Better Wary Ties Than Enmity

A spokesman for the new Islamic regime in Afghanistan says it wants “friendly and good relations” with the United States. Washington says it’s ready to send an envoy to Kabul to explore how to achieve that goal.

The gesture from the religious Taliban militia leadership is encouraging, especially when set against the American experience in Iran after the revolution there brought radical clerics to power in 1979. A major difference, of course, is that in Iran the United States had been closely allied with the repressive government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In Afghanistan, the United States probably has some residual credit for the important help it gave the groups that fought the Soviet Union’s invasion in the 1980s. Some in Kabul even say the United States was behind the current rise of the Taliban.

Whatever direction Afghanistan’s foreign policy may take, the Talibs, as they are called, have already raised concerns among many Afghans and in some neighboring countries by moving rapidly to impose on Kabul the same strict religion-based code of behavior they put in force in other areas they control. Women are forbidden to work or to appear in public unless cloaked from head to toe. The hands of thieves can be lopped off, adulterers can be stoned. All television is banned. Predictably, the Talibs claim to speak for virtually all Afghans. In fact, their rigid religious orientation appears to have only limited support, especially in Kabul. But the Talibs have the guns and hold the capital.

Russia isn’t hiding its concern about the triumph of the Talibs, fearing destabilization along its southern tier if they try to export their religious zeal to the largely Muslim neighboring states of the former Soviet Union. Iran, dominated by the Shiite branch of Islam, is also wary about its neighbor to the east now that its new Sunni masters have proclaimed their own Islamic republic.

Afghanistan is one of those unhappy places where nothing ever seems to be really settled. That’s a powerful strategic reason for the United States to reestablish its presence in Kabul, seven years after the ferocious civil war forced the U.S. Embassy to close.