The reports of Ispi, Cesi, Limes and International Affairs on Afghanistan
The Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan did not arrive in mid-August like a bolt from the blue. The return to power of Islamic students had been prepared by the previous Trump-led US administration with the signing of the Doha Accords. The legitimacy of the movement as a political actor has accelerated in the last two years thanks to the diplomatic activity of the Taliban representative office in Qatar. The last step is the recent trip to China of one of the group’s historical founders, Abdul Ghani Baradar to meet with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Taliban guarantors of stability in Afghanistan
As Francesca Manenti, CESI analyst writes in the report “The return of the Taliban to Kabul”, with the rapid Taliban victory over the central government, “the movement thus seems to have wanted to demonstrate that it is the only possible guarantor of control and security in Afghanistan , to relaunch its role both outside and inside the country ”. Students of the Koran are now interested in gaining accreditation as reliable to manage “the economic dossiers linked to the reconstruction of the country and to guarantee themselves political banks they can rely on on an international level. The support of actors such as China and Russiain fact, it could prove to be particularly valuable in averting isolation, should a part of the international community, primarily the United States, decide to impose international sanctions against the newly born Taliban government ”. The new interlocutors of the international community
At the seizure of power, the Taliban announced that there will be no repercussions for the Afghan citizens who have collaborated with the Americans in these 20 years. “ We will not discriminate against women, their rights will be protected by Sharia lawand Afghanistan will not be a threat to any country in the world. We have forgiven everyone, no enmity ”. So said Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, in favor of the camera. The words are addressed to an external audience and have the purpose of reassuring the international community. US-led coalition states must explain to citizens why they sent their armies to fight an enemy to which they have now returned Afghanistan.. “The ways in which the group managed the advance, in fact, highlight the interest of the Quetta leadership to clean up the image of the movement, to definitively mark the transition from being the main actor of the insurgency to becoming a new institutional subject – writes the analyst Manenti of the study center directed by Andrea Margelletti -. The very choice of waiting at the gates of the capital for the surrender of the government of the now former President Ashraf Ghani or the invitations addressed to the militants to respect the population of the cities conquered in the previous days underlined the will of the Taliban not to appear as conquerors, but as the legitimate winners of the war. Compared to the 1990s, when they had militarily conquered Kabul to impose the Islamic Emirate,the Taliban now seem willing to demonstrate that they have faced a process of maturation as a political subject and that they can be considered by the International Community as an interlocutor in all respects, with whom to dialogue on an equal footing “. The sense of 20 years of war
The developments in mid-August make it inevitable, for Western public opinion, to ask what 20 years of war and the 3,232 soldiers who fell during the years of Western occupation, including 53 Italians, were used for . I “If Washington’s primary objective was to prevent the country from being a safe haven for international Islamic terrorism after 11 September, the absence of major attacks in the US in the last two decades is a sign of success – writes Alessandro Marronein his analysis for International Affairs -. A success, however, due both to the war in Afghanistan and to intelligence operations, special forces and drones in several countries – after all, Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan “. One of the goals, now denied by the words of US President Biden, was also the construction of ” Afghan institutions that come close to the minimum standards of Central Asia in essential services such as justice, education and health, and some form of political representation” . Objective achieved and witnessed by the ” hundreds of thousands of Afghan exiles who have returned to rebuild the country , the millions of children and adolescents at school, the tens of millions of votes cast in the elections, the dams built to carry water and electricity, the roads and hospitals ”. The end of the constitutional experience
Net of the initial proclamations “the return to the Islamic Emirate marks, in fact, the end of the constitutional and republican experience built up in recent years and the beginning of a new season of confessional fundamentalism of the institutions – continues the CESI analyst -. As has already begun to happen in some of the conquered cities and villages, this would entail a step backwards in the protection of the fundamental and civil rights conquered by the population and a deterioration of living conditions especially for women and religious minorities. In this sense,the tout court restoration of the Emirate may not please some of the local leaders , who have always fought against the insurgency and who have built consensus within their communities on opposition to the Taliban advance and the return of a season of obscurantism in the country “. An example for other terrorist groups
The return of the Taliban in command of Afghanistan could be an encouragement for other “resistance groups in new enclaves defined on an ethnic basis, which risk not only undermining the already complicated process of building a national identity. Afghanistan started in the last two decades, but, above all, to condemn the country to a new season of violence”, Reads the CESI report. The repercussions, however, could have an even wider echo and become an example for insurgent groups of a fundamentalist matrix. ” First of all for the group of Teherik and Taliban Pakistan (TTP) , the Pakistani Taliban insurgency which since 2014 has found refuge in the eastern areas of Afghanistan and which could now galvanize itself from the victory of the Afghan movement to try to put the militancy back on its feet beyond the border against the authorities of Islamabad ”, the report continues. The risk of a new radicalization: the “Talibanization” of Al Qaeda
