Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister, recently voiced his opposition to “intra-Afghan” negotiations, stating that the group has no desire to repeat what he called a “bitter experience.” Yet, in the same breath, he affirmed that “Afghanistan is the shared home of all Afghans.” If that is true, why can Afghans not engage in dialogue about the future of their collective home? The answer, it seems, lies in the Taliban’s rigid and insular ideological framework, which leaves little room for concepts like mutual understanding or peaceful resolution—unless the opposing party possesses superior military and political power. The Afghan opposition groups abroad, who continue to call for intra-Afghan dialogue, have thus far failed to even reach political consensus among themselves, let alone take meaningful action or pose a serious political-military challenge to the regime in Kabul. Therefore, when Muttaqi dismisses dialogue with these fragmented, uncoordinated, and largely ineffective opposition figures, it is not only because the Taliban are inherently averse to peaceful solutions. It is also because their adversaries lack significant political or military weight and hold no decisive leverage to influence the Taliban’s stance. In politics, one universal principle holds: if you want to negotiate from a position of strength, you must first secure a stronger position on the battlefield.
Looking at the issue from another angle, one cannot ignore a sobering reality: Afghanistan has never, at any point in its history, managed to resolve its internal crises without foreign intervention. There is no enduring or successful precedent of intra-Afghan talks producing lasting agreements in the absence of international mediators. Before the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul, a meeting between the Taliban and the Afghan government’s negotiating team was held in Doha, Qatar, branded as an “intra-Afghan” dialogue. That meeting was hailed as a potential pathway to peace, something the Afghan public overwhelmingly desired. Before that, the Taliban had consistently refused to engage with the former government, dismissing it as a puppet regime. It took considerable diplomatic pressure from the United States to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Ultimately, the Taliban agreed to talks only after securing substantial concessions. Ironically, while the Taliban were adamant in branding the former Afghan government as a foreign puppet, it is the Taliban themselves who have long borne the stigma of being closely tied to and supported by foreign powers, more so than any other political faction in recent Afghan history.
While both sides of Afghanistan’s internal conflict tried to portray themselves as independent actors, their dependence on foreign powers was an open secret few could deny. On one side, there was Washington’s heavy-handed role in forcing a peace deal on the Afghan government, and President Ashraf Ghani’s ever-blurring red lines. On the other hand, the Taliban operated in lockstep with the policies of Pakistan’s military establishment. These dynamics underscored just how deeply both parties vied with one another, not for independence, but for whose foreign ties ran deeper. Despite their stubborn insistence on being seen as sovereign actors, both the government and the Taliban aggressively sought to prove their autonomy while accusing the other of being a proxy. The irony was hard to miss: both camps, each carrying damning accusations of foreign allegiance, sat across from one another at a negotiating table convened under heavy international pressure. Without the presence—or more accurately, the supervision—of foreign stakeholders, the talks would have collapsed midway. Any meeting orchestrated, managed, and sustained by external powers cannot, in any meaningful sense, be described as “intra-Afghan.” It continues only as long as foreign actors remain in control, whether behind the scenes or directly in the spotlight.
The term “intra-Afghan” itself has come to symbolize the chronic political dependency that has plagued Afghan leaders for decades. Outwardly, much is made of “Afghan-led” decisions and “Afghan-owned” negotiations. But beneath the surface—and often not very far beneath—it is foreign powers who set the terms and manage the process. What Afghan actors offer is a feeble performance of sovereignty, a nauseating pantomime of independence. Indeed, “intra-Afghan” has become the perfect euphemism for the farcical notion of Afghan autonomy. The louder the drumbeat of this phrase, the more it seems to signal the deepening entrenchment of foreign control.
More than that, the term reflects a false and hollow unity that has never truly existed. Afghanistan’s fractured history is riddled with instances of collusion with foreign powers, while its fiercest battles have been waged among its people. Time and again, it is outsiders—not Afghans themselves—who have brokered so-called peace and imposed a semblance of unity. Who better understands this than the Taliban themselves, whose cabinet was assembled under the direction of the then-head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)? Yet Afghan politicians have never mustered the courage to acknowledge their reliance on foreign actors.
Even the term “intra-Afghan” is problematic on a linguistic level. It is an Arabic construction, not rooted in Persian, Pashto, or Uzbek—the country’s primary languages. It’s as if the influence of outsiders has so deeply infiltrated the Afghan psyche that even the vocabulary of self-determination bears a foreign stamp. Foreign powers, it seems, are ever-present, hovering even over our most intimate moments of supposed emancipation. Perhaps this is one of the strange divine favors bestowed upon our martyr-making, jihad-glorifying nation. What a glorious “nation” indeed.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
