Why is Taliban so important to Middle East regimes? | Economic Times

By 2006, the US was bogged down in Iraq. In Afghanistan, Taliban resurgence was beginning to take shape, largely with help from Pakistan. Soon Saudi Arabia and Qatar jumped in with external funding. Why? According to Antonio Giustozzi, one of the top experts on Taliban, this was partly at Pakistan’s request, which could not pay to sustain Taliban in Afghanistan.Saudi Arabia had been, with the UAE and Pakistan, one of the three countries that had recognised the Taliban government in 1990s so that wasn’t a surprise, particularly given the Kingdom’s record of championing radical Islamist causes.Why did Qatar house Taliban?Qatar was more interesting. First, the then Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was a bit of a diplomatic activist, a trait he passed on to his son and successor, Sheikh Tamim. Qatar brokered a truce between Israel and Hamas, also Fatah and Hamas, between Lebanese factions, even a ceasefire between Sudan and Darfur (2013).Qatar also flirted with radical Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It was one of the biggest external financiers to Islamic State/Daesh. It supported Arab Spring protests in Libya and Syria. Taliban was one more.Second, Giustozzi says Qatar wanted to support Taliban as a way of limiting Iranian influence on the Karzai government. Ironically, by 2017, Qatar had grown closer to Iran and its crop of Islamist groups, inviting the wrath and a blockade from Saudi Arabia and UAE.When did US-Taliban engagement begin?By 2011, the US wanted a venue to start diplomatic engagement with Taliban. Qatar volunteered. It suited the US, since its biggest air base in the region is in the tiny, wealthy state. But Hamid Karzai, then president of Afghanistan objected, and quietly, so did Pakistan, feeling leverage slipping. Karzai would have preferred Taliban to set up office in Turkey, for instance.But Qatar prevailed, seemed more neutral, and mid-level Taliban leaders, like Mullah Abdul Saleem Zaeef had moved there. Taliban opened a political office in 2013. The first negotiations were over freeing US soldier Sgt Bowe Bergdahl. Taliban wanted five of its people freed from Guantanamo Bay.Pakistan may have ceded space to Qatar but they arrested Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and kept him in prison so Taliban-in-Qatar was not as effective or independent as it could have been.The Qatar office became the focal point for negotiations between US and Taliban as the US began the long process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.Were there other contenders?The UAE apparently pitched to house Taliban. The Emirates was one of the three early supporters of Taliban in the 1990s. A leaked cable quoted the UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba as telling US officials that the UAE was frustrated they didn’t get to give space to Taliban. Given that the UAE de-recognised Taliban after 9/11, it’s curious why they wanted it back.Reports say UAE’s strategic aim was to broker reconciliation within Afghanistan and between Taliban and the US. (Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul on Sunday to land in the UAE, so the connections are at both ends.) Second, like other Arab countries, UAE did not much care for US intervention in Afghanistan and wanted to help end it. They also wanted to moderate Taliban and tried, unsuccessfully, to get Taliban to give up Osama bin Laden into a UAE facility.However, in 2017, UAE-Taliban ties crashed after its envoy Juma Mohammed Abdullah al-Kaabi and five diplomats died following a bombing in Kandahar. The UAE too positioned itself as a moderate Muslim country, as a global financial hub, opposed to the IS, Al Qaeda and less tolerant of Taliban. Saudi Arabia maintained close ties with almost all the different Taliban factions.Who is the dark horse?Iran, obviously. The Shia revolutionary regime flirted with Taliban for some time, for tactical and strategic reasons. Mullah Akhtar Mansour, head of Taliban, was killed by a US drone when he was driving into Pakistan from Iran. Osama bin Laden’s son took refuge in Iran, as has Saif-al-Adl, ops chief for Al Qaeda. Iran was happy to support Taliban tactically to get the US out of Afghanistan.Now the US is out. The question is will the old Shia-Sunni faultiness be resurrected? Or will Iran’s investment in Taliban endure?