The Taliban and Central Asia

The collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in August 2021 directly impacted the country’s Central Asian neighbors from the very beginning. When the Taliban took Kabul, Afghanistan’s former President Ashraf Ghani fled to Uzbekistan; however, Tashkent’s strained relationship with Ghani resulted in his subsequent transfer to Abu Dhabi.

During this time, over 50 members of the Afghan Air Force fled in their planes. Some landed in Tajikistan and more touched down in Termez, Uzbekistan. The Taliban demanded the return of the planes, but Uzbekistan, in particular, handed them over to the United States instead, insisting they were U.S. property.

Initially, humanitarian agencies expressed grave concern about a potentially overwhelming refugee flow over the borders into Central Asia. However, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan did not allow average Afghan citizens to enter their territories, with only a few high-level delegations being granted access. The presence of over 10,000 Russian troops in Tajikistan helped maintain stability and protect the border between the Central Asian states and Afghanistan.

Although the relationship between Afghanistan under the returned Taliban and Central Asia started with confrontation and confusion, it has evolved into a cooperation based on shared norms. Despite the Taliban's insecure hold on power, the neighboring countries are working closely with them. Leaders in Central Asia, who have long preferenced stability over democracy, saw the Taliban as a potential source of order in the region. The fall of the Afghan Republic provided Central Asia with an unexpected opportunity to reconnect with Afghanistan in new ways.

Since 2021, the relationship between the Taliban and its northern neighbors has been based on a complementarity of interests. The Taliban want trade and economic activity to alleviate the economic hit the regime took when foreign aid, upon which Afghanistan has depended for so long, evaporated. Central Asian states in turn are looking for stability and security. Some countries, like Uzbekistan, even have ambitions of building grand infrastructure projects and restoring deep connections with Afghanistan to facilitate trade and commerce.

Divergent Paths

After the fall of the Afghan Republic in August 2021, the five states of Central Asia each took different paths in relation to the Taliban’s self-declared Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). Despite variations in strategy, none of these states has officially recognized the regime. During the Taliban's first period of rule from 1996 to 2001, it was recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Currently, the Taliban appear to have normal relations with neighboring countries, but formal recognition remains elusive due to the government’s restrictions on women and girls, which have limited their access to most professions and secondary education beyond the elementary level. Furthermore, the government lacks inclusivity as it is predominantly Pashtun-dominated and has few members from Afghanistan’s Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and Turkmen populations.

Despite the lack of formal recognition, Uzbekistan has a grand vision for its future relations with Afghanistan. Tashkent seeks not only to reconnect economically through new trade routes and infrastructure but also wants to reposition Afghanistan as a key part of Central Asia.

This can be seen through the frantic activity of Esmatullah Ergashev, the special representative of the president of Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. He served in this position before the fall of the Republic and has been frenetically crisscrossing the region. He was instrumental in bringing the Taliban to Uzbekistan and facilitating regional conversations. Since the rise of the IEA, Ergashev has been a frequent guest in Kabul, where he has tried to stir up support for regional cooperation and infrastructure projects. Speaking in perfect Kabuli Dari, he is often spotted on Afghan television alongside news of truckloads of humanitarian assistance or discussing new deals with government officials.

Tashkent is desperate to connect to its southern neighbors in order to gain another trade route, freeing itself from the existing routes dominated by Russia, China, or Iran. It dreams of an Afghanistan-Pakistan-Uzbekistan railway that will connect Pakistan’s Kurram border crossing with Termez through Afghanistan. While Russia and Kazakhstan were once interested in the trans-Afghan railway, they have cast the idea aside as infeasible. But Uzbekistan is seemingly determined to make it happen, even though the kind of external funding required would seem impossible to obtain from the major multilateral donors, who are wary of the IEA.

Tajikistan, on the other hand, has been far more hostile to the Taliban. In the days immediately after the collapse of the Afghan Republic, Tajikistani President Emomali Rahmon posthumously awarded the country’s highest honor to two of the Taliban’s most resolute opponents, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani, both ethnic Tajik leaders of the rebel Northern Alliance. Rahmon bestowed these honors as the National Resistance Front (NRF), led by Massoud’s son Ahmad Massoud, was battling Taliban forces in Afghanistan’s Tajik-dominated Panjshir Valley. NRF forces quickly collapsed as Taliban hegemony became clear and Massoud fled to Tajikistan, where he still maintains an office.