Taliban leadership may not be enough to curb the reorganization of terrorist groups that are pointing to a new wave of radicalization. “The Taliban’s effort could be concentrated mainly on contrasting the formation of Daesh still present in the country (Daesh in Khorasan), with which the group has always had an ideological, but above all political confrontation – writes CESI analyst Francesca Manenti -. As for al-Qaeda, however, the relationship between the network founded by Bin Laden and the Taliban has become so osmoticover time that, to date, a rebirth of the group as an entity in its own right and in the round appears rather remote. The international operations to combat terrorism carried out in recent years, in fact, have dismembered the Qaedist network and led to a progressive integration of a part of the militants in the ranks of the Taliban insurgency . Furthermore, the creation of family ties through marriages between Qaedist militiamen and women belonging to Pashtun tribes loyal to the Taliban has further deepened this relationship which has resulted in a sort of Talibanization of the Qaedist formation in Afghanistan “. American isolationism
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan testifies to an isolationist line of continuity in US foreign policy, from Obama to Biden via Trump. “The only possible alternative was to send thousands of other soldiers to fight a war that – said President Biden – many Afghans seem not to have wanted to fight”. The US President confirmed that the American goal in Afghanistan was “to prevent more terrorist attacks on US territory” and not “nation building”. “The defeat is softened in the White House – wrote Lucio Caracciolo, director of Limes, in” La Stampa “- inscribing it in the overall effort to reduce overexposure in secondary theaters or in prolonged sedation, among which the Euro-Mediterranean area stands out, to concentrate on containment of China and Russia “. Middle class geopolitics
For the US president, staying in Afghanistan would have been a mistake. Biden implements “the geopolitics of the middle class, based on avoiding international crises to heal domestic socio-cultural fractures by launching hyper-Keynesian economic plans in which the Biden administration plans to invest billions – writes Lucio Caracciolo -. Choice accompanied by a request to “friends and allies” ofstrengthen the supervision of the respective areas of competence “. The president of the CDU and candidate for the German chancellery Armin Laschet considers the western retreat “the greatest failure that NATO has ever suffered since its creation”. As we read in the ISPI newsletter “The unknown factor of the new Islamic Emirate weighs on the European borders , with its possible burden of refugees, insecurity and terrorism, while Washington pursues its internal political calculation, in a furrow apparently indistinguishable from that of Trumpian isolationism. And Europe will have to take this into account ”. Geopolitical fibrillations
The fall of Kabul is causing fibrillations in the geopolitical equilibrium in the region. “Of these, the most visible appear to be the defeat of India due to the enlargement of Pakistan’s sphere of influence to the whole of Afghanistan (which is structurally vacillating, with its approximately 160 atomic warheads) and the facilitation of the Chinese corridor towards the Indian Ocean (port of Gwadar) and the Mediterranean via Afghanistan-Pakistan – adds the director of Limes -. On the other hand, Russia is burdened by serious unknowns , such as to push Moscow to enter into informal counter-insurance pacts with Kabul with respect to the risks of jihadist infiltration into its “neighboring countries”, even in its southern regions exposed to militant Islam ”. The lessons for Europe and Italy
The hasty US retreat could provide Europe and Italy with valuable lessons. “Instead of flying the flag haphazardly around the world, training and arming our future enemies only to flaunt ourselves serving the cause of the Superior and obtain the exact opposite of what was proclaimed, we could finally concentrate our meager resources, not just military, in areas of immediate interest – concludes Lucio Caracciolo -. With the blessing of Washington, or at least of the less bewildered apparatuses than him. The Italian priority is the Strait of Sicily, not that of Taiwan.And the desert is the Sahara desert with Sahelian projections, not that of Rigestan, the Afghan “land of sands”. They are the disputed Balkan reliefs with their jihadist shrines, not the Hindu-Kush ”. The 3 scenarios according to Magri’s Ispi
Three questions will arise in the coming days and months, according to Paolo Magri, executive vice president of Ispi: “1. What government knows and wants to give itself the Islamic emirate It will be
really different and more inclusive (very little of course) than the previous experience, over twenty years ago
There really exists, within the Taliban command team, a current attentive to the indignant reactions of parts of the world
2. What will change for Biden, for America, for the West after this more than evident debacle
With what credibility – after having handed over Afghanistan to a regime with terrifying precedents – will he be able to lead the “recovery of democracies” against the regimes of the world
Biden will also pay an internal political cost and if so, in favor of whom
3. Moscow and Beijing is struggling to hold back the satisfaction of yet another star-and-strip failure, albeit worried about a new source of instability near their borders. What will change in the equilibrium in the region
China, above all, will be able to bring Afghanistan into its sphere of influence, without being bogged down in turn
There would, of course, be a fourth question about Europe, but we already know the answer: more refugees on the Balkan route and more alert for a possible (and certainly not desired) new outbreak of terrorist acts, in the wake of a victory that not even the Taliban imagined so close at hand ”.
