Russia’s recent praise of the Taliban’s anti-terrorist successes, foreign spy chief Sergey Naryshkin’s historic visit to Kabul, and the impending trip of Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk as part of an economic delegation have prompted global interest in Russia’s game plan in Afghanistan. Something significant is quite clearly in the works. It almost certainly goes beyond Russia arming the Taliban against ISIS-K and most probably concerns the clinching of a strategic partnership in all domains.
As regards the security one, this could include arms, drone warfare training, and joint counter-terrorist drills, the last of which could be modeled off of the annual ones that Russia holds with Pakistan. That would empower the Taliban to vanquish ISIS-K from its strongholds near the border with Russia’s Central Asian allies that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned about last week. This “terrorist ‘Internationale’”, as he memorably described it, is actively trying to infiltrate Central Asia and must be stopped at all costs.
The security dimension of the Russian-Afghan Strategic Partnership leads into the investment one regarding the Kremlin’s interest in the country’s $1 trillion mining industry. Russia is far behind the US and China in the tech race that’ll define the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” but can catch up through Afghanistan’s critical minerals that are integral to AI, data centers, robotics, and the “Internet of Things”. Talks over priority access to them, on fair terms of course, will likely characterize Overchuk’s visit.
Russia’s interconnected security-mining interests lay the basis for its economic ones as regards the role that it could play in rehabilitating Afghanistan after decades of war. Some of the proceeds from Russia’s mining investments could be recycled into Russian-built (or at least -designed) power plants, schools, urban infrastructure, agricultural initiatives, and connectivity projects. If requested, Russia will gladly help Afghanistan devise a realistic rehabilitation plan, which could form the core of their partnership.
To facilitate the aforesaid as well as complementary efforts by Afghanistan’s other partners like India and China, which form the core of the BRICS network that’s accelerating the global systemic transition to multipolarity, Russia will probably open up a financial channel with Afghanistan very soon. Russia is the only country so far to formally recognize the Taliban’s return to power, so its banking services can legally be connected to Afghanistan, thus aiding the flow of capital to and fro. Halal loans can be offered too.
The last pillar of the Russian-Afghan Strategic Partnership concerns regional connectivity, particularly the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan railway, which Russia envisages one day reaching India in the event that it and Pakistan finally resolve their decades-long dispute over Kashmir. For that to happen, however, the Afghan-Pakistani War must first end. Russia’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov offered to mediate, but conditional on both sides requesting it, though Pakistan just played dumb about his offer.
This leads to the proverbial elephant in the room, Pakistan, which angrily insists that the Taliban is allied with terrorists. Its Establishment, which refers to the powerful military and intelligence services that really run the country, might therefore overreact to any potentially forthcoming Russian-Afghan Strategic Partnership, especially its security dimension. If they do, then they’ll only remain part of Afghanistan’s problems to Russia’s consternation, which hopes that they’ll finally become part of the solution instead.
