An inclusive setup

The dust seems to have settled on a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Domestically, there is almost no organized armed resistance. Important regional states are cozying up to the group; and whereas the US ambivalence suggests an attempt at wiping its Afghan project from our collective memory, the European states are looking for ways to engage with the Taliban without appearing to strengthen the regime or extend legitimacy to the de facto rulers in Kabul.

Despite the absence of meaningful international opposition, however, it appears that the Taliban’s march towards integration into the international community through wider diplomatic and political recognition has hit a wall – the notion of an inclusive government.

In January, when the Taliban delegation met Western diplomats in Norway, it was viewed as a measured but key step towards establishing working relations between the Taliban government and the West. However, as BBC reported in the aftermath of the meeting, the issue of an inclusive government remained the central issue inhibiting the achievement of anything of practical consequence.

Recently, while speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Afghanistan, US Special Representative on Afghanistan Thomas West expressed his dismay at the unwillingness of the Taliban to establish an inclusive government. The EU had already stated in September last year that it expected the Taliban to establish an inclusive government and that the establishment of such a political structure “is an essential benchmark for EU engagement.”

And the demand for inclusivity is hardly limited to the Western countries. In October 2021, when the Taliban delegation met ten regional states in Moscow, the summit opened with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calling for an inclusive government in Afghanistan. Just weeks back, even Iran and Turkey repeated the same condition for the recognition of the Taliban government.

Since it is clear what the international community wants, it should be easy for the Taliban to oblige by establishing such a setup – especially because the Taliban have made no secret of their desire to engage with more members of the international community. The principal challenge, however, is that the Taliban and international community have different notions of what is meant by inclusive government.

The Taliban have time and again insisted that their government is already inclusive. In the Moscow summit, the head of the Taliban delegation, Abdul Salam Hanifi, contended that the Taliban had formed an inclusive setup and demanded the international community to recognize it. After the Oslo meeting, Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi gave a more detailed response to the question of an inclusive government. He lamented that the world had failed to provide the definition of an inclusive government. He also claimed that since the Taliban government had representation from all ethnicities and the cabinet had membership from all parts of the country, the government was adequately inclusive.

To scale the proverbial wall that has stalled the Taliban’s progress in engaging the international community, the first step should be to define inclusivity in the context of Afghanistan. I propose that before we arrive at an agreement regarding the definition of inclusivity, we need to understand the opposite – the nature and type of exclusivity in Afghanistan.

Essentially, the Taliban movement and the regime is distinguished from other Afghan players ideologically. The exclusion, under the Taliban, therefore, is less ethnic or regional, and more political and ideological. This is not to say that territorial, regional, or linguistic marginalization has not aggravated in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, but that the Taliban have shown more willingness to accommodate linguistic or territorial differences than political and ideological ones – although, it must be noted that in Afghanistan ethnic and ideological differences often go together.

As expected, the composition of the interim Taliban cabinet is predominantly Pashtun. However, certain non-Pashtun leaders have been assigned important responsibilities. For instance, an Uzbek, Abdul Salam Hanifi, holds the position of deputy prime minister. Similarly, Tajik Taliban leaders hold the positions of minister of economy and the chief of staff. If the Taliban agree that the Afghan government needs to be more representative, it must include members of other ethnic groups at all levels. However, that alone would not make the government inclusive.

To make the current setup even remotely inclusive, the Taliban will have to include individuals that do not entirely see eye to eye with them politically or ideologically. The Taliban need to include individuals, both men and women, who have different notions of the nature of state, its relationship to the citizens, and how the country should be governed.

Practically, I understand that there are two reasons why the expectation that the Taliban would embrace such individuals and groups may sound misplaced: One, the Taliban are vehemently ideological, and as noted, they find it harder to make an ideological compromise. And two, they returned to power after a bloody war that pitted Afghans against Afghans and many people who should be included in the setup are viewed as bitter enemies by the Taliban. Nevertheless, the whole idea of discussion and formation of an inclusive government is premised on the apparent bafflement of the Taliban on what inclusivity might actually mean.

To a question regarding including such ideologically and politically diverse groups, Foreign Minister Muttaqi stated that there are no governments in the world that include opposition figures. He asked, rhetorically, whether President Biden would “give a seat to president Trump (and his cabinet members)?” At a rhetorical level and targeted at a subscribing audience, such assertion does sound fair. However, such an argument does not hold the scrutiny of political reality or simple logic for at least three reasons: one, the parties and groups in the systems, that the Taliban leadership use as example, agree to the rules of the transfer of power. The Taliban came to power disrupting the existing rules of transition of power. Therefore, it is only fair that the other groups are given a role in the political setup.

Two, in countries that the Taliban leadership uses as examples, even when a group is out of government, they are not entirely excluded from the system. To go back to Foreign Minister Muttaqi’s example of choice, the Republican Party is actively holding Biden’s feet to fire on every issue.

Third and most important, rather than comparing themselves with how the Western states are governed, the Taliban should revitalize the Afghan traditions of consultative and participatory governance.

The writer is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Peshawar. He also co-hosts the podcast ‘Pakistan at 75.’ He can be reached at: aameraza@gmail.com.