By Mark Trevelyan
(Reuters) – Russia’s parliament passed a law on Tuesday that would allow courts to suspend bans on groups designated by Moscow as terrorist organisations – paving the way for it to normalise ties with the Afghan Taliban and potentially with the new leadership of Syria.
No country currently recognises the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which seized power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal after 20 years of war.
But Russia has been gradually building ties with the movement, which President Vladimir Putin said in July was now an ally in fighting terrorism.
The leader of Russia’s Muslim region of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, called on Monday for the removal of Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from Moscow’s list of banned terror groups. HTS spearheaded the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this month.
Kadyrov, a close Putin ally, said Russia needed ties to the new Syrian authorities to ensure stability and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. The Kremlin said this week that Russia was in contact with the new leadership in Syria, where it hopes to retain the use of an airfield and a naval base that give it an important military foothold in the Mediterranean.
The new law, passed by parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, allows for a group to be removed from Russia’s banned list by order of a court if it ceases terrorist-related activity.
The Taliban was in the first batch of groups to be listed, in February 2003, and Syria’s HTS was added in 2020.
SECURITY THREAT
Moscow sees a major security threat from Islamist militant groups based in a string of countries from Afghanistan to the Middle East, where Russia lost a major ally with the fall of Assad.
In March, gunmen killed 145 people at a concert hall outside Moscow in an attack claimed by Islamic State. U.S. officials said they had intelligence indicating it was the Afghan branch of the group, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), that was responsible.
The Taliban says it is working to wipe out the presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan.
Western diplomats say the movement’s path towards wider international recognition is stalled until it changes course on women’s rights. The Taliban has closed high schools and universities to girls and women and placed restrictions on their movement without a male guardian. It says it respects women’s rights in line with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Russia has a complex and bloodstained history in Afghanistan. Soviet troops invaded the country in December 1979 to prop up a Communist government, but became bogged down in a long war against mujahideen fighters armed by the United States.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled his army out in 1989, by which time some 15,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Felix Light; Editing by Gareth Jones)
