On May 27, 2025, Moscow and Kabul announced that they had signed a military?technical cooperation pact–the first formal step since Russia recognised the Taliban regime almost a year ago after removing it from the list of banned terrorist groups.
Interestingly, around the same time, Pakistan’s deputy premier and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, en route to Washington, prepared to tell his American hosts that Afghanistan’s soil must not be used by the Tehreek?i?Taliban Pakistan or other groups that terrorise Pakistan. These two movements-one toward arms and alliances, the other toward diplomatic persuasion-frame the fault lines across which Afghanistan is once again being pulled. Dar was coming straight from China where a joint statement issued to mark the conclusion of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s trip emphasised:: The two sides stressed on the need of not allowing any individual, group or party, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) etc., to use the territories to harm and threaten regional security and interests, or conduct terrorist actions and activities.”
In geopolitics, the first handshake often becomes a door through which others eventually walk.
Moscow’s pact with the Taliban is not a sentimental embrace. It is rooted in three hard calculations that Russia has been telegraphing for months. First, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) threatens Russian interests in Central Asia, and the Russian security chief Alexander Bortnikov has even accused British intelligence of working with ISKP to weaken Kabul.
Second, Russia wants to fill the vacuum left by the US withdrawal and believes Afghanistan’s geography could feed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation?linked trade corridors and energy routes.
Third, recognition of the Taliban allows Moscow to act as a broker in the region, thus reclaiming a measure of great?power prestige.
Yaqoob Mujahid, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and now the de facto defence minister, oversaw the signing. “Afghanistan and Russia have long and historical relations, and we have expanded bilateral relations,” he told reporters. Moscow and Kabul have not disclosed the pact’s contents. However, analysts say it likely covers repairs to Soviet?era equipment, small arms, training and intelligence cooperation. Some, like Hameed Hakimi, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, also believe that Russia’s ability to deepen defence cooperation with the Taliban will be constrained by Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine as well as the crippling impact of Western sanctions on the Kremlin’s coffers.
But symbolism matters as much as substance.
Russia is the only country in the world to formally recognise the Taliban government. It did so in 2025, four years after the group returned to power following the 2021 withdrawal of US forces. In geopolitics, the first handshake often becomes a door through which others eventually walk.
Engagement with Moscow is bound to add more oxygen to Kabul’s narrative of international recognition. Already, it has used engagements with countries like China, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan( that maintain diplomatic, trade, and economic ties without official recognition) to signal that it is not entirely cut off from the international system.
Meanwhile, India has found another route. New Delhi recently signed a $46.3 million agreement with Afghanistan’s National Standards Authority to build ten laboratories at border points. These “soft infrastructure” projects-training, documentation, quality control-help to professionalise Afghan trade and create an alternative to Pakistan’s transit routes, which have been closed since October 2025 because of Afghanistan’s unwillingness to address cross?border terrorism.
William Dalrymple once described Afghanistan as a venue for an “Indo?Pak proxy war.” His line, borrowed from another imperial era, is resonating again. An Indian presence in Taliban?run institutions risks deepening the Indo?Pak rivalry. It also shows that soft tools can be as strategic as hard ones when contesting influence in contested spaces.
China walks a different path. It has not recognised the Taliban, yet both sides maintain ambassadors. Beijing’s priorities are straightforward: prevent Uyghur militants from using Afghan territory, secure access to copper, lithium and rare earths, and ensure stability to protect investments in Pakistan and Central Asia.
Islamabad closed border crossings like Torkham and Chaman after a wave of terrorist attacks and demanded that Kabul dismantle TTP sanctuaries. The logic was clear: enough is enough.
In Washington, Dar explained these dynamics, especially in light of the growing intersection of India’s interests (as evidenced by India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s presence in Russia this week) to Secretary Rubio. He conveyed Pakistan’s concerns about terrorist groups using Afghan territory and stressed the need for enhanced counter?terrorism cooperation.
Yet Afghanistan’s proxy wars are seldom neat. US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski once wrote to President Jimmy Carter after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, “It is essential that Afghanistan’s resistance continues… more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice”. Those shipments succeeded beyond expectation. They also sowed the seeds for new transnational threats to the extent that American journalist Steve Coll later observed that “The self?perpetuating secret routines of these official liaisons, and their unexamined assumptions, helped create the Afghanistan that became Osama bin Laden’s sanctuary”.
The lesson is not that history repeats itself. It is that unintended consequences are as much a part of statecraft as intended ones.
Afghanistan today is not the Afghanistan of 1979. The superpowers have shrunk, and the region’s middle powers have grown. The Taliban are not Marxist clients but Islamists who claim sovereignty while sheltering militants who threaten their neighbours.
One need not go further than this month, which has already seen the secretary of Russia’s Security Council call on Western countries to unfreeze Afghan government assets held in foreign banks and accept what he described as responsibility for the consequences of their two-decade military presence in the country. Addressing another meeting in Kyrgyzstan, Sergei Shoigu said Russia had built a “pragmatic dialogue” with the Taliban and was developing what he called a “full-fledged partnership” with Kabul.
Positions have been taken! Let the proxy games begin!
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. She tweets @DureAkram.