by Pepe Escobar for the Asia Times
Anyone attempting to “rebuild” Afghanistan will have their work cut out. The success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative hinges on progress being made, however
Will the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) ever manage to cross the Hindu Kush?
Temerity is the name of the game. Even though strategically located astride the Ancient Silk Road, and virtually contiguous to the US$50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a key BRI node – Afghanistan is still mired in war.
It’s easy to forget that way back in 2011 – even before President Xi Jinping announced BRI, in Kazakhstan and Indonesia, in 2013 – the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touted her own Silk Road, in Chennai. No wonder the State Dept.’s vision bit Hindu Kush dust – because it assumed war-torn Afghanistan as the plan’s lynchpin.
The state of play in Afghanistan in 2017 is even more depressing. Dysfunctional does not even begin to describe the administration that emerged out of the fractious 2014 presidential election and which passes for a government.
Since 2002 Washington has spent a mind-boggling US$780 billion on its (unfinished) Operation Enduring Freedom. It has absolutely nothing to show for it – apart from over 100,000 dead Afghans.
President Obama’s much-touted 2009 nation-building-cum-counterinsurgency surge was, predictably, a disaster. Aside from reframing the global war on terror (GWOT) as Overseas Contingent Operations (OCO) it achieved nothing. There was no “clear, hold, and build”; the Taliban are back virtually everywhere.
Washington has spent around US$110 billion in Afghan “reconstruction.” Adjusted for inflation that’s roughly equivalent to the full cost of the Marshall Plan. Yet no gleaming Afghan Frankfurt sprang up around the Ghazni minaret; over US$70 billion went to the Afghan military and police; and waste and corruption were always pervasive. Afghanistan’s GDP last year was still a paltry US$17 billion, or US$525 per capita.
The new Afghan “policy” under the Trump administration has consisted in dropping an MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) in the east, to no effect, coupled with the Pentagon demanding more troops. Enduring Freedom forever, indeed.
Wanna go mining? Ask the Taliban
It should not come as a surprise that, under the radar and without most Atlanticist circles even noticing, Chinese government researchers recently met with foreigners in Beijing for a discussion billed as “Afghanistan Reconnected”.
Sun Yuxi, the first Chinese ambassador to Kabul after the Taliban were bombed out of power in late 2001, correctly summed up the stakes as follows: “If the way and connectivity through Afghanistan is not open, it would be like an important vein being blocked on the Belt and Road, which leads to many diseases to this organ.”
How to reconnect/ reconstruct/ rebuild Afghanistan is the substance of sleepless nights in places such as the Beijing-based Centre for China & Globalization think tank.
Everyone knows about the projections Afghanistan may be sitting on at least US$1 trillion in mineral wealth from copper, gold, iron ore, uranium and precious stones. But how to safely extract it?
Beijing’s security dilemma about protecting its investments is spectacularly illustrated by the ongoing Mes Aynak copper mine saga. The Chinese Metallurgical Group Corp bought the mine – 40 kilometers southeast of Kabul – in 2008.
Theirs was the largest foreign investment project in Afghanistan. It took the Taliban another eight years to pledge its resolve not to attack it.
Meanwhile, on the railway front – which is key to BRI – in September 2016 the first ever freight train from China arrived in Haratan, in Afghanistan, via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The trade flow is still negligible, though, so no regular service for now.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by Russia and China, is finally stepping in. At its latest summit, while warning about the security “deterioration”, the SCO pledged to be directly engaged in finding an “all-Asian” solution for Afghanistan, with both India and Pakistan, now full SCO members, on board.
The “Syraq” connection
Afghanistan is a close neighbor to the Xinjiang autonomous region – and some of its most inaccessible parts host the odd member of the Uyghur separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is closely linked to al-Qaeda (while being dismissed by Islamic State).
To compound the problem, any possible New Silk Road eventually traversing the Hindu Kush must consider the direct connection with what’s happening with the phony caliphate in “Syraq”.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is moving inexorably towards the Iraq border. At the same time, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units have reached the Syrian border in Al-Waleed. Between them we happen to find US forces – which are occupying al-Tanaf in Syria. Damascus and Baghdad have agreed, however, to close the al-Tanaf crossing from the Iraqi side of the border. This means the US forces have nowhere to go, except back to Jordan.