Rahmon’s awards to Massoud and Rabbani were a curious choice, coming as they did after the collapse of the Republic. Indeed, his audience for the award was more likely domestic rather than reflecting or having any consequence for dynamics inside of Afghanistan. Since his rise to power in the 1990s, Rahmon has attempted to mobilize Tajik nationalism, an effort that has become more important in recent years as Tajikistan has faced economic hardship and conflict with its neighbor Kyrgyzstan. Skirmishes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border in the Fergana Valley in April-May 2021 were triggered by disputes over irrigation canals in the most densely populated part of the valley, but took on a nationalistic tone as the conflict escalated.

During those days shortly after the fall of the Taliban, it was unclear what impact the situation would have on Tajikistan. Flows of refugees were discussed, and Rahmon seemed to need another pillar to mobilize society behind him during this period of uncertainty. Unlike Uzbekistan, which called for moderation, Tajikistan took a more active stance against the Taliban, stating that it would not recognize the regime unless the largely Pashtun Taliban leadership was more inclusive of the country’s Tajik population.

Despite blistering initial talk from Dushanbe in the early days after the establishment of the IEA, Rahmon eventually softened his position and began to accommodate the nascent regime. For example, a few months after his verbal assault against the Taliban, Rahmon signed agreements on electricity payments after previously threatening to shut off power exports to Afghanistan. Although Rahmon has allowed an NRF-friendly group to run the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan handed over the Afghanistan consulate in Khorog to the Taliban.

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have adapted to conducting business without concern for the former power brokers – the anti-Taliban resistance groups led by local warlords – whose influence has significantly diminished since the Taliban takeover. Central Asian states had long relied on ethnically Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance leaders to further their interests within Afghanistan. During the previous Taliban regime in the late 1990s, Uzbekistan provided crucial support to Uzbek militias led by former Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum. Similarly, Tajikistan consistently supported Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by al-Qaida just two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Junbesh-e Milli, the paramilitary party founded by Dostum, practically vanished when he left Afghanistan in August 2021. The remaining faction of the Northern Alliance is now led by the aforementioned Ahmad Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. The younger Massoud became politically active in Afghanistan in the year leading up to the collapse of the Republic. Massoud’s NRF, which maintains an office in Tajikistan, claims occasional attacks against the IEA, asserting that repression and targeted killings by the Taliban have hindered the movement from growing on a larger scale.

Big Dreams

Through extraordinary repression, the Taliban have been able to usher in an era of relative quiet in Afghanistan. In turn, this has yielded an era of unprecedented cooperation with Central Asia. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from the region did not open up a security vacuum. Instead, a more confident Central Asia engaged directly with the Taliban on important projects that have been stalled for years, if not decades. Rather than take their cues from the United States or Russia, the states of Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan, have charted their own course.

This growing cooperation is manifested in increasing levels of bilateral trade as well as the resurrection and revitalization of stalled regional infrastructure and energy projects that have long been the dream of Central Asian states.

Prior to the collapse of the Afghan Republic, upward of 80 percent of the country’s budget came from international donors. With these donors unwilling to open their pocketbooks to the IEA, the Taliban are trying to turn to neighbors who can invest in the country. One easy fix is to try to profit from Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, but it’s hard to convince foreign companies to invest in a country whose regime remains a pariah and whose long-term stability is in question.

The desire to do business is coming from both sides of the Amu Darya. Central Asia hopes that the Taliban can provide security and stability so that infrastructure projects that connect Central Asia to South Asia can come to fruition. Central Asia remains shackled by U.S. and European sanctions in every direction: Russia to the north, Iran to the southwest, and Afghanistan to the south. This makes getting goods in and out, while remaining in the good graces of the world’s largest economies, quite difficult. In this context, creating new transit routes is an urgent priority.

Uzbekistan has been playing a particularly active role in pushing Central Asia along the road to greater cooperation with the Taliban. As a double-landlocked state, Uzbekistan’s economy faces enormous strain from having its imports and exports face tariffs and taxes at multiple borders on their way to and from new markets. With a young, growing population, Uzbekistan is focused on fostering economic growth in the hopes of creating job opportunities for its people.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also convinced other states in Central Asia that it could be beneficial to find alternative trade routes that allow them to bypass Russia and China. Those routes necessitate access to and across Afghanistan.

