Pakistan’s newspaper of record Dawn recently published an editorial titled “State of denial” wherein they argued that the Taliban’s denials of ties to terrorist groups “hold no water” despite Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praising them twice this month here and here for their anti-terrorist struggle. Dawn implied that the Taliban is allowing ISIS-K to operate from Afghanistan “even though it is at daggers drawn with the Taliban” and suggested that this state of affairs could one day threaten Russia.
While the second of Lavrov’s cited speeches warned that “a significant presence of terrorist and extremist groups, along with their training camps and strongholds, remains in Afghan areas bordering Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan”, he importantly didn’t imply that the Taliban approves of this. To the contrary, the historic visit of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergey Naryshkin to Kabul last week hints that Moscow might soon arm the Taliban against ISIS-K for the sake of regional security.
Having clarified Russian policy towards Afghanistan, it’s time to address the rest of Dawn’s editorial, particularly its claim that the Taliban is tied to terrorists. Russia considers the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP, “Pakistani Taliban”) to be a terrorist group per its approval of the UNSC’s designation thereof, but it doesn’t legally consider the “Balochistan Liberation Army” or other Baloch separatists to be terrorists. It did, however, agree to this terminology in multilateral statements with China, Iran, and Pakistan.
Both groups are suspected of having a presence in Afghanistan, but Russia hasn’t publicly assessed the Taliban’s potential relationship with them. Nevertheless, as intuited by the recent signals that Russia is seriously considering arming the Taliban against ISIS-K – specifically Naryshkin’s historic visit to Kabul and Lavrov’s declaration in the first of his two cited speeches that “providing material and expert assistance” to the Taliban “meets the interests of all” – it doesn’t believe that they’d pass along its arms to them.
Dawn’s editorial concluded that “If the Taliban regime commits to preventing groups based on its soil from attacking neighbouring states, the process of normalisation and regional integration of Afghanistan can begin”, but this process has already begun with Russia’s leadership. The Kremlin quite clearly doesn’t believe that the Taliban allows terrorist groups to attack any neighboring states from its soil. This is the crux of the dispute between Russia and Pakistan over Taliban-led Afghanistan as elaborated upon here.
The second of Lavrov’s cited speeches even saw him declare that “we are working to consolidate external support for the authorities in Kabul and for their efforts that objectively meet regional security interests.” He also called for “deepening cooperation within the Working Group on Afghanistan under the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers, and resuming meetings of the SCO–Afghanistan Contact Group, which remains suspended.” All of this proves that Russia doesn’t consider the Taliban to be a threat.
Pakistan can have whatever view it wants about them, but it’s not going to convince the Kremlin to disengage from Afghanistan, and any such attempt might even accelerate their already rapid rapprochement in defiance. If Pakistan truly believes that the Taliban has ties to terrorists, then it should fortify its border fence with Afghanistan to ensure that no terrorists infiltrate the country. Pakistan, not Russia, should therefore disengage from Afghanistan, end its war on the country, and leave it alone.
