Korybko To The Media Line: Russia Has Pragmatic Reasons For Partnering With The Taliban

Here’s the full interview that I gave to The Media Line’s Arshad Mehmood, excerpts of which were included in his report about how “Moscow’s Move To Delist Taliban Faces Skepticism Over IS-KP Threats”.

1. Can this significant move by Russia genuinely bring stability to the region?

Russia’s promised delisting of the Taliban as a terrorist organization is unable to bring stability to the region on its own, but it can help improve the overall situation in Afghanistan with time. Russia can now expand military and intelligence cooperation with the Taliban, including the possible provisioning of small arms, and reach investment deals in the energy and mining sectors. The last two can provide more jobs and budgetary revenue, the latter of which could ideally be reinvested into helping average people.

2. Is this part of a larger strategy to form a new bloc as a counterbalance to the United States?

Russia doesn’t believe that bloc politics are relevant anymore. While it’s true that the global systemic transition can be oversimplified into the competition between those countries that want to retain the US-led Western unipolar system and those who want to accelerate multipolar processes, there’s too much diversity within the second group to characterize them as a bloc.

What Russia wants in Afghanistan is for the Taliban to eradicate terrorism, keep foreign military bases out of the country, open up investment opportunities in its energy and mining sectors, become a market for certain Russian exports, and facilitate trade with South Asia via a new logistics corridor. These are legitimate interests that don’t infringe on anyone else’s legitimate ones, including the US’.

3. Is stability in the region and effective action against terrorist organizations, including Daesh, feasible without Pakistan's involvement?

Daesh/ISIS-K is still a formidable threat, but the most destabilizing regional force in recent years has proven to be the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the “Pakistani Taliban”. They’re designated as terrorists by Pakistan, have reportedly allied with similarly designated Baloch groups, and have been responsible for an upsurge in terrorism since 2021 and especially over the past year. Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban (“Taliban”) of patronizing the TTP though they’ve denied it.

Nevertheless, the joint statement that emerged from the third quadrilateral Chinese, Iranian, Pakistani, and Russian Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Afghanistan on the sidelines of last month’s UNGA explicitly called on the Taliban to “eliminate all terrorist groups equally and non-discriminatory and prevent the use of Afghan territory against its neighbors, the region, and beyond.”

This clause implies that the Taliban has double standards towards its obligation to fight terrorism and thus lends credence to Pakistan’s claim that they’re patronizing the TTP and other groups. Accordingly, it also suggests that Pakistan’s partners would understand – or at least not politically object to – it engaging in more cross-border kinetic action to thwart related threats, including at scale if needed.

So long as such threats remain, Russia and every other responsible stakeholder in Afghanistan will be unable to achieve their goals in that country. Terrorism will remain a problem, investments wouldn’t be safe, and Afghanistan is unlikely to facilitate anyone’s trade with South Asia owing to deteriorating Taliban-Pakistani ties. It’s therefore in everyone’s interests, Russia’s included, that the Taliban stop the TTP and its allies from attacking Pakistan.

4. How would you shed light on the evolution of this situation in a broader context?

The Taiban are Afghanistan’s de facto rulers and must therefore be pragmatically engaged with by all responsible stakeholders if they want to have any influence in the country, whether with regards to fighting terrorism or searching for investments. Russia’s promised delisting of them as a terrorist group will help advance these goals and other countries might soon follow in its footsteps.

Excerpts from this interview were included in Arshad Mehmood’s report titled “Moscow’s Move To Delist Taliban Faces Skepticism Over IS-KP Threats”.