Connectivity inside of Central Asia is not a new idea. But for years, the energy behind this idea came from the outside. Under the Obama administration, the United States sought to connect Central Asia and South Asia through its New Silk Road strategy. The strategy focused on the creation of new transport and links to help get goods in and out of Afghanistan, which was important to the U.S. as it faced growing tension with Pakistan during the 2010s. The U.S. facilitated the Northern Distribution Network as an alternative. But the transport routes to get goods in and out of Afghanistan depended on Russia. As relations with Vladimir Putin soured, so too did the long-term prospects of the northern route.

Central to this strategy were grandiose projects like the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, which seeks to bring Turkmen gas through Afghanistan into energy-starved Pakistan and India. There is also CASA-1000, a Central Asia-South Asia power project, which would export excess hydroelectric power from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan would benefit not only from access to electricity, but also from transit fees.

The great irony is that the departure of the United States, and the absence of the money, resources, and attention the U.S. brought to the region, has facilitated greater cooperation between Afghanistan and Central Asia on precisely the projects Washington once championed.

While regional momentum has never been stronger, interest by donors such as the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has waned. However, the disappearance of donors has a bright side: It has facilitated a more genuine and bottom-up form of regional cooperation. Lack of resources forced countries in the region to dig more deeply into their own pockets and work with each other without help from an external third party to move these projects forward.

For example, the World Bank halted a grant of $245 million for CASA-1000 because of the Taliban takeover, but the IEA continues to make agreements with its neighbors aimed at moving the project forward. Shortly after donor support for CASA-1000 collapsed, the Taliban said their government would honor previous contracts related to the project. The Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried to reassure all neighboring countries that the project is still on track. Kyrgyzstan continues to build out the infrastructure for the CASA-1000 project, despite uncertainty in Afghanistan. Even India, which has long had icy relations with the Taliban, maintains that the project will go ahead.

Similarly, Turkmenistan and Pakistan are still speaking publicly about a revival of the TAPI pipeline. Afghanistan has said that it would even prepare a special security force for the project. Some estimates claim that Afghanistan could reap up to 85 percent of its central budget revenue from pipeline transit fees alone. Of course, there is skepticism about the project and its long-term viability. India, for example, is concerned about the TAPI pipeline’s feasibility given the financial and security challenges faced by Kabul.

Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been pushing hard for the trans-Afghan railway, which would connect Uzbekistan to South Asia through Afghanistan. The 760-kilometer railway would ensure both Afghanistan and Uzbekistan get access to Pakistan’s ports, cutting the time it takes goods to travel from Pakistan to Uzbekistan from 35 days to four. Although the World Bank warned against the route due to the route’s insecurity and mountainous terrain, and the project’s uncertain economic viability, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are enthusiastically trying to move it forward.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the trans-Afghan railway even more important for Tashkent, which is desperate to find a sanctions-free way to get goods in and out of the country. Thus, despite all the very real challenges, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan signed a joint protocol outlining their intention to move ahead with the project.

Cold Realities

Despite the numerous agreements and tireless diplomacy that has followed the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the threat of terrorism continues to loom large. The Taliban, still insecure in their own power, are in the process of transitioning from an insurgent movement to a government. However, their ideology remains brutal and does not accommodate women and most non-Pashtuns, sowing the seeds of instability.

When the Taliban came to power, they promised that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for terrorist attacks against neighboring countries or any other country. This pledge was crucial for neighboring countries and the United States, but the promise lacked credibility. The Taliban fought alongside a range of foreign terror organizations – the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; Jamaat Ansarullah, a group that aims to bring down the Rahmon government in Tajikistan; and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group aiming at securing the independence of China’s Xinjiang region – in order to defeat the United States and the previous Afghan government.

Today, though, the Taliban have everything to gain by eliminating these groups. Should they do so, their government will gain the trust of neighboring countries, yielding the investment and economic regeneration that is so badly needed after the economic collapse faced after 2021. But a clampdown against these long-time allies will certainly cause them to strike back at the Taliban, potentially triggering a new round of insurgency and violence.

Although cooperation between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, for example, is at an all-time high, both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan experienced unprecedented rocket attacks from Afghan territory by a group with which the Taliban has already clashed. In March and July 2022, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) fired rockets from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan. Although these rockets resulted in no casualties or failed to explode, this was the first time Uzbekistani territory had been attacked from Afghanistan in recent memory.

Although ISKP remains a small force inside Afghanistan, it is the largest group opposing the Taliban. Since 2021, it has launched border attacks against all of Afghanistan’s neighbors, except for China. It has expanded its social media presence to help recruitment among Central Asians by focusing on content in Uzbek, Tajik, and Russian. There are reports that ISKP training camps have emerged along Afghanistan’s borders with China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. In June 2023, suspected ISKP militants were killed by Tajikistani border guards as they sought to enter the country with a large cache of weapons. It appears these militants were planning a terrorist attack inside Tajikistan.

