Russia wants sanctions against Afghanistan lifted, assets frozen in Western banks returned and economic and other forms of cooperation restored due to the “grave humanitarian situation” facing the long-suffering nation, and given the obvious benefits that a stable and prosperous Afghanistan would have for the region, Russian Council for International Affairs expert Kirill Semenov told Sputnik, commenting on the results of Friday's Moscow Format of Consultations on Afghanistan meeting.
At the meeting, attended by senior representatives from ten countries, including Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the collective West’s “cynical policy” on Afghanistan had reached a “dead end,” and accused the US and its allies of deliberately “hindering the revival of the Afghan state” through punishing restrictions.
Slamming the US for illegally holding onto the Afghan state's frozen assets and keeping crushing sanctions against the country’s banking sector in place, Lavrov urged the West to lift its restrictions and return the “embezzled assets.”
Russian presidential special representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov announced Friday that Moscow is preparing to remove the Taliban from its list of terrorist groups. A decision on this score has been taken at the highest level, according to the diplomat.
"The Foreign Ministry, together with the FSB and a number of other Russian agencies, is completing legal work on the process of removing the Taliban from the Russian terrorist listing. It's not a matter of wanting to; a fundamental decision on this issue has been taken by Russia's top leadership," Kabulov said.
“The Taliban, being that they are in power, is trying to fight terrorism, trying to fight drug trafficking, trying to take other steps to normalize the situation in the country, but they lack any resources, any opportunities to conduct open foreign economic and foreign policy activities, which creates serious obstacles for economic growth in the country, for the development of the economy,” Semenov explained, commenting on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s bold initiatives.
“For now, Russia, the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia are at the vanguard of the gradual recognition of the Taliban and the establishment of full-fledged interstate relations with them,” the observer said, emphasizing that the US and its allies, not opposed to the idea of normalized relations with Afghanistan in principle, want to see the Taliban “act in line with US interests,” with the seized assets “a very important tool to pressure the Taliban to become more accommodating.”
Washington does not want Afghanistan under the Taliban to join regional groups such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or various institutions driven by the Global South in opposition to the diktat of the collective West, Semenov emphasized, recalling that the US desire to see a Taliban that can be controlled goes back to the talks with the militant group in Doha, which culminated in the 2020 agreement to bring the Afghan conflict to an end, and the chaotic US and NATO withdrawal from the country in August 2021.
“They are trying to blackmail the Taliban’s political leadership, so that if it takes any steps, it does so with an eye toward the United States. In other words, the Americans want to maintain their influence in Afghanistan using these frozen assets,” the analyst said.
The Biden administration froze over $7 billion in Afghan state assets in August 2021 as Kabul fell and the NATO puppet government crumbled, with $2 billion+ more stuck in Europe and the UAE.
Russia is one of a number of powers looking for pragmatic diplomatic and economic ties with Afghanistan, with others including China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and cooperation ranging from joint infrastructure and investment to trade and regional security.
* Under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.