SUMMARY
Many believed that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was only a matter of time, but few thought it would happen this quickly following a US pullout. Here is a rundown of what a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan means for US foreign policy and the geopolitics of a highly strategic region:
RECOGNITION: THE MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION
As yet no one knows the level of diplomatic recognition that will be extended to the Taliban regime, and this is a variable that carries significant geopolitical consequences. After two decades of war, it follows that the Taliban would prefer widespread recognition, as the alternative – relative isolation – leaves the regime dependent on regional players that are more liable to be pursuing their own agendas; i.e., Pakistan. Thus, there is some leverage here for NATO countries, namely the United States, which itself will be desperate to extract something resembling a win from its colossal investment into Afghanistan. Perhaps a globally recognized and ‘responsible’ Taliban regime would fit the bill. However, such an outcome remains unlikely given the human rights violations inherent to the Taliban’s style of governance, violations that will be all the more difficult for Western governments to ignore after leaning so heavily on a nation-building narrative to justify NATO’s long-term presence in the country.
The China factor could also have Western governments considering recognition. It’s generally assumed that China will join with Iran and Russia to recognize the Taliban government once the dust settles in Kabul. Ongoing non-recognition by Western countries not only carries significant economic costs, but also allows gifts China a valuable foothold in a highly strategic region. Incidentally, recognition in order to deny China a clear geopolitical victory would be further evidence of a return to the zero-sum dynamic of the Cold War era.
RISK OF A REFUGEE EXODUS
Recognition will largely be determined by what happens in the weeks ahead, namely whether the Taliban seeks revenge against those who worked closely with NATO, the government, and civil society organizations, and whether the Islamist group facilitates or impedes the frenzied rush-for-the-exits that’s currently playing out at Kabul airport. Regardless, there will be a spike in refugees seeking to leave the country (currently around 3 million Afghans are internally displaced and another 3 million reside in neighboring Pakistan). The swiftness of the Taliban’s military victory may represent cause for optimism on this front. With organized opposition to their rule evidently non-existent, and now armed-to-the-teeth with billions of dollars’ worth of seized NATO hardware, the Taliban is sufficiently equipped to occupy the moral high ground should it choose to. A magnanimous track is being projected by the group’s PR wing, which has promised no revenge killings or property seizures in Kabul; how it all plays out in practice remains to be seen, but historical precedent are enough to give pause.
THE END OF AN ERA FOR US FOREIGN POLICY
US President Joe Biden inherited an expensive and unpopular two-decade-long war and a Trump peace deal that essentially gave the Taliban everything they wanted in exchange for a promise to be good in the future. A pullout was never going to be easy; recall that former president Obama once campaigned on withdrawing all combat troops from the country within 16 months of taking office back in 2008. To perpetuate the status quo of pouring money into a corrupt and woefully ineffective government represents an equally unpalatable option. Yet despite all this, we can expect considerable political blowback for President Biden, who as recently as July was insisting that a Taliban victory was impossible. Such is the extent of the United States’ astonishing tactical oversights. This is Saigon, but in fast-forward, and there will be severe reputational fallout for the United States, not just in terms of the viability of future nation-building ventures, but also in Washington’s ability to entice would-be allies and assets throughout the world. One can’t help but feel like this is the end of the 9/11 era, and that the United States’ interventionalist proclivities will be severely curtailed in the future, not least by a US public that is overwhelmingly tired of expensive overseas adventures.
WHITHER PAKISTAN’S STRATEGIC DEPTH?
A Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is highly consequential for the geopolitical chess match between India and Pakistan. Recall that Pakistan’s search for ‘strategic depth’ against India had it supporting the Taliban during the civil war in the 1990s. But the Pakistan-Taliban relationship – or more accurately the ISI-Taliban relationship – was never a natural fit for either side, and was facilitated in large part by the pre-2001 international isolation of the Taliban. The Durand Line that separates the two countries is regarded as an arbitrary colonial vestige by most Afghans; it has never been recognized in Kabul, not even by a Taliban movement that owes its 1996 victory in large part to Pakistani support. Several factors further complicate the bilateral dynamic: tens of millions of Pashtuns living in northwest Pakistan, many of which speak Pashto and identify more on the basis of ethnicity than their Pakistan nationality; the presence of over 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan; and the rise of the Pakistan Taliban, an ideological fellow traveler that represents an existential threat to the government of Islamabad. In short, the original Pakistan-Taliban dynamic was born out of the latter’s international isolation and the former’s misguided belief that it could control the movement once it took power. Going forward, the once harmonious relationship could swing dramatically in the opposite direction given their conflicting core interests.
CONSEQUENCES FOR BELT AND ROAD, CHABAHAR PORT
Afghanistan under any regime remains a geopolitical prize due to its untapped mineral wealth and highly strategic location. As such, the country is being courted by two great power connectivity projects. One was India’s Chabahar port, which brought Iran and Afghanistan together in an effort to provide the land-locked country with a shipping corridor to the open sea. The hope was that the infrastructure would eventually tap into India’s more expansive North-South Transport Corridor, which seeks to link India to Europe. Another albeit much more nascent effort was the extension of China’s Belt and Road into Afghanistan, which Beijing had only begun to openly explore earlier this year.
The Taliban victory is a likely boon for Belt and Road, as Beijing can be expected to step in as a no-questions-asked economic partner, much like it has with other illiberal regimes around the world. And though there’s widespread fear in India that the over $3 billion in post-2001 investments in Afghanistan are now at risk of either expropriation or economic irrelevance, this is not necessarily a foregone conclusion; rather, it could depend on the tone that New Delhi adopts in its dealings with the Taliban. In a hypothetical future where Pakistan-Taliban relations are far less harmonious than they were previously, the Taliban might be inclined to look favorably on an infrastructure project that’s sole purpose is to circumvent Pakistan. In fact, given Afghanistan’s ongoing reliance on Pakistan as an export partner – a reliance born of lacking infrastructure – it follows that the Taliban would be interested in cultivating Chabahar port as a matter of national interest.
RISK OF A NEW TERRORIST SAFE HAVEN
The Taliban infamously provided Al Qaeda with safe haven in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks, prompting concerns that a Taliban takeover will increase global terrorism risks. This fear is not entirely unfounded, and only time will tell if old habits die hard (notwithstanding that famous promise that served the Taliban so well in its negotiations with the U.S.). However, it’s also possible that the threat is overblown. For one, al-Qaeda does not represent the same level of risk to Western governments that it did in 2001 – and the NATO campaign is only part of the reason why. Arguably more important are shifts in the global jihadist movement that have occurred over the past two decades, a period where competitors like Islamic State have increasingly elbowed out al-Qaeda, and new tactics have emerged placing the onus on capturing and holding territory in failed states, rather than on high-profile attacks in the West (which have tended to be perpetrated by lone wolf attackers). Moreover, even if one were to accept an extreme threat level as a given, there’s still a question of whether the tens of billions of unconditional support to a failing government is the best way to mitigate said threat.
The Taliban is in large part a nationalist movement, evident in the group’s clashes with Islamic State. There’s also no shortage of motivations to follow through on its promise and refuse safe haven to global jihadist outfits. Critically, these motivations also stem from the regime’s future relations with China, which will be extremely important in the event of non-recognition from the Western world. Beijing is extremely sensitive to the threat of Islamic extremism (a phenomenon it tends to interpret quite liberally), which it regards as potentially destabilizing for Muslim-majority areas, namely Xinjiang.
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