Bets can be made that the Pentagon won’t take this lightly. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow is convinced these US forces will use High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to eventually prevent the meeting of the Iraqi units and the Syrian army, whose mission is to pursue Daesh remnants inside Syrian territory.
This “Syraq” meeting of the armies is so important because it heralds in effect the realignment of a key nexus in the New Silk Roads: Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut.
It is a categorical imperative for Beijing to expand BRI across the Levant, linking China to the Mediterranean overland just like the Ancient Silk Road did. And yet that clashes frontally with the crucial fact admitted on record by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn himself: that the Obama administration made a “willful decision” to let Islamic State fester, with the objective of arriving at a “Sunnistan” across “Syraq” as a means to accelerate regime change in Damascus. Translation: let ISIS break up the BRI in the Levant.
There’s no question influential sectors of the US deep state have not abandoned the project. At the same time President Trump has declared unwavering war on ISIS. The fundamental question is whether the “House of Saud policy” – striking against Damascus and its supporters in Iran – will prevail in Washington.
When the Taliban went after Afghan warlords across Pashtun lands in the mid-1990s, the local population supported them because they brought safety to roads and villages. They were widely regarded as angels fallen from heaven to help the Prophet against his enemies in Mecca.
This “Syraq” meeting of the armies is so important because it heralds in effect the realignment of a key nexus in the New Silk Roads: Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut
In my travels across “Talibanistan,” some of them documented at Asia Times, I found the Taliban to be stone-cold pious and moralistic, enveloped in a sort of heavily-weighted obscurity, virtually inaccessible.
But the main actors in this renewed Great Game in the Hindu Kush are far from being the Taliban. It’s all about the jihadi diaspora after the collapse of the caliphate in “Syraq”.
ISIS is already shipping out jihadis in retreat in both Iraq and Syria to the Hindu Kush. At the same time, it is actively enrolling scores of Pashtuns with lots of cash and weapons – a workforce including tens of thousands of potential suicide bombers.
Besides Afghans, a new batch of recruits includes Chechens, Uzbeks and Uyghurs, all of them quite capable of blending in with the scenery in a mountainous region inaccessible even to the Pentagon’s MOABs.
It’s no wonder secularized Afghans in Kabul already fear that Afghanistan is the new citadel of a re-morphed caliphate. Against the self-declared Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), it’s up to the SCO – primarily China, Russia, India, Pakistan – to come up with a rescue brigade. Otherwise Eurasian integration will be in mortal danger all across the intersection of Central and South Asia.
“… I found the Taliban to be stone-cold pious and moralistic…”
For anyone who cares to reflect, the resemblance between today’s Muslim fundamentalists and the early Christian Protestant leaders is astounding. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox – who wrote that engaging little tract “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstruous_Regiment_of_Women.
The Protestants were just as hardline, just as opposed to any form of fun or freedom, just as grim and joyless as the Taliban. And yet they were the spiritual ancestors of today’s American leaders, who have retained essentially just one aspect of the early Protestant teaching: wealth is a sign of God’s approval.
They even LOOK like the Taliban! Check this out:
https://johnbotkin.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/reformers-wall-close-up.jpg?w=1024
https://johnbotkin.net/2013/10/29/reformation-week-know-your-reformers/
There is one other player in the alignment of forces/nations against US/ISIS warmaking. Iran. Iranian Afghan militias are strong in Iraq and Syria. They will return to add real grit to the SCO alignment. Russia is trying to hurry Iran’s membership in SCO. Her entry ticket is these militias.
The US will add 5000 more trouble-makers (trainers) and NATO is sending thousands of more targets (troops) for the Taliban, ISIS and AQ to blow up.
Two factors will change this new surge. Body bags and massive bombings, suicide or otherwise. The amount of new forces intended for this surge is trivial. Basically, they are there to transfer equipment to the ISIS proxies as they enter the war zone.
