Afghanistan in Badakhshan province, seen from the Pamir highway in Tajikistan during my November 2019 Central Asian loop. This district, not far from Ishkashim, is now under Taliban control. Photo: Pepe Escobar
By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times
And it’s all over
For the unknown soldier
It’s all over
For the unknown soldier
The Doors, The Unknown Soldier
Let’s start with some stunning facts on the ground.
The Taliban are on a roll. Earlier this week their P.R. arm was claiming they hold 218 Afghan districts out of 421 – capturing new ones every day. Tens of districts are contested. Entire Afghan provinces are basically lost to the government in Kabul – de facto reduced to administer a few scattered cities under siege.
Already on July 1st the Taliban announced they controlled 80% of Afghan territory. That’s close to the situation 20 years ago, only a few weeks before 9/11, when Commander Masoud told me in the Panjshir valley , as he prepared a counter-offensive, that the Taliban were 85% dominant.
Their new tactical approach works like a dream. First there’s a direct appeal to soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to surrender. Negotiations are smooth – and deals fulfilled. Soldiers in the low thousands have already joined the Taliban without a single shot fired.
Mapmakers cannot upload updates fast enough. This is fast becoming a textbook case on the collapse of a 21st century central government.
The Taliban are fast advancing in western Vardak, easily capturing ANA bases. That is the prequel for an assault on Maidan Shar, the provincial capital. If they get control of Vardak they will be literally at the gates of Kabul.
After capturing Panjwaj district, the Taliban are also a stone’s throw away from Kandahar, founded by Alexander The Great in 330 B.C. and the city where a certain mullah Omar – with a little help from his Pakistani ISI friends – started the Taliban adventure in 1994, leading to their Kabul power takeover in 1996.
The overwhelming majority of Badakhshan province – Tajik majority, not Pashtun – fell after only 4 days of negotiations, with a few skirmishes thrown in. The Taliban even captured a hilltop outpost very close to Faizabad, Badakhshan’s capital.
I tracked the Tajik-Afghan border in detail when I traveled the Pamir highway in late 2019. The Taliban, following mountain tracks on the Afghan side, could soon reach the legendary, desolate border with Xinjiang in the Wakhan corridor.
The Taliban are also about to make a move on Hairaton, in Balkh province. Hairaton is at the Afghan-Uzbek border, the site of the historically important Friendship Bridge over the Amu Darya, through which the Red Army departed Afghanistan in 1989.
ANA commanders swear the city is now protected from all sides by a five-kilometer security zone. Hairaton has already attracted tens of thousands of refugees. Tashkent does not want them to cross the border.
And it’s not only Central Asia; the Taliban have already advanced to the city limits of Islam Qilla, which borders Iran, in Herat province, and is the key checkpoint in the busy Mashhad to Herat corridor.
The Tajik puzzle
The extremely porous, geologically stunning Tajik-Afghan mountain borders remain the most sensitive case. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, after a serious phone call with Vladimir Putin, ordered the mobilization of 20,000 reservists and sent them to the border. Rahmon also promised humanitarian and financial support to the Kabul government.
The Taliban, for their part, officially declared that the border is safe and they have no intention of invading Tajik territory. Earlier this week even the Kremlin cryptically announced that Moscow does not plan to send troops to Afghanistan.
A cliffhanger is set for the end of July, as the Taliban announced they will submit a written peace proposal to Kabul. A strong possibility is that it may amount to an intimation for Kabul to surrender – and transfer full control of the country.
The Taliban seem to be riding an irresistible momentum – especially when Afghans themselves were stunned to see how the imperial “protector”, after nearly two decades of de facto occupation,
left Bagram air base in the middle of the night , scurrying away like rats.
Compare it to the evaluation of serious analysts such as Lester Grau, explaining the Soviet departure over three decades ago:
When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate, professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw in good order and the Afghan government to survive. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) managed to hold on despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Only then, with the loss of Soviet support and the increased efforts by the Mujahideen (holy warriors) and Pakistan, did the DRA slide toward defeat in April 1992. The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was well executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar nations.
When it comes to the American empire, Tacitus once again applies: “They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
In the wake of the Hegemon, deserts called peace, in varying degrees, include Iraq, Libya, Syria – which happen to, geologically, harbor deserts – as well as the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
That Afghan heroin rat line
It looks like Think Tank Row in D.C., between Dupont and Thomas Circle alongside Massachussets Avenue, have not really done their homework on pashtunwali – the Pashtun honor code – or the ignominious British empire retreat from Kabul.
