Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian media on Tuesday that Moscow plans to remove the Afghan Taliban from its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations in order to facilitate diplomacy with Afghanistan.
“The Taliban are in power” [in Afghanistan]”Like the People’s Republic of China, we have never closed the Afghan embassy,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Afghan network. Toro News.
Lavrov said removing the Taliban from the terrorist list and establishing formal diplomatic ties were necessary to “accept reality.”
“The Afghan ambassador, along with other ambassadors, presented their letters of credentials to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Kazakhstan recently decided to remove them from the list of terrorist organizations,” Lavrov was quoted as saying. “We will do the same.”
“The UN Security Council has not declared the Taliban a terrorist organisation. There are between 12 and 15 people specifically named on the list. But the important thing is that they are in power,” he argued.
Dozens of women protested in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday against a ban on beauty salons imposed by the extremist government earlier this month, in a rare show of defiance against the brutal Taliban regime. https://t.co/peWay29hY1
—Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) July 21, 2023
The Taliban, which has made significant efforts over the past three years to expand business and diplomatic ties with neighboring countries, responded enthusiastically to the possibility of improved ties with Russia.
“We applaud Russia’s action and hope it will be implemented as soon as possible. Afghanistan wants to have good relations with all countries, including Russia,” Taliban top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Tolo News.
“Russia’s decision [leadership] It definitely means removing obstacles. [the establishment of] “Official relations between Afghanistan and Russia”, Zakir Jalali, Advisor to the Taliban’s “Foreign Ministry” Said The message was posted on Twitter, a social media platform frequently used by the Taliban to make official statements.
“Despite these obstacles, Afghanistan and Russia have achieved significant progress in bilateral relations over the past three years,” he stressed.
Jalali also reportedly confirmed that Taliban terrorists have been invited and will likely attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June, where they will have the opportunity to pursue business opportunities with Russia.
We are also responsible for all information that they share between us.
Please wait a moment. At least some people believe that they are entitled to their opinion, and they believe that they are entitled to their opinion. ده وویل «د… pic.twitter.com/vKeqxAlQ3n— Zakir Jalali – داکر جلالي (@zakirjalaly) May 28, 2024
The Taliban, a Sunni jihadist terrorist organization, is currently the absolute government of Afghanistan. They held power in the country in the 1990s but lost control of the country after the US military invasion following the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on Afghanistan.
Taliban jihadists have waged a 20-year war against the US and its allies, only to be victorious when President Joe Biden broke an agreement with the terrorists to prolong the conflict. Former President Donald Trump had agreed to withdraw troops by May 1, 2021, but Biden refused and sought to extend the war until September.
However, by August, the Taliban had overrun the entire country and stormed the capital, Kabul, forcing then-President Ashraf Ghani into abrupt flight. Taliban terrorists have been in uninterrupted control of the country since August 15, 2021, under the name of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
FILE – In this Friday, Nov. 9, 2018 file photo, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, second from right, and Russia’s special envoy for the president of Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, right, arrive to attend a conference on Afghanistan bringing together Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
Despite the lack of any rivals to credibly challenge the Taliban’s claim to be the Afghan government, few countries maintain formal ties with Taliban-ruled Kabul. In October 2021, two months after the fall of Kabul, a coalition of nine countries, including Russia and its allies China and Iran, issued a statement informally recognizing the Taliban’s status as the Afghan government.
In March 2022, the UN took a similar step, passing a resolution in the Security Council authorizing it to work with “relevant political actors in Afghanistan” to restore stability in the country. The resolution did not name the Taliban, but after their August conquest, the Taliban became the only “relevant” political actor with significant power in the country.
Some countries, including Iran and China, have accepted the Taliban as an “interim” Afghan government rather than fully supporting it as a legitimate government. China has been the furthest in legitimizing the Taliban, and is set to host Taliban ambassador to Beijing, Bilal Karimi, in December 2023. Taliban jihadists have expressed a strong interest in joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure project in which China provides predatory loans to poor countries to be used to build roads, bridges and railways. In October, Taliban officials confirmed that their administration was seeking to formally join the BRI.
The British Defence Secretary defended President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal, saying the UK has been in discussions with the Taliban. https://t.co/idEdCuJK6b
—Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 16, 2021
Unlike Russia, China has not designated the Taliban a terrorist organisation and has established diplomatic ties with them more quickly than Moscow.
The move announced by Lavrov this week followed years of speculation that Russia would change the law to strengthen ties with the Taliban. In April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that removing the Taliban from the list was “under consideration” in order to maintain a reasonable level of diplomatic ties with Afghanistan.
“The fact is that this is our neighboring country. In one way or another, we are in communication with them. We have to solve urgent issues, which also require dialogue,” Peskov said. SaidThis was reported by the Russian news agency TASS.
Taliban representatives are friendly towards Russia and support its foreign policy institutions. On Wednesday, Russia’s special presidential representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, I got it. The Taliban even support Russia’s continuing aggression into neighboring Ukraine.
“They clearly support Russia’s position on the Ukrainian crisis,” Kabulov argued. “They understand the root causes and consequences of this process. They are on our side and think like us.”
