Russia has removed the ruling Afghan movement from the list of extremist organizations.
On April 17, at the request of the Prosecutor General‘s Office in Russia, the Supreme Court of Russia excluded the Afghan Taliban movement from the list of terrorist organizations. Zabihullah Mujahid, a representative of the Islamic Emirate, said that “we consider this step to be very important. In the future, Afghanistan and Russia will certainly build a good relationship in the spheres of economy and diplomacy. Russian President [Vladimir Putin] has a correct policy with regard to Afghanistan.”
This news was long expected. Moreover, Taliban delegations, despite their banned status, had previously regularly visited Russia to participate in various forums and meetings at a high political level.
Therefore, it was only a matter of time before the Taliban movement was formally recognized as a political force, just like the various ruling parties in other countries, operating within the framework of their sovereignty and resolving issues of their State and society. And speaking from the standpoint of pragmatic interests, this time was somewhat missed. Since, in fact, immediately after the expulsion of the US occupation forces, other major players began to work quickly in Afghanistan, considering it as a promising place to implement all kinds of projects.
For example, Chinese companies are already actively developing mineral deposits in Afghanistan, and the oil and gas giant CAPEIC (Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co) signed a 25–year oil production contract with the Taliban in early 2023, under which it will annually invest $150 million in the Afghan economy.
Iran is also actively developing cooperation, as it has a long border with Afghanistan, and Iran‘s seaports are needed by Afghanistan for import and export operations.
It is significant that just before the decision to change the status of the Taliban movement, a high-level Russian government delegation visited Afghanistan, where it held a meeting with the Taliban, in particular, with the Minister of Public Works Mohammad Ashraf Haqshenas. It is known that in addition to the general issues of expanding economic and trade cooperation, they discussed the he repair of the Salang Highway tunnel, the construction of new tunnels in mountainous areas, as well as the modernization of rail lines, and the procurement of necessary equipment and railway components from Russia.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan has also shown interest in building railways, and the Afghan side has also confirmed that it is interested in expanding ties with the Central Asian republics. Earlier, it was Kazakhstan that openly proposed removing the status of a terrorist organization from the Taliban movement.
If we talk about the interests of the Taliban themselves, the Islamic Emirate plans to expand its Hairatan -Herat railway network and further on to Kandahar and Spin Boldak. It will connect Central Asia with South Asia, as well as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Pakistan.
In general, the Taliban want to reduce Afghanistan‘s economic dependence on Iran and Pakistan, as it uses the main trade routes passing through Iran and Pakistan for imports and exports, with most of its commercial goods transported via the sea routes of these countries to China.
Some neighboring countries use Afghanistan‘s trade dependence as a political tool. For example, during harvest, some countries block trade routes, causing millions of dollars in losses to Afghan farmers.
This railway project is part of a broader plan to connect Afghanistan with China and Russia through Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The new railway will reduce Afghanistan‘s dependence on Iran and Pakistan, while offering a faster and more cost-effective trade route.
Currently, it takes at least 40 days for Afghan goods transported through Iran and Pakistan to reach China, while the new route will reduce this time to 12-15 days. Moreover, transportation costs will be reduced by 15-20%.
The Trans-Afghan Railway project, which will connect Pakistan and Uzbekistan, has been around for a long time. Back in February 2021, three countries signed a roadmap in Tashkent for the construction of the Termez — Mazar-e-Sharif —Kabul-Peshawar railway. But then there was a change of power in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban supported this initiative.
Using this logistical opportunity, Kazakhstan joined the route project through Afghanistan in 2024. But for now, goods across Afghanistan and Pakistan are transported by car to the port in Karachi. If there is a railway line, delivery will be greatly simplified.
In November 2024, at the Transport of Russia International Forum, it was announced that “the North–South multimodal route to Iran will expand through the eastern branch through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan. Then the route will go to the ports of Pakistan or India.”
In addition to cooperation in infrastructure projects, the extraction of various natural resources is seen as promising. It was Soviet geologists who conducted research in Afghanistan in the 1950s and 70s, that is, even before the Soviet troops entered this country. Last year, these studies resumed and showed good results. It was noted that “samples of precious and rare earth metals, during preliminary analyses, showed an excess of 8 times the forecast for precious metals and 12 times for rare earth metals. Precious metals include silver, gold, platinum, and palladium. Rare earths are lithium, tantalum, niobium, caesium, rubidium, beryllium and cadmium…“
Therefore, the mining industry sector may be quite attractive and promising for Russia‘s interests.
Moreover, with the changing situation, energy cooperation also looks quite attractive.
Alongside the very long-standing unrealized TAPI gas pipeline project (Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India), there was a gas pipeline project from Iran to Pakistan, but Islamabad suspended the construction of its section due to force majeure circumstances. Given the swap supply agreement between Russia and Iran, energy cooperation would also be interesting for Moscow. Although, during strategic planning, it is probably necessary to think about its own branches of gas and oil pipelines towards energy–vulnerable Pakistan through Afghanistan. To this can be added the CASA–1000 energy grid project for Central Asia, as well as the possibility of building nuclear reactors in the future.
In addition, the factor of security cooperation is of great importance. On April 21, 2025, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Naryshkin stated at an international conference in Baku that “we are all aware of the important place of Afghanistan in the geopolitics of Greater Eurasia. The potential of this country as a link between the north and south, east and west of the continent is huge. It is in the common interests of our states to promote reconstruction and prosperity on Afghan soil,” adding that “the information received by the SVR (Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service) makes it possible to confidently say that the main problem is the desire of Western countries to maintain instability in Afghanistan in order to solve their selfish geopolitical tasks. It is to the Western, most often British, intelligence services that the threads from the terrorist attacks of the so-called Wilayat Khorasan are drawn.”
The above mentioned terrorist organization is a local branch of ISIS, which is joined by those who resent the Taliban. The problem is that there is a kind of Pashtun nationalism within the Taliban, and for this reason, members of other ethnic groups who are prone to radicalization are readily recruited by ISIS. And then there are terrorist attacks, both inside Afghanistan and planning beyond its borders. And given the revealed links with Western intelligence agencies, this factor is extremely important.
Meanwhile, the “legal fork“ still remains, as the UN continues to consider the Taliban as an organization guilty of human rights violations, especially discrimination against women and religious minorities, in particular the country‘s Shiite community.
Thus, the press Secretary of the UN Secretary General, Stephane Dujarric, regarding Russia‘s exclusion of the Taliban movement from the list of terrorist organizations, said that “this is a sovereign decision of the Russian Federation, the status of the Taliban movement in the UN, established by the member states, remains unchanged.“ The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified that this step does not change Moscow‘s commitment to the UN Security Council sanctions against individuals and legal entities associated with the Islamic Emirate.
However these sanctions are unlikely to be an obstacle to economic cooperation, as both Moscow and Kabul have learned to circumvent them through various mechanisms.
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