By: Pir Mohammad Molazehi

Introduction
Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, presented his report on the current and future status of Afghanistan to the United Nations Security Council. This report has been prepared and presented based on the several-month mission of Feridun Sinirlioglu, Secretary-General's Special Coordinator, and after negotiations with all parties involved in the issue of Afghanistan, and based on Resolution 3679 of 2003. This report has received a wide response, and many opinions have been given in support or opposition to it. Among these opinions, the view of three groups are more important:

the Taliban government
the anti -Taliban opposition
The experts in Afghanistan issues

The Taliban has implicitly welcomed Guterres's report, but with its own caution and special considerations. Opponents have implicitly or explicitly opposed it. Experts, while having diversity of views, have evaluated it as a step forward for the international community to better understand the current situation in Afghanistan.
However, the importance of this report is in other ways. There are some important and fundamental points in Guterres' report to the Security Council, including:

1- The Secretary-General of the United Nations has tried to establish the credibility of the UN as an independent organization that preserves global peace and stability and is away from the penetration of global sources of power.
2- The United Nations Secretary-General has tried to present his report according to the realities in Afghanistan, and to find a favorable road map to solve the problem of the Taliban with the opposing currents, and help the peace and stability of this country, the region and the world.
3- The Secretary-General has tried to shift his road map from the level of conflicts and competitions among global powers to a more realistic level, that is, a regional level with interactive capacity based on common interests.
4- In his report, the Secretary-General has tried to prepare the ground for the international community's relationship with the Islamic Emirate in an encouraging and interactive way. This means that, on the one hand, he has tried to encourage the Taliban to accept a minimum of international standards and norms of governance, respect for human rights and reduction of strictures on women and acceptance of their social, educational and job rights, and on the other hand, he has tried to make the international community aware of the difficult situation and ideological bottlenecks of the Taliban, so that in an interactive process, the Taliban can gradually align itself with global norms.
5- In his report to the Security Council, the Secretary-General has implicitly and indirectly tried to draw the Council's attention to the dual nature of the Taliban Emirate structure - an extremely strict and ideological leadership in Kandahar, a the more realistic current in the Taliban structure.

Analyzing the UN roadmap
According to the contents of the published UN Secretary-General's report, the most important aspects of this report can be summarized as follows.
A) The effort of the Secretary-General to remove the problem of Afghanistan from the framework of the Great Power competition.
The fact is that Afghanistan's strategic geography throughout history, especially since the end of the 18th century, has caused the competition of the world's great powers. At one point in history, Afghanistan was the place of conflict between two colonial empires, the Tsarist Russian Empire and the British Empire which had the Indian subcontinent under its control. The phrase Grate Game that entered the political literature was the product of these competitions. At another point, during the Cold War, Afghanistan was at the center of the competition between the global powers of the East and the West; and now it seems that the strategic position of Afghanistan is turning this country into a place of competition between new power blocs centered on China and the United States. The result of the competition between these powers was three periods of Afghanistan occupation in the 19th century by Britain, in the 20th century by the Soviet Union, and in the 21st century by the United States. These Occupations have been effective in the defeat of colonial powers and the formation of an anti-colonial resistance.

However, in the new round, the China-US competition has gained wider dimensions and includes three strategic regions of the world today:

The Indian Ocean and the Makran Coast area and its banks, from the Hindu Kush & Himalayan Mountain range to the Makran Coast, which includes the three core countries of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
The Middle East region which includes the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the shores of the Oman Sea in the Indian Ocean in the south.
Central Asia (Russia's traditional backyard and influence area) where Afghanistan is considered a part of it in terms of geographical connection.

These competitions reflect in the form of two projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): one of which connects the China’s Xinjiang province to the Gwadar Port on the Makran coast of Pakistan's Balochistan, via Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, crossing the Pashtun and Baloch ethnic geography; the other one, which is called the Karakoram Highway, starts from the west of China and enters Pakistan by passing through the Hindu Kush & Himalayan Mountain range and Kashmir region, and reaches Gwadar by passing through Pakistan’s Pashtun and Baloch geography.
Meanwhile, America has designed the Abraham project with the aim of thwarting China's Belt and Road project. Although this project has been temporarily stopped due to the war between Israel and Hamas, it can be operational in the long term - this project connects Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, Israel and Arab countries to the coast of the Oman Sea on the northern shore of the Indian Ocean, and finally reaches to India.
​In this U.S-China competition, Afghanistan has again maintained its traditional central role, because of it connecting geography between the three competitive areas (Central Asia to South Asia and the Indian subcontinent; Central Asia to the Indian Ocean; and the Middle East region between China and America).

B) The effort of the UN Secretary-General to formulate the problem of Afghanistan as a regional problem.
The historical reality related to Afghanistan is that whenever and for whatever reason international competition has decreased, regional competition has quickly replaced it. Part of the internal ethnic and ideological competition inside Afghanistan has been in the shadow of this competition of foreign powers, especially the neighboring countries or the peripheral countries far and near, which has prevented the formation of a powerful central government in Afghanistan.

The failure of governance in Afghanistan over the past half century confirm this reality, including the Mohammad Zahir Shah’s Reign, the Pashtun nationalist Republic of Sardar Daud Khan, the Marxist-Leninist Regime of Nur Mohammad Taraki, the Islamic State of Rabbani, the first Emirate of the Taliban, and the liberal system emerging from the Bonn Conference which led by Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani. In fact, all of them failed under the influence of foreign competitions. If we use the historical experience of Afghan governance as the criteria of judgment, we can conclude that the fate of the new and current era of the Taliban Emirate will depend on the competition at both the international and regional levels.

