Series Introduction

The Afghanistan Crisis: Anxieties and Trigger Points

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has prompted a geopolitical free-for-all situation in the country, with regional, if not, extra-regional implications. It ceded the country swiftly to Taliban control, with China, Russia, and Iran all poised to forge close relationships with the new Afghan government. International players like Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan, which have had functional relations with the Taliban, have sought constructive engagement with the new government, to the extent of opening a pathway for them into the international system. Others, particularly the Central Asian states, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are disquieted by security concerns, terrorism-related or otherwise. In Europe, the immediate impact of events in Afghanistan is having to manage a massive refugee crisis.

This series of Insights examines the implications of the US disengagement from Afghanistan, ranging from strategic openings in interstate relations to ground-level anxieties.

 

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By James M Dorsey*

 

The Taliban’s ability and willingness to control militants on Afghan soil, and defeat in the case of the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the Islamic State’s Central and South Asian affiliate, is emerging as the key to the international community’s recognition of the group’s rule in Afghanistan. The recent IS-K bombing of a Shi’a Hazara mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that killed at least 60 people heightens concerns that regional stability could be threatened not only by cross-border and transnational attacks launched from Afghanistan by militants and jihadists but also by civil strife in Afghanistan itself. The Taliban’s record in containing IS-K and policing other groups has so far been chequered, dampening hopes that the group could serve as a reliable buffer.

 

Few in the international community, including Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours, are holding their breath that the Taliban will make good on promises to respect human and women’s rights, uphold freedom of the press, and appoint a more permanent, truly inclusive government. Hopes for the Taliban’s cooperation with the international community are perhaps highest when it comes to the group’s pledge to police militants on Afghan soil and ensure that they do not launch cross-border or transnational attacks.

Yet, even there, the Taliban’s track record is chequered. Admittedly, the group only recently took control of Afghanistan, but its record already casts doubt on its willingness and ability to impose its will on various militant groups. The Taliban’s effort to control militants has several prongs: confrontation of the Central/South Asian Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan, which opposes Taliban rule because the group was willing to negotiate with the United States; negotiations with various other militant groups, including Al Qaida that have produced at best mixed results; and reliance on a potential paradigm shift in jihadist strategy away from transnational attacks and towards local governance.

The doubts are fuelled by the composition of the Taliban’s caretaker government, which includes multiple figures designated by the United Nations and/or the United States as terrorists, some with ties to Al Qaida and other groups. The concern is not limited to members of the Haqqani family but also other members of the notorious clan’s network such as Mullah Tajmir Jawad, Afghanistan’s new deputy intelligence chief. Before being appointed, Jawad allegedly ran a suicide bombing network that orchestrated some of the most lethal attacks in Afghanistan of the past two decades. In the words of Michael Semple, a Dari-speaking former UN adviser on Afghanistan and EU representative in the country:

Until last month he [Jawad] was running a suicide bombers’ training camp — that’s how favourable an environment [Afghanistan] has become [for Al Qaida]. The kind of people that Al Qaida treats as their peers or supporters are now moving straight out of the suicide-bomber training camps into running the intelligence service. … If you are a member of Al Qaida trying to make arrangements to keep your leaders and key operatives safe and out of view and avoiding trouble from the local authorities, what more could you dream of than to have your well-wishers take over the Interior Ministry?[1]

The doubts are further informed by the Taliban’s adoption of a governance model built on an alliance between the state and the clergy that has been part of the Muslim world’s problem rather than the solution to its multiple troubles that have hindered and plagued it for centuries.[2] As a result, the Taliban’s vision of what an Islamic state should look like as well as its emerging attitude since its takeover of Afghanistan towards human, women’s and minority rights and freedom of the press adds to questions about how reliable a counterterrorism partner the group may be.

Those questions go to the heart of the debate on how to coax the group against the backdrop of diminishing Chinese, Russian, Iran and Qatari hopes that the Taliban may prove more compromising in their second attempt to govern the country. China, Russia, Iran and Qatar as well as Turkey favour lifting sanctions and maintaining relations even if they are not about to unconditionally recognise the Taliban government as opposed to the United States and Europe, which have opted for a more coercive approach involving sanctions and international isolation, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE hedging their bets and taking their lead from Washington.

