Russia’s “troubleshooting tactics” with the Taliban*

Three years ago U.S. forces were ordered to draw down from Afghanistan and the Taliban rapidly filled the void.

Russia was - and remains - a key stakeholder in the process. With the exception of Turkmenistan, a self-isolated state that also shares a border with Afghanistan, Russia has a visa-free regime with all the Central Asian countries. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led defense and security alliance of ex-Soviet republics. Russia has long been concerned with the presence of Islamist extremists near its borders or in adjacent regions — a reason it cooperated with the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan in early 2000s and launched its military campaign in Syria in 2015. The prospect of the Taliban’s return to power is yet another grave concern for the Kremlin.

At the time, Amb. Zamir Kabulov, then Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, communicated four major items of concern to Moscow:
👉 the potential spillover of instability from Afghanistan into Central Asia;
👉 the threat of ISIS* to Russia and its allies in Central Asia;
👉 drug trafficking;
👉 the safety of Russia’s diplomatic and consular missions.

The Taliban sought to provide reassurances on all four items and said they would not “violate the borders of the Central Asian countries” and would “provide guarantees of the safety of foreign countries’ diplomatic and consular missions in Afghanistan.” They also committed to “eradicate drug production in Afghanistan” and stated they were “firmly determined to ward off the threat of ISIS in Afghanistan.”

Russia may not have liked having an Islamic emirate a few miles from its borders, but as long as the Taliban’s agenda was local and not global, like that of ISIS, it seemed to believe it could live with it. The modalities of the policy are still in place even though the regional dynamics has changed since then and remains rather turbulent.

*designated as terrorist by the courts of Russia