Foreign Policy

As the Taliban have said, their ideology is the same, but they have more ‘experience.’ I take this to mean that their political leadership has learned in the last 20 years how to manipulate rhetoric to try and gain international legitimacy, it has learned to maneuver on the world stage, but on the ground in Afghanistan — they haven’t shown any indication that anything will be different from the last time they were in power. [There is] no indication that it will be any different from their regressive and draconian rule 20-some years ago.

Pakistan will face security concerns with a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, chiefly from an emboldened and resurgent Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist group responsible for killing tens of thousands of Pakistanis. [The developments in Afghanistan may also give a boost  to other fundamentalist groups within Pakistan] in a way that renders them more powerful than before and threaten the state's authority. I think Pakistan will have less clout over the Taliban now than it did in the 1996-2001 timeframe.

It is extremely unlikely that the Taliban will have access in the immediate term to the SDRs [special drawing rights] in a usable form — meaning the ability to access them and exchange them for dollars, euros or otherwise. If the Taliban becomes both the de facto and de jure government of Afghanistan, in full control of the instrumentalities of power, then it will be difficult for the IMF to deny them access to the SDRs. But that does not mean that there won’t be huge efforts to avoid that outcome.