Need for Taliban to form representative government

 Euronews reports that the first reactive flush of embassies of EU nations closing has been replaced by cautious engagement.

According to the EU, cooperation is dependent on the Taliban meeting five conditions, including preventing the export of terrorism, respecting human rights, creating an inclusive government, allowing access to humanitarian aid, and allowing the departures of Afghan and European civilians who wish to leave.

When the conservative Islamist group took over last month, the EU and many Western countries chose to close embassies in Afghanistan, limiting their influence on any new administration. But now, Brussels is changing its tone, whilst remaining cautious about formally recognising the Taliban, as well as how trustworthy the new government will prove to be.

It does, however, hope to keep any European citizens remaining in Afghanistan safely and prevent a new large influx of migrants coming to the bloc's borders.

Earlier, the Christian Science Monitor in explaining the roots of the Taliban's swift success incidentally pointed at potential vulnerability:

“They used age-old Afghan traditions, as was the case when they came to power the first time [in 1996],” says Douglas London, former CIA counterterrorism chief for South and Southwest Asia. “It wasn’t through a series of military conquests. The Taliban leveraged negotiations and bribery with local and provincial officials.”

The Taliban need to keep sweet local governors, officials and clan leaders who do not necessarily subscribe to the former's extreme interpretation of Islam. For this, the Taliban administration will need money. In turn, this can only come from international aid and from trade, both of which depend on cooperation with other nations.

While on the subject of perspective, we should not rush to write off Afghanistan as a perpetual failed state. People of my generation can remember (though I never indulged) the Afghan trail through territory which welcomed visitors from the West. Richard Gregory recalled:

Herat was the first real destination on the Hippie Trail. The paranoia of oppressive control in Turkey and Iran was left behind for a wilder but welcoming state of anarchy. Afghanistan has people from many distinct tribal and ethnic groups on which I am no expert, but the one thing they all seemed to have in common was a proud independent spirit. 

 They generally had a great sense of fun too. The traditional hospitality of the country is well documented, and it extended to the young Europeans with long hair who crossed in their thousands during the sixties and seventies. In the major cities there were hotels, cafes and restaurants whose clientele were exclusively 'hippie trailers'. They were networking centres where travellers would swap stories and advice, learn where to head for in the next town, and smoke the world's finest hashish.

The widespread suspicion of foreigners probably began when in 1979 the Soviets invaded in order to shore up an unpopular elected Marxist government which had failed to fulfil its promises.

Finally, Alexander Hainy-Khaleeli, a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, takes the long view:

Biden labelling Afghanistan “the graveyard of empires” is, at best, historically illiterate and, at worst, utterly self-serving. It not only negates thousands of years of Afghanistan’s history as a flourishing centre of civilisation, but also—in an act of supreme imperial hubris—shifts the blame for U.S. failures there onto the land and people of Afghanistan themselves.

But where did this phrase come from? What does it mean? And why is it flat out wrong – and even racist?

It may sound like timeless wisdom, but Afghanistan’s epithet “the graveyard of empires” appears to have been coined only recently—so recently, in fact, that it doesn’t even predate the U.S. invasion. It first appeared in 2001, in a Foreign Affairs article by the CIA’s former Pakistan Station Chief Milton Bearden, titled ‘Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires.’

In the article, Bearden cautioned against a U.S. occupation of Afghanistan based not only on the historical experiences of the Soviet Union and the British Empire, but also of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and all “the world’s great armies on campaigns of conquest” who “eventually ran into trouble in their encounters with the unruly Afghan tribals.” This argument reduced the history of Afghanistan to a history of its invaders and dismissed the Afghan people as backwards and savage, recycling classic orientalist tropes for a “War on Terror” audience.

Most importantly, however, Bearden’s argument is utterly at odds with the realities of history. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan not only conquered Afghanistan, their successors ruled it for centuries after them and adapted themselves to its culture and religion. Far from being a place where empires go to die, the land of Afghanistan was, for millennia, a place in which they thrived and prospered, thanks in part to its strategic location at the crossroads of Asia. It is only to be expected, then, that many great empires also emerged from Afghanistan to make their mark on world history.

Thanks to Liberal England for pointing us to the last article.