The Taliban and Central Asia

Concerns about the spillover of conflict from Afghanistan into Central Asia have seen a resurgence as the Taliban – emboldened by the looming U.S. exit – have intensified their military campaigns across the country. Most dramatically, the Taliban seizure of areas bordering Tajikistan last month chased more than a thousand Afghan troops across the border.

But the fighting hasn’t followed them, yet.

Tajikistan has called up 20,000 reservists and requested assistance from its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to further strengthen the 1,360-kilometer border. The Taliban, meanwhile, sent a delegation to Moscow, which reassured the Russians that the group “wouldn’t violate the borders of Central Asian countries” and provided “guarantees of security for foreign diplomatic and consular missions in Afghanistan.”

The last time the Taliban were on the march, Tajikistan had its own problems.

In the spring of 1992, neighboring Tajikistan and Afghanistan both erupted into civil wars. As rival mujahideen groups and warlords squabbled over the ruins of post-communist Afghanistan, political competition in post-Soviet Tajikistan devolved into fighting as well. The separate conflicts preoccupied and devastated each country over the next several years, coming to different conclusions within a year of each other.

As scholars Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer wrote in a 2013 monograph on the political and social history of Tajikistan, “By 1996–97 the Russians, the Iranians and the [Islamic Renaissance Party]’s sponsors in Afghanistan (for example, Ahmad Shah Massoud) realised that the ongoing civil war was detrimental to their efforts against the Taliban, which was rapidly gaining territory.”

And yet, in September 1996, the Taliban stormed into Kabul, victorious. As they unfolded their strict fundamentalist vision of Islamic rule over as much of Afghanistan as they could, the Tajik Civil War persisted until the following summer.

The peace deal that ended the Tajik Civil War in June 1997 entitled the opposition, led by the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), to 30 percent of government posts and included promises to lift restrictions on media and bans on opposition parties, including religious parties.

With Islamists seizing power in Afghanistan, the Tajik government under President Emomali Rahmon and his Russian backers – both secular in the Soviet tradition – sought an off-ramp for the conflict.

Although the Taliban had declared their neutrality in the Tajik Civil War, several Taliban factions were reported to have fought on the side of the opposition. Massoud, an ethnic Tajik warlord in Afghanistan, also supported the opposition. Arguably, Rahmon recognized the potential threat of the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan and sought to co-opt the Tajik opposition before the possibly materialized of its seeking support from the Taliban and its allies. Although the Tajik opposition was led by an Islamist party, its ideology was far less extreme than that of the Taliban and the broader opposition coalition contained democratic and progressive groups too.

The complicated geopolitics of the time resulted in the governments of both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan recognizing and supporting the Northern Alliance, a united front formed against the Taliban by former Afghan mujahideen foes. The Northern Alliance’s political head was Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, with Massoud his defense minister and a powerful force in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. Also under the Northern Alliance umbrella at the time was Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord infamous for shelling Kabul in 1992 instead of allowing Rabbani to hold on to the Afghan presidency. Their squabbles momentarily sidelined, the Northern Alliance provided a buffer for the Central Asian governments against the Taliban.

While Tajikistan and Uzbekistan did not recognize the Taliban’s government, and were in the words of RFE/RL’s Bruce Pannier “openly hostile toward the Taliban” in the late 1990s, Turkmenistan was a different story. With neutrality enshrined in Turkmen politics and pipedreams of laying gas lines across Afghanistan, the government of Saparmurat Niyazov engaged with the Taliban directly. The Taliban, for example, opened a representative office in Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital.

At present, the governments of Central Asia are taking a variety of positions vis-a-vis the Taliban, none as directly hostile as in the 1990s.

Turkmenistan is as opaque as ever, muddling through in the middle. Although the government of Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov maintains its neutrality mantra and the eternal dream of laying a gas pipeline across Afghanistan, it has increased its military presence at the border with Afghanistan. Nevertheless, Ashgabat also hosted Taliban delegations in February and July this year.

On the far end of the spectrum is Uzbekistan, which has engaged the most directly with the Taliban but also with the Afghan government. Under Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan has tried to position itself as centrally politically as it it is geographically. With a strident focus on regional connectivity and trade, including with and through Afghanistan, Tashkent has hosted meetings with Afghan and Taliban delegations alike and promoted itself as a venue for peace talks. Cynically, Tashkent is hedging its bets. However the political structure of Afghanistan shakes out, it wants to cut deals with the powers that be.

Tajikistan, with the most immediate problem regarding the Taliban, has been conspicuously quiet and occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s unlikely an accident that Rahmon’s government has kept the Taliban at arm’s length while entertaining the possibility of hosting U.S. forces or otherwise cooperating with Washington to keep tabs on Afghanistan following the withdrawal.

While nothing has been officially announced, the tea leaves can be read: Tajik officials have met with various U.S. representatives, including stops by the foreign minister at the U.S. State Department and Defense Department in early July, but have not once met with a Taliban delegation. In fact, as Pannier wrote recently, “Tajik authorities have not invited Taliban representatives to visit, nor sent any officials to third countries to meet with Taliban representatives.”

Unlike 1997, Tajikistan doesn’t have a powerful allied force across the border in Afghanistan to serve as a buffer. It has also completed the work of the civil war and destroyed its opposition, purging IRPT and other former opposition members from the government over a span of years. Dushanbe may be concerned that Islamists in Afghanistan will ally with Islamists in Tajikistan, but that threat is arguably more imaginary than real.

The Taliban in the 1990s and also at present doesn’t espouse international ambitions, with the group limiting itself rhetorically to ruling Afghanistan. Nevertheless, a Taliban government in Afghanistan could complicate geopolitics for Central Asia. In geopolitics, you can’t pick your neighbors.