Russia hosts the Taliban for talks on regional threats and says it will keep funding Afghanistan

Associated Press
Fri, September 29, 2023 

This is a locator map for Afghanistan with its capital, Kabul. (AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Moscow will keep helping Afghanistan on its own and through the U.N. food agency, Russian officials said Friday as they hosted Taliban representatives for talks on regional threats.

The talks in the Russian city of Kazan came as Moscow is trying to maintain its influence in Central Asia even as it wages war on Ukraine. The discussions focused on regional threats and creating inclusive government, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

President Vladimir Putin's special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov attended the gathering and said Russia is inclined to keep helping Afghanistan independently and through the World Food Program.

A letter from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was read at the talks, accusing Western countries of “complete failure” in Afghanistan, saying they should “bear the primary burden of rebuilding the country.”


The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.

Following their takeover, the Taliban gradually imposed harsh edicts, as they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, based on their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. They barred girls from school beyond the sixth grade and women from almost all jobs and public spaces.

No country has formally recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. The United Nations says that recognition is “nearly impossible” while the severe Taliban restrictions on women and girls are in place.

Moscow has since 2017 hosted talks with the Taliban and other representatives from other Afghan factions, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the former Soviet nations in Central Asia. Taliban representatives were not at the last meeting, in November. No other Afghan factions attended Friday's talks.

Kabulov, the Kremlin envoy, has previously said that international recognition of the Taliban will hinge on the inclusiveness of their government and their human rights record.

Russia had worked for years to establish contacts with the Taliban, even though it designated the group a terror organization in 2003 and never took it off the list. Any contact with such groups is punishable under Russian law, but the Foreign Ministry has responded to questions about the apparent contradiction by saying its exchanges with the Taliban are essential for helping stabilize Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with its troops withdrawing in 1989.

Afghanistan's Taliban-appointed Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said Friday that other countries should stop telling them what to do.

“Afghanistan doesn’t prescribe forms of governance to others, so we expect regional countries to engage with the Islamic Emirate rather than give prescriptions for the formation of a government in Afghanistan,” he said in Kazan. The Taliban call their administration the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

He invited people to come and see Afghanistan for themselves, and asserted that “tourists, diplomats, aid workers, journalists and researchers” travel to the country with confidence and roam freely.

No current talks with Taliban, Afghanistan's Massoud says, promising guerrilla warfare

Fri, September 29, 2023 

Ahmad Massoud, exiled leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, in Paris


By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) - There are no talks with the Taliban to negotiate a peace settlement, Afghan anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Massoud said on Thursday, vowing to step up "guerrilla warfare" to bring the hardline Islamists to the negotiating table.

Speaking in an interview in Paris, Massoud, the exiled leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), said that the only way for the Taliban to achieve legitimacy would be to hold elections, but there was no prospect of that happening for now.

"The Taliban are refusing any talks of negotiation and they just want the world and the people of Afghanistan to just accept that this is the only way going forward, which it is not," said Massoud, son of the former anti-Soviet mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, said late on Thursday.

The NRF groups opposition forces loyal to Massoud. It opposed the Taliban takeover and clashes have occurred since August 2021 between the two sides in the resistance movement's stronghold of Panjshir, north of the capital Kabul.

Massoud, who operates from overseas, said the NRF had been forced to change tactics because it could not fight the well-equipped Taliban conventionally.

"We chose last year a more pragmatic approach and that is guerrilla warfare. That is why you see less of us but more impact," he said, adding that the number of fighters had grown from 1,200 to 4,000.

The 34-year-old, who was in Paris to launch a new book, said his fighters were not receiving any military assistance, but were relying on stocks from the decades of war in the country and needed ammunition.

"It is enough to be a headache for the Taliban, but not to topple them or to create too much pain for them so they come for proper, meaningful talks. So, this is the thing the world must understand," he said.

Massoud dismissed any suggestion of returning to Afghanistan as part of a Taliban reintegration scheme of former officials.

"Those people who left Afghanistan, they left for more than just house or a car. They left for noble causes. They left for some principles," he said.

"If the Taliban announced that they accept elections, today we all can return because this is what we want."

The most recent elections in Afghanistan were held under the U.S.-backed administration which Taliban deposed in August 2021 when Western troops withdrew. The Taliban dissolved the country's elections commission in December 2021.

Many Western governments do not formally recognise the Taliban administration, notably over its treatment of women in the country. But there is little pressure or desire to once again get involved in the country with their focus primarily on the war in Ukraine.

"We try to tell the West that maybe you're busy with Ukraine, but at the same time, you need to pay attention to the situation in Afghanistan because the situation in Afghanistan is a ticking bomb," Massoud said.