 

The Taliban’s Quagmire

The Taliban’s quagmire was evident when Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani described in late September the Taliban’s repressive policies towards women and brutal administration of justice as “very disappointing” and taking Afghanistan “a step backwards.”[3] The minister warned that the Taliban risked misusing Shari’a or Islamic law. “We have… been trying to demonstrate for the Taliban how Muslim countries can conduct their laws, how they can deal with the women’s issues,” Sheikh Al Thani said. “One of the examples is the State of Qatar, which is a Muslim country; our system is an Islamic system (but) we have women outnumbering men in workforces, in government and in higher education.”

Al Thani’s effort to position his country as a model of Islamic governance was not only a bid to offer the Taliban an alternative but also an attempt to garner brownie points in a competition with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for religious soft power in the Muslim world and international recognition as an icon of an autocratic, yet “moderate” interpretation of Islam. Hoping for Taliban moderation may, however, be wishful thinking. “Policies are pitched at the group’s lowest common denominator to preserve concord. That makes it difficult for the Taliban to change”, The Economist commented.[4]

As a result, Afghanistan has become the latest arena where religious soft power meets defence, security, and counterterrorism policy. The complexity of that space was evident in the balancing act that Saudi Arabia performed as it sought to distance Islam as practised in the kingdom from the Taliban’s interpretation of the faith amid growing doubts about the reliability of the United States as an ally.

Against the backdrop of the rivalry for religious soft power, the stakes in Afghanistan are highest for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who need to be seen as distancing and differentiating themselves from the Taliban. To be sure, the UAE competes with Qatar in having made significant progress on women’s rights while Saudi Arabia has substantially enhanced women’s professional and social opportunities since the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Yet, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were, together with Pakistan, the only three countries to recognise the first Taliban government in 1996. Moreover, Saudi Arabia, together with the United States, created the Taliban’s cradle by funding and arming the mujahideen who forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, in a bid to distance Saudi Arabia from the Taliban, recently distinguished Wahhabism, the kingdom’s ultra-conservative strand of Islam, from Deobandism, another ultra-conservative interpretation of the faith that originated in India and constitutes the theological wellspring of the Taliban. Prince Turki was speaking in London at the Royal Society for Asian Affairs’ launch of his book, The Afghan Files.[5]

Some media reports suggested that Prince Turki secretly met Taliban leaders in August.[6] Prince Turki unsuccessfully sought to convince the group to moderate its policies and put flesh on the notion of a changed Taliban 2.0. As head of Saudi intelligence from 1979 to 2001, Prince Turki dealt with the mujahideen during the war against the Soviets and sought to persuade the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden after Al Qaida bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The need to distance Islam as practised in conservative Gulf states from the Taliban’s interpretation of the faith takes on added significance amid doubts about US reliability reinforced by the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the United States rejigging its commitment to guaranteeing security in the region. It is where religious soft power meets defence and security policy in a court of public opinion that may not delve into the nuanced differences between Wahhabism and Deobandism.

 

Testing Taliban Commitments

The Taliban’s willingness and ability to honour their pledge to control militants on Afghan soil may be put to the test sooner than later. It would be a matter of time before China knocks on newly appointed Afghan acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani’s door, demanding the extradition of Uighur fighters. The Chinese demand would be challenging not least because of the Taliban’s consistent rejection, no matter the cost, of requests for the expulsion of militants who have helped them in their battles.