That’s how it was done in Iraq and Syria. And funding? They will assure a sizeable piece of the opium trade will belong to ISIS.
Trump will need a year to learn the bitter lesson of Afghanistan. He has only 15 or so MOABs left. He’ll discover what Alexander the Great and every other invader discovered. Afghanistan’s dust and rocks are made of the bones of foreigners who came and lost.
In search of the mineral wealth, the US will fail. China has a far better chance to extract that wealth and infuse an infrastructure that will benefit the Afghans. With Pakistan and Russia aiding the effort and sharing in the bounty, China can reliably be trusted to leave internal politics alone. Russia is already dealing with one segment of Taliban in order to establish a working relationship. That is why the US is complaining the Russians are “arming” the Taliban. Talks are arms to the ever fearful and failing Pentagon and State Dept.
The test for SCO is to become a force that wins this challenge from the Hegemon and its proxy ISIS. Drones and missiles will become the first wave of this warfare. And then the battlefield testing of robotic warriors and systems. China and Russia will demonstrate this next level of warfare. The lesson will be humiliating to the Hegemon. All those aircraft carriers and submarines are relatively useless in Afghanistan, aren’t they? And air power? Over whom will they be allowed to fly to get to their “targets”?
There are limits to nearly everything, and the Hegemon is at its limits. Trump, Mattis and McMaster will break its back on the desolate mountains and rock of Afghanistan. Slow learners, the trio who think tactics are strategy and strategy is volume. They can turn up the volume on their rhetoric and self-deception. But the Afghans are deaf.
AFghanistan usd to be a friendly place for visitors who came in peace, the hippies enjoyed the hospitality and culture of the Afghan peoples in the 1960s with no problems, it can and must go back to being a country unoccupied by invaders.
Yes, my brother was there in the sixties.
My friend Bernt Glatzer, an ethnomusicologist, so loved the Afghan people and their tribal culture and music and spent his life in the service of better understanding of Afghanistan..
https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/obituary-dr-bernt-glatzer-by-aga/
Way, way back when, in Munich, I helped him and his friend Michael ?? (name forgotten) translate their first monograph on a 12th C. madrassah, Shah-i Mashhad, a ruin still standing in a distant province, that they had heard about from tribal informants and found their way to it via further hints they got while under way on horseback.
Bernt Glatzer wrote quite a lot, for those with a genuine interest in understanding Afghan tribal society. Just Google his name and you get lots of hits.
He was one of the few westerners who really knew the Afghan tribal peoples, from living and traveling with them.
William Dalrymple has some excellent books on the history of the Great Game and its relationship to events in India.
http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com/books
And there is always the delightful Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
Katherine
Shah-i-Mashad, for the curious:
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/iran/downloads/Shah-i%20Mashhad/Shah-i-Mashhad_Index.htm
Katherine
I wonder what the numbers are of the Iran-Afghan troops. If there are thousands of them. They,as battle hardened troops,could be a crucial factor there. From what I see there today. You have the “government” troops (basically war-lords with semi-loyal gangs). Fighting against Taliban Islamist gangs (not exactly jihadi,since they tend to only keep to Afghanistan and Pashtun areas of Pakistan).US and NATO troops used more today as garrisons in the large cities and to do air support for the Afghan troops.And lastly the “new kids in town”,ISIS.The US has allowed (helped) several thousand and growing,ISIS jihadis to occupy some areas in Afghanistan. And they are trying with limited (so far) success to subvert the Taliban to their side.And recruit poor Afghans as well. With unlimited Saudi and US funding that isn’t too hard to do.
Now a question that I see no one asking is “how are they getting to Afghanistan” to start with. We hear that thousands of them are pouring in,”how”. Afghanistan is a land locked country.And to get in from the ex-Soviet states to the north would ,I’d think,be hard. To get in from China and Iran,which also border Afghanistan,even harder.That leaves either Pakistan or by air.Unless Pakistan is helping the US sneak them in. It seems to me thousands of young Arab men. Wouldn’t find in easy to enter Pakistan undetected .And since, unlike Syria, they don’t speak Arabic in that part of the World it would be even harder for them. We can “assume” that some of them do come in over those different borders.But I think we should consider that the ISIS fighters are being flown into Afghanistan.And that would mean either by the US or private Gulf Arab companies. But either way the US would have to be aware of it as they control the air space over Afghanistan.
