SANAA AL-ALI

Understanding the Taliban's return is not limited to the nature of the movement or the weakness of the Afghan state; it requires looking at Afghanistan as a strategic location at the intersection of the interests of China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States. From this perspective, what happened can be read as part of a redistribution of influence rather than merely the end of a long war.

Over the two decades following the Taliban's fall in 2001, these interests kept the United States maintaining a significant military and political presence in the country, granting it wide influence near areas that China, Russia, and Iran consider vital to their "national security." However, over time, American calculations changed. Competition with China in the Indo‑Pacific region became a strategic priority, while long wars in the Middle East and Central Asia became a political and military burden.

China views Afghanistan through its position within its global economic project, in addition to security considerations related to its western borders. Stability in Afghanistan could represent an opportunity to connect it to infrastructure, energy, and trade projects in Central Asia. China also prefers a central authority capable of controlling Afghan territory and preventing security threats from reaching its borders. Therefore, it reluctantly accepted Taliban authority, seeing it as a "political party to be dealt with according to calculations of interests, not ideological alignment."

Moscow sees the US withdrawal from Afghanistan—the main backer of the former regime—as a decline in American influence in a region historically within Russia's security sphere of interest. Despite Russian concerns about extremist groups, the presence of an Afghan government not aligned with the West may be viewed as an opportunity to reduce US influence near Central Asia.

Pakistan is among the countries most affected by Afghan shifts due to the long border and historical relations with various Afghan parties. It saw that a non‑hostile Afghan government serves its security interests, particularly amid regional competition with India. However, relations with the Taliban remain complex, as shared interests do not eliminate security and political disagreements.

Iran also dealt with the new regime in Afghanistan despite ideological and political differences. Tehran approached the movement's return from a pragmatic standpoint, linked to border security, refugees, trade, and preventing the presence of hostile groups within Afghanistan.

 

The Qatari Political Cover

The relationship between Qatar and the Taliban movement is among the most debated files in regional politics in recent decades. From the Taliban's rise in the 1990s, through its fall after the US intervention in 2001, to its return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, Qatar's name emerged as a party that played important political and diplomatic roles in dealing with the movement.

Supporters of Qatari policy defend it by saying that Qatar chose to play the role of mediator between conflicting parties. However, the reality is that Qatar provided the Taliban with a political and diplomatic space that helped it enhance its international presence, despite being designated as a "terrorist movement."

Returning to the movement's first takeover of the country in the mid‑1990s, the movement exploited the chaos following the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government, managing to seize the capital in 1996 and establish what became known as the "Islamic Emirate."

At that stage, countries that officially recognized the Taliban government were extremely limited, most notably Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Qatar was not among the countries that officially recognized the first Taliban government, but Doha later began to play a different role as international circumstances changed.

At that time, the Taliban was linked to multiple regional networks, and the support it received came primarily through channels related to the Afghan and Pakistani environment, not from Qatar as a declared state. However, after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the fall of the Taliban regime, the movement shifted to armed operations against US forces and the new Afghan government. Over the years, the US and its allies realized that ending the war required a political track, and began searching for communication channels with the Taliban. Here, Qatar emerged as a country capable of hosting dialogue due to its relations with various parties and its non‑direct involvement in the Afghan war.

The opening of a Taliban political office in Doha in 2013 was a significant milestone in the history of the relationship. The office gave the movement, for the first time since its fall, an official political platform to communicate with the international community, granting the Taliban political legitimacy as if it were a moderate opposition entitled to demand a return to power. Indeed, the Taliban exploited this, considering the office a means to present itself as a political party rather than merely an armed group, and allowing it to manage its external communications more systematically.

The Qatari role reached its peak with the negotiations that led to the signing of the agreement between the US and the Taliban in Doha in 2020, which stipulated the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in exchange for security pledges from the Taliban, opening the way to the stage that ended with the fall of the Afghan government in August 2021. It is possible that this agreement paved the way for that return.

After the Taliban took control of Kabul, Qatar became one of the few countries able to communicate directly with the new leadership, and continued to play a mediating role in humanitarian and political files, also hosting meetings related to the Afghan file. However, it has not officially recognized the Taliban government with full diplomatic recognition, but has maintained open communication channels with it—an approach similar to the policy of a number of countries that preferred to deal with the new reality rather than cut relations.