What path of survival does the Taliban have?
Author: Naim Asghari, analyst (Germany), especially for “Sangar”
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization can play a key role in the development of Afghanistan, which is under Western political and economic pressure. The modern world lives in an era of barriers, restrictions, and sanctions, which are very difficult to overcome alone. Many countries are building a multilateral dialogue with their regional neighbors to jointly defend their national interests.
The SCO is a very influential international organization, whose population exceeds 3.5 billion people, or half the world's population, and its total territory exceeds half of Eurasia. The list of members of the organization includes India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. 14 states are dialogue partners, 3 countries work at SCO sites as observers, and 7 more countries have applied for observer status.
The authority of the organization is steadily growing, and along with it, interest in the activities of the SCO throughout the world.
Many SCO members, partners, and observers are countries neighboring Afghanistan, cooperation with which can bring benefits to all participants. The regional peculiarity of the SCO is such that it is very difficult to consider the organization’s activities without Afghanistan. All parties are interested in resuming a full dialogue, which has a rich history.
The SCO-Afghanistan contact group was created in 2005, four years after the creation of the Organization. 7 years later, in 2012, Afghanistan was granted observer status at the SCO, and in 2019, an Action Roadmap was agreed upon, which expanded the areas of regional cooperation. The ultimate goal was to ensure peace, security, and economic recovery in Afghanistan. The activities of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group continued until August 2021, when the Taliban came to power.
Today, Kabul strives for international recognition, but the country is under international pressure and is in dire need of economic recovery. The key to solving the problem may be international dialogue through the resumption of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group. Intensified cooperation has high potential and could affect the areas of transport, trade, energy, investment, scientific research and technology, and humanitarian issues. Despite the change in power, Afghanistan continues to strive for peace and prosperity. International support will be provided by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
But the only thing that is required of the Taliban, the current rulers of Afghanistan, is their cooperation with the region. The region's demands can be summed up in recent words by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He asked the Taliban (1) to fulfill their promises, the most important of which was creating an inclusive government, and (2) to establish contact with the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan.
The Russian Foreign Minister rightly admitted that no government in Afghanistan would be stable without the participation of all ethnic groups and political forces. Government instability in Afghanistan means political instability not only in this country, but throughout the region and, naturally, in the territory of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - the mother region of Afghanistan.
The Taliban must seize this historic opportunity or they will destroy themselves and lead to permanent instability in both Afghanistan and the region.