The US has been able to help networks of jihadis seemingly move all over the World. Its not that hard for them in the Arab World. Since most of the jihadis used there are Arab. Crossing through those countries and across borders would be simpler. With the help they used to get from the Turks crossing from Turkey was easy too.But in other parts of the World,if governments weren’t cooperating with them it should be much harder.How and why are they getting into these countries should be the questions asked.We see reports that hundreds of jihadis are coming back into Europe from Syria (to Sweden and Britain in particular). How is that possible. If those countries “know” they are coming back. Why are they not being seized the moment they get back. Tried and imprisoned. It would appear that those countries in Europe are in collusion with the jihadis. Allowing them to go abroad to rape and murder.And then return “home” for R&R,before another jihad.Countries like Russia and China should be monitoring air flights Worldwide. And seeing if they can use that information in their anti-terrorist operations.The best idea (I believe) would be to stop them “before” they get into a country. Instead of fighting them once they are there.
You pose some very good questions, Uncle Bob. Perhaps someone could ask one of the journalists posting these claims where they get their info from (or who is buying the air-tickets for ISIS) :-)
I read some where that Taliban they could have eliminated IS long ago had American jets do showing up bombing Taliban every time they about to eliminate IS.
As important as this essay is by Pepe, his latest provides details of what will provide the fireworks at the G-20 meeting and can be found here, https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201706301055121126-washington-berlin-collision-course/
Also of import is this synopsis article about Trump’s planned trade war that’s additional to what Pepe describes, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/06/30/flouting-cabinet-trump-plows-ahead-potentially-devastating-trade-war
The real solution: bomb Israel and Saudi Arabia into the Stone Age. Well, in the Saudi case, they’re already there – but not militarily and not economically, which is what needs to be targeted.
“Bomb their ass and take the gas” really is a good policy when it comes to the Saudis and Israel.
A map showing the current situation of the USUK forces near al Tanf.
https://www.sott.net/image/s20/404560/large/whattanf.jpg
syriancivilwarmap.com
has this (it is one of the “interactive” pop-up thingies on the map):
06/30: Syrian Arab Army troops met on Raqqa/Ithriya-Road and created a ISIS pocket
Katherine
I don’t think Chinese, Russians & Co will start peacekeeping ina Afganistan by force and by weapons. First of all, they will try with the negotiations and with the money.
What a great resource Pepe Escobar is.
How would anyone understand any of these faraway developments without him.
Stay safe, Pepe!!
Katherine
The map is incorrect. It assigns Gilgit-Baltistan to India. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor does not go through the Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan as shown.
Gilgit-Baltistan is a de facto part of Pakistan, much to India’s chagrin, and one reason for India opposing CPEC, which avoids Afghanistan and goes through Khunjerab pass into GB.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khunjerab_Pass
Tiger is right. The China – Pakistan highway was built in the early 1980’s connecting Kashgar over the Khunjerab pass with Gilgit/Balistan and further through Pakistan’s Khagan valley to Balakot, Abbotabat, down into the Indus valley to end in Balochistan’s Gwadar port. This will give China access to the Indian ocean without having to pass through the Straits of Malacca.
https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Gilgit/@35.9136099,72.0644988,7z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x38e649e3642543b1:0x40fd0ca3ca17282b!8m2!3d35.920154!4d74.3080126
In Pakistan there is potential for a westward diversion via Quetta to Zahedan and onward to Tehran.
https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Quetta,+Pakistan/@30.1790237,62.5070254,6z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x3ed2de34ca7faae9:0x4696d44c4b6ff197!8m2!3d30.1829713!4d66.998734
Meanwhile China has already opened a 10 000 km rail link between Yiwu (Shanghai region) and Tehran passing through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, reducing transport time to 14 days compared to 45 days over sea.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/iran-china-and-the-silk-road-train/
The Wakhan corridor, and for that matter Afghanistan, have nothing to do with this scheme, nor with possible Chinese intentions to enter into the mining business in that country.
