China Outmaneuvers Washington in Kabul
As the US plays catch-up
By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
After unsuccessfully trying to ‘isolate’ the Taliban for over two years since August 2021, the US, in a major admission of its previously flawed approach, now appears to be more than willing to shift its overall stance, change its terms of engagement, tone down its punitive approach, and cooperate with the Taliban regime without any necessary preconditions. This is due to China’s success in establishing solid ties with the Taliban, making Washington fear that the country might soon become a Chinese vassal, allowing China to consolidate its land access to Central and West Asia.
For the US, which was defeated in Afghanistan after 21 years of war and “nation-building” that cost the lives of 243,000 Afghans and 2,402 US military, the country, even though landlocked, religiously strangled, and desperately poor, might not matter as a country, what matters is how China’s dominance in the region might defeat Washington’s grand ‘containment’ strategy. By all standards, China’s influence seems to be expanding rather than shrinking, making Washington uncomfortable. It is, however, far from clear whether Washington’s policy shift will yield any success.
After China became the first country to appoint a formal ambassador to Afghanistan last September, China in December became the first to receive Afghanistan’s ambassador, consolidating a presence that marks a dramatic shift in the war-torn country from a two-decades-long US military occupation (2001-2021) to entering into formal relations – which many say is a strategic alliance – with one of Washington’s most important global rivals.
On the one hand, China certainly sees Afghanistan as a lucrative diplomatic target because of the natural resources it possesses. For instance, Chinese companies signed multiple business deals with the Taliban government in 2023, one of which was a 25-year oil extraction contract with an estimated investment value of US$150 million in the first year, and up to US$540 million over the next three years. Whether or not these contracts yield any immediate material benefits for the Taliban is open to question, but, in a more intangible sense, the contracts granted the Taliban regime legitimacy, ending, from the Taliban’s perspective, their ongoing international isolation.
On the other hand, China has cultivated its ties with the Taliban as a means to minimize the threat that otherwise anti-China groups, such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the Islamic State–Khorasan (IS-K), pose to Beijing. It took China more than two years of engagement with the Taliban to make these seemingly convenient relationships, leading the Taliban to ensure, in return, that Chinese interests are not attacked inside Afghanistan. After a January 2023 attack in Kabul that targeted a Chinese delegation, no later anti-China attack has taken place, revealing the Taliban’s efforts to guarantee security for China.
That the “win-win” formula is so far working is evident from the bilateral appointments of ambassadors, but this situation has left policymakers in Washington worried.
When China’s Xi received the letter of credential from the Afghan ambassador in a formal ceremony in January, the Biden administration released a (back-dated) document (“Integrated Country Strategy: Afghanistan”) to indicate its position on Afghanistan post-2021 and a set of steps it will take to secure some presence to tackle what the document calls “predatory powers like Iran, China and Russia [seeking] strategic and economic advantage or at a minimum to put the US at a disadvantage.”
Although Washington blames – not necessarily incorrectly – the Taliban for enforcing “an extreme form of religious authoritarianism that uses military force and its secret police as governance instruments of choice,” the US is still willing to work with the Taliban (so that the Taliban, who are not going anywhere now, do not slide too deeply towards China) and “pump unprecedented amounts of humanitarian assistance into the country, [and] convince the Taliban to adopt international economic norms and advocate tirelessly for education.”
This document, while filled with the necessity for the US to push the Taliban to ‘do more’ to establish an inclusive system, is still a major shift – indeed a retreat – from a position that Thomas West, US special representative for Afghanistan, expressed last September, saying that “steps toward normalization, I think, are not going to be possible. And I think there will remain remarkable unity among the international community until and unless we see a significant change in their [Taliban] treatment of the population.” As it stands, the US thus now appears prepared to disregard its own preconditions.
More importantly, this shift is also an admission that the US policy of isolating the Taliban and forcing them into submission will just not work. What has also not worked thus far for Washington is offering diplomatic support to the old generation of Afghan warlords, hoping that supporting anti-Taliban groups might weaken the Taliban’s strong grip on the country. This support was evident from the fact that Washington’s sanctions regime does not apply to any of the anti-Taliban leaders, including Ahmad Massoud.
However, the Taliban have also suppressed any armed opposition that seemed to exist to resist the Taliban post-August 2021. What has helped the Taliban is the total absence of pressure from China (and Russia) to establish an ‘inclusive’ system (whatever that means). In fact, while China and Russia have emphasized the necessity of curbing terrorism, the Taliban saw anti-Taliban groups as part of the terrorism targeted at them. China and Russia, of course, did not object to this approach. Chinese officials have been very blunt in telling the Taliban that Beijing ‘respects’ their political system (whatever that might be), bolstering the Taliban’s claim to power and undermining those of the rival groups.
These anti-Taliban groups, therefore, have already largely disappeared from Washington’s approach to Afghanistan. The emphasis on including all groups in power-sharing has now been replaced by US support for an “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led” peace process to bring the internal conflict to a permanent end, giving the Taliban in power a major leeway vis-à-vis conflict resolution.
The question, however, is: will the Taliban be willing enough to engage with the US? From one perspective, the Taliban is likely to see in Washington’s new approach an opportunity to, for instance, unlock access to Afghanistan’s money and future economic cooperation. However, it is unlikely to be lost on the Taliban regime that the raison d’etre for Washington’s engagement is the imperative of countering the “predatory” states. Given this, the Taliban are unlikely to engage with Washington in ways that may force the former into the US’s ‘game of containment’.
This is on top of the fact that the Taliban are unlikely to trust Washington unless Washington first takes substantial confidence-building measures, including taking steps towards recognizing their government. That, for Washington, might still be a bridge too far.