???? SPECIAL AFGHANISTAN IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ????

?? The poppy dilemma: How much have the Taliban changed?

In many media outlets there is a marked tendency to normalize the Taliban, with statements such as that they will respect the basic rights of women or that they will not carry out reprisals against their former enemies.

Evidently all this comes from the mouths of the Taliban themselves, who are trying to convey an image of a certain "moderation" in their return to power 20 years after the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was deposed in 2001. However, itis surprising that many Western media fall for this discourse. That is why it is worth asking... have the Taliban of today really changed compared to those of 20 years ago?

Well, the short answer is no. At least not in their objectives, although the means and strategies to achieve them may have changed slightly. And it is precisely this point that we would like to develop.

On this occasion we are going to leave aside the all-important dilemma of human rights to look at the economic landscape. Evidently, if the Taliban want to govern their own emirate with a view to making it last over time, they will have to ensure that the population has, at the very least, a certain economic sustenance. This is not an easy challenge to achieve in a country so dependent on international aid and almost impossible if the recipe the Taliban knows best is not used. A rather unorthodox but very effective recipe.

The fact is that, although it may come as a surprise, the Taliban's speciality, apart from committing inhuman brutality, is drug trafficking. Specifically opium, which is used for the manufacture of morphine and also heroin, which is the real final destination of all the opium produced in Afghanistan from the wild-scale cultivation of poppies.

And take note because we are not talking about a small-scale business. Afghanistan produces between 80 to 90 percent of all the opium in the world. In other words, 9 out of 10 heroin addicts in the world are consuming a product that originated in Afghanistan, and more specifically, a large part of it comes from territories that were already under Taliban control before the fall of the country.

The area under poppy cultivation for opium production has continued to grow in recent years, reaching a peak of 328,000 hectares in 2017, and currently standing at around 224,000 hectares. All this despite the nearly $9 billion theUnited States spent for more than 10 years trying to eradicate poppy production.

According to estimates by the US government itself, Afghan exports of opium and methamphetamine – the new guest at the Taliban narco-party – amount to between $1.5 and $3 billion dollars a year. An amount that has been heavily taxed by the Taliban in all those territories under its control, making this activity its main source of income in recent years.

We are talking about an amount that, according to available estimates, would range between US$200 and 500 million a year. And if we add to this figure the income derived from illegal mining and the proceeds from checkpoints, we find that for years the Taliban have been perhaps the most well-financed insurgent group in the world.

In addition, the proliferation of poppy cultivation became an important source of income for thousands and thousands of impoverished farmers who saw the Taliban as a de facto supporter of their activity.

However, now the Taliban say that in their new Islamic Emirate version 2.0 the cultivation of narcotics will be prohibited. The question is: will they really dare to do this considering the enormous presence that this activity has in the Afghan economy?

The truth is that it wouldn't be the first time they've done it. And this is where you have to look back a few decades, as they already did it in 1997, 1999 and 2000. The result? Global opium prices increased tenfold. The benefits of having a virtual monopoly on production.

The trick was that this prohibition was carried out with a large stockpile of opium which they were able to sell at prices ten times above normal. A situation similar to the one that could exist today thanks to the high increases in production experienced in recent years.

Even so, it would be surprising if they were to carry out a total ban today. Firstly because a large part of the Afghan rural population does not know how to make a living from anything else, secondly because international aid will disappear, thus increasing the dependence of many communities on opium, and thirdly because the Taliban already have consolidated enormous networks of contacts with international drug trafficking to bring in quick and easy money.

The Taliban's alternative to avoid becoming a full-fledged narco-state is to replace opium and methamphetamine revenues with mining. Particularly with the extraction of copper, rare earths and lithium. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated in May that global demand for lithium would increase 40-fold over the next 20 years, and guess what? Afghanistan has one of the world's largest reserves of this mineral.

The problem is that in order to be able to exploit all these riches, a stable environment with sufficient guarantees is needed for the big international companies to be able to operate. And something else is also needed: the recognition of the Taliban regime. In fact, this is exactly where the geo-strategy of the great powers comes into play.

