News & insights

Translated from French:

Olters, Jan-Peter (2024). ‘L’heure du « grand bargain » avec les talibans, a-t-elle sonné ?’ Conseil des relations internationales de Montréal (CORIM), 17 September 2024. https://blogue.corim.qc.ca/bargain-avec-talibans/

The end of the summer marks the third anniversary of the abandonment of Western efforts to provide security in Afghanistan and promote its development. The hasty withdrawal left a political and military vacuum filled by the Taliban, who ‘celebrated’ the occasion by promulgating a new law on the total public invisibility of women. The self-proclaimed Islamic Emirate thus remains an open wound in world politics that, if left unattended, risks causing chronic suffering for its inhabitants, its neighbours, and the international community. 

Contrary to widespread expectations in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the Afghan economy has not collapsed. It has shown some resilience to the effects of the withdrawal of international aid, the freezing of reserves, the imposition of sanctions, the significant reduction in opium production, and the exclusion of women from the labour force. Reduced to around two-thirds of its former size, the Taliban economy has entered a period of stabilised deflationary stagnation, with more than two in three Afghans struggling to meet their basic needs. But the combination of growing poverty, diplomatic isolation, and the lack of access to quality education remains a ticking time bomb for this country, battered for decades, and for the states that will have to host and integrate future Afghan refugees.

The socio-political repression and brutal restrictions imposed on women and girls violate universally recognised human rights and are rightly the focus of international concern. At the same time, they are a mortgage on the country’s future and are inherently incompatible with the self-proclaimed goal of creating a gender-segregated society. For such a system of parallel economies to work (whatever one’s moral judgement of this objective), Afghanistan would have to overcome a growing shortage of educated and skilled women in the ‘female economy’. Today’s political decisions will determine tomorrow’s ability to ensure that female professionals (nurses, doctors, teachers, professors, and other skilled workers) are available to serve and help Afghan girls and women.

Strategic development dilemmas

There is no good solution. It is morally repugnant to turn a blind eye to a starving country. It is equally repulsive to support a regime that does not respect even the most basic standards of human rights and is an ongoing threat to international peace and security. Faced with this dilemma, development partners have sought a politically acceptable approach to extra-budgetary humanitarian assistance (through the Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund), which is implemented by the United Nations outside of Taliban-controlled budgets.

This assistance is based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2664 (2022), which defines a humanitarian exception to frozen assets and sanctions ‘necessary for the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance or in support of other activities to meet basic needs’. This exemption allowed the World Bank to adapt its ‘ 3.0 approach ’, under which grants are made to UN agencies and other international organisations to support basic services, particularly those benefiting women. In this context, the resumption of the Central Asia-South Asia Regional Power Transmission and Exchange Project (CASA-1000) is particularly important, not least because it links four beneficiary countries to a financing consortium of major multilateral development banks and international development partners. The project places power-starved Afghanistan at the centre of international efforts to transmit green energy from hydroelectric power plants in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan through its territory to Pakistan. With construction almost complete in the three source and destination countries, the pressure is now on Kabul. Any success in regional cooperation could become a solid brick in a new foundation between Afghanistan and the world.

Some initial discussions

Certain measures taken by the de facto Afghan authorities have already brought them closer to the international community’s long-held goals of curbing opium production and heroin exports. To ensure the sustainability of these measures, discussions need to continue on how best to provide farmers with alternative sources of income. Reform of payment systems could also be considered, as this would strengthen the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. At the UN-sponsored Doha meetings on Afghanistan at the end of June, the Taliban expressed an interest in reforming the banking sector, which is seen as a major obstacle to private sector growth and an essential pillar in the fight against drug trafficking.

Although condemned by human rights activists for excluding women, the Doha talks were important in that they brought together—for the first time in an official setting—key players from the de facto authorities and the international community. These closed-door meetings allowed all parties to clarify their respective priorities, expectations, and red lines. This first step was so important that, a few days later, UN Secretary-General António Guterres reaffirmed its potential by encouraging the heads of state and government, meeting in Kazakhstan at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, to ensure that ‘[a]ll countries should unite to prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a hotbed of terrorism’. They then reconfirmed, in the SCO’s Astana Declaration, that member states stood ready ‘to support the international community’s efforts to facilitate peace and development’ in Afghanistan.

Time for a grand bargain?

The main issues of international concern to Afghanistan are clear and include—in ascending order of political complexity—drugs, poverty, terrorism, human rights and, above all, women’s rights. Western governments and those represented by the SCO (which includes all of Afghanistan’s neighbours except Turkmenistan, as well as China, Russia, India, and the Central Asian littoral states) tend to share the goal of supporting the inclusive and sustainable development of a resilient and peaceful Afghanistan. Such a ‘globally coordinated approach’ vis-à-vis the hitherto unrecognised regime in Kabul would create an environment, in which international development partners could deliver humanitarian aid more effectively, reach more hungry families, and give hope and prospects to women trapped in their homes.

In this respect, Afghanistan stands out as an exceptional example, largely overlooked in the public debate, of a global convergence of geopolitical objectives. Leaving aside other conflicts that are currently beyond the reach of diplomacy, a two-step process could make a tangible, comprehensive, and lasting difference to the complex situation in Afghanistan. First, at a preparatory summit co-chaired by Western and SCO governments (but without Kabul), the international community would agree and formulate the terms of a grand bargain for Afghanistan (which could culminate in the ultimate diplomatic recognition with corresponding technical and financial assistance). On the basis of this political weight and these terms, a world conference on the peaceful and inclusive future of Afghanistan could then be organised with the Taliban. In this particular instance, the overarching interests of all parties involved appear broadly aligned.

The fulcrum around which diplomatic efforts could be leveraged would be the acceptance of two parallel economies within Afghanistan, separated by gender. Each of these economies would have their own institutions of representation and administration, allowing everyone access to education, health services and employment opportunities. This time, after more than 180 years of unsuccessful swordplay by the world powers of the day, the Gordian knot may have to be untied—carefully and painstakingly—through global cooperation. But, as the Oracle suggests, the effort would be worthwhile.