The International Community's Reflexive Exit Risks Leaving Behind a Perpetually Poor, Isolated Afghanistan

If there is one thing that biased Western media coverage got right about the current state of Afghanistan, it is the precarity of governance in the era of post-Taliban takeover. As the Taliban streamed into the major cities of the country practically unopposed, a large number of locals have spurned the new government, fleeing to the Kabul airport in the hopes of catching an evacuation flight to a new homeland. Many of these people genuinely fear for their lives, having collaborated with the Western "occupiers" and the previous "puppet" government that the Western allies propped up at great expense. 

Others may just be opportunists, finding a great opportunity to leave a country that they long wanted to leave, imagining greener pastures where socioeconomic conditions are much better. For these people, even if they see no reason that the Taliban will harm them personally, they no longer see any point remaining in the country to help improve upon it. As far as they are concerned, the new government is destined to remain internationally isolated, subject to economic and diplomatic blockade for their association with human rights abuses and terrorism. The isolation will ensure Afghanistan has no resources to rebuild.

These opportunists not only consist of local Afghans, but many members of the local expatriate community not associated with the Western allies. As the Americans and the British left, so did the Indians and the Japanese, even though they contributed little to the Western allies' anti-Taliban military efforts in the past two decades. Their rationale for evacuation cited vague notions of potential political instabilities, despite the fact the Taliban takeover has removed the biggest source of political instability that the country had dealt with in the past decades: a protracted guerrilla war led by the Taliban.

The real opportunism of the non-Western internationals fleeing Afghanistan may be an unwillingness to deal with the diplomatic mess that is being left behind by the West. The US is unlikely to take kindly to any country that is seen to make conciliatory overtures to the Taliban government. For most countries, the choice between keeping good relations with the US and the Taliban is an obvious one. Only those that are both willing and capable of standing up to the US with little consequences, including Iran, Russia, China, and Talian's fellow jihadist brethren around the world, will openly maintain links with the new government in Kabul.

Yet, as most of the international community almost reflexively jump on the next plane to get out of Kabul and cut all ties with the Taliban, it is really Afghanistan's future that will suffer. With no real, nationwide opposition left to the Taliban, ensuring future development for the Afghan people will have to go through the new Taliban government. If governments around the world simply refuse to interact with the Taliban in any way, there is no way that Afghanistan will be able to cobble together the financial resources and drum up the foreign investments needed to pull millions out of poverty.

As much as the Taliban would like to impose its conservative social values upon the Afghan people, it has no reason to want the country to remain poor and isolated. In its own way, the Taliban leadership has shown public restraint and signaled a desire to behave like a "normal" government that maintains open lines of communication, economic interactions, and diplomatic relations with other states near and far. Just as any other government after a major domestic upheaval, the Taliban government is looking for international support in restoring calm and pool together resources for reconstruction.

For other countries to ignore the Taliban's preferences for normality would be dangerous. If the Taliban cannot get international support through normal diplomatic means, it is likely to resort to international blackmail, not unlike what North Korea has done in the past decades, to extract economic concessions to keep the local economy going. Whereas the North Korean regime has blackmailed through the threat of war and nuclear devastation, the Taliban can perfectly be capable of threatening the world with the specter of renewed global terror and an endless flow of outbound refugees.

Even with the largest evacuation of people in history, the Western allies were only able to extract some 80,000 people out of Afghanistan. That is a drop in the bucket that the overall population of the country. In a world that is growing tired of hosting refugees and illegal immigrants, the best way to ensure future generations of Afghans do not cross international borders illegally remains a continued effort to develop Afghanistan economically, no matter who happens to be leading the country from Kabul. Restoring normal ties with the Taliban is a good first step.