The Taliban already made that clear two decades ago when they accepted the risk of a US invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 by refusing for the umpteenth time to hand over Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. There is little in Taliban 2.0 that suggests that this stance has changed. If Haneef Atamar, foreign minister in former president Ashraf Ghani’s government, is to be believed, Uighurs, including one-time fighters in Syria, contributed significantly to the Taliban’s most recent battlefield successes in northern Afghanistan.[7]

A demand to extradite Uighurs to China would also be challenging because Haqqani himself, the Afghan official in charge of internal security, is a wanted man with a US$10 million US bounty on his head.[8] Moreover, the United Nations has sanctioned Haqqani’s prime minister, Mullah Hasan Akhund, and various other members of the caretaker government. “It’s hard to see a wanted man turning over someone who is wanted for similar reasons,” said a Western diplomat.[9]

Likewise, honouring extradition requests could threaten unity within the Taliban’s ranks. “Taliban actions against foreign jihadist groups to appease neighbouring countries would be especially controversial because there is quite a widespread sense of solidarity and comradeship with those who fought alongside the Taliban for so long”, said Afghanistan scholar Antonio Giustozzi.[10]

Unanswered is the question of whether and why China would go along with what seems to be an unspoken international consensus that it may be best not to seek extraditions if the Taliban keep their word and prevent militants from striking at targets beyond Afghanistan. Counterterrorism experts and diplomats argue that if forced the Taliban would quietly let foreign militants leave their country rather than hand them over. Such a move would make it difficult to monitor these individuals.

China has in recent years successfully demanded the extradition of its Turkish Muslim citizens from countries like Egypt, Malaysia and Thailand and has pressured many more to do so even though the persons in question were not suspected of being foreign fighters and/or members of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP). The United Nations Security Council designated TIP’s predecessor, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), as a terrorist organisation. TIP’s members had once fought alongside the Islamic State in Syria. There is little reason to assume that China would make Afghanistan, a refuge from Syria for Uighur fighters, the exception.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made that clear when he hinted at possible extradition requests during talks in July in China with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and the new government’s first deputy prime minister.[11] Wang demanded that the Taliban break relations with all militant groups and take resolute action against the TIP.

The Taliban may have destroyed any chance of Chinese reliance on them by demonstrating early on that they and the international community may be speaking different languages even if they use the same words. The Taliban made clear that their definition of inclusivity, a term the group and the international community, including China, Russia and India, appeared to agree on, was very different. The Taliban formed an overwhelming ethnic, all-male government that was anything but inclusive by the universally agreed meaning of the word.[12] Adding fuel to the fire, Haqqani and his colleagues, including Qari Fasihuddin Badakhshani, the Afghan military’s new Taliban chief of staff, a Tajik and one of only three non-Pashtuns in the new 33-member government structure, is believed to have close ties to Uighur, Pakistani and other militants.[13]

 

Disappointment Galore

Analysts read China’s insistence on the Taliban maintaining good relations with all of its neighbours as an effort to position Central Asian nations as a counterweight to the baggage that comes with the group’s ties to Pakistan and Iran. China worries that the Taliban’s discrimination and persecution of the Shi’a Hazara, who account for 20 per cent of the Afghan population, could persuade Tehran to covertly support resistance to the group’s rule.

China is also concerned that the Taliban will be reticent about entertaining Chinese-backed Pakistan requests for the handover of members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), more commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP is a coalition of Islamist Pashtun groups with close ties to the Afghan Taliban that last year joined forces with several other militant Pakistani groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a violently anti-Shi’a Sunni Muslim supremacist organisation.

China fears that the fallout of the Taliban’s sweep across Afghanistan could affect China beyond Afghanistan’s borders, perhaps no more so than in Pakistan, a major focus of the People’s Republic’s single largest Belt-and-Road (BRI) investment. The killing in July of nine Chinese nationals in an attack on a bus transporting Chinese workers to the construction site of a dam in the northern mountains of Pakistan[16] raised the spectre of Afghanistan-based jihadists targeting China. Until now, it was mainly Baloch nationalists who targeted the Chinese in Pakistan.