In this report, the UN Secretary- General has tried to stop this bloody cycle inside and outside Afghanistan. Internally, it tries to create an interactive condition inside the country between the Taliban and its opponents in the form of accepting the process of national interaction. Externally, it tries to reduce the international and regional rivalries, in order to facilitate the political stability and avoid civil wars that have the potential of foreign interference. This is the reason why the UN Secretary General is looking for a sustainable regional solution that can lead to peace and stability, by expanding the scope of the Taliban's current monopoly of power. Therefore, the Secretary-General has tried to encourage the Taliban to accept an inclusive government with ethnic and religious diversity, so that a favorable ground for the participation of all political currents can gradually be prepared. The importance of this issue will become clearer when the dual nature of the Taliban Emirate’s structure is taken into consideration.

The fact is that the power structure in the Taliban government is not homogeneous. The main power is in Kandahar, and is in the hands of the extremely conservative leader Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzadeh. The activity of this faction is based on a combined ideology (consisting of the radical Islam of the Deobandi school, and the traditional and ethnic Pashtun values, known as Pashtunwali). the other part of power is in the hands of the formal government of the Emirate in Kabul, which is somewhat more flexible but unable to break through the narrow ideological frameworks supported by the Kandahar-based leadership. As long as this duality is not properly understood and the Taliban government itself does not find a solution for it, the Taliban government in Kabul cannot give in to the desired and universal standards, norms and values and behave like a normal government.

The Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, while partially welcoming the UN Secretary-General's report, rejected the part of the report that required the Taliban government to comply with global values and norms related to human rights and girls' right to education and work, and conditioned it on the non-contradiction with Islamic values in Taliban’s religious rules. In this statement of Mujahid, one can clearly see the Emirate's concern about the reaction of the conservative leadership based in Kandahar; otherwise, it is so clear for the Emirate in Kabul that there is no other way to survive the government, to maintain power and international recognition, and to launch the declining economy of Afghanistan, except to accepting international norms.

C) In his report to the Security Council, Guterres has tried to draw a line between providing humanitarian aid to Afghan people, who desperately need it, and the world of politics. He tries to separate the issue of the Taliban's governance from the issue of humanitarian aid to the desperate people of Afghanistan, and encourage the international community to increase and continue its aid and support.

D) One of the main goals of the UN Secretary-General's report is to encourage the Taliban to create the rule of law in their government, and to draft a new constitution. Another point is to emphasize the necessity of starting a serious intra-Afghan dialogue, which will lead to the political solution of the Afghanistan problem and the establishment of a government with a broader social base. This dialogue can also contribute to a safe transition from the ethnic and religious monopoly of power, pave the way for global interaction and international recognition of the Taliban Emirate, and ultimately facilitating the integration of Afghanistan- as a responsible government-  in the international system.

Conclusion
The UN Secretary-General’ report to the Security Council can be evaluated as the first serious effort of the United Nations, as an important global institution, whose responsibility is to maintain regional and global peace and stability. The report was prepared after several months of investigation by the Special Representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan and the region, and it is presented as a road map for the political solution of the Afghan issue. Its ultimate goal is to help the Taliban and its armed political and military opponents, and prevent a new destructive civil war over power in Afghanistan.

​ At the same time, the main focus of the report is to create conditions that can lead to the formation of an inclusive government in this multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. More broadly, the report aims to lay the groundwork for the official recognition of the Taliban through the integration of the Emirate into the international community, and as a result, to solve the political, socio-cultural and economic problems of Afghanistan. Therefore, in this roadmap, an international meeting of global and regional actors, with participation of at least twenty countries, is envisioned in the future. However, the adoption of such measures will not be effective only with the good will of the UN Secretary-General, and it requires wider cooperation of the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban must break the ethnic and school monopoly of power, and provide the basis for the participation of all political, ethnic and religious communities in the national power. At the same time, the success of this roadmap requires a stronger will at the global and regional levels that can help the Taliban Emirate to gain international recognition, and to take Afghanistan seat at the United Nations.

However, the truth is that the Taliban is not currently prepared enough to accept the opposition groups in the government, as proposed in the form of an inclusive government. Taliban leaders believe that the current government is inclusive and people from Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and other ethnicities have a share in it. This difference in the perception of the Taliban and others about the inclusive government is a serious problem that has not been considered in the UN Secretary- General's roadmap.

At the same time, the more important fact is that the issue of power structure in Afghanistan has remained a source of controversy. The Pashtun ethnic group generally supports the centralized structure of power, which is also the wish of the Taliban, while other ethnic groups want the distribution of power in the form of an ethnic federalization; This plan has been clearly proposed by Latif Pedram, a Tajik politician and a former member of the parliament. In the report of the Secretary-General, this importance matter has been ignored, and just the necessity of forming an inclusive government has been noticed. Even if it is thought that the Taliban will one day accept the inclusive government, it is unlikely that they will be able to solve the problem of power structure, and to end the conflict of power distribution or power concentration.
In any case, in a preliminary evaluation of Guterres's report and road map, it can be said that it is a positive step forward, but it is not enough. Therefore, there should be no great expectation that this road map can solve all the problems and provide a final solution to the power crisis in Afghanistan.
 
​ Pir Mohammad Molazehi, is a senior expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues.