In line with centrifugal tendencies, ambitious statements from the gorges of the Panjshir Valley, incomparable with anything else, draw attention to themselves. "No association can gain legitimacy without the support and approval of His Excellency Ahmad Masud, because today he is the source of legitimacy," said Ali Maisam Nazar, Ahmad Masud's spokesman for the United States. On what grounds the young son of the national hero of Afghanistan, who has not shown himself in any way outside of his native province, has suddenly turned into a source of legitimacy, we can only guess. And The New York Times reports: Ahmad Massoud hired Washington lobbyist Robert Streak, rumored to be close to the Republicans, to get help from the United States. It is unlikely that this will prompt the Biden administration to fund or, say,military-technical assistance to the Panjshir people, but it may well arouse some of the congressmen in this direction. In general, these are not the first appeals of Ahmad Massoud to the United States and the West in general, which is not surprising for a graduate of the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Berkshire ...
If we consider the situation in Afghanistan in an extremely broad geopolitical context, we can agree with the Russian expert Timofei Bordachev that the victory of the Taliban is not a special case, but an important episode in the common struggle between China and Russia for a more just world order in relation to their interests. ... But then it is also necessary to realize that this is understood not only in Beijing and Moscow. Surely there is an understanding of this circumstance in London and Washington - this is at least. And this, in turn, means the inevitability of counter opposition, including the use of intra-Afghan forces, of which only the local anti-Taliban resistance of the Panjshir Tajiks is relevant.
At the moment, this resistance for the West looks like a quite convenient tool for continuing the civil war in Afghanistan, regardless of whether Panjshir itself is able to understand it or not.
So far, this resistance has met with vivid support only in Dushanbe, which is based on a wide range of explanations.
Undoubtedly, there is a wide ethnic solidarity of Tajiks of Tajikistan with Afghan Tajiks, which, among other things, is also a channel for dumping public activity on landmarks that are not related to life in Tajikistan itself.
Emomali Rahmon announces the figure of 46% as the share of Tajiks in the population of Afghanistan, and at the same time calls on Tajiks to prepare for war.
Naturally, this is intended for an internal audience: Panjshir is not Crimea, and Afghanistan is not Ukraine.
And Tajikistan is far from being Russia ... A tough stance towards the Taliban also reinforces the systematic work to create in the public consciousness images of external threats associated with religion, which ensures loyalty.
All this rhetoric seriously strengthens the vertical in Tajikistan.
But the polar opposite of the above-mentioned geopolitical - Russian, Chinese, and Iranian - positions are puzzling.
This approach is warmly perceived only in the Indian capital, which is easily explainable from the point of view of both New Delhi's relations with Beijing and Islamabad, which has seriously strengthened its position in Afghanistan. The call of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the already mentioned SCO summit is characteristic: to make a decision on the recognition of the Taliban in a "collective way". It is clear that there is no collective opinion on this issue and there will not be, since this would mean a kind of "veto" on the part of the Hindu nationalists, whose nominee is the current prime minister. So far, hardly anyone (with the exception of Pakistan, Qatar, possibly the PRC, as well as the UAE and Turkey) views the recognition of the Taliban as a short-term prospect.
Nevertheless, even UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks about the advisability of excluding the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations. That also does not mean international legal recognition, but allows you to influence the political - not the military! - the process in Afghanistan, including the creation of incentives for the Taliban to fulfill their international obligations: creating a government with representation of all ethnic and religious groups, establishing peace in the country, preventing the use of the country's territory by international terrorist groups and drug producers. Against the background of the general position of the West for the UN Secretary General, this is a rather bold statement. However, the same USA has never included the Taliban in its internal registers of terrorist organizations, leaving itself room for maneuver.
Among the countries of the region, participating and not participating in such formats as the SCO or the CSTO, the Afghan situation has produced a certain polarization of positions and opinions. Unlike Dushanbe and New Delhi, official Tashkent supported the pragmatism regarding the changed Afghanistan: Uzbekistan welcomes the creation of an interim government and expressed the hope that “this decision will be the beginning of achieving broad national accord, establishing sustainable peace and stability in this country. We express our readiness to develop constructive dialogue and practical interaction with the new state bodies of Afghanistan. " This is stated in the official statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan. At the same time, Uzbekistan called for unfreezing Afghan assets in foreign banks and began delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
At the same time, Tashkent does not abandon the solidarity position of most regional countries on the need to create a broadly representative government in Afghanistan.
A certain loophole for such hopes is also provided by statements from the Taliban themselves. The creation of a permanent Afghan government could take months, said Mohammad Suhail Shahin, a Taliban spokesman. "Ministers can still change, and it may take days or months to form the final composition of the cabinet." The promise, of course, is rather vague, but this is natural, if we understand the presence of a serious factional struggle in the movement itself, and multidirectional external influences on it. It is not very clear yet, on what principle in the new conditions to ensure the same, for example, the representation of ethnopolitical forces, and this is far from only one community of Panjshir Tajiks who have taken an extremely radical position, far from being ready for constructive negotiations.
In this regard, the thesis of the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, voiced by him in Dushanbe, is interesting: if the Taliban can start moving towards an inclusive government, Afghanistan will be able to live peacefully after 40 years.
But if something goes wrong, the country can plunge into chaos.
The Taliban need to be given more time to figure out how they will behave in power.
In Islam, there is such a concept as "sabr", in one of the meanings adequate to the Russian concept of "patience".
Perhaps this is what is needed today by all partners of Afghanistan who are interested in a constructive solution to the problems of this country.
* "Taliban" - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.