Every country from China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey sees several difficulties and opportunities in the new Taliban Afghanistan and approaches it accordingly. A common denominator for these countries in this approach is realpolitik.
The word realpolitik expresses a German term that describes diplomatic and international action based on current reality and not some kind of complex pursuit within a moral framework of values.
Realpolitik is one of the most well-known pillars of the formation of axes of action that combine the national-state interest in the international arena.
by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis
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Taliban’s Afghanistan
The Taliban of 2011 have nothing to do with the Taliban of 2001. Their first statements show that it is a national movement and secondarily an Islamic movement. The Taliban in 2001, when they took refuge in Al Qaeda, considered themselves part of a global Islamist-jihadist movement and secondarily an Afghan national movement.
The Taliban of 2021, place Islamic fundamentalism second to the glory of state power and their recognition by the international community. For this reason:
1. They avoided mass retaliation / executions.
2. They announced a general amnesty
3. They are willing to accept some basic principles regarding human rights and the position of women (flexible application of Sharia law).
In effect, the Taliban are likely to be bound by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and to try to resolve their differences through diplomatic means, thus gaining participation in supranational formations of the conciliation forum.
The Taliban, and unfortunately for Afghan society, are now a domestic solution to power, as the Taliban know the political and cultural tradition there, with their enemies gone. Once the Taliban have managed to avoid a new civil war, their rule will have a future.
Economic theory shows that the basis for the development of a country’s economy in the modern world is energy, and the Taliban, if they move properly, can become reformers by placing Afghanistan in the modern states of the world.
The goals of neighboring countries
- Russia
Russia wants to take advantage of the international surveillance gap in the region, which has now emerged with the withdrawal of the United States. The ideal situation for Russia would be a dependent on Russian sources of funding and products respectively Afghanistan.
In this way Russia achieves:
1. Ensuring the protection of its own region from any export of Islamic fundamentalism.
2. The coveted security from its southern borders.
3. Its exit to the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan.
In addition, Russia’s economic interests in the region are great. More specifically, in 2010, Russia together with Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India signed an agreement for the construction of a gas pipeline (TAPI), 1.7 km long and with a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters.
This project was stopped due to the inability of the then Afghan government to control its remote provinces. Logic dictates that the current Taliban regime should approve the project.
In this case, Russia will become the main supplier of pipes and fuel to South Asia.
Afghanistan has a huge shortage of electricity. The country has only seven power plants with a capacity of 3.1GW. As Azerbaijan occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the recent war with Armenia (for this reason Russia did not support Armenia), Russia wants to implement an energy bridge project between Azerbaijan and Iran, which with the consolidation of new status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh is now more likely to be implemented.
But this energy plan could be extended to Afghanistan as well, if the Taliban regime wants it.
- China
China wants Afghanistan to complete the One Belt-One Road economic route between China-Afghanistan-Pakistan (Gwadar) ending in the Indian Ocean. In addition, it wants to exploit Afghanistan’s opium, which will be processed in China and then diffused from its ports around the world.
In addition, large hydrocarbon reserves have been discovered in northern Afghanistan, specifically in Balkh province, and along the Amu Darya basin, on the border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The field, after on-site research by the American Geological Survey, estimated its potential at 1.8 billion barrels of oil, 440 billion cubic meters. gas and more than 560000 barrels of condensed gas. With this deposit, Afghanistan can solve its energy problems for decades to come.
China is eyeing this deposit. China National Petroleum Corporation in 2011 received permission from the Afghan government to concede three fields and in return built three refineries.
China’s main interest is the rare earths and in particular the lithium of Afghanistan and as China is today considered the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world and in battery technology.
The above will be achieved through generous funding from China for the reconstruction of Afghanistan’s infrastructure and the simultaneous extraction and exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth.
At the same time, China will demand compensation from Afghanistan for not exporting “Islamic Renaissance” to its western border as it is home to Muslim populations (such as the Uighurs) whom the Chinese government considers suspicious of autonomy and independence.
China’s goal in the region is to gradually annex the countries of the region to its sphere of influence, countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, to build a strong counterweight to its current and future confrontation with India.
The India-China confrontation will prevail in the coming decades, which is why the West must join India at all costs. The West mistakenly believes that the confrontation will take place mainly between China and Taiwan.
China considers that all spheres around it should belong to its sphere of influence, which, according to its strategy, belongs to it.
- Turkey
Turkey imagines the extent of the Turkish race in a vast expanse of Asia. Turkish-Turkmen populations with similar cultural elements (Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks) live in Afghanistan, mainly in the north.
Turkey’s approach is necessarily a mild form of power offered by a mix of protection and investment, such as the Turkish approach to the Central Asian states.
At the same time, Turkish public opinion does not want to accept other refugees from Afghanistan. In addition, to achieve the above goals, the Turkey-Pakistan axis must be strengthened, as Pakistan is a central point of Turkey’s radical foreign policy.
- Iran
Iran has a multifaceted interest in Afghanistan. Large groups of Afghans are of Persian descent (Khazars, Aimaks, Nuristans, Tajiks), and their languages are of Persian origin, with Dari being one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, resembling Persian Farsi.
As Iran has managed to be the leader of Shiite Islam, it has an even greater interest in Afghanistan, because the Khazars living in Central Afghanistan are Shiites.
Iran bases its interest in Afghanistan on this dual ethno-racial and religious relationship.
In addition, Iran hosts more Afghan refugees than any other country, with Iran incurring the corresponding financial costs. This element wants Iran to be interested in stopping a new flow of migrants, persuading the Taliban to keep them inside the country.
Iran’s trade with Afghanistan exceeds $5 billion a year. The settlement of the border region shows that Iran, along with Pakistan, are the two countries with the strongest interest in Afghanistan.
- Pakistan
Pakistan is the country supplying Taliban personnel and the entire Pakistan-Afghanistan border zone is perforated and not controlled for who passes through which country. Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan as its strategic depth vis-vis India. Pakistan has always aimed to eradicate any Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is an extroverted Islamic country with tendencies of domination that has long served radical movements in its periphery as a means of representing its own non-formal intervention.
Afghanistan may have borders, but in essence it is a multi-divided country, as it is an intermediate “mosaic” of many separate populations. The problem for these neighboring countries, which are planning to fill the gap left by the US, is whether the Taliban and the Afghan people in general are willing to cooperate, as they want to become independent of foreign powers.