("We are waiting for an open, inclusive and broadly representative regime to be established in Afghanistan before addressing the issue of diplomatic recognition," Zhao Lijian, Chinese government spokesman)

The Taliban know that now that they have power, what they need are resources to consolidate it. Something especially pressing if we take into account that almost 75% of the Afghan government's budget in 2020 came from international aid.

To obtain these resources the Taliban need some recognition from the international community, hence their efforts to show apparent restraint. The question is, will they be willing to put an end to the lucrative opium industry, will the Western powers be able to play their cards with the Taliban regime or will Afghanistan become a new, almost exclusive playground for China?

?? The Taliban's fight for international legitimacy begins now: China and Russia on the prowl

The moment in which the Taliban militancy in Afghanistan finds itself is crucial. Once the whole country has been conquered, and with the total withdrawal of foreign troops scheduled for 31 August, it will be the Taliban's turn to govern again, and this includes gaining political recognition within and beyond their borders.

For the moment, Russia and China have already said they will accept the Taliban as leaders of the Afghan state, and even the European Union has already opened the door to an implicit recognition of their government if "basic" conditions of respect for human rights are met (whatever human rights the EU takes into account when dealing with such a radical group).

However, there is so much more to cut through.

As we told you in the previous item, the Taliban will need to seek, sooner rather than later, international recognition and legitimacy on a large scale in order to have access to global trade and development aid and also to reduce the risk of suffering sanctions or punitive operations by the international community.

This is a status they were denied when they came to power in the 1990s, when not only their viewpoints were very radical but also their methods. This is another reason why the Taliban seem to have changed, at least "aesthetically", from their behaviour two decades ago.

This is a new strategy that the Taliban put in place during 2013-2014 when the group was under the leadership of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who was killed in 2016 in a US drone strike.

Mansour was a strong advocate of changing the group's strategy to become not only a military apparatus, but also a political management apparatus. The idea was to become more effective than the Afghan government itself in order to increase its level of social support throughout the country. Mansour also spearheaded the opening of a headquarters in Qatar with the intention of holding meetings and negotiations with the international community.

In any event, given the circumstances, everything suggests that China and Russia could play a key role in this issue. But for this to happen, it is essential that the new Afghanistan does not become a destabilising element in Central Asia, where both powers have enormous interests.

The problem is that the Taliban movement is not homogeneous, but is made up of various groupings with some common points of view, but also with certain differences.

Some of them are very radical, others are somewhat more "moderate", if it is possible to use that term in such a context. In order to achieve what we have just told you, the "moderate" views will have to get the upper hand, and for that they will need to keep the more fundamentalist factions at bay.

Given this scenario, the Taliban will also face the challenge, especially over the next two years, of generating a centralised loyalty in which all members are committed to common goals, rather than focusing on defending local or personal interests, something that is very common in insurgency movements and can give rise to scenarios of chaos and internal strife.

The question is how cohesive the Taliban movement will remain once there is no longer a common external enemy (the foreign "invaders") and furthermore, the visions on how to execute the new government of the Emirate differ between some factions and others.

An example of this are the contradictory statements by the Taliban on human rights issues that we have seen in recent days.

Furthermore, the Afghan Taliban will have to manage and consolidate their influence over other allied Islamist movements such as Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TPP), a Pakistani split from the Taliban.

The Taliban victory in Afghanistan and the creation of a new Taliban-controlled state is likely to fuel the activities of these groups in countries like Pakistan, which would go head-on against China's interests. The Asian giant intends to invest heavily through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor with theprimary objective of weakening India.

This is why their international recognition and legitimacy as a government, and to some extent also their remaining in power, depends on how much they manage to restrain themselves in their actions, and how much they manage to restrain like-minded groups abroad that might act against Chinese and Russian interests in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Tajikistan. Just as the Taliban managed to keep at bay the Islamic State of Greater Khorasan, an Afghan "franchise" of ISIS formed by Taliban defectors (presumably the perpetrators of the 26 August attack on Kabul airport), so it will have to do with any group that seeks to destabilise the region from now on.

The challenge is how to achieve all this without provoking the break-up of the Haqqani Network, or sparking an internal confrontation between Taliban from different factions that would lead to civil conflict. The cards are on the table. In any case, we cannot forget that we are talking about a radical Islamist group that has no intention of respecting basic human rights in relation to women or social minorities.