Delaney Simon, Graeme Smith & Jerome Drevon
Syria’s new leaders have few models to follow in their quest to win international recognition. No guidebooks exist on how to run a government for groups operating under terrorist designations—and there is no clear set of rules for foreign governments on how to bring a former al Qaeda affiliate in from the cold. But Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that dislodged Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in early December, and outside governments alike can learn from a cautionary precedent: the Taliban’s 2021 return to power in Afghanistan.
After the Taliban seized Kabul, Afghanistan staggered under the weight of sanctions and other kinds of economic and diplomatic isolation. Other governments failed to act with sufficient speed and boldness to ease the country’s poverty crisis, and they left in place economic punishments that had no moderating effect on the Taliban but pushed Afghans closer to famine. Most countries declined to negotiate with the Taliban in a way that might have promoted women’s rights and other international norms, choosing instead to wait and see whether Afghanistan’s new leaders would do so on their own. That reluctance to engage with the Taliban dealt a blow to the movement’s pragmatic wing, empowering hard-liners during the regime’s precarious first months.
International officials have engaged more deeply with HTS in the past month than they did with the Taliban after the fall of Kabul. HTS encouraged that outreach by foreign officials by demonstrating a political and ideological flexibility that distinguishes the group from the Taliban. Yet unfortunately, outside actors seem poised to repeat many of the same mistakes they made in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover.
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