Taliban block negotiations with Turkey and Qatar to manage Afghan airports
Talks between Taliban leaders and the Turkish-Qatari consortium for the management of Afghan airports have stalled after months of intense negotiations to convince the fundamentalist militia to cede control over the facilities. The Taliban have blocked dialogue to hand over the prerogatives to negotiating teams linked to Ankara and Doha, increasing distrust with two of their main regional backers since they regained power in August 2021.
It is the Afghan Ministry of Civil Aviation that currently manages the operation of air services since the US ended its stay in the country 20 years later. A logistical team of Qatari experts, sent by the Emirate months after the US withdrawal, is supporting the monitoring and maintenance of the airports in view of the lack of preparedness of the Afghan managers.
The head of Qatari diplomacy, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, received this week in Doha his Afghan counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, a former member of the Taliban negotiating team at the Qatari office, with whom he met for about two hours to bring the two sides closer together and reach an agreement on airport management. But the parties identified issues related to the contract "that needed further discussions", Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi revealed via Twitter.
Far from resolving some contractual details, sources close to the negotiations quoted by AFP maintain that the stalemate is due to the Taliban's insistence that its own fighters take control of the airports, with Turkish and Qatari companies ultimately in charge of the technical aspects. The fundamentalist militia has so far been wary of foreign presence on Afghan soil, even with the two actors closest 'a priori' to the Taliban regime.
"Our people will protect the airport. The presence of foreign troops or security experts on our soil is unacceptable to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," an Afghan official told AFP. The problem is that neither Qatar nor Turkey trusts the Taliban to safeguard the security of the compounds, let alone after numerous attacks in recent months in various parts of the country claimed by the Islamic State of Khorasan, a jihadist group even more radical than the Taliban themselves.
Qatar and Turkey are not throwing in the towel and will try to persuade the Taliban to approve a lucrative deal that would also allow both to strengthen their influence in the region through airspace control. A booty that motivates the Turks and Qataris. Although the radical group had no qualms about threatening Turkey when President Erdoğan conveyed his intention to maintain part of his forces to secure Kabul's Hamid Karzai airport.
The ace up Ankara and Doha's sleeve is the strategic importance of a well-functioning facility. Shoring up air services would allow the Taliban to partially revive Afghanistan's devastated economy and would also facilitate the arrival of much-needed humanitarian aid. Because the equation does not only include the capital's airfield, but also the five other air facilities spread across the country, such as those in Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Khost.
Kabul's airport, named after former President Hamid Karzai, was virtually destroyed last August as a result of the abrupt US withdrawal, when thousands of people flooded into the vicinity of the facility in an 'in extremis' attempt to leave the country during evacuations. Domestic and international flights have since resumed, but improvements are still needed for international airlines to fully resume services.