Thread by @smithkabul

A brutal regime falls. But there’s a problem: the UN and several countries say the victorious rebels are terrorists. What to do? There’s no playbook for Islamist insurgents faced with the challenges of running a country. But there is a precedent, in Afghanistan. 1/

Of course, the rise of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 are two very different situations. Still, some of the Taliban’s difficulties in recent years will also confront HTS because of how the international system works. 2/

In fact, a lot of the time the international ‘system’ does not work. My colleagues and I spent the last three years studying the patchwork of rules, norms, and politics that shape the Taliban’s engagement with the outside world. It’s not much of a system. 3/

We weren’t the only people documenting the Taliban’s struggles to repair their relationship with international actors. The HTS leader reportedly “followed events in Afghanistan closely”, seeking to avoid that mess. 4/
newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-…

On paper, the first systematic response to crises in places like Syria and Afghanistan should be delivery of humanitarian aid. This is a problem in many countries: @DelaneySimon calculates that more than 100 million people need life-saving aid where ‘terrorists’ operate. 5/

@delaneysimon The pariah status of the men with guns who control territory gets in the way of aid agencies trying to deliver help. Our friends @ChathamHouse and @nyuCIC estimated that this affects almost half of all people in fragile and conflict-affected states. 6/
chathamhouse.org/2023/04/aid-st…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC The fact that HTS is listed as a terrorist group by the UN, EU, U.S., UK, Russia, Türkiye and other states has already been a barrier to getting basic supplies into northern Syria. 7/ crisisgroup.org/middle-east-no…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC The headaches of delivering aid to Syria could get worse. The HTS-controlled state will ask NGOs to pay taxes, customs, and other fees – which will ring alarm bells in the legal department of many charities. They won’t want to risk providing assistance to terrorists. 8/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC That is why our team @CrisisGroup called for an exemption to UN sanctions for all humanitarian aid and pushed the Security Council to make it permanent. Politics should not block assistance for needy people. 9/ crisisgroup.org/global/sb12-te…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup To their credit, the Council members did what we asked: they voted in favour of the indefinite humanitarian carveout last week. The U.S. ambassador was right to call it a “landmark” moment at the UNSC. 10/ usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup But those humanitarian exemptions have limited impact, as we saw in Afghanistan. Aid groups protested, and got a carveout from UN sanctions after the Taliban takeover in December 2021. But that didn’t solve the problem. 11/ blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup As I testified to U.S. Congress, the chilling effects of sanctions continued choking the whole economy of Afghanistan. It wasn’t enough to simply make it legally permissible to deliver emergency rations. 12/ crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asi…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Soon afterwards, in February 2022, the Biden administration went further and published the most sweeping set of exemptions ever written for U.S. sanctions, permitting a wide range of business with Afghanistan. Problem solved? 13/ ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Nope. Firms were still reluctant to do business in Afghanistan. High compliance costs, reputational risks, and lingering legal questions outweighed the potential upside. Plus, some countries did not ease sanctions at all. 14/ foreignaffairs.com/afghanistan/le…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Such effects of sanctions could be worse in Syria than in Afghanistan because the U.S. calls HTS a “foreign terrorist organisation”, which is a tougher label than the U.S. listing of the Taliban as “specially designated global terrorists”. 15/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup The picture in Syria is also profoundly more complicated than in Afghanistan. It’s not just a sanctioned rebel group taking control of the country. Syria itself has been under the world’s most restrictive sanctions for years. 16/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Among the many sanctions on Syria is a U.S. State Sponsor of Terrorism designation, one of the most powerful weapons in the US economic arsenal. Some of the Syria sanctions date back to the 1970s. The Taliban sanctions look simple by comparison, a legacy of the 1990s. 17/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup But even the straightforward sanctions on the Taliban have proven tricky. The U.S. promised to work toward lifting sanctions on the Taliban as part of a deal with the insurgents in 2020, but implementation fell apart as the Afghan government collapsed. 18/ state.gov/wp-content/upl…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup In 2023, the UN Special Coordinator reviewed all international engagement with Afghanistan and concluded, among other things, that sanctions against the Taliban should be reformed to “make the sanctions regime more relevant to current realities”. 19/
unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup The Council asked for implementation of the Special Coordinator’s recommendations, but nobody took the initiative to review the Taliban sanctions. The economic pressure continues. Ironically, the worst effects fall upon Afghan girls and women. 20/ crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asi…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup This highlights the political side of the problem. There is no world court of sanctions, where experts weigh the merits of a) coercing the Taliban, hoping to change their rules that crush the rights of women, or b) lifting sanctions to ease poverty.

21/lawfaremedia.org/article/why-in…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Instead, there is a UNSC committee that supposedly reviews the sanctions. In practice, it takes few actions. Committee staff sometimes feel puzzled about why they are tasked with prolonging sanctions that no longer fit reality. 22/
main.un.org/securitycounci…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Complete removal of the UN sanctions on HTS or the Taliban would require a broader political understanding with the permanent members of the Security Council. Unilateral sanctions will need separate negotiations. 23/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup In the meantime, it’s possible that the interim government in Syria will face some of the other issues that troubled the Taliban in recent years. These are speculative, but worth mentioning. 24/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup First, it's unclear whether central bank assets belonging to Syria might become an issue like Afghanistan's frozen reserves. The Taliban lost access to $9.5B in overseas accounts, crippling monetary policy. 25/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Second, the central bank of Syria may have trouble meeting AML/CFT requirements if the decider of new appointments at the institution is a listed terrorist with a $10m bounty on his head. Syria was already under scrutiny by the FATF. 26/ fatf-gafi.org/en/countries/d…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Third, we don't know how Syria's UN representation will play out. The Taliban still haven't taken Afghanistan's seat at the General Assembly, and UN-led normalization talks have been plagued by contentious politics (mostly over the Taliban’s awful treatment of women). 27/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Fourth, Syria's sticky web of pre-existing sanctions will likely continue to affect the banking and financial sectors. In Afghanistan, businesses still have trouble with wire transfers for basic transactions such as importing food and medicines. 28/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Fifth, Syria needs to rebuild -- but World Bank and IMF programs can be difficult in these settings. Afghanistan got a “yes” vote from the Bank board for an electricity project (barely), but most infrastructure funding has been halted since 2021.
29/worldbank.org/en/news/press-…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Sixth, more broadly, there’s a bunch of connectivity issues: civil aviation, telecommunications, customs integration, border security, etc. The Taliban case shows how hard it is for rebel groups to plug into global systems. 30/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup I’ve been sending copies of the UN independent assessment of Afghanistan to colleagues who work on Syria, because it reads like a checklist of the many ways the new regime in Damascus might struggle to restore functional relations with the world 31/
unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/…

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup Sadly, the so-called international system is not built for this. Sanctions are crude instruments. States tend to fall into “with us” or “against us” categories, with few options in between. 32/

@delaneysimon @ChathamHouse @nyuCIC @CrisisGroup We need better tools for dealing with such situations. The current all-or-nothing approach serves no one well, especially the civilians who suffer in the grey zones. Here’s hoping that Syrians do not get stuck in the same limbo that afflicts Afghans. /end

p.s. For the few nerds who read this entire thread, you might want to know that I'm posting first on the other site, graemesmithauthor (dot) bsky (dot) social