 

Eyeing Pakistan

The attack occurred amid fears that the Taliban victory would bolster ultra-conservative religious sentiment in Pakistan, where many celebrated the group’s success in the hope that it would boost chances for austere religious rule in the world’s second-most populous Muslim-majority state. “Our jihadis will be emboldened. They will say that ‘if America can be beaten, what is the Pakistan army to stand in our way?’” said a senior Pakistani official.[17]

Indicating its concern, China has delayed the signing of a framework agreement on industrial cooperation that would have accelerated the implementation of projects that are part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a crown jewel of the People’s Republic’s transportation, telecommunications and energy-driven BRI.[18]

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid recently kept the Taliban’s relationship with the TTP ambiguous. “The issue of the TTP is one that Pakistan will have to deal with, not Afghanistan. It is up to Pakistan, and Pakistani Islamic scholars and religious figures, not the Taliban, to decide on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of their war and to formulate a strategy in response”, Mujahid said during an interview on a Pakistani television programme.[19] The spokesman stopped short of saying the Taliban would abide by a decision of the scholars. Afghan sources suggest that the Taliban advised the TTP to restrict their fight to Pakistani soil and have offered to negotiate with the Pakistan government an amnesty and the return of the Pakistani militants to the South Asian nation.

The TTP is a coalition of Pashtun Islamist groups with close ties to the Afghan Taliban that last year joined forces with several other militant Pakistani groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. “Our fight against Pakistan will continue until we establish it as an Islamic state. We will not spare their dollar-dependent soldiers and politicians”, said TTP commander Molvi Faqeer Mohamad. A wanted man in Pakistan, Mohamad was speaking to Al Jazeera[20] after having been freed from jail in one of the Taliban’s many prison breaks. The US-backed government of Ashraf Ghani had refused to extradite Mohamad to Pakistan.

Increasingly, the TTP is framing its struggle as a Pashtun nationalist, rather than a jihadist, quest. “We will free our land from the occupation of the Pakistani forces and we will never surrender to their atrocious rule. We want to live on our land according to Islamic laws and tribal traditions. We are Muslims and Pashtuns”, said TTP leader Nur Wali Mehsud in March.[21] In separate remarks, Mehsud insisted that “the independence of Pakhtunkhwa and the Pashtun tribal areas is national and religious for all Pashtuns.”[22]

A few analysts have pointed to what would constitute the greatest threat to Pakistan: the potential coalescing of a campaign of TTP violence with the notion of merging Pashtun-populated areas of Pakistan with Afghanistan. The intertwining of Pashtun national identity and Islam resounds in a Pashto poem quoted by Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban official and brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the group’s deputy leader. “The essence of my Pashto is so Islamic, Were there no Islam, I would still be a Muslim”, a couplet of the poem says. Haqqani quoted the couplet while discussing Pashtun identity with no reference to geopolitics.[23]

“Pashtuns of the Afghan Taliban will, after a few years in power, find common cause with their Pashtun kinsmen in Pakistan… There are plenty of Pakistani Pashtuns who would prefer the whole of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province) to be part of a wider Pashtunistan”, predicted scholar and former British ambassador to Pakistan Tim Willasey-Wilsey.[24]

Other analysts have privately argued that a Pakistan-dominated Pashtunistan embedded in a broader Asian confederation would counter the various threats Pakistan is concerned about, including the TTP, ultra-conservatism and secession. The views of these analysts embody the Pakistani military and government’s worst fears: the undermining of Islam as Pakistan’s glue by ethnic cleavages. It is a fear that was first expressed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s founder, who warned against the “poison of provincialism”. The fear has been reinforced by the secession of predominantly Bengal East Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971.

“The time is now ripe for America and its allies to marginalise the remnants of radical Islamdom in South-Central Asia as a first step in generating a mega-confederation of free peoples extending from Pashtunistan in the West all the way to and including Indonesia in the East”, said a former Western government official-turned-scholar. “The key step for Pakistan in countering the extremism of radical Muslims trained by the Saudi Wahhabis is simply to absorb the western half of Pashtunistan, which includes the southern two-thirds of Afghanistan, and the eastern half which makes up most of the western third of Pakistan, into a new Province of Pashtunistan in a greater Pakistan confederation as a model for the world and especially for the looser confederation extending across India to Indonesia”, the scholar said.

