Russia close to removing Taliban from list of terrorist organisations

Russia is close to removing the Taliban from its list of terrorist organisations, Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov told a meeting of security chiefs of the Commonwealth of Independent States on Friday.

Bortnikov said the Taliban “aimed to restore order and maintain stability”, while noting its willingness to fight Islamic State’s Afghanistan-based branch Wilayat Khorasan, “which the West continues to support, and uses in subversive actions under a false flag on our territory”.

Wilayat Khorasan claimed responsibility for the attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow on 22 March, in which at least 144 people were killed and over 550 were injured.

Putin’s representative on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, confirmed the move, according to state-owned news agency TASS, saying the decision had already been made at the highest level, but legal steps still needed to be taken. The Foreign Ministry, the FSB and other Russian agencies were working on the issue, he said.

In late August, the Taliban banned women in Afghanistan from speaking in public, showing their faces outside their own home or singing and reading aloud, classifying such activities as vice. The Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has said it has detained thousands of people for non-compliance with Sharia law in the country.

Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organisation in March 2003, two years after the group lost power in Afghanistan following the country’s invasion by a US-led military coalition as part of the Global War on Terror.

However, in May both Russia’s Foreign and Justice Ministry submitted a recommendation to Vladimir Putin that he remove the group from Russia’s official list of terrorist and extremist organisations.

Since then, Putin has spoken of the necessity of building better relations with the Taliban, inviting representatives of the group to this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.