Aug 26, 2021, 14:55
Western leaders and their media outlets have fear-mongered about closer Chinese-Afghan ties since the Taliban's rapid takeover of that country earlier this month. They misportray such an outcome as being aggressively-intentioned on China's part and against their own interests there, which is a false assessment.
What few of those commentators acknowledge is that closer Chinese-Afghan ties are natural since these neighboring countries share the same mutually beneficial developmental interests that aren't aimed against anyone else, and even less have realized that their own governments' policies are accelerating this trend.
In particular, the U.S. recently froze the Afghan Central Bank's $9.5 billion assets around the same time as the IMF suspended the country's access to funds. This was followed up by the World Bank halting its aid to Afghanistan. The realistic recourse for its internationally unrecognized but de facto Taliban-led government is to rely on other sources of funding, which could lead to China playing a pivotal role in this respect.
Either way, it appears inevitable that Chinese-Afghan ties will become even closer than before and at an unexpected pace as well in light of the West's efforts to isolate the war-torn country's Taliban-led government through unilateral financial means. They wanted to punish the Taliban for seizing power but inexplicably expected that it wouldn't seek alternative sources of financing in response, particularly from China as seems bound to happen sooner than later. This makes the West's prediction about closer bilateral ties between those two a self-fulfilling prophecy to a certain extent despite their natural impetus as explained.
There are three important lessons to be learned from this observation. The first is that Western-controlled financial institutions are unreliable and arbitrarily discriminate against some of their partners for political reasons.
They also sometimes attach political strings to their assistance, which reduces the sovereign decision making of those who receive them. In this context, the West intends to punish the Taliban, but it's really just worsening the socio-economic suffering of average Afghans as always happens whenever it weaponizes these financial instruments for political reasons.
The second lesson is cliché and it's that every action of these sort provokes an equal and opposite reaction even if it's unintended or unexpected by those who initiate these dynamics. Although Afghanistan's de facto Taliban-led government has yet to officially request similar aid from alternative sources, it seems to only be a matter of time before they do since they don't have any other choice if they truly aspire to rebuild their country.
This means that the West is counterproductively accelerating the same process that it fearmongered about with respect to closer Chinese-Afghan ties, which to be clear, aren't at anyone else's expense.
Third, China doesn't attach any political strings to the aid that it or the institutions that it founded extend to their partners. That's actually one of the primary appeals of the country worldwide and the reason why so many countries want to cooperate with it.
They understandably want to retain their sovereignty in line with international law and justifiably feel uncomfortable sacrificing some of it to receive much-needed aid from Western countries and Western-led organizations. No matter how much the West denies that it weaponizes these instruments, the whole world knows that they're lying after they cut off financial support for Afghanistan.
Looking forward, Afghanistan's future remains bright in spite of the West's attempts to sabotage it through their weaponization of financial instruments against the Taliban, which will only worsen the living standards of average Afghans whether they intend to or not. China is a reliable partner for all since it doesn't attach political strings to its support for anyone.
There's no doubt that Chinese-Afghan relations will continue improving and that this will be mutually beneficial. What's most interesting about that though is that this trend will likely be accelerated by the West, but hopefully they'll realize that they have nothing to fear from such an outcome.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst. (Source: CGTN)
The ISIS-K suicide bombings near Kabul airport yesterday causing massive casualties have suddenly escalated grave undertones to the Afghan situation and may well have torpedoed the Biden administration.
It won't be lost on US citizens as well as its allies that this administration had earlier ignored both its own military advice as well as the advice from its European counterparts not to leave Afghanistan in a hurry without a realistic exit plan for that matter without even knowing how many foreigners are in Afghanistan.
Now Biden is trying to exercise damage control by vouching to exact revenge despite being forewarned by western intelligence that Kabul airport would be a target.
In his latest press conference, he has so much as said those Afghans who want to leave but cannot be evacuated on time will be left to their own fate on the ground that wars have collateral losses. This however is inexcusable since it was the US which had attacked Afghanistan in pursuit of Al-Qaeda and then stayed on for the state's mineral resources like copper and lithium.
The world can finally confirm the US' view of the world is predicated on the US' primary interest in itself personified in its domestic political agenda only without any respect for reality on the ground anywhere in the world it attempts to exert its geopolitical and military influence.
