Martin Parsons: Farage’s plan to negotiate with the Taliban is dangerous appeasement

Dr Martin Parsons is the author of a book on Conservativism and as an overseas aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1990s had to negotiate with senior Taliban

Nigel Farage has just announced his party’s immigration policy – which involves negotiating a returns agreement with Afghanistan and Eritrea to loud applause from Reform supporters.

In other words, his plan is to negotiate with the Taliban and persuade them to take back all the Afghans who arrived on British beaches…

A populist soundbite it may be, but this has to be one of the most ill-thought out policies any opposition politician has ever come up with.

Even leaving aside for one moment the fact that Afghanistan and Eritrea have two of the worst human rights records in the world, to negotiate a bilateral treaty with another country requires two basic things. First, establishing diplomatic relations with that country; secondly, giving them something that they want in return.

Currently Putin’s Russia is the only country in the entire world to recognise the Taliban government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are actually desperate to get international recognition. One of the key reasons the Taliban have just handed over to Iran three Afghans it suspects of spying for Britain is that it wants to use this as leverage to persuade Iran – yes that’s the Islamic Republic of Iran – to officially recognise it. Iran of course wants the three Afghans and the MoD kill list the Taliban have to use a leverage – well actually blackmail – to stop the UK and other Western countries imposing sanctions when it starts rebuilding its nuclear programme…

Which brings us to the second point – what would the Taliban want in exchange for agreeing to the sort of returns agreement Nigel Farage is proposing? Well, there would be two basic demands, first, the status of formal diplomatic recognition by the UK. Secondly – money and aid. The Taliban leadership know if they don’t get this soon, no matter how ruthless they are, then ultimately people will rise up against them and they will not be able to hold onto power.

But before anyone even starts to think about recognising the Taliban – or giving them UK taxpayers’ money – which under the Terrorism Act 2000 would first require them to be removed from the Home Office list of proscribed terrorist organisations, we should remember why 457 British service personnel gave their lives and countless others were injured fighting the Taliban. It was to prevent Afghanistan being used as a terrorist haven where groups like al-Qaeda could plan terror attacks on the West as they did with the 9/11 attacks on the USA.

However, thanks to President Trump’s 2020 deal with the Taliban (the Doha Accord) which withdrew all US forces in exchange for the Taliban “promising” to reduce the number of their attacks and not allow the likes of al-Qaeda to use the country as a base  – al Qaeda have now returned to Afghanistan and re-established suicide bomber training camps there. That’s something some of us warned about at that time on ConservativeHome.

I have spoken before of why the West cannot negotiate with the Taliban. As an aid worker in Afghanistan during the first period of Taliban rule in the 1990s I had to negotiate with senor Taliban to run aid projects. But there is a world of difference between NGOs negotiating to deliver humanitarian assistance and governments negotiating with terrorist organisations who even if they are now in government, brutally torture and murder their own people and want to extend that sort of rule to the rest of the world.

But let me just for clarity’s sake repeat here exactly why the West cannot negotiate with the Taliban:

First, in common with other jihadist groups, the Taliban aim to achieve an Islamic government with strict Islamic law (shari’a) imposed on Muslim and non-Muslim alike. not just in Afghanistan, but across the entire world – and they seek to do that by means of jihadist attacks on the West.

Secondly, Shari’a does not allow a permanent peace treaty to be made with a non-Islamic government – merely that of a truce (hudna), a ceasefire enabling them to regather strength before seeking to achieve a final military victory.

And finally, a major Western government negotiating with the Taliban gives jihadist organisations around the world a massive psychological victory.

The UK can no more appease the Taliban than we could safely appease  the Nazis in the 1930s.