Russia, SCO, BRICS: The normalization of Afghanistan, by Pepe Escobar

The country the U.S. couldn’t tame in over 20 years of fighting is lining up with the U.S.’s adversaries. Development and trade assistance beats bullets and bombs every time. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.su:

The whole Russia-Taliban affair involves a humongous package – encompassing oil, gas, minerals and loads of rail connectivity.

This past Sunday in Doha, I had a meeting with three high-level representatives of the Taliban Political Office in Qatar, including a founding member of the body (in 2012) and a key official of the previous Taliban government of 1996-2001. By mutual consent, their names should not be made public.

The cordial meeting was brokered by Professor Sultan Barakat, who teaches at the College of Public Policy at Hamad bin Khalifa University – set in an outstanding, immaculate campus outside of Doha which attracts students from across the Global South. Prof. Barakat is one of those very few – discreet – players who knows everything that matters in West Asia, and in his case, also in the intersection of Central and South Asia.

With my three Taliban interlocutors, we talked extensively about the challenges of the new Taliban era, new development projects, the role of Russia-China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). They were particularly curious about Russia, and posed several questions.

Professor Barakat is working on a parallel angle. He is conducting the work of the Afghanistan Future Thought Forum, whose 9^th session took place in Oslo in mid-May, and was attended by 28 Afghans – men and women – as well as an array of diplomats of Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, U.S., UK and EU, among others.

The key discussions at the forum revolve around the extremely complex issue of the Taliban engagement with that fuzzy entity, the “international community”. In Doha, I directly asked my three interlocutors what is the Taliban’s number one priority: “The end of sanctions”, they replied.

For that to happen, the UN Security Council must overturn its 2003 decision of designating several members of the Taliban as a terrorist organization; and simultaneously, discrimination/demonization/sanctions by Washington need to go. As it stands, that remains an immensely tall order.

The forum – the next session should be held in Kabul, possibly in the Fall – is patiently working step by step. It’s a matter of successive concessions from both sides, building trust, and for that it’s essential to appoint an UN-recognized mediator, or “adviser for normalization” to supervise the whole process.

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