Still, it’s too early to tell whether what is being spun as the US “retreat” from Afghanistan reflects the definitive unraveling of the Empire of Chaos. Especially because this is not a “retreat” at all: it’s a repositioning – with added elements of privatization.
At least 650 “U.S. forces” will be protecting the sprawling embassy in Kabul. Add to it possibly 500 Turkish troops – which means NATO – to protect the airport, plus an undeclared number of “contractors” a.k.a mercenaries, and an unspecified number of Special Forces.
Pentagon head Lloyd Austin has come up with the new deal. The militarized embassy is referred to as Forces Afghanistan-Forward. These forces will be “supported” by a new, special Afghan office in Qatar.
The key provision is that the special privilege to bomb Afghanistan whenever the Hegemon feels like it remains intact. The difference is in the chain of command. Instead of Gen. Scott Miller, so far the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the Bomber-in-Chief will be Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM.
So future bombing will come essentially from the Persian Gulf – what the Pentagon lovingly describes as “over the horizon capability”. Crucially, Pakistan has officially refused to be part of it, although in the case of drone attacks, they will have to overfly Pakistani territory in Balochistan. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan also refused to host American bases.
The Taliban, for their part, are unfazed. Spokesman Suhail Shaheen was adamant that any foreign troops that are not out by the 9/11 deadline will be regarded as – what else – occupiers.
Whether the Taliban will be able to establish dominance is not an issue; it’s just a matter of when. And that leads us to the two really important questions:
1. Will the CIA be able to maintain what Seymour Hersh initially, and later myself, described as the Afghan heroin rat line that finances their black ops?
2. And if the CIA cannot continue to supervise opium poppy field production in Afghanistan as well as coordinate the subsequent stages of the heroin business, where will it move to?
Every thinking mind across Central/South Asia knows that the Empire of Chaos, for two long decades, was never interested in defeating the Taliban or fighting for “the freedom of the Afghan people”.
The key motives were to keep a crucial, strategic forward base in the underbelly of “existential threats” China and Russia as well as intractable Iran – all part of the New Great Game; to be conveniently positioned to later exploit Afghanistan’s enormous mineral wealth; and to process opium into heroin to fund CIA ops. Opium was a major factor in the rise of the British empire, and heroin remains one of the world’s top dirty businesses funding shady intel ops.
What China and the SCO want
Now compare all of the above with the Chinese approach.
Unlike Think Tank Row in D.C., Chinese counterparts seem to have done their homework. They understood that the USSR did not invade Afghanistan in 1979 to impose “popular democracy” – the jargon then – but was in fact invited by the quite progressive UN-recognized Kabul government at the time, which essentially wanted roads, electricity, medical care, telecommunications, education.
As these staples of modernity would not be provided by Western institutions, the solution would have to come from Soviet socialism. That would imply a social revolution – a convoluted affair in a deeply pious Islamic nation – and, crucially, the end of feudalism.
“Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s imperial counterpunch worked because it manipulated Afghan feudal lords and their regimentation capacity – bolstered by immense funds (CIA, Saudis, Pakistani intel) – to give the USSR its Vietnam. None of these feudal lords were interested in the abolition of poverty and economic development in Afghanistan.
China is now picking up where the USSR left. Beijing, in close contact with the Taliban since early 2020, essentially wants to extend the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – one of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) flagship projects – to Afghanistan.
The first, crucial step will be the construction of the Kabul-Peshawar motorway – through the Khyber pass and the current border at Torkham. That will mean Afghanistan de facto becoming part of CPEC.
It’s all about regional integration at work. Kabul-Peshawar will be one extra CPEC node that already includes the construction of the ultra-strategic Tashkurgan airport in the Karakoram highway in Xinjiang, only 50 km away from the Pakistani border and also close to Afghanistan, as well as Gwadar harbor in Balochistan.
In early June, a trilateral China-Afghanistan-Pakistan meeting led the Chinese Foreign Ministry to unmistakably bet on the “peaceful recovery of Afghanistan”, with the joint statement welcoming “the early return of the Taliban to the political life of Afghanistan” and a pledge to “expand economic and trade ties”.
So there’s no way a dominant Taliban will refuse the Chinese drive to build infrastructure and energy projects geared towards regional economic integration, as long as they keep the country pacified and not subject to jihadi turbulence of the ISIS-Khorasan variety – capable of spilling over to Xinjiang.
The Chinese game play is clear: the Americans should not be able to exert influence over the new Kabul arrangement. It’s all about the strategic Afghan importance for BRI – and that is intertwined with discussions inside the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), incidentally founded 20 years ago, and which for years has advocated for an “Asian solution” for the Afghan drama.
The discussions inside the SCO regard the NATO projection of the new Afghanistan as a jihadi paradise controlled by Islamabad as not more than wishful thinking nonsense.
It will be fascinating to watch how China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and even India will fill the vacuum in the post-Forever Wars era in Afghanistan. It’s very important to remember that all these actors, plus the Central Asians, are full SCO members (or observers, in the case of Iran).
Tehran plausibly might interfere with potential imperial plans to bomb Afghanistan from the outside – whatever the motive. On another front, it’s unclear whether Islamabad or Moscow, for instance, would help the Taliban to take Bagram air base. What’s certain is that Russia will take the Taliban off its list of terrorist outfits.
Considering that the empire and NATO – via Turkey – will not be really leaving, a distinct future possibility is a SCO push, allied with the Taliban (Afghanistan is also a SCO observer) to secure the nation in their terms and concentrate on CPEC development projects. But the first step seems to be the hardest: how to form a real, solid, national coalition government in Kabul.
History may rule that Washington wanted Afghanistan to be the USSR’s Vietnam; decades later, it ended up getting its own second Vietnam, repeated as – what else – farce. A remixed Saigon moment is fast approaching. Yet another stage of the New Great Game in Eurasia is at hand.
The difference is that they are in the area, America is not. Each of these countries except China have borders with or near Afghanistan. It is important to have a stable and healthy Afghanistan.
China’s Xinjiang province shares a small land border with Afghanistan.
Actually, Chine does have a common border with Afghanistan – in the north-east end of Badakshan province. Indeed, it’s a short one, but it’s there.
47 miles!
Where Uyghur terrorists come and go through ratlines.
Now that America has left the “graveyard” of Empires, all that’s left now is for it to leave the “scourge” of Empires.
http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/israel-the-scourge-of-empires/
Then the world will be at peace.
The situation would be grim if not for the concrete (and steel) reality of the BRI. Rather than flirt with vague ideals of zero-sum hegemony, the regional players can focus on BRI/CPEC as a real and unifying force that serves to lift all boats.
As Pepe says, the events around 9/11/2021 will be momentous. Sino bridges or CIA bombs?
Where would the CIA turn to for its narcotic fix? Where else? To the borders of Myanmar and Thailand of course. The infamous Golden Triangle lives again! That’s also partly what the recent coup in Myanmar is about – to recreate the old and very lucrative narcotics fairyland. The old drug rat-lines are likely even now being reactivated and with new production technology too! Everyone’s happy. Except for the poor people of Myanmar.
All borders of Aghanistan:
Afghanistan is a landlocked country located in Southern Asia that borders
China,
Iran,
Pakistan,
Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan.
The Hindu Kush Mountains run northeast to southwest and divide the northern provinces from the rest of the country.
I truly cannot find a good map.
The author wrote with respect to the appeal offered to the Afghani people by the Taliban, “Their new tactical approach works like a dream. First there’s a direct appeal to soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to surrender. Negotiations are smooth – and deals fulfilled. Soldiers in the low thousands have already joined the Taliban without a single shot fired.”
This paragraph leads to the question, “What is it about the Taliban’s approach to governance, the domestic economy, restrictive Islamic dogma and general cultural practices that attracts the Afghanistan citizenry to their calling?”
We need further education about the Taliban that goes beyond women wearing burkas. Perhaps Mr. Escobar or other capable journalists can delve further into what life is like under Taliban rule.
“What is it about the Taliban’s approach to governance, the domestic economy, restrictive Islamic dogma and general cultural practices that attracts the Afghanistan citizenry to their calling?”
Perhaps the Taliban are taking a hint from the early Chinese Communists in their revolution from Chiang Kaishek and his nationalist government. That government was extremely repressive and corrupt, and the Chinese Communists at that time supported more equal rights (especially for women) and were essentially not corrupt. I do not know about the Taliban’s actual practices about civil repression or lack of corruption, but it may be so.
Quite simple. Taleban organised the country.
All the many different armed and criminal gangs in the country were fought and controlled. Taliban established schools where Afghan children could learn to read, write, calculate. Established Courts where locals could settle their disagreements. Established Churches with weddings, funerals.
