Monday marks a year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan after almost 20 years of US occupation.
But the Taliban rulers have much work left to do as they struggle to revive the country\u2019s lifeless economy and address the dire humanitarian situation.
Meanwhile, the Taliban\u2019s international isolation has not helped its cause.
Despite repeated appeals and efforts by Taliban leaders, no country in the world has recognised the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), as the country is officially known under Taliban rule.
The West has demanded that the Taliban ease curbs on women\u2019s rights and make the government more representative as a condition for recognition. The Taliban says the United States is violating the 2020 Doha Agreement by not recognising its government.
Last month\u2019s killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a US drone strike in Kabul has led to Western governments accusing the Taliban government of failing to live up to its commitments under the Doha Agreement, which required the Taliban to deny safe haven to al-Qaeda and other armed groups in Afghanistan in exchange for the US withdrawal.
Several deadly attacks attributed to the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) have further raised concerns in the Western capitals about post-US Afghanistan\u2019s security landscape.
Washington will find it hard to trust the Taliban in the wake of al-Zawahiri\u2019s killing, with the West likely taking a hardened stance towards the Taliban government amid growing support for sanctions imposed on it.
The US\u2019s dwindling trust in the Taliban could prove disastrous from a humanitarian standpoint as the negotiations held between the two sides in Doha, the Qatari capital, for the release of funds to Afghanistan have come to a screeching halt.
Nathan Sales, the former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, said after al-Zawahiri\u2019s killing that \u201cthe risk is substantial that money released to [the Taliban] would find their way inevitably and directly into al-Qaeda\u2019s pockets\u201d.
Although engagement between the West and Afghanistan is \u201clikely to slow down\u201d in the wake of al-Zawahiri\u2019s killing, \u201cso far it is unclear if this development will impact regional engagement with the Taliban\u2019s de facto government\u201d, said Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst with the International Crisis Group focusing on Afghanistan, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
\u201cAl-Qaeda is not a key consideration for many of the regional countries and it is possible they may continue their engagement despite this development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Non-Western countries\u2019 approach Human rights Emerging anti-hegemonic axis Monday marks a year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan after almost 20 years of US occupation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>It is important to examine how non-Western countries approach the Taliban government. Several of Afghanistan\u2019s neighbours, including China, Pakistan, and Iran, have accepted Taliban diplomats, along with Malaysia, Qatar (which hosts the Taliban office in Doha), Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Turkmenistan. In fact, Ashgabat, Beijing, Islamabad, and Moscow have even formally accredited Taliban-appointed diplomats, underscoring how the Taliban\u2019s international isolation is relative.
Given how China, Russia, and Iran see ISIS-K as a far graver threat than al-Qaeda, these countries will \u201chave at least some sympathy\u201d for the IEA \u201cas long as the Taliban continues to fight against [ISIS-K]\u201d, Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera.
\u201cHostility to [ISIS-K] helps explain why Russia and China reached out to the Taliban in the years before their victory [in August 2021]. However, these links stop well short of the kind of financial support that the Taliban urgently needs. Russia does not have it to give, and China has always been extremely cautious about this kind of handout,\u201d Lieven said.
Although Tehran has carefully engaged the rulers in Kabul, the exclusion of the Hazara Shia minority from governance has not impressed Iran, which has also experienced border clashes and disputes over water rights with the Taliban since August 2021.
Pakistan, a long-term Taliban ally which was one of only three governments to recognise the Taliban government in the 1990s, has also had major problems with post-occupation Afghanistan. Taliban rule has emboldened Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, in its attacks against Islamabad, which has responded by carrying out cross-border air attacks.
For China\u2019s government, a primary concern pertains to questions about how the Taliban will deal with armed Uighur groups which have a history of being based in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
China worries that the Taliban might give such organisations the freedom to operate against China. Beijing has offered the Taliban economic and development support on the condition that Afghanistan cooperates with China vis-\u00e0-vis such armed factions and avoids targeting Chinese interests, particularly the Belt and Road Initiative \u2013 a global infrastructure project funded by Beijing.
\u201cWhile Moscow and Beijing do have more contacts with the Taliban than do Western countries, they are nevertheless also weary of the leaders in Kabul,\u201d Claude Rakisits, an honorary associate professor in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, told Al Jazeera.
\u201cThe confirmation that the Taliban was protecting the al-Qaeda leader, will further strengthen these sentiments.
\u201cAccordingly, despite the Taliban\u2019s promises that they would not allow their territory to be used by non-state actors to attack other countries, the Russian and Chinese leaders would be worried that, indeed, the Taliban would do nothing to prevent various non-state actors, such as the Uighurs\u2019 [East Turkestan Islamic Movement or ETIM] and other central Asian militant groups from launching terrorist attacks into China and Central Asian countries \u2013 Russia\u2019s soft strategic underbelly,\u201d Rakisits said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year, it has taken draconian actions that lead observers to see its approach to women and minorities being as extreme as it was during its first stint in power during 1996-2001.
Such human rights violations drastically decrease the chances of any Western government recognising the Taliban or easing sanctions. Yet the Taliban believes that time is on its side and that the West and the rest of the international community will eventually come to terms with its rule irrespective of its governance.
\u201cThe Taliban are principally about the Taliban rights, not human rights, and they generally perceive the concept of \u2018rights\u2019 as less about being equitable and more about redemption,\u201d Javid Ahmad, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera. \u201cAnd so, they frankly are unconcerned about the world community and believe the world will eventually bow.\u201d
Moreover, Afghanistan\u2019s immediate neighbours and other countries throughout the region are far less likely to make decisions about how to engage the Taliban based on human rights-related issues.
\u201cMany of the neighbouring countries and regional powers appear to be continuing their engagement and in some rare cases, even offering cover for the Taliban\u2019s actions by framing these matters as Afghanistan\u2019s sovereign prerogative,\u201d Bahiss, the analyst from the International Crisis Group said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>As great power competition intensifies while East-West bifurcation increases in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war, Afghanistan could become more important to China and Russia\u2019s strategies for challenging the US.
Moscow and Beijing seem to have embraced a mostly wait-and-see approach to the Taliban government for now, before they embrace Kabul.
But if the Taliban rulers successfully convince Moscow and Beijing of their commitment to fighting ISIS-K and denying ETIM a haven in Afghanistan, these capitals could help the Taliban circumvent Western sanctions.
For example, Chinese companies investing in Afghanistan could decrease the harm caused by the West\u2019s financial warfare, which in turn would benefit China in terms of its ability to access the war-torn country\u2019s prized rare-earth mineral reserves, copper, lithium, iron ore, and other natural resources.
As China, Russia, and Iran grow increasingly cooperative in their efforts to challenge US hegemony, these powers might come around to viewing the Taliban as a partner through which they can expand their influence in Greater Central Asia.
Within this emerging anti-hegemonic axis, China is probably the power that can do the most for the Taliban as it continues grappling with major domestic, regional, and global challenges. Although foreign companies are unlikely to quickly reap rewards in Afghanistan given the extent to which the country lacks stability, Chinese firms are known for their patience and long-term vision.
\u201cAfghanistan has long been considered a graveyard for conquerors \u2013 Alexander the Great, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now the United States,\u201d wrote Zhou Bo, an expert on global security who previously served as a senior colonel in China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army, five days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year.
\u201cNow China enters \u2013 armed not with bombs but construction blueprints, and a chance to prove the curse can be broken.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"