Taliban minister at Doha defense expo: Could the winds be changing?

On March 4-6, the Afghan Taliban Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob and Army Chief Mohammad Fasihuddin Fitrart attended the Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition (DIMDE) in Qatar. Being a landlocked country with no naval forces, the presence of Yaqoob and Fitart at the DIMDE sparked both concern and curiosity. Furthermore, the two Taliban officials showed up at the exhibition after their regime refused to participate in the United Nations meeting on Afghanistan held in Doha in February.

Keeping in view some recent developments, Yaqoob’s presence at the DIMDE in Qatar could be signalling various things. Undoubtedly, Qatar is a most influential country which has hosted the Taliban’s political office since 2012 and successfully brokered the Doha Agreement in 2020. Since then, most Western capitals have continued their diplomatic engagements with the Taliban through their embassies in Doha. Qatar has hosted four face-to-face meetings of the US and Taliban officials and two meetings of the UN on Afghanistan (but the Taliban did not participate).

Since October 2023, the US approach toward the Taliban has evolved pragmatically from isolating the clerical regime to selectively engaging it on issues of mutual concern. The Biden administration feels that the China-led regional approach of engaging the Taliban has punctured US policy of keeping the regime isolated. Furthermore, the growing Taliban-China proximity as well as the recently concluded Iran-Taliban Chabahar port deal worth $35 million has created unease in Washington. Therefore, Washington has also been exploring options of re-establishing a diplomatic presence in Kabul to maintain some leverage over the Taliban. Hence, it is quite possible that Qatar hosted Yaqoob on Washington’s behest. 

Direct and overt engagement with the Defense Ministry could be a precursor to reopening the US diplomatic mission in Kabul. 

- Abdul Basit Khan

Yaqoob is considered a moderate Taliban leader and also has Mullah Omar’s pedigree. The opposition of some Taliban leaders, including Yaqoob, to harsh policies such as banning girls’ education, is publicly known. Potentially, this engagement can create fissures in the Taliban movement in the future. The younger generation of the Taliban also look up to Yaqoob and he is seen as the least bad option to engage the Taliban’s moderate elements and strengthen their hands.

Presently, there are two power centers in Afghanistan: the political center in Kabul that is very weak, and the spiritual center in Kandahar which is quite powerful. The Taliban’s political leadership in Kabul has been held hostage to Haibatullah’s decrees who is running the political show from Kandahar. Haibatullah wants to build his own force along the model of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards which directly reports to the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The creation of such a force would undermine Yaqoob’s authority who is trying to strengthen the Taliban army and increase its size. If Haibatullah succeeded in creating a Revolutionary Guards’ like force, the Taliban’s future as a movement would be held hostage to his hard-line inner circle. 

Against this backdrop, engagement with Yaqoob is to weaken the hard-liners and use it as a tool to pressurize Haibatullah. 

Following the Taliban’s refusal to attend the UN meeting in Afghanistan in February, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, maintained that some countries may be able to convince the Taliban to attend by next year’s meeting. So, among other things, one of the reasons to host Yaqoob in Doha could be to convince him to revisit the Taliban’s refusal to attend the event and participate in next year’s meeting, even if conditions are not acceptable. 

US and Taliban security officials have met several times in Doha, albeit secretively, to discuss security matters, particularly the threat from Daesh-Khorasan. US officials have publicly acknowledged cooperating with the Taliban against Daesh-K and even praised the latter’s ruthless efficacy against the terror group. Allowing Yaqoob and the Taliban Chief of Army Staff to attend a defense expo in Doha is a signal of widening the security engagement with the Taliban regime beyond secret meetings held in the past. In other words, the US-Taliban security engagement is now graduating from covert to overt domain. Of course, few things in this domain will always remain overt. However, direct and overt engagement with the Defense Ministry could be a precursor to reopening the US diplomatic mission in Kabul. 

Washington’s harsh Afghan policy based on pre-conditions toward the Taliban regime has proven to be counterproductive. The Taliban have in fact hardened their stance on several issues instead of showing leniency. At the same time, the Taliban have not only shown great interest in working with the US on issues of mutual concerns, such as Daesh-K, but have also shown great promise. Hence, engagement with moderates like Yaqoob is geared toward deepening the cooperation in overlapping interests in the hope of winning some concessions in the future. 

- The author is a Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. X: @basitresearcher.