Central Asian states face a significant dilemma in dealing with the Taliban. On the one hand, they recognize that the IEA’s lack of inclusivity poses a threat to the country’s stability. History has shown that citizen outrage over repression could lead to insurgency in Afghanistan. On the other hand, these Central Asian states, which are not particularly concerned about democracy, hope that the Taliban’s newly acquired authoritarian power can establish a monopoly on violence that has been absent in Afghanistan for decades.

The Taliban have brutally suppressed all forms of opposition within the country. Almost every week, new videos surface showing the Taliban engaging in acts of strangulation, suffocation, torture, or beating against former members of the Afghan army or police who collaborated with the previous government. These videos serve the purpose of instilling fear in the population and discouraging any resistance. Unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, which appeared indifferent to the state, the current Taliban seem captivated by centralized power and control. They are utilizing the large amount of military equipment inherited from the United States to secure power. This has been supplemented by a nationwide security system equipped with cameras featuring facial recognition technology, which the Taliban have acquired from the Chinese firm Huawei.

China is interested in supporting the use of this surveillance technology in Afghanistan because it fears instability and the growth of terrorism from the ISKP and the small number of Uyghur militants who are present in Afghanistan. China is very concerned that security spillovers from Afghanistan could threaten stability inside of Xinjiang. China is so fearful of Xinjiang’s native Muslim population that it has embarked on what U.S. President Joe Biden and others have called a genocide against the Uyghur people.

Afghanistan is currently experiencing a level of stability that has not been seen for 40 years, measured by the decrease in suicide bombings and insurgent attacks on cities and communities throughout the country. However, it is important to note that stability does not equate to peace. The Taliban, while maintaining their ideology, have shown a greater interest in building state capacity compared to the past. Nevertheless, they continue to rely on authoritarian tactics to maintain their power and this is far from a peaceful experience for women, minorities, and dissidents.

The Taliban’s focus on internal security presents both opportunities and risks for Central Asia. Excessive brutality from the Taliban could have negative consequences. While there is currently little resistance to the government in Kabul, prolonged violence may lead to a recognition in Central Asian capitals that the Taliban’s zealotry has gone too far. Yet Central Asian states are aware of the effectiveness of using force and fear to suppress populations into submission. They know that the Taliban considers ethnic minorities and those associated with the former government as the main obstacles to their consolidation of power, and may tolerate a greater degree of state violence in pursuit of stability than Western nations can stomach.

But at the same time, an increasingly bellicose Taliban regime not only threatens internal stability but also poses a threat to neighboring countries. We are already witnessing these dynamics in action. Since coming to power, the Taliban have engaged in conflicts with almost all neighboring countries.

Pakistani leaders in particular had anticipated peaceful relations with the Taliban when the latter assumed power. After all, Pakistan’s government had supported the Taliban financially and by providing them a haven on their territory throughout the 20-year insurgency against the United States. Instead, Pakistan has faced deep disappointment. There have been a number of clashes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, with the Taliban, like all previous Afghan governments, refusing to recognize the Durand Line dividing the two countries. Islamabad is also intensely frustrated by the Taliban’s glib denials that the Pakistani Taliban enjoy safe havens within Afghanistan, despite the skyrocketing number of cross-border attacks since the Taliban returned to power.

A New Central Eurasia

There are limits to the new cooperation between the IEA and Central Asia. The Taliban can only run on the fumes of coercion for so long before people begin to turn against them in a sustained manner. If history is any guide, we can be certain that repression will not yield quiescence in Afghanistan, but new forms of rebellion. The quiet now in Afghanistan will not last forever.

However, this period of calm has allowed us to observe the beginnings of a new regional alignment. Previously, analysts and diplomats considered Afghanistan and Central Asia as separate regions. The rivalry between Russia and Britain in the 19th century created the “Great Game” and established a firm division between Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Now, Central Asia is breaking free from its Soviet past and embracing its close historical connections with its southern neighbor. We are witnessing the gradual emergence of a cooperation that brings together neighboring countries that have long been separated, forming a new regional configuration.

The sustainability of this new configuration in an environment that is not reliant on authoritarian control is uncertain. But this is a story that will unfold sooner than we might anticipate.