Seminar Report – The UK’s Afghanistan Crossroads: where do we go from here? 

Thursday Oct 31 2024

Speaker: Dr Davood Moradian, Director, Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, Kabul, Afghanistan 
Seminar title: The UK’s Afghanistan Crossroads: where do we go from here?  

Speaker’s bio: Dr Davood Moradian received his PhD from the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews in 2006. He returned to Afghanistan to work with the Afghan government in different positions, including at the Presidential office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Security Council. Since 2012 Dr Moradian has served as the Director of Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS). After the Taliban’s occupation, AISS has relocated to the UK.

Author: Bethell Seese, MECACS intern and student of International Relations and Arabic at the University of St. Andrews. 

In this talk, hosted by the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus Studies (MECACS), Dr Morodian shared his thoughts on how Western powers – namely, the US and the UK- and Afghanistan can move forward in their respective foreign policies after a rushed and humiliating Western withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2019. Dr Moradian suggested that undoubtedly, dismantling the Taliban via women’s resistance movements might be the only way forward for Afghanistan. This approach currently runs counter the West’s move towards policies which normalize and legitimize the Taliban.  

To identify the crossroads that now exist in this policy discourse, Dr Morodian analysed three significant periods in the Taliban’s rise to power and subsequent Western responses. Firstly, the period between 9/11 and 2010 saw the defeat of the Taliban, executed by a heavy-handed US-led military strategy in the name of “American retribution.” After the initial threat of the Taliban was eliminated, then came the process of “state-building,” reinforced by the Bonn Conference in 2001, which supported an emerging Islamic State of Afghanistan. These factors reshaped the Middle East according to a neoconservative ideology out of Washington. The War on Terrorism was expanded, the Taliban dismantled, and the construction of a democratic state of Afghanistan began. 

However, around 2010, the Taliban’s relentless insurgencies ultimately led to the Doha process – a pragmatic approach to state-building in Afghanistan. The second identifiable period that Dr Moradian recognized was the official Doha Agreement in 2020, which solidified the US’s strategic shift from a military to a more diplomatic approach. The West, especially the US, recognized that the only way to successfully keep its’ influence in the region was to recognize the Taliban as an inevitable force.  

From here, Dr Moradian spoke on the new reality of Western-Afghanistan relations. The US sought to normalize and legitimize the Taliban for their own interests. For instance, the US pursued realist strategies like funding the Taliban and refusing to recognize them as a terrorist organization. This allowed the US to establish an intelligence-sharing alliance, and a commitment from Afghanistan to refrain from harbouring terrorist organizations. This was aimed at “containing” Afghanistan and exert influence in the region.  

Dr Moradian compared the UK’s policies towards Afghanistan in relation to those of the United States. The UK-Afghanistan relationship is rooted in a colonial past, and in fact, the borders of Afghanistan were a result of the British establishing the Duran Line in the late nineteenth century. This unresolved colonial past is emulated in modern UK policy towards Afghanistan. Rather than approach the Taliban like a threat, as the US did, there was a certain “fascination” that the UK had with the Taliban. Rather than eliminate the Taliban, the UK wanted to understand them and view them as untameable, exotic, and oriental.  

In conclusion, Dr Moradian highlighted the need for a critical reassessment of Western policies to see Afghanistan move forward. To dismantle the Taliban, there must be international support of grassroots movements and contest a colonial past as well as realist policies.  

November 2024