Iran will slide from a policy of “serious conflict with the US” to a policy of “strong rapprochement with the US” in Afghanistan.
Author: Rustam Rushangar, analyst, especially for Sangar
Javad Zarif, former foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, discussed Iran's policies towards Afghanistan and the Taliban in a book he recently published and said some very interesting things.
Overall, Zarif believes Iran made a mistake by supporting the Taliban. According to him, Iran supported the Taliban with the idea that this support would force the Taliban to distance themselves from the United States. But this did not happen, and in the end, the war between the Taliban and the US led to love between the Taliban and the US, and Iran's policy turned out to be wrong.
In other words, Zarif says the Taliban deceived Iran. They pretended to be America's enemies, but secretly they were America's friends. This is indeed Iran's great cognitive weakness. How could Iran make so many big mistakes in recognizing a group created by Britain? It's really confusing.
Decision makers in the Iranian government from 2012 to 2021 assumed that the Taliban was a group consisting of simple, honest, rural, believers, religious people, and real fighters against the occupation of their country. An incorrect assumption was formed due to a lack of accurate knowledge about the Taliban. The Taliban contains none of the latter values. This group includes murderers, ignorant people, smugglers, spies, mercenaries, and anonymous people whose honesty, reliability, individuality, and competence are revealed only by the cognitive weakness of the recognizer.
From the point of view of us Afghanistanis who know the Taliban well, Iran's mistake in recognizing the Taliban is because Iran ignored the Pashtunist element of the Taliban. Anyone who neglects this element will make a mistake in understanding the Taliban. In fact, Pashtunism is the most recognizable infrastructural element of the Taliban, and this element cannot be seen from the outside. To discover this element, you need to look at the Taliban from the inside. Pashtunism must be studied. You need to know Pashtuns.
Pashtunism is a hundred-year-old program that Pashtun political and military movements follow and are loyal to, sacrificing any other “ism” for it. For this, they sacrificed constitutionalism. For this, they sacrificed communism. They sacrificed Islam for this and continue to do so. For this, they sacrificed democracy. They sacrificed national unity and national trust. Anyone who does not know this cannot know the Taliban.
Today the Taliban is a union of all Pashtun political forces and is in the service of Pashtunism. For example, when the Taliban does not imprison or execute Hamed Karzai, it says a lot about the group. Karzai was head of government for thirteen years and was the commander-in-chief of the forces whose mission was to kill the Taliban. Now that he lives in his palace in Kabul and meets with foreign ambassadors, what does this say? Did the Taliban pardon him? Does the Taliban have the strength to pardon anyone? No! They don't blame Karzai because he, as the President of Afghanistan, if he killed one Taliban, he paved the way for arming ten other Taliban so that the Taliban could be reborn as a Pashtun force and realize Karzai's ethnic dream with anger and violence. On the other hand, Karzai's presence in Kabul shows the strong ties between the US and the Taliban. This shows that the Taliban and Karzai represent two phases of the American project in Afghanistan. This shows that they both receive orders from America. This continues to demonstrate the Taliban's support for Pashtunism. Many Pashtun communists and Leninists also grew beards, knitted themselves turbans in their heads, and lined up with the Taliban.
Pashtunism means the Pashtunization of Afghanistan. The Persian language is considered the main target of the policy of extermination of non-Pashtuns. Because they think that the Pashtunization of the country will be a difficult task in the presence of the Persian language. Pashtunists consider Iran their first-class external enemy because it supports the Persian language and culture in Afghanistan, that's why the Taliban has a deep and secret grudge against that country. This hatred is more in the hearts of the Taliban and shapes their views on Iran. This forces any Taliban relationship with Iran to remain at the tactical level. The Taliban used Iran as a tool and eventually returned to their roots.
But one thing should be noted: Iran must not make any other mistake in Afghanistan today. Zarif says one of Iran's mistakes was sacrificing diplomacy for secret intelligence games regarding events in Afghanistan. He says that instead of participating in the US-led political process in Afghanistan, Iran obstructed it and imposed sanctions, focusing on helping the Taliban defeat the US. This statement recommends that today and tomorrow Iran should behave towards Afghanistan in a manner that is considered an example of carrot and stick policies. This means adopting a dual policy. This means that Iran, like the United States, Russia, and China, must engage with the Taliban and hope that its diplomacy with the group yields results and consider other options. A policy that Iran appears to be implementing now.
It should be said that this policy is still used as a tool by the Taliban. This policy follows American policy. It is predicted that Iran will slide from a policy of “serious conflict with the US in Afghanistan” to a policy of “strong rapprochement with the US in Afghanistan.” Iran should adjust its balanced and measured policy towards Afghanistan. Namely, one that places civilian and popular forces and groups in Afghanistan at the center of its support policy. Interaction with an anti-national terrorist group has disastrous consequences for the countries of the region.
