- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday October 4 2000 02.57 BST
China, concerned about the impact on its restless Muslim minority, has joined Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in condemning cross-border incursions by Taliban-backed radicals from Uzbekistan's Fergana valley. Russia, the former regional superpower expelled from Afghanistan in 1989, is also alarmed. Last June, Moscow and Washington jointly decried the "growing influence of extremist groups". Both have stepped up military aid to Afghanistan's northern neighbours. Russia, which maintains 25,000 border troops in Tajikistan, has threatened air strikes. Last month, the US sent Central Command chief General Tommy Franks to Kyrgyzstan with a $3m cheque for army training. India, meanwhile, complains about Pakistani and Afghan-backed violence in Kashmir.
The Taliban provide a common link in a wide range of escalating problems. The civil war has created an enormous, unaddressed refugee crisis on the Tajik border, exacerbated by the most severe Asian drought for 50 years. The Taliban's growing ascendancy has coincided with an upsurge in heroin smuggling (Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer). The regime continues by all accounts to train and harbour other people's terrorists, notably Osama bin Laden, the alleged 1998 bomber of US embassies in Africa who is now also linked to an August assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin by Chechens in Yalta. The Taliban's close military collaboration with Pakistan's loose-cannon leader, General Pervez Musharraf, is another geo-strategic wild card. Crucially, this instability hinders regional development, incites repressive governance, and compounds the poverty on which militancy feeds. Little wonder then that, repulsive though they remain, the world suddenly wants to talk to the Taliban.