Pakistan last year cracked down on the Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement, or PTM, a non-violent protest movement demanding rights for Pashtuns in Pakistan’s former Federally Administered Tribal Areas.[25] Pakistan is completing a physical barrier to any changes along the Durand Line that separates it from Afghanistan, the country’s longest border, with the construction of a US$500 million, 2,600-km-long wall.[26]

The wall, conceived to keep militants and potential refugees on the Afghan side of the border, is being bolstered by state-of-the-art surveillance technology and multiple fortresses. Pakistan has closed 75 of its 78 border crossings in the wake of the Taliban takeover. Much of the border is mountainous and, in the words of a former Pakistani military officer, “good territory for guerrillas to operate and hide in.”[27]

The notion of Pashtunistan or a confederation that includes arch rivals Pakistan and India as well as countries as diverse as Indonesia may be far-fetched, to say the least, but is certain to ring alarm bells in Islamabad. Those bells may already be ringing after Taliban official Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai declared in a rare statement on foreign policy that “we give due importance to our political, economic and trade ties with India and we want these ties to continue. We are looking forward to working with India in this regard.”[28]

Said scholar and author Pervez Hoodbhoy: “Like it or not, AfPak has become reality. Despised in Pakistan because of its American origin, this term rings true. Geographical proximity is now augmented by the ideological proximity of rulers in both countries. Taliban-style thinking is bound to spread through the length and breadth of Pakistan.”[29] The term “AfPak” was used by the US government to signal that Afghanistan and Pakistan constituted a single theatre of operations in the war on terror.

 

Showing Them a Fist

Recent attacks on Pakistani military personnel by the TTP notwithstanding, neither the Taliban nor Al Qaida are believed to want to risk a repeat of the kind of actions that prompted the United States to invade in 2001 and topple the government. “Al Qaida would not like to waste the Taliban’s victory again but might like to use their presence in the country to strengthen their regional affiliates in the subcontinent, Yemen, Somalia, and the Sahel”, said Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Similarly, Sir John Sawers, former head of the UK’s MI6 intelligence agency, argued that “the Taliban will want to focus on consolidating its position in the country. They’ve also got some important relationships they have got to get right, particularly Pakistan, then Iran and China. All are complicated and none are going to be helped if they become the base of international terrorism.”[30]

China’s dilemma in dealing with the Taliban is reinforced by the fact that Russia, with Central Asia as a buffer and a military base in Tajikistan, feels less urgency in settling the Afghan issue. As a result, Russia rejected a Chinese request that it recognise the Taliban government and allow China to go second. “China is running out of instruments to engage with the Taliban”, said Yau, the China scholar.

Instead, Russia, like Iran, is hedging its bets. Both countries had helped the Taliban as the group rolled across the country in the months before the US withdrawal. The two countries provided funding and weapons and helped the Taliban cut deals with groups that paved their road to Kabul.[31] Both countries were taken aback when in return the Taliban refused to form a truly inclusive government rather than one that was overwhelmingly Pashtun at the expense of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks and Shi’a Hazaras. The prominence in the government of the Haqqani network that has a history of brutality towards the Shi’a was particularly galling for Iran. Giustozzi, the Afghanistan scholar, suggested that Iranian concern about the Taliban predates the recent formation of their government and started with the earlier arrival in Afghanistan of Iranian Baluchi nationalist fighters from Jaysh ul Adl, a group that had been operating from Pakistan and has intermittently attacked targets in the Iranian province of Balochistan with the support of the Haqqani network.

Russia signalled its displeasure with the breakdown in talks to form a government between the Taliban and former president Hamid Karzai and former chief executive Abdullah by holding a series of joint war games in recent weeks with troops from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which hosts a Russian military base and openly supports ethnic Tajik opponents of the primarily Pashtun Taliban. The drills, which involved 2,500 troops from the three nations and some 500 military vehicles as well as artillery, were held close to the Afghan border and included Russian planes striking mock militant camps.

“If the logic of the United States is that its military presence might enhance security of Central Asia, the natural response for Moscow is that we can take care of it, we have done it for a long period of time”, said Andrey Kortunov, director-general of the International Affairs Council, a nonprofit think tank in Moscow.[32] General Anatoly Sidorov, commander of the forces involved in the exercise, emphasised that it was deliberately a high-profile undertaking. He pointed out that his troops were “all visible, they are not hiding.”[33] Russia’s approach, added Daniel Kiselyov, editor of Fergana, a Russian-language media outlet focused on Central Asia, is: “You can talk to the Taliban but you also need to show them a fist.”[34]

 

* Dr James M Dorsey, an award-winning journalist and scholar, is the author of the syndicated column and blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore.