Taliban erased the opium industry down to 8000ha. Drug addicts were very rare in year 2000 under their rule.
If you just followed their simple rules, you were protected by Taliban police, and could live a peaceful family life with normal work, farming, herding, produce, carpets, nomads.
US/West closed many and tried to destroy Taleban schools with gender equality bs, made the country into a warzone with bombs, nightly raids, rape, robbery, kills, a shithole grew up to 15% of the Afghan population drug addicts and 40-50% of the labour occupied with opium crops 260000ha.
Many of Afghan best educated boys and girls, best athletes, were bombed, blown up, as you know the British upper-class and the US KKK Liberals cant take brilliant natives who are supposed to be untermenchen.
Do you understand now why they prefer Taliban?
Good questions raised in this article about the lucrative heroin trade and how the CIA will finance its black ops going forward.
What will this mean for the Balkan Medellin aka Kosovo-Albanian drug cartel ? Right now they are using forex profits from narcoterrorism to control political parties in at least two Balkan states (Macedonia and Albania). But if funds dry up, then that could change the geo-political situation in the Balkans…
Does the name Makedonia comes from a Serbian word MAK=poppy seed? Which, indeed, grows there like nowhere else in Europe. I would be surprised if they don’t reinvest in an old agricultural production of mak. Perhaps they already did and do. And the production can be easily expanded to Bulgaria and northern Greece, having similar geographical and climate conditions.
Regards, Spiral
Well spotted Spiral!
I never made the connection with the “Makedonia”. I associate “Mak” with a dessert not the seed (actually its poppy seed pastry…).
So did Alexander the Macedon (who spent time in Afghanistan) and introduced the poppy seeds to the world give the name to the seed?
Thanks for this Spiral!
Not clear at the moment. There were, according to some Greek historians, two other Serbian warriors, world explorers, much earlier than Alexandar Karanovic,
known as “The Great” or “The Macedonian”, who did it around 330 B.C.
The first one was Nino Belov, around 2000 B.C. The second one is Serbo Makaridov, around 1330 B.C.
Only very recently the grave of Nino Belov, founder of Assyria but originally from the city of Nis in Serbia, was found in Iraq. His crown and steel swords (the first steel weapons in the world) are exhibited in Baghdad museum. Unfortunately, no remains of poppy seed cake were found.
Regards, Spiral
As an add to Mr Escobar’s spot on analysis and his following conclusion:
History may rule that Washington wanted Afghanistan to be the USSR’s Vietnam; decades later, it ended up getting its own second Vietnam, repeated as – what else – farce. A remixed Saigon moment is fast approaching. Yet another stage of the New Great Game in Eurasia is at hand.
This summary adds detail to the absolute debacle, the lies, the fraud, the incompetence, etc, etc of the 20 yr destruction of Afghan and the ~$2 trillion gift to the war profiteers by the American taxpayer:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/afghanistan-bagram-wreckage-of-american-empire/
Maybe this is another fatal nail in the coffin of the empire!
Why did the puppet masters in Washington allow this now, when it could have been accomplished years ago during the Trump “administration,” saving at least a few lives and some tax dollars? Refusal to confront the inevitable? Or to manipulate domestic American politics? Washington formally withdrew from Iraq, only to return when expedient. The regime can still drone the Taliban or whomever it pleases throughout Afghanistan. What are now its objectives? The stubborn cusses never gave up what they think is title to Iran. The exceptional ones are exceptionally obstinate. Even their mothers cannot trust them.
“Its unclear if Islamabad or Moscow, for instance, would help the Taliban take Bagram air base”.
Uh, no “help” was needed. The Empire slinked out of Bagram in the middle of the night. Didn’t even bother to turn out the lights or leave a note. They just left. Cowards the lot of them.
In my lifetime I have now had the “pleasure” of seeing these idiot war mongers loose two major wars after spending a couple of trillion of our borrowed tax monies on making a few people rich while neglecting their own citizens needs.
And murdering millions of innocent people in the process.
They will now look for more victims to keep the war spending going while keeping us down at home.
It won’t end till they loose a big war somewhere. Or they collapse from the weight of the debt. No longer care which comes first.
The real question now is accountability. (I know, uncontrolled laughter and hilarity ensues). Accountability? he asks, what is that?
At a minimum, one would expect the sane and responsible free press (sic) to dig in and list those cretins in the last few years who have been pounding the table and screeching that we cannot pull out Afghan.
