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More than a year after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they still do not have an ambassador to the United Nations or any other country. And since last Friday, the regime’s foreign minister has been banned from traveling abroad.
Diplomatically, the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is worse than the dictatorship of North Korea, which is often said to have embassies in more than 45 countries around the world and is home to the United Nations headquarters in New York. .
A short-term travel permit granted to 13 Taliban officials expired on August 19 because members of the UN Security Council did not agree to extend it.
Since 1999, under UNSC Resolution 1267, 151 Taliban officials have been banned from traveling abroad for alleged links to international terrorism.
The US government, which has fought the Taliban in Afghanistan for two decades and has designated several Taliban leaders as international terrorists, wants “strictly limited” diplomatic relations with the Taliban.
“[F]A spokesperson for the US State Department told VOA that face-to-face talks with the Taliban in third countries have been useful in furthering our interests.
Two other UNSC members, Russia and China, have expressed a continuing diplomatic interest in the Taliban.
China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, told reporters on Thursday that “certainly for China, we hope that participation is very important because Afghanistan is at a very critical stage.”
But despite their agreement on the importance of meeting with the Taliban, the major powers at the UNSC appear to differ sharply on how and where to meet with Taliban representatives.
For years, US officials have met with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, where a small US diplomatic mission oversees Afghanistan-related issues. Doha is the only place where the United States prefers freedom of travel for the Taliban, and Taliban officials have access to diplomats from any country or international organization.
Not only did China and Russia open their own embassies in Taliban-controlled Kabul, they also recognized Taliban diplomats in Moscow and Beijing without officially recognizing the Taliban government.
While the US wants to meet with the Taliban in Qatar, Chinese and Russian officials prefer to host Taliban delegations in Russia and China.
Extending freedom of travel to moderate Taliban officials is an option mentioned in some diplomatic circles.
But the differences between UNSC forces run deeper than petty preferences, some analysts say.
“The issue of the Taliban travel ban is not so much about the situation in Afghanistan,” Omar Samad, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, told VOA.
“The real issue is sensitive enough from the political and technical standpoints, but now it has entered high-wire diplomacy under the influence of East-West tensions.”
Ineffective restrictions?
Taliban leaders have been imposing tough international sanctions for more than two decades, from asset embargoes to travel bans to prison terms.
While many observers have criticized these sanctions as largely ineffective, others say the Taliban’s refusal to accept international law leaves the world with few options but to impose sanctions on them.
Former Afghan lawyer and diplomat Shinkai Karokhail said, “The more you give them to Tality, the more they think it’s a reflection of their strength” and show no commitment to international norms.
Karokhail said the sanctions regime needed to be improved and specifically targeted at the most problematic elements within the Taliban leadership.
“If the Taliban’s relations with Pakistan are effectively sanctioned, this will bring about disastrous changes in the Taliban regime,” she told VOA, referring to Pakistan’s intelligence agency’s alleged support for the Taliban.
Although the Taliban denies taking orders from Pakistan, US officials and many Afghan observers say the group has deep ties to Pakistan.
In a recent interview with a German magazine The mirrorFormer Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the Taliban of closing Afghan girls’ high schools on Pakistan’s orders.
Taliban officials say the sanctions are counterproductive and no external pressure will force them to compromise on their Islamic policies “even if they use nuclear bombs,” a senior Taliban leader said at a religious gathering in Kabul in July.
American presence
The United States is the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, providing more than $700 million in aid last year.
The United States distributes the money through the United Nations and other international organizations and has no involvement in monitoring how the aid dollars are used in Afghanistan.
A May 2022 RAND report recommended that “the best way for the United States to maintain normal relations and develop awareness of the situation on the ground is to reestablish diplomatic engagement in Kabul.”
The report’s authors, two former top US diplomats and a researcher who has done extensive work on Afghanistan, described the policy of engagement with the Taliban as a way to advance US interests and hold the Taliban accountable for its counter-terrorism rhetoric.
“The United States has no immediate plans to resume operations at the embassy in Kabul,” a State Department spokesman said.
On August 1, a U.S. drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, an event that markedly reduced U.S. relations with the Taliban. US officials have accused the Taliban of “publicly violating” their commitment not to host al-Qaeda and other terrorists in areas they hold.
More than three weeks after the drone strike, Taliban officials said they had not found al-Zawahiri’s body and instead criticized the US for violating Afghanistan’s air sovereignty.
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