 

Image caption: Taliban fighters stand guard near an open-air rally in a field on the outskirts of Kabul, 3 October 2021. Hoshang Hasshimi / AFP

 

End Notes

[1] Abubakar Siddique and Abdul Hai Kakar, “Al-Qaeda Could Flourish with New Strategy under Taliban Rule”, Ghandara, 30 September 2021, https://gandhara.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-al-qaeda-taliban/31486256.html

[2] Ahmet T Kuru, “The Ulema-State Alliance: A Barrier to Democracy and Development in the Muslim World”, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 2 September 2021, https://institute.global/policy/ulema-state-alliance-barrier-democracy-and-development-muslim-world

[3] Al Jazeera, “Qatar Calls Taliban Moves on Girls Education ‘Very Disappointing’”, 30 September 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/30/qatar-taliban-afghanistan-eu-borrell

[4] The Economist, “In Power, the Taliban’s Divisions are Coming to the Fore”, 4 October 2021, https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/10/02/in-power-the-talibans-divisions-are-coming-to-the-fore

[5] Royal Society for Asian Affairs, “The Afghanistan File — Prince Turki AlFaisal Al Saud”, YouTube, 25 September 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMRtd65jzZc

[6] Intelligence Online, “After Fall of Kabul, Riyadh Takes Prudent Approach to Talks with Taliban”, 27 August 2021, https://www.intelligenceonline.com/government-intelligence/2021/08/27/after-fall-of-kabul-riyadh-takes-prudent-approach-to-talks-with-taliban,109687293-art

[7] Yaroslav Trofimov and Jeremy Page, “In Leaving Afghanistan, US Reshuffles Global Power Relations”, The Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-u-s-withdrawal-china-russia-power-relations-11630421715

[8] Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Sirajuddin Haqqani”, Undated, https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorinfo/sirajuddin-haqqani

[9] Interview with the author, 1 October 2021.

[10] Antonio Giustozzi, “Terrorism Monitor Interview With Dr Antonio Giustozzi”, Terrorism Monitor 19, No. 17, 7 September 2021, https://jamestown.org/program/terrorism-monitor-interview-with-dr-antonio-giustozzi/?mc_cid=d6e594b307

[11] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi Meets with Head of the Afghan Taliban Political Commission Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar”, 28 July 2021, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1895950.shtml

[12] Frud Bezhan, “Taliban’s ‘Mullahcratic’ Government: Militants Fail To Form Inclusive Administration”, Ghandara, 8 September 2021, https://gandhara.rferl.org/a/taliban-failure-inclusive-government/31450471.html

[13] Bilal Sarwary, Twitter, 8 September 2021, https://twitter.com/bsarwary/status/1435452237648642049

[14] Afghanistan’s rare earths are “light” and more easily found elsewhere, including in China, which is believed to have 37 per cent of global reserves, including the world’s single largest reserve in Inner Mongolia. See Tom Daly, “China Hikes 2021 Rare Earth Quotas by 20% to Record Highs”, Reuters, 1 October 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-hikes-2021-rare-earth-quotas-by-20-record-highs-2021-09-30/. Although the Pentagon once described Afghanistan as the potential “Saudi Arabia of lithium”, China’s efforts to meet its demand for lithium are focused on Latin America’s “Lithium Triangle”, home to 53 per cent of the world’s economically viable reserves. See Steve Levine, “The Story of China’s Jump on the US in the Lithium Triangle”, 9 April 2021, https://themobilist.medium.com/the-story-of-chinas-jump-on-the-u-s-in-the-lithium-triangle-2de47eb12d70

[15] For details on these two companies’ experience with a US$2.8 billion deal to mine copper for 30 years at Mes Aynak, see Archie Hunter, Julian Luk and Yasemin Esmen, “Afghanistan’s Mighty Copper Reserves Remain Out of Reach, Even for China”, Fastmarkets MB, 24 August 2021, https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/4004437/in-depth/Afghanistans-mighty-copper-reserves-remain-out-of-reach-even-for-China.html. The author’s own interview with some well-placed sources suggested that most of the funds were invested only on paper and never reached Afghanistan.

