«The Taliban movement is a terrorist organization that is banned in Russia,» is what still has to be written according to the current Russian legislation. However, after multilateral negotiations took place in Moscow with the participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and official representatives of the Afghan Taliban, informal instructions were given to the editors of the state news agency RIA Novosti to stop referring to the Taliban as terrorists.
So why have these changes occurred? On the one hand, the Taliban have been able not only to withstand, but also to demonstrate over a decade and a half of war with the NATO coalition that they are a military-political force that must be discussed with anyone who is genuinely interested in the future of Afghanistan. On the other hand, the Taliban themselves have managed to escape the label of an international terrorist organization with goals and methods that are unacceptable to all global players and that have been imposed on them from all sides. They have positioned themselves as a liberating and guiding force for the Muslim Afghan people, ready to build responsible neighborly relations with their surroundings.
From another perspective, in the midst of the confrontation with the United States, Moscow is taking the opportunity to «troll» its geopolitical competitors by demonstratively conducting negotiations with those who are at war with it. This is consistent with the U.S. relationship with Syrian rebel groups that have fought against Moscow and the official Damascus government.
But it is more important to understand what all this means. And here we should neither get euphoric, as some do, nor despair, as others do. First of all, negotiations are just negotiations. Nothing more, nothing less. It should be remembered that Moscow has been forced several times to negotiate with unrecognized forces, which it has declared illegal, and then continued to fight them to destruction as if nothing had happened. This was the case with the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and, more recently, with the Syrian opposition groups, which simultaneously called for ostentatious negotiations in Astana while bombing and reducing to rubble the cities and towns under their control. Thus, negotiations and certain diplomatic maneuvers are not even an official recognition or retreat from «terrorism». By the way, the Taliban have been negotiating with the US representatives in Qatar for a long time, specifically demanding to be removed from the list of terrorist organizations. However, they have not yet been able to achieve this, so the fact of negotiations is not the same as the recognition of «non-terrorism».
Second, even diplomatic recognition is not the kind of armor that can protect against any encroachment in the modern world. Moscow officially recognized the territorial integrity of Ukraine and Crimea as part of it, even when the planning and implementation of a plan to annex the latter to Russia had already begun. And such tricks have been played on it repeatedly throughout the 20th century — «as is well known», it was the Afghan and Finnish peoples themselves, represented by Kremlin-recognized puppets, who asked the USSR to send troops to their countries to provide «international assistance». In other words, if there is a desire and the ability to circumvent international law, it will always be there.
Nevertheless, the fact that the Taliban are being recognized as participants in the international political process cannot be considered insignificant. Of course, this should not, and will not, lead to complacency. As the saying goes, a kind word and a gun are more persuasive than a kind word alone, and the Taliban are well aware of this and do not need us to state these obvious truths. Still, to be admitted to a club where you can use a kind word as well as a gun is a significant political victory, especially for those who have not been sought out by that club for decades.
Whether we like it or not, in recent decades no force in the Islamic world that has demonstratively rejected the possibility of membership in the club of the so-called international community has succeeded in achieving its secular political goals. The reality is that in order to effectively control its territory, govern it, and solve the problems of its population (in our case, the Islamic population), it needs international recognition and to emerge from the niche of an international terrorist organization with which no state will have any dealings. The Taliban are currently on the road to such recognition, and this is an indicator that their military-political course is bearing fruit. But it is premature to say that they are final and irreversible.