Kyrgyzstan sprang a surprise last week when it sent a high-level official delegation to Afghanistan. In Kabul, the Kyrgyz officials met Taliban higher-up, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaq, to hand over humanitarian aid.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid tweeted about the unexpected visit on September 23, saying that Muttaqi sahib had "welcomed them and thanked them for their help" . He also posted some photos of the meeting.
What is surprising is the high profile of the delegation. It included the deputy chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council, Taalatbek Masadykov, and the head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Kyrgyz presidential administration, Jeenbek Kulubaev.
Moreover, this has been the most well represented delegation from Central Asia, to visit Kabul for meetings with the acting Taliban government. Even outside the region, the only other stand-out visits to Kabul till now had been that of Qatar's foreign minister and deputy prime minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdur Rahman Al-Thani. Before that, the visit of Pakistan's ISI chief Faiz Hameed, had also turned heads.
While Afghanistan has a tiny minority of ethnic Kyrgyz – concentrated in the Wakhan corridor – it does not share a common border with Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are the three Central Asian countries bordering Afghanistan. Even Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which have engaged with the Taliban, especially regarding border controls, even sending humanitarian aid after the militant group took over Kabul, have not yet sent such a senior delegation so far.
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This comes amid uncertainty in the Central Asian nation on how to deal with the changed geo-political circumstances in its periphery. Taliban remains an organisation that is banned in Kyrgyzstan as it is in Russia and Tajikistan. Moreover, some days prior to the visit from Bishkek to Kabul, Kyrgyz president Sadyr Japarov, during the summit of the Moscow led Collective Security Treaties Organization (CSTO), of which Kyrgyzstan is a member, had voiced his concerns over the ascendancy of the Taliban. REFL reported that he expressed concern that the creation of a theocratic state in the Central Asian region was bound to negatively impact the member-states of the CSTO.
Kyrgyzstan has seen its share of political turmoil and social unrest. It is the only state in Central Asia to see a number of attempts at a colour revolution, including one just last year. It is one of the poorest states in the region, and one that is most closely allied to the US. For a while, the country had also hosted US troops at its MANAS airbase.
Kyrgyzstan also hosts a number of Afghan refugees, and in the aftermath of the Taliban's takeover of Kabul, it had announced 500 students visas for Afghan students as humanitarian aid.
As part of its measures to prepare for a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan had shored up its border defences, by participating in multilateral military drills within the CSTO framework.
Inside Kyrgyzstan, the prevailing view is that the Taliban are a reality. Though unpleasant, they need to be engaged with, without allowing them to get close to Bishkek, even as the latter would follow a policy of non-interference in Afghan affairs.
Taliban, first and foremost, says a Bishkek-based commentator, does not simply herald a change of regime inside Afghanistan. It represents a profound geopolitical shift in the region.
The Kyrgyz have reasons to be wary of the Taliban. Taliban 1.0 had supported and encouraged the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which then spilled over from neighbouring Uzbekistan into Kyrgyzstan. While the latter has been contained so far, radical Islam continues to pose Bishkek, a lurking threat. Around 700 Kyrgyz citizens are believed to have flocked to Syria to join the Islamic State.
Consequently, just as neighbouring Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan hopes that engagement with the Taliban, will contain other terrorist groups inside Afghanistan, and not allow them to use the country as a base to threaten neighbouring countries.
Aid diplomacy may, therefore, be a beginning of engagement with the Taliban. But if “appeasement” of the Taliban fails, Kyrgyzstan may need to urgently work on a plan-B, with a clear focus on the strengthened Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) as the way forward. Going to the roots of the rise of the Taliban, Bishkek and Tashkent also need to be wary of Pakistan, the epicentre of radicalism in the AfPak, from where another wave of terror is now likely to spread engulfing Central Asia.
