Taliban’s two year anniversary
As Taliban members gathered near the abandoned US embassy in Kabul today to celebrate the second anniversary of their dramatic return to power, the rest of the world remains in rare agreement: two years on, not a single country has formally recognised Afghanistan’s ruling government.
This lack of foreign recognition is hardly surprising. The Taliban has abandoned its initial promise to govern less harshly than during its previous stint in power. Instead, its leaders have imposed what the UN labels a “gender apartheid” – with women once again banned from education and most of public life. And, through its crackdown on the arts, it has also inflicted a cultural poverty, where the sale of musical instruments, for instance, is now deemed a punishable offence.
Yet international condemnation of the Taliban comes at a cost to the Afghan people, 80% of whom are living below the poverty line. Sanctions on the Taliban complicate aid deliveries into the country while the US freeze on $7bn of Afghanistan’s central bank assets has helped to send the economy into free fall.
Nicolas Kay, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan between 2017 and 2019, used today’s anniversary to argue that the UK should re-establish a presence in Kabul to support the Afghan people more effectively.
“This is neither recognition nor an endorsement of the Taliban”, he insisted, pointing out that the EU already has a low-level diplomatic and development office in the capital. “Thick-skinned diplomacy” is needed to prevent state collapse, Kay added.
This has put him at odds with Sir Laurie Bristow, Britain’s most senior diplomat during the fall of the Kabul, who boarded the final evacuation flight out of Afghanistan.
In his first interview since leaving Kabul, Bristow told the Telegraph that it was too risky to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul. Instead, he suggested that the UK should focus its efforts on helping Afghans who were left in significant danger from the ruling Taliban due to their work with the British – be it British Council teachers, those who fought alongside British Forces or embassy staff.
Doing so is no act of “generosity”, he stressed. Rather, “these are people who we have an obligation to [help].”
Over 15,000 Afghans were evacuated from Kabul in August 2021 during Britain’s biggest evacuation effort since the Second World War. But many who worked for the British were not rescued in time.
In January 2022, the UK government formally opened its ACRS scheme to provide safe, legal routes for such individuals. But, according to a recent report from the Refugee Council, “Since this announcement, only 54 Afghans have been newly resettled in the UK on ACRS pathways” out of the 5,000 it promised to resettle through this scheme in the first year.
At least 2,000 Afghans have been accepted for resettlement in Britain but are stuck in limbo in Pakistan after fleeing the Taliban because the UK government won’t allow them to travel to Britain unless they have accommodation here – a demand the Refugee Council has labelled “unrealistic”.
Meanwhile, some Afghans are taking matters into their own hands. Migrants from Afghanistan accounted for the highest proportion of those who arrived in Britain on small boats in the first half of 2023, after over 8,000 crossed the channel during this period.
If Sunak wishes to fulfil his small boats pledge, then he must get the ACRS scheme properly up and running.
And if the government wishes to prevent a mass exodus from Afghanistan, then it may well need to engage in the “thick-skinned diplomacy” Kay speaks of – or at least ensure that attempts to punish the Taliban government don’t intensify the plight of the Afghan people.
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