Taliban’s aspirations for legitimacy – and a UN seat By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — The suicide bombings that claimed the lives of over 170 Afghans, and wounding more than 200, along with the deaths of 13 US servicemen and 18 wounded, marked a devastating blow to Americans.

The deaths were one of the highest American casualties in the 20-year US occupation of Afghanistan, with an August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of all troops.

Speaking from the White House, President Joe Biden was on a vengeance trail: “We will hunt you down and we will make you pay”, he said, as he directed his warning against ISIS-K which claimed responsibility for the bombings.

The bombings left several questions unanswered: Did the US make a mistake in trusting the Taliban to ensure security outside the perimeter of the airport? How did the suicide bombers reach their targets despite several security checkpoints manned by the Taliban, and which were meant to body-search all Afghans moving towards the airport? And were the suicide bombers women in burqa who remain untouchables under Taliban’s brand of fundamentalism?

When the Taliban captured power back in 1996 for its short-lived, five-year government, only three countries recognised its legitimacy: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

But is the Taliban’s attempt to cooperate with the Americans part of a strategy to gain international legitimacy — and perhaps a seat in the UN General Assembly?

Asked why the US wants to deal with a Taliban government that is not legally recognised by Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the US had been “engaged with the Taliban for some time, diplomatically going back years in efforts, to try to advance a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan”.

“Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests — and does it help us advance them or not?”

“If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, and the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it,’ said Blinken, leaving the door open for a political relationship with the Taliban government.

He said if a future Taliban government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks “directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with.”

“If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah,” he declared.

But there are many human rights activists and academics who refuse to forgive the Taliban for its five-year rule characterised by brutal excesses, including the hanging of a President without a public trial.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS there is no evidence that the Taliban version 2.0 will be any different from the original Taliban, despite their attempts to convince the world that this time around they will be more user-friendly.

For decades, he pointed out, the Taliban have been responsible for war crimes, and when they last ruled Afghanistan, they perpetrated crimes against humanity.

Last time they were in government, Taliban forces systematically persecuted the country’s vulnerable Hazara minority and stripped millions of women and girls of their universal human rights. The Taliban have not changed, he argued.

Beyond the glare of TV cameras and press conferences, Taliban fighters are already carrying out summary executions and evidence has already emerged of a recent massacre of Hazara men, said Dr Adams.

As an armed extremist group, as perpetrators of atrocities and as a state power, the Taliban stand in direct opposition to everything that the United Nations stands for.

They belong in handcuffs, not sitting in the UN General Assembly hall, he declared.

James M. Dorsey, Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, told IPS there is no doubt that the Taliban will claim Afghanistan’s UN seat once they form a government.

They cannot do so before that. In terms of the International Criminal Court (ICC), there is equally no doubt that the Taliban have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The problem is they are in good company: China, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, just to name a few”.

“Why the Taliban and not also others? asked Dorsey, author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

According to National Public Radio (NPR), Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), the group that claimed responsibility for the attacks, is a regional affiliate of the Islamic State that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Khorasan” is an antiquated term for the modern-day region encompassing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

Responding to a Republican call for President Biden to resign, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: “It’s not a day for politics, and we would expect that any American, elected or not, would stand with us in our commitment to going after and fighting and killing those terrorists wherever they live. And to honouring the memory of service members. And that’s what this day is for”.