The Taliban victory creates risks for Gulf states
The speed of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has shocked policymakers in the Gulf as much as those in the US. It will take time to see how the new regime will behave in practice, and the second-order implications of this dramatic development are difficult to predict, but we can begin to speculate on some aspects of how this might impact the Gulf, including:
1. Jihadist groups, including those with designs on the GCC, will be emboldened and might launch attacks.
The first of these areas is by far the most concerning and the one most likely to have material economic and market implications for the Gulf states. The speed of the Taliban advance in the last week was very reminiscent of ISIS’s June 2014 capture of Mosul and much of north/west Iraq, where the national security forces also crumbled without a fight. The rise of ISIS resulted in several attacks in the Gulf, including the bombing of a Shia mosque in Kuwait in 2015 (killing 27) and a series of attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2015-6 that killed 14 in total. ISIS’s presence in Yemen complicated the Saudi-led intervention in the civil war, and other wings of the group also impacted Gulf allies in Libya and elsewhere. The Taliban is very different to ISIS in that it views itself as a national liberation movement, similar to Hamas in Palestine, that has not traditionally had international ambitions; indeed, it has clashed with ISIS’s Afghan affiliate, the “Khorasan Province”…
2. The US will look to Gulf allies to support evacuations and mediate with the Taliban.
One of the problems the US faced in recent months, as it prepared its departure, was the slow speed of visa processing for Afghan allies that it has wanted to evacuate. It had been negotiating with several countries, including Qatar and Kuwait (which host the main US bases in the region), for them to temporarily house Afghans while they were screened and processed for US visas. Although there had been no formal announcement, it appeared there was an agreement for this to happen and there have been reports of evacuation flights from Kabul in recent days going to Qatar (including on a flight crammed with about 640 civilians in a C-17 military transport, DO)…
3. There will be a renewed focus on terrorist financing that could tar some Gulf states.
If Gulf states do step in to try and mediate with the Taliban, providing humanitarian aid and commercial links, they could face accusations and possible legal action related to terrorist financing. This was a major issued during the early stages of the Syrian civil war, and several Gulf states, including Kuwait and Qatar, have been criticized for failing to permit financing flows to terrorists or even providing direct funding to certain groups (including in relation to securing hostage releases). Indeed, this issue was central to the external justification for the Quartet’s four-year boycott of Qatar, even if it wasn’t the real motivation…
4. Regional states bordering Afghanistan, including Iran and Pakistan, could be destabilized.
It currently looks likely that the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is here to stay and may well persist for decades. This could eventually affect the power balance in Asia, including between China and India, in ways that are difficult to predict. The most immediate implications are for the states that have the longest borders and most intimate relationships with Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and which are both important neighbors of the Gulf states...
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