Towards a Cooperative Future

Andrew Korybko

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan has resulted in a plethora of predictions about what might come next for the broader Central & South Asian region. Most of these forecasts are negative considering the group’s prior ties with international terrorist organisations and its previous history of ruling over the country with a very heavy hand.

Moreover, the Taliban is still designated as a terrorist group by the international community, including Russia and China despite those two having developed pragmatic political ties with it throughout the course of the Afghan peace process. The challenges ahead for a Taliban-led Afghanistan are therefore very formidable and shouldn’t be downplayed, but the future might not be full of doom and gloom either.

There’s close to no realistic chance that the Taliban will be overthrown again anytime soon so the world will have to learn to live with it once more. The international situation has drastically changed since the group was last in power and this time some members of the international community might cautiously welcome it into their ranks for reasons of simple pragmatism. This is conditional of course on the Taliban keeping its promises to cut ties with international terrorist organisations and to respect minorities and women’s rights. It remains to be seen how sincere it is in these respects, but Russian officials have expressed optimism about everything since the Taliban returned to power. This suggests that the group might have truly changed.

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If Russia’s and China’s high hopes about the Taliban’s new leadership style are met, then Afghanistan has a chance to function as the integral component of Central and South A