As western embassies burnt and shredded secret documents, herding staff onto military helicopters for evacuation, two leafy diplomatic compounds in the Afghan capital remained resolutely open for business.
Chinese and Russian diplomats stayed diligently at their desks as Kabul fell to the Taliban, working on portfolios of interests they plan to pursue with Afghanistan’s new rulers.
The western scramble for the door, following the Nato withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government they backed, has redrawn the diplomatic map for this critical crossroads in the heart of Asia, a new Great Game for the 21st century.
While Boris Johnson urged western allies not to race to recognise the Taliban, Moscow and Beijing gave no such reassurances, having already established their own friendly relations with the group.
China and Russia’s posture towards the Taliban has profound implications for how the crisis in Afghanistan will play out on the global stage, as world powers gather at the UN to formulate a response.
Threats from the US and its allies to turn Afghanistan into a pariah state if the Taliban return to their brutal ways will ring hollow and have limited effect if China and Russia decide to go another way.
Both wield a veto on the UN security council, a forum Beijing has in effect defanged against reprisals for its own human rights abuses and those of its allies.
China said on Monday that it wanted “friendly relations” with Afghanistan but stopped well short of recognising Taliban rule. The foreign ministry called for an inclusive new Afghan government, reflecting Beijing’s thinking that the Taliban takeover represents a transition, not an end point.
At a peace conference in Moscow in March, the US, Russia, China and Pakistan all vowed not to support the restoration of an Islamic emirate under the Taliban. That was before President Biden confirmed an August 31 deadline for the Nato exit, at a time when a power-sharing agreement between Kabul and the Taliban was still being discussed as a possibility, a belief that now looks naive.
As the Americans withdrew and a Taliban military victory looked increasingly likely, Beijing was swift to contact the group. Mullah Baradar, the Taliban co-founder and likely head of government, led a delegation to the Chinese city of Tianjin barely two weeks ago, where he met the foreign minister, Wang Yi.
Russia’s outspoken ambassador to Kabul was preparing to host Taliban leaders at the embassy, where the group’s own fighters had taken responsibility for securing the perimeter. Dmitry Zhirnov told Russian state television that “the situation in Kabul now under the Taliban is better than it was under Ashraf Ghani” — the western-backed president who fled into exile on Sunday.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, spoke approvingly of the Taliban’s political reassurances, saying Moscow accepted their word that they were ready to discuss an inclusive government.
“I consider it a positive signal that the Taliban in Kabul are declaring, and in practice showing, their readiness to respect the opinion of others,” Lavrov said.
Russia has sought to build ties with the Taliban just as it has historically waded into Afghanistan, to ensure stability in central Asia and counterbalance other countries’ interests in the region.
“I have decided that the Taliban is much more able to reach agreements than the puppet government in Kabul,” Zamir Kabulov, President Putin’s special representative for Afghanistan, told Russian state television.
For its part, China could offer an economic lifeline to Afghanistan if western support were to vanish. Beijing has eyed Afghanistan’s mining potential for years but conflict has interfered. It has held the contract on a vast copper mine south of Kabul for a decade but has been unable to fully exploit it. A 2014 report found that Afghanistan’s unmanned mountains may hold nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of extractable rare-earth metals.
Afghanistan has long resisted signing up to China’s Belt and Road initiative, nervous of upsetting its western backers. That may now change. Beijing is building a road through the Wakhan corridor connecting Xinjiang to Afghanistan and onward to Pakistan and central Asia, which, once finished, would greatly facilitate its trade and mining projects.
The Taliban, meanwhile, has vowed not to interfere in China’s internal affairs — including over the mass persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. China, in turn, is likely to turn a blind eye to Taliban abuses within Afghanistan’s borders.
The collapse of hard power leverage has forced American diplomats to scramble to persuade China and Russia to co-operate. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, held urgent phone calls with his Russian and Chinese counterparts on Monday to urge them to work with Washington. Blinken also spoke to Pakistan, Turkey, Britain, the EU and Nato.
Pakistan has supported the Taliban for decades, despite its partnership with the US, and there was shock when the prime minister, Imran Khan, hailed the Taliban’s victory as evidence that Afghanistan had “broken the shackles of mental slavery”. Islamabad is a key ally of China in its rivalry with India, but even Delhi is now racing to build ties with the Taliban.
Missing from Blinken’s round of phone calls was Iran, where a new hardline president has just taken office. Tehran’s relationship with the Taliban is complex but ties are likely to strengthen as it takes up a role in Kabul. President Raisi declined to criticise the Taliban after its takeover, despite Tehran’s alliance with the ousted government. Instead he hailed the American defeat as “an opportunity to restore life, security and lasting peace to the country”.