Never mind the fraudulent military “leaders” who promised and kept promising that we were turning the corner, whatever the hell that meant, and what was the corner that we were turning, what was the plan, what was the objective? “Light at the end of the tunnel” is too old and hackneyed and it is from a previous fraudulent debacle.
Maybe make a list of the extent of the riches the war profiteers banked from this fraud and debacle would be revealing.
Nah, I know, none of the above will ever happen; the sheeple are asleep, the press is totally corrupted and controlled, and the war profiteers and military “leaders” are off merrily counting their loot. And the intelligence apparatus continues to control as the fourth branch of goberment.
“It won’t end till they loose a big war somewhere. Or they collapse from the weight of the debt. No longer care which comes first.”
It won’t end until the reserve currency status is broken and the war machine complex has to be funded with actual citizens’ tax money. At the moment, every time I hear/read “our tax money” I laugh and point to the Fed Reserve and its Cornucopia of endless Wall St and Pentagon funding supplies.
Market based capitalism died in the final years of the 20th with the Willie Clinton gang and the rotting carcass was burried by ‘Mr Peace Prize’ himself in 2007-9. It is now just raw gansterism without even the effort to disguise itself.
When the author said this:
“In early June, a trilateral China-Afghanistan-Pakistan meeting led the Chinese Foreign Ministry..”
Did the Taliban attended or it was the ANA government?
Thank you.
https://warsawinstitute.org/china-afghanistan-pakistan-meeting/
No. Taliban and Afghan government were in Doha talking.
This was an online video meeting of foreign ministers.
I would bet that once Taliban becomes the top dog in Afghanistan that superduper American embassy with its flawless technotroopers will be shut down. I doubt very much Centcom would have any ability to direct trouble from far away. At this point they can brag about whatever but when the moment arrives logistics rule the day.
It is the mindset of the Taliban that will be the intrigue that the Chinese has to grapple with. Do they yearn for material prosperity? What kind of a world do they envision to build? Once a mighty warrior would they adjust well to putting down their arms to opt for a new reality? Will they reject modernity altogether much like the Amish? If indeed so I think the Chinese may have a tough nut to crack. To be frank I believe the Chinese might have lost more than a few years’ of sleep over this area. I wish they had done their homework well from talking with key figures from this future victor.
“Considering that the empire and NATO – via Turkey – will not be really leaving, a distinct future possibility is an SCO push, allied with the Taliban (Afghanistan is also a SCO observer), to secure the nation on their terms and concentrate on CPEC development projects.”
Given the Turk capacity to go whichever way the winds blow I’d suggest that their ‘Nato’ involvement is really a face-saving fall back by the hegemon. The Yanks slink away leaving a cardboard sign on a stick saying “NATO” in every direction. But in reality it is a few ‘paid for’ Islamic Turks holding the fort until the next great distraction can leave Afghanistan in the American history books. Then the ‘Fall of Kabul’ will be a Turk failure etc.
Meanwhile, the opium ‘rat lines’ will flow straight to Istanbul for the usual -three-letter agency suspects to collect and re-distribute to their global networks.
We’ll all look back with fondness on the good old days when we read/heard about how US Afghani recruits would turn their guns on on their designated unit inside the bases.
Maybe this is why the American pale faces left in the wee small hours.
Oh look, a flying squirrel, gnawing on its nuts.
If I am an American citizen I demand my tax money back from the Pentagon.
“West’s Plan alternative F for a new Afghanistan as a jihadi paradise”……………………………LMAO. Who would ever think we were that bottom lousy in all our hypocrisy during the last 50 years.
Im puking when I see who we really are.
Yes a 2nd Viet Nam for USA….
The Clown 🤡 🤡🤡 Show 🤡🤡🤡 exits Stage Left 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Great analysis of the Eurasian Unstoppable Economic Bullet Train as it is leaving the Station by Pepe the Great.
“… it’s unclear whether Islamabad or Moscow, for instance, would help the Taliban to take Bagram air base.”
Ahhahahaha… Pepe published this on July 7 and in the night of July 8-9, the Americans left Bagram, their biggest base, and the Taliban moved right in. Things are moving faster than we expected. It seems neither the Americans nor their Israeli handlers have a real plan. The Empire had 20 years to plan for the war’s end and they never did. This confirms that end-of-empire is always driven by stupidity and corruption.
Amazing what the Taliban has achieved, what iraq and Syria cant achieve…victory.