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Taliban Wants To Build Afghanistan’s Air Defenses With Russia’s Help
ByPaul Iddon,Senior Contributor.
Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist focused on Middle East affairs.
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Sep 10, 2024, 11:58am EDT
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A picture shows a Russian Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft defence system at the Russian Hmeimim military base in Latakia province, in the northwest of Syria, on December 16, 2015. (PAUL GYPTEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Amidst warming ties between its regime and Russia, the Taliban have expressed its intent to build Afghanistan’s air defenses with Russian equipment. And while Moscow has appeared willing to arm the Houthis in Yemen and even Hezbollah in Lebanon with advanced missiles in recent months, it may not prove so willing for the current ruling regime in Kabul.
In early 2023, less than two years after reconquering Afghanistan amidst a chaotic U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban allotted the largest share of Afghanistan’s budget to defense, expressing its aim to build air defenses.
“Anti-aircraft missiles are the need of countries,” Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat, a Taliban commander and chief of army staff, was quoted as saying by Reuters in April 2023.
“There is no doubt that Afghanistan is trying, and doing its best, to have it,” he added but did not elaborate on how the Taliban could acquire such missiles.
However, in an Aug. 29 interview with Russia’s state-run Tass news agency, General Sayed Abdul Basir Saberi, head of the logistics department of Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled Ministry of Defense, was much more direct.
“I think we need air defense and airspace control equipment. We have ground equipment. I think we will purchase [such products] from you at the international level, when there are [international legal] conditions for this,” Saberi said.
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“In the future, we plan to buy Russian-made equipment that will enable us to create an air defense,” he added. “We would like to have such weapons, as you are the most advanced country in the world in terms of these technologies.”
It was perhaps inconceivable just a short few years ago that the Taliban might make such a request. But Saberi’s statement comes at a time of warming relations, exemplified by Moscow inviting the group to the St. Petersburg forum in May. Saberi comments suggest the group hopes warming ties could translate into weapons acquisition.
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The statement also comes after Russia recently showed a willingness to arm the Houthis with anti-ship missilesand reportedly transfer a medium-range Pantsir-S1 air defense system to Hezbollah via Syria.
A transfer of Pantsirs to the Taliban, or short and medium-range systems like the Buk and Tor, would undoubtedly alarm the United States. Since withdrawing in August 2021, the U.S. assassinated al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with an “over-the-horizon” drone strike on downtown Kabul, where the Taliban were hosting him as their guest.
Improved air defenses in Afghanistan could complicate such drone operations. In March, the Taliban said U.S. drones were patrolling and “violating” the country’s airspace.
On the same day Saberi’s interview was published, Aug. 29, Iraqi forces shot down a Turkish Aksungur drone over Kirkuk, apparently using one of their Pantsir-S1s to do so.
There is also the dire risk that any air defense Russia supplied the group could endanger civil aviation. Afghan airspace has become a major route between Europe and Asia, with many airliners that had avoided it for years increasing their number of flights over the country amidst heightened tensions in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.
While that situation may prove temporary, one cannot dismiss out of hand the risk of a fatal accidental shootdown. After all, it was only in January 2020 that neighboring Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner above Tehran with a Russian Tor missile amidst heightened tensions with the United States.
Pavel Luzin, a non-resident senior fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, doubts Russia will sell the Taliban advanced weaponry anytime soon, describing Saberi’s interview as a “sweet speech” for the ears of the Kremlin.
“The Taliban would like to get some air defense systems, but it is not ready to purchase them yet,” Luzin told me. “Despite the fact that Russia has a long-term experience of arms supplies just for free, some wishful thinking takes place here.”
“Russia is a global trouble-maker with openly and officially declared purposes of undermining the U.S. global leadership and the whole global order,” he said.
As part of these declared purposes, Luzin explained that Russia has shown readiness to deal with “any types of global criminal junk,” ranging from North Korea to the Taliban to the Houthis and warlords in Africa.
On the other hand, he pointed out that Russia cannot export sophisticated conventional weapons like Pantsir and Tor systems since it has lost so much hardware in Ukraine, with the Russian military industry struggling to replace heavy losses.
Furthermore, any air defense deal would not consist of Russia merely delivering the system off the shelf.
“The only possible way of supplying air defense systems like Buk, Tor, or Pantsir in Afghanistan is supplying them together with crews,” Luzin said. “The problem is that the Taliban forces are not very well educated to deal with the systems.”
“So, if you see Russia’s ‘Buk’ or ‘Pantsir’ near Kabul or Kandahar, that inevitably means that it is operated by the Russian military.”
