The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that it is considering the removal of the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations. This decision comes in the wake of a recent deadly terrorist attack attributed to ISIS Khorasan, a group operating either under the influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan. While Russia attributes radical Islamists to being involved in this attack, it considers ISIS to be a deceptive flag under which Russia’s global rivals conceal themselves. According to Moscow, the primary management of the attack lies in the hands of Western intelligence agencies and Ukraine, not ISIS.
However, even if we accept that Western intelligence agencies orchestrated this attack, Russia still does not dismiss the involvement of radical Islamists in the terrorist attack on the outskirts of Moscow. These Islamic hardliners share ideological commonalities with a group that Russia aims to remove from the list of terrorist organizations and utilize to advance the “war on terror,” similar to the war being waged by the United States and other countries. In this battle, the objective is not to combat terrorism in the literal sense. Such an expectation is entirely misplaced. Instead, this battle is exploited for the benefit of specific government policies, forming alliances with practically terrorist groups to combat other terrorist groups. Here, some terrorists are deemed “good,” while others are labeled “bad,” or some terrorist groups are evaluated as “bad,” and others as “worse.” The logic of political pragmatism is simple: to combat the “bad,” one must ally with the “good,” or sometimes, to counter the “worse,” one must stand alongside the “bad.” This political strategy, while often adopted out of necessity, sometimes morphs into the primary policy of governments and takes on a strategic nature.
Today, major powers, whose foreign policies are shaped based on geopolitical competition, not only do not consider the exploitation of terrorism against their strategic enemies unethical but also utilize it to the fullest extent. In a deeply stratified and directional society, discussing neutral and non-stratified phenomena is hardly straightforward. We have no concept of neutral and non-stratified ethics. The political ethics favored by America are not obligatory to be deemed more ethical by China and Russia, and vice versa; likewise, the politically favored ethics by Russia and China are not necessarily palatable to the taste of American politics. With this brief explanation, if Western intelligence agencies and Ukraine were behind the massacre in Moscow, it would be ludicrous and unbelievable. The declarative policy of governments is not always consistent with their actions, and it can even be contradictory.
Currently, tensions between the West and Russia have escalated to such an extent that both sides openly and directly accuse each other of supporting terrorism. The West accuses Russia of state-sponsored terrorism and crimes against humanity due to its invasion of Ukraine, while Russia has repeatedly accused the West, especially the United States, of supporting ISIS, a terrorist group that Moscow has become inevitably supportive of another terrorist group to combat: the Taliban.
Russians believe that the Taliban group is a more reliable ally than the West in the fight against ISIS. This perception stems from decades of geopolitical competition between Russia and Western countries and a longstanding game initiated by America, using Islamist hardline groups to undermine its global rivals, especially the former Soviet Union. The continuation of this rivalry, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, has led to such distrust between the two sides that now Russians consider the Taliban a more trustworthy partner than the West in the “war on terror” and, therefore, seek to engage more with this group.
As the activities of Islamist groups expand, terrorism becomes more serious, complex, and dangerous than ever before. Governments, as always, prioritize interests deemed “national” above all else. Even if securing these interests entails the growth and strengthening of terrorism, governments see no issue in supporting it. If such action proves sustainable, all the better, and if it is superficial and short-term, it is still acceptable. The fact that a terrorist attack by ISIS in the capital of Russia undermines the intelligence credibility and self-confidence of this country to some extent, even if it lacks sustainable and strategic effectiveness, still somewhat appeases Moscow’s adversaries. In such a situation, it is natural for Russia not to remain passive and to take more serious steps in the fight against ISIS. One of these measures is increasing interaction with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
If Russia removes the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations, it will be a significant success for this group and an attempt to legitimize it. It seems that the Taliban’s obstinacy will once again prevail, which does not convey a positive message. If the Taliban, who have ruthlessly imposed their will on the people of Afghanistan over the past two decades and have shown no regard for the demands of the world’s countries to lift increasingly stringent restrictions on women, continue to gain favor with major powers without the slightest change in their inhumane policies, they will never succumb to global pressure to refrain from their restrictive actions in the present or future. The world is forced to continue to compromise with this group, not the other way around.
However, increased interaction with the Taliban ultimately materializes into a nightmare whose signs are already visible. But the consequences of this nightmare are not limited to Afghanistan, and the world will soon taste the bitterness of interacting with Taliban terrorism or, in the worst-case scenario, legitimizing this group. The most dangerous consequence of this interaction is the transformation of de facto and unofficial terrorism into official and “legitimate” terrorism; an action that will inevitably lead to more violence and war in the region and then the world.
