Moscow moves towards delisting Taliban from “terrorism” blacklist

Vladimir Putin at a State Duma plenary session, 2020. Feature image source: Kremlin.ru. 

On 26 November 2024, Interfax, a Russian news agency, reported that a group of senators and other lawmakers — mostly from the United Russia parliamentary faction — submitted a bill on the temporary delisting of organisations from the list of prohibited terrorist organisations in Russia.

While the Taliban was not mentioned in the bill, Interfax labelled the proposal a “bill to lift the ban on Taliban in Russia”. The bill was passed in the Duma on 17 December and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on 29 December.

The new law effectively amends Russia’s existing anti-terror legislation to introduce a procedure for temporarily delisting terrorist organisations, which previously did not exist. The new law states:

While the law applies to all Violent and Extremist Organisations (VEOs), AW believes that there are indications that the law was passed to facilitate Russia’s future cooperation with the de facto authorities in Kabul.

These include recent visits of Taliban delegations to Russia in 2023 and 2024, as well as a visit by Sergey Shoigu, Russian Secretary of the National Security Council, to Kabul in November 2024. During his visit, Shoigu reportedly said that the Taliban would “would soon be removed” from Russia’s list of terrorist organisations.

There has also been notable positive coverage of Afghanistan under the Taliban by Russian state television and bloggers. Positive coverage on Russian state TV broadcaster Russia 1 includes a series of newsreels by Sergey Zenin, a Russian war correspondent also covering the war in Ukraine, in April and May 2024.

In his reports, Zenin claims to have visited Kandahar, Wardak, Kabul, and other Afghanistan provinces, and portrays the Taliban as a legitimate and efficient government combating drug trafficking and a radical insurgency. Furthermore, he compares the Taliban to freedom fighters who opposed the Western occupation and the pro-Western former Afghan government.

The reports further highlight the lasting, “benevolent” impact of the Soviet Union’s presence in Afghanistan, including by showing still functioning, Soviet-built motorways against the backdrop of villages allegedly bombed by the US. Finally, the program showed Bush Bazaar, an informal market in Kabul where US-military property and non-lethal equipment is sold. Zenin concludes that the same fate will befall the US military aid in Ukraine.

Russian motivations

AW analysts believe that there are several plausible explanations for Russia’s courting of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In some ways, this engagement echoes the USSR’s New Eastern Politics, which sought improved relations with non-aligned Muslim countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia in the 1960s and 1970s during the Cold War. Russia then sought to shore up symbolic and material support from these states, in particular where anti-Western sentiment dominated among political elites.

At recent Kremlin-arranged international events in 2024, such as the Kazan Forum and more notably the St Petersburg Economic Forum, the Taliban delegation found itself grouped with other Latin American and African delegates (Bolivian, Venezuelan, Zimbabwean) as one of the countries that had experienced military occupation by Western forces, to the detriment of its economy.

Another Russian consideration is likely the still largely untapped natural resources of Afghanistan, estimated to be worth some USD 1 trillion. The latest study of Afghanistan’s deposits of 2021 lists some of the world’s most valuable commodities, including precious and rare earth metals, as well as gems and semi-precious stones.

Security implications in Central Asia

While three out of the five republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan) have accepted the credentials of Taliban envoys or delisted the group as terrorists, AW estimates that there are remaining regional security concerns associated with delisting the Taliban in Russia.

While the Afghan Taliban may have abandoned the idea of invading Tajikistan and overthrowing President Emomali Rahmon, their Tajik allies, the Islamic Emirate of Tajikistan (formerly Ansarullah) has never disavowed their antagonism against the secular government of Tajikistan, and continues to promote jihad against Tajikistan in its propaganda.