Russian media may find it odd to call Taliban banned entity if Kabul's ties with Moscow deepen

Every mention of the Taliban in Russian media has to be supplied with a footnote: This is a terrorist organisation, according to the UN. You also need to add that the Taliban’s activities are banned in Russia. This is a fairly intrusive request from our country’s national regulator watchdog, which in general doesn’t bother writers with directives.

These days we just have to read that “terrorist” footnote again and again, since Taliban delegations are frequent visitors to Russia. One such delegation, headed by Nuriddin Azizi, acting Minister of Trade and Industry, left Moscow this week, after several days of negotiations with government officials and private corporations.

There is almost no information regarding the outcome of these talks. But there are a lot of commentaries, showing that Moscow is in the midst of a complicated diplomatic plot, involving not just Afghanistan, but also China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, maybe India and many other regional players. Russia cannot do anything alone in this plot, even if it wanted to.

Let’s see what the Taliban traders want: they want Russian oil (and who doesn’t?). Also grain, including seed grain, cooking oil and, according to some sources, all kind of foodstuffs. And they need it on a long-term basis, not just once. These plans have been made known months ago, since this is not the first high-level business delegation sent from Kabul to Moscow.

But there is more. Apparently, the Afghans have been trying to revive the TAPI project – that is a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and to India. Last time we heard about TAPI was in 2019.

Russia might also want to start building anything thinkable in the country, the Taliban delegations are believed to be have said. Building is a good business, essentially if it’s government contracts, everybody loves that.

So that’s what Kabul wants. While Russia, essentially, wants to be paid, and to be paid, it needs a broad regional agreement, which may include a kind of a general treaty on Afghanistan’s good behaviour in the future. Otherwise, Russia cannot get any money for its oil or grain, not to mention the fact that the deliveries of these goods are questionable if there is no such agreement.

The Talibs know very well that they have a lot to offer. Russian media is full of long lists of treasures, hidden in Afghan soil. Oil and gas might be worth around a trillion US dollars, and that’s only the confirmed deposits in the North, near the borders with Uzbekistan. Then there is copper, cobalt, aluminium ore, uranium. Iron – yes, that, too, in huge quantities, like 2 billion tonnes, and that’s very rich ore at that, with about 63 per cent of iron content.

And then there is lithium. There are wholesale wars going on between the two global dinosaurs, China and the US, about who will own all these markets for batteries and anything that is electronics. Lithium is being called “a 20^th century metal”, and Afghanistan could overturn all the tables in this game.

So Taliban is dangling a huge carrot in front of Russia. The only problem is, who will invest in development of this treasure land, to start the money flows to importers.

There is China, of course, it was very, very active there even under American occupation. And it’s very active now, especially since Taliban’s best friend is China’s friend Pakistan. China, exactly like Russia, has kept its embassy in Kabul open throughout all the wars and troubles. China has just erected a teaching building and auditorium at the centre of Kabul University. It has an academic lecture hall and 30 classrooms equipped with projectors, audio and other multimedia teaching equipment. It’s something unique not only in Kabul but also in the country, says Osama Aziz, the rector of Kabul University.

But China has a little problem – that is, the most jihadist-minded of Uyghurs from Xinjiang, who had moved, long ago, to Afghanistan, just like Al Quaeda got refuge there more than two decades ago. And there is no information about any settlement of this Uyghur problem, since Taliban, I have to say it again, is very good at negotiating.

Besides, there is a problem with Tajikistan, since the ethnic Tajiks, populating the North of Afghanistan, are still resisting the masters of Kabul, who are mostly Pashtu, the people of the South. Then, there is Uzbekistan, on the brink of completion of the first nuclear power stations in the region, able and even, maybe, willing to sell a lot of energy to Afghanistan. But there is a problem of Talibs being maybe too popular in Uzbekistan’s Islamic circles.

All that means that even if Russia was willing to come to a kind of a separate trading agreement with Kabul (as it is definitely not), it would not even be able to deliver any goods there without asking all the regional partners, including China. Air-freighted humanitarian assistance might be the only option.

So we may want to watch for signs of some general regional agreement over Taliban’s future activities there. Luckily, the diplomatic machinery to do it has been created long ago. The best known part of it is the SCO, that is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, comprising everyone who matters in the region, with very small exceptions. The next summit of SCO will take place in ancient Samarkand this September. The general idea of an agreement is all too obvious, Kabul pledges not to undermine its neighbours, which paves the way for turning Central Asia into an investment miracle. Oh, and an official recognition of the Taliban government by all the neighbours might be handy, too.

The general idea is, that something similar has already happened with Iran. There was a lot of jitters in 1979, when the Iranian Islamic revolution happened, but by now it’s just another regional power, not known for export of its values and lifestyle anywhere.

If that gradually happens to Afghanistan, then, maybe, the Russian media will escape that obligation to call Taliban a banned entity, again and again.

The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views are personal.

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