The 11th round of the Herat Security Dialogue (HSD-XI) kicked off on Monday, November 27 in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan. Titled “Reimagining Afghanistan: Ways Forward,” the two-day conference organized by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) gathered nearly 150 international experts, politicians, Taliban opponents, and representatives from 20 countries to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan.
The conference is named after Herat, an ancient city in western Afghanistan predating much of what is left of the past in the region. For nearly a decade before the republican government collapsed, the city became the epicenter of attention for those who followed events in the war-torn country. Every year in November, HSD brought hundreds of intellectuals, political figures, civil society, and government officials to the Herat Citadel, an Alexandrian fortress recognized by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage, to place the country’s events in a broader regional and global context. The congregation of regional experts, international researchers, and diplomats from near and far was a portrayal of how connected the country had become to the outside world despite a ravaging war that took human lives in dozens every day.
When the political dispensation under which the dialogue became a flagship event in Afghanistan’s calendar collapsed, the Afghanistan Institute of Strategic Studies, the conference’s organizer, resettled in London. But for Davood Moradian, the institute’s Herati-British founding director, it was too far from a civilizational geography larger than Afghanistan that he had obsessed over for decades. So, in 2022, the Herat Security Dialogue reconvened for its 10th round in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Other than becoming a new home for anti-Taliban discussions, Dushanbe, another Persian city like Herat, was perhaps the closest Moradian could get to his hometown.
For many participants, there was a strange feeling of nostalgia about an Afghanistan that was not good enough to sustain but enough to miss. There is also a bitter-sweetness in the conference projecting a familiar continuity to a country whose historical life has been nothing but rupture and disintegration. Unlike the quiet and monolithic Afghanistan under the Taliban, the discussion in Dushanbe was diverse and had live music by women vocalists.
The participants, however, had to grapple with a stalemated crisis that has left millions of people hungry, oppressed, and with no prospects for a dignified future. Moradian put them to a task many shy away from, imagining an Afghanistan after the Taliban but with them. “The focus of this year’s talks is more on the future of Afghanistan; that is, what should be done? Can the Taliban be part of the solution? If the Taliban have the will and capacity to be part of the solution, let’s start slowly to draw a post-Taliban Afghanistan.” The question, however, lingered as to how novel a solution one could get from many whose irresponsible statesmanship sent Afghanistan to the Taliban’s grips.
As soon as the discussions began, it became clear that there were rarely any new ideas put at the table, certainly not in reimagining Afghanistan. Speakers brought a mixture of criticism, moral appeals, and risk analysis to convince the world that its tolerance of the Taliban is not only morally wrong but also self-destructive. Rahmatullah Nabil, the country’s former spy chief, for example, claimed that he has reports of efforts within the Taliban to acquire tactical nuclear weapons. The Pakistani security establishment could give the capability to the Taliban, he said, or the group could pay Pakistani engineers for them.
The lack of Western engagement with the non-Taliban political forces was evident in the conference. Unlike its previous rounds in Afghanistan which were populated by American ambassadors and European envoys, there was hardly any senior official in Dushanbe on Monday. Even at the regional level, official delegates or voices closer to policy establishments were largely absent. From Pakistan, a country deeply entangled with the crisis in Afghanistan, there were only Pashtun political activists such as Mohsin Dawar, Affrasiab Khattak, and Bushra Gohar, all critical of the Islamabad government and its Afghanistan policy, including the ongoing deportation of nearly 1.7 million refugees.
The convention of the event in Dushanbe could signify the city’s position as a hub for non-Taliban and anti-Taliban political forces. But it also shows the increasing isolation of Afghanistan and the opportunity missed in building institutions that could infuse stability and inspire confidence. Whether the country’s old and young political class can manage to bring Afghanistan back to the halls of policy deliberation in Washington and Brussels will depend, perhaps, on their ability to first engage their own population.
In a global environment where multiple crises compete for attention, large-scale and high-level deliberative events on Afghanistan such as the Herat Security Dialogue have become a rarity. One value that could still attract dozens from around the world to Dushanbe, despite its peculiar travel logistical complications, is the continuity in institutional memory the event provides for a country that has had to begin from ground zero almost every two decades.