Meanwhile the US Republicans are going to turn the Afghan evacuation fiasco into their burning election platform next year, fracturing the American polity further against the background of loss of morale in the US military and intelligence circles which is further accentuated by the fact that the US' CIA had used the Talibans against Russia, then used them again to cultivate opium and heroin to fund its operations.
While the US suffers its own domestic undertows magnified by the spread of the Delta variant, plots to take revenge globally, and wonders how it is going to mend relations with its allies now that they themselves have realized their US overlord is inherently juvenile and galactically self-serving, the Talibans are seeking recognition for their administration of Afghanistan, a state broken by years of war, rifed by tribal rivalries, and too denuded of social and economic institutions to rebuild and modernize a society that is still hampered by practices of a past era.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a ready platform that can help the Talibans restabilize and renormalize Afghanistan but there are still significant challenges and risks.
To restabilize, the Sunni Talibans need to show they can manage a government and administrate a country.
Firstly, this requires them to bury all discord with other tribes, especially the Hazaras Shia ethnic minority which forms 13% of the Afghan population of 38 million. Their first order of the day is to pow-wow with the other tribes towards a permanent peace agreement bolstered by a pre-conflict consultation mechanism. To them should be made known in no uncertain terms this is a yardstick going forward.
Perhaps they can take for encouragement the example of how elements in Sunni Iraq can cooperate with Shia Iran, despite US presence in Iraq, now being reinforced after its Kabul experience.
After all, it is tragic that the Islamic civilization as a family member of human civilizations has been thwarted for so long by the Sunni-Shia fracas.
Who knows, Afghanistan may well be the place where a bridge can finally be built between both that will reduce tensions and harvest peace from Libya and East Africa over to Iraq and Iran and across to Afghanistan and Pakistan especially Balochistan.
Secondly, the Taliban administration must quickly structure a government organization that is consistent, focused and efficient. This will require the Taliban leadership to ensure and guarantee that while they may say one thing, their underlings down the line and in any district or province won't be doing something else, like taking revenge on others, or propagating insurrection, or appropriating state assets, or interpreting Kabul federal policies to their own whims.
Thirdly, the Talibans must swiftly come to closure with their erstwhile Afghan military opponents, both being Afghan brothers for being born on the same land. Only then can the latter realize days of working with US interests are over and former can realize no government can operate for long if it does not have unifying cooperation with others in its midst.
To renormalize, the Talibans must not and never punish their more educated and liberal-minded educated Afghans. Because without them, they can neither operate any functional government nor execute programs and projects to rebuild the country and reconnect with the world from which it seeks recognition.
This manpower requirement will absolutely need more than Taliban men from hardy and harmful remote areas, most of whom having only third grade education levels and never having operated any urban social and economic institutions.
Since they are trying to disbar the more progressive Afghans from leaving, they should therefore realize their own first priority is to save educated human resources to operate the government which in turn means the house-to-house search for Afghans who have worked with the US before is nothing but counterproductive to their first priority which also reflects how muddle-headed and disorganized they are.
Perhaps the Taliban leadership can take a note from China's society which has treated women as social and economic equals and vital for education of children and economic contribution, despite coming from a patriarchical heritage.
In any case, they must quickly confirm to the world that their priority is not to reestablish an Islamic state, especially when ISIS-K has just killed hundreds including women and children, an act which has grave implications for how the world sees with trepidation a Taliban Afghanistan as a state-level jihadic magnet which also means the Taliban administration must never ever again try to play its Islamic card by welcoming, harboring, supporting or nurturing terrorists and separatists, if the Kabul airport bombings are anything to go by on the porosity of the Afghan borders.
This means they must prioritize modernization as a thrust against radicalism which means economic and social progress under a government with Islamic values but with pro-progress Afghan, not vengeful, fanatically brutal and counterproductive, characteristics.
Unless they do all these things upfront, caution is advised going forward in any interaction with them if only for the reason the US will try to recover its costs by instigating more conflicts inside the new Afghanistan in order to draw China and others into its quicksand while the rest of the west will take umbrage with any talibanic anti-social practices against human worth.
"Third, China doesn't attach any political strings to the aid that it or the institutions that it founded extend to their partners." Chinese people and their government are well known the world over for their philanthropic approach to all things, excluding any business relationships based on mere financial concerns of mutual trust or "quid pro quo".
Six of G7 are member countries of eight that attacked China!
From then till now, none of them stop ill speaking about China.
This shows how uneducated and more than just back time in the 21st century.
Soon, they will dig their own graves for own funeral at their own time and course.
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