What next

What next

Now that the ‘interim’ Taliban Govt has been unveiled, the world must decide on future course.

The world had hoped against hope that the Taliban have changed this time around, that they appear mindful of public opinion and may not be as regressive as before. The world even debated about the good Taliban and the bad Taliban. The hope was that just one step of the Taliban towards civilised behaviour will make it easier to decide whether to take a chance by recognising them. The Taliban, by announcing their interim Government, simply dashed all these hopes. They are the same as ever. It is as if they expect the world to accept them as they are. Where recognition of a toned-down version of the 1996 vintage Taliban might have paved the way for some kind of developmental interference of the world in Afghan affairs, the same old hardline faces in the interim Government limit the international community’s options on recognition and sanctions. The world thought it was seeing a reformed Taliban when their spokesperson with a smile pasted on his face conversed with a woman journalist. The announcement on Tuesday changed all that. It is an all-male, no-women, hardliner affair. The field commanders crowd the Government and the Doha-based political moderates are edged out. If it took this long to announce the Government — the process speeded up, coincidentally, only after the arrival in Kabul of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence chief — it was because the Taliban were settling their internal squabbles over demarcating their turfs and arriving at a pro rata share in the power pie acceptable to all shuras.

It is an “interim” Government, the prefix carrot dangled in the face of the world, hinting at a promise of elections at some point and insisting that democracy is not a mirage in the wilderness of Islamist ideology. The hasty departure of the United States troops from Afghanistan and the quantum of vacuum they left behind are suddenly a thing of the past. The nations of the world face the question: What next? The ball is in their court. A series of global meetings in the next couple of weeks may help debate the options — the BRICS meeting, followed by the SCO council of the heads of State and the UN General Assembly. In between, the UN Security Council’s Taliban Sanctions Committee will meet, India in the chair. Should there be a request for the lifting of sanctions or their extension? All eyes will be on China which said it will decide on recognising the Taliban after the Government is announced. It cannot be that the world can be asked to recognise the Taliban Government when new Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, under sanctions from the UNSC committee, is also on the US’ most wanted list for terrorism. The world is reminded of Haqqani’s smug remarks the New York Times braved criticism to publish just days before the 2020 Taliban-US agreement was signed in Doha: “I am convinced that the killing and the maiming must stop.”