Taliban officials have nonetheless traveled abroad, including a delegation that visited Brussels in June for talks with 15 EU countries on returning failed asylum-seekers.
Afghan people sit inside a US military aircraft during an evacuation at the military airport in Kabul on 19 August 2021, following the Taliban’s capture of the Afghan capital four days earlier.
Shakib RAHMANI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
KABUL (AFP) — Five years after returning to power, Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have built working relationships with a growing number of countries despite limited international recognition.
Russia remains the only country to formally recognize the Taliban government, while many Western nations have demanded reforms on human rights before doing so.
But countries including Britain and European Union (EU) members are engaging with Kabul, driven largely by practical concerns such as security, trade and migration.
The Taliban says it “seeks relations with all countries,” with officials regularly hosting foreign envoys in Kabul from China, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Britain.
“The countries of the region and our neighboring states have particular importance, because our economic ties and interests are closely linked,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said last month.
Officials from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan gathered in Kabul this year as landlocked Central Asian states seek trade routes through Afghanistan to the sea.
Limited progress
The Taliban has promoted cross-border infrastructure and expanded mining to attract investment, but foreign funding remains limited as investors remain wary of the government’s lack of recognition.
Taliban officials have nonetheless traveled abroad, including a delegation that visited Brussels in June for talks with 15 EU countries on returning failed asylum-seekers.
“Those who have no legal right to stay in Europe must be returned,” an EU spokesperson told AFP.
Germany has also stepped up deportations, including the return in July of an Afghan who had not been convicted of a crime.
But major obstacles remain, particularly the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls. Girls are barred from education beyond age 12, with no policy shift expected.
The International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani over alleged crimes against humanity linked to the persecution of women and girls.
A UN source in Kabul said international influence over the Taliban remained “highly issue-dependent.”
“Some of these issues are kind of fairly impenetrable, but then you have other issues on which you are able to make progress,” the source said, citing cooperation on counternarcotics and humanitarian access.
‘Political reality’
Regional diplomacy has expanded as Afghanistan faces security and economic challenges.
When Afghanistan and Pakistan went to war this year, China hosted talks after hundreds of civilians were killed. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Malaysia also sought to help end the fighting.
India has strengthened ties with Kabul, while its UN envoy called for a rethink of sanctions targeting Taliban members.
“The political reality of Afghanistan has changed in the last five years, and the current UN sanctions regime must take that into account,” Indian diplomat Harish Parvathaneni said.
Despite continued disagreements, the UN source said engagement with the Taliban government is “the current state of play.”
“Everybody recognizes the fact that, essentially, Afghanistan is fully controlled by the de facto (Taliban) authorities and, essentially, there are multiple issues on which the world, the region, has to deal with them,” the source said.