Escobar’s story then rambles on into Syraq, assuming that the Levant is the logical destination of the OBOR (BRI) scheme. I disagree with this assumption and expect to see a much more Northern trajectory passing through South Asia (not Middle East) straight into the heart of Europe with ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Lisboa as the final destination. Possible stop-overs in Bulgaria or Armenia and then into Hungary westward.
The geographical error undermines the whole premise of the article.
The OBOR/BRI initiative is a project of Imperialist scope. And for all the emphasis on SCO, it’s a Chinese initiative to serve Chinese interests. There is really only one way to implement and defend such a project. That is, the Chinese need an Imperialist military force to defend external property, trade routes and invested capital and to enforce contracts.
This is why the British Empire long had a global military presence and why the US still does. The Chinese at some point will have to make such a decision.
@JD
The Chinese “Imperialist” Army is billions of RMBs.
They have never in their thousands of years wanted to or did operate an Imperium with military force. They were a mercantile power, traders, importer-exporters, and nothing has changed. The cost of such a constructed Imperium by force would be a total failure and self-destructive.
The reason the AIIB exists and the OBOR or BRI or New Silk Road or Maritime Silk Road speak to infrastructure investment is the Chinese economy rise created the technologies, tools, processes and successes of Infrastructure. This is their strength. They do construction faster, cheaper and better than most everyone. Combined with their wealth, they can get Eurasia done, connected from Atlantic to Pacific, Lisbon to Vladivostok. And it breaks the containment of China and Russia by the Hegemon. It creates an inner market of 4.5 Billion people which will not be subject to WTO, BIS, Rothschild banking, etc. It will use RMBs and Ruble and other currencies in bilateral trades. The US hegemony will be peripheral to trade and development.
Imperialist Projects are usually built on Military Superiority and Weapons of dominance.
The Chinese have a large but “gentle” military among militaries. It’s navy is nowhere near large enough or powerful enough to project Imperialist power even in the Indian Ocean. It disappears in the vast Pacific. It could never, for 50+ years at least, become an Imperial Navy with the US, Japanese, Indian and Australian navies nearby. China would bankrupt itself if it attempted such a ridiculous scheme.
Building Belts and Roads is co-venturing. The Chinese are requiring the nations, like Pakistan, to provide the military security for the projects within their sovereign space. Hardly Imperialism. Consider the size of the nations, India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, etc, the idea that China could actuate some Imperialist plan is specious.
Hi Larchmonter, I admit the usage of the term “Imperialism” is a bit thorny. However, neoliberal globalist Capitalism is often regarded as itself Imperialist. Military force simply being the other side of the coin, as per the old saw “when goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will”. A benign sounding sentiment except when others do not wish to trade.
But purely from the standpoint of military intervention, I’ve read from your posts that you seem quite critical of China’s reluctance to use military force in Syria. Why do feel that is justified? Does not the act of opposing Imperialism at some point become Imperialist itself?
We shall see if China’s strategy to require trade partners to provide security through their own territories is a viable strategy or not. Whether this is successful or evolves into something else, time will tell.
That seems to be the Chinese plan:
http://mantraya.org/road-to-the-dragon-overcoming-challenges-to-the-wakhan-corridor/
. . .
Sceptics would be wise to remember that developing the Wakhan Corridor, while ambitious, is the resurrection ofan ancient, tried and proven trade route. A successful project in the Wakhan will be far more than an economic measure; it will simultaneously be a domestic and foreign confidence-building mechanism, a geostrategic manoeuvre to outflank both America and India, and a stabilising force in the region. China has done nothing for the Wakhan thus far, but it is for these reasons that China is right to exercise patience and caution to ensure the project fulfils its maximum potential.
Just notice, Pepe has an Indian version of map…
Who is best to make up the rescue brigade? It must be begun as soon as. Planned by several effected countries. Nom-American Deep State.