[16] Asif Shahzad, “Pakistan Says Attack That Killed Chinese Was a Suicide Bombing”, Reuters, 13 August 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-foreign-min-says-bus-attack-that-killed-9-chinese-workers-was-suicide-2021-08-12/

[17] Asif Shahzad, “Pakistan Says Attack That Killed Chinese Was a Suicide Bombing”.

[18] Afshan Subohi, “Widening Fissures”, Dawn, 19 July 2021, https://www.dawn.com/news/1635842

[19] MEMRI, Afghan Taliban Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid On Pakistani Taliban Organization TTP: ‘It Is Up To Pakistan, And Pakistani Ulema and Religious Figures… to Decide on the Legitimacy or Illegitimacy of Their War’”, 30 August 2021, https://www.memri.org/reports/afghan-taliban-spokesman-zabihullah-mujahid-pakistani-taliban-organization-ttp-it-pakistan

[20] Al Jazeera Arabic, 30 August 2021.

[21] Cited in Abdul Basit, “Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Discursive Shift From Global Jihadist Rhetoric to Pashtun-Centric Narratives”, Terrorism Monitor, 24 September 2021, https://jamestown.org/program/tehreek-e-taliban-pakistans-discursive-shift-from-global-jihadist-rhetoric-to-pashtun-centric-narratives/

[22] Cited in Abdul Basit, “Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Discursive Shift”.

[23] Ahmed-Waleed Kakar, “Taliban, the Next Generation: An Interview with Anas Haqqani”, Newlines, 30 August 2021, https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/taliban-the-next-generation/

[24] Tim Willasey-Wilsey, “After Triumph in Afghanistan, Foreboding for Pakistan”, Royal United Services Institute, 25 August 2021, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/after-triumph-afghanistan-foreboding-pakistan

[25] Madiha Afzal, “Why is Pakistan’s Military Repressing a Huge, Nonviolent Pashtun Protest Movement?”, Brookings Institution, 7 February 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/02/07/why-is-pakistans-military-repressing-a-huge-nonviolent-pashtun-protest-movement/

[26] Abdul Basit, “Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Fence, a Step in the Right Direction”, Al Jazeera, 25 February 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/2/25/the-pak-afghan-border-fence-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction

[27] Interview with the author, 16 August 2021.

[28] Rezaul H Laskar, “Want Good India-Afghanistan Relations, Says Taliban Leader”, Hindustan Times, 6 October 2021, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/want-good-india-afghanistan-relations-says-taliban-leader-101630260163407.html

[29] Pervez Hoodbhoy, “A reformed Taliban?”, Dawn, 28 August 2021, https://www.dawn.com/news/1643074/a-reformed-taliban

[30] Andrew England, Helen Warrell, Katrina Manson and Amy Kazmin, “Taliban Victory Sparks Concerns Al-Qaeda Could Regroup in Afghanistan”, Financial Times, 17 August 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/03cc24ca-dc69-4bd6-8f2d-7509b0f6b6f1

[31] Antonio Giustozzi, “Alliances Were Key to the Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan”, Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, 9 September 2021, https://newlinesinstitute.org/afghanistan/alliances-were-key-to-the-taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan/

[32] Michael R Gordon, “Putin Rejected Role for US Forces Near Afghanistan at Summit With Biden”, The Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-rebuffed-u-s-plans-for-bases-near-afghanistan-at-summit-with-biden-11629398848

[33] Andrew E Kramer and Anton Troainovski, “With Afghan Collapse, Moscow Takes Charge in Central Asia”, The New York Times, 19 August 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/world/asia/afghanistan-russia.html

[34] Andrew E Kramer and Anton Troainovski, “With Afghan Collapse, Moscow Takes Charge in Central Asia”.