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August 31, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Can ‘Stans’ integration tempt the Taliban into breakthrough talks?
But all of that is changing now. With the growing role of newly reform-minded Uzbekistan as the fa- cilitator of regional cooperation and the desperate need of Turkmenistan to turn Afghanistan into its natural gas transit zone, the “sixth” Central Asian nation is finally coming to the fore. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have unexpectedly emerged
as the bearers of some promise when it comes to regional peace and stability.
Meetings with US officials
Most surprising to observers this year has been the rise of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban as a politi- cal force capable of negotiation — starkly contrast- ing with its reputation as a defiant warmonger. In the past several months, the Taliban have reportedly met at least twice with US officials to discuss peace prospects, despite Washington’s previous insistence that the Taliban and the Afghan government should be the only parties engaged in negotiations. The Taliban has insisted on only talking to the US while, some analysts note, sending out mixed signals such as announcing an Eid-al Fitr religious holiday cease- fire in June, but rejecting the Eid al-Adha holiday ceasefire offer in August.
That said, a mutual push to make peace prospects possible has been increasingly seen on the part
of both the Afghan government and the militant group. This was demonstrated in the latest Uz- bekistan-based talks between the two sides — an encounter observed as an odd occurrence consid- ering the Taliban’s claimed desire to only speak
to US officials. US observers portrayed the event as a mark of the Taliban’s rise as a political group and mostly relegated Uzbek interests to anxieties over Islamic State and Uzbekistan’s own extremist group, the IMU, which is Afghanistan-based.
What many observers may have missed was the role of the Uzbek-led and Turkmen-supported
Central Asian integration efforts in bringing out
the militant group’s previously unseen, albeit still complex, proclivity for dialogue. At the heart of Af- ghan concerns on both sides of the conflict lies the opium poppy cultivation market which stands as
a vital part of the nation’s economy — and the two regional neighbours have for the first time in a long time offered a real alternative to the crop used as the essential ingredient in heroin production.
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is valued at nearly $3bn per annum by the United Nations. In 2017, the country’s opium output rose by a record 87% y/y, according to UN statistics and, not sur- prisingly, opium accounts for a big share of the Taliban’s revenues. During the group’s first three years ruling Afghanistan, their regime encouraged local farmers to grow the crop, offering govern- ment protection for exports. The Taliban collected taxes on both the harvest and heroin production, but in a move for international acceptance in 2000, following a severe drought, opium was banned. The move is believed to have been one reason behind the regime’s swift collapse in 2001.
The country had come to depend on the mono- crop for both income and employment. Now, the present Afghan government is unsuccessfully attempting to foster significantly less profitable wheat cultivation in place of opium production. The Taliban, on the other hand, may have learned their lesson too well and they have come to de- pend on the crop once more. Opening up a route to peace will be impossible without comparable legal substitutes to the opium economy.
Alternatives to the heroin economy
That fact was precisely demonstrated when the Taliban, to everyone’s surprise, in February an- nounced support for the Turkmenistan-Afghani- stan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project in exchange for a future share of transit revenues. On top of that, some of the militants immediately began offering to discuss peace with the current Kabul regime in exchange for pipeline jobs. The $10bn and 1,814-kilometre-long pipeline is ex- pected to export 33bn cubic metres (bcm) of natu-