A wiser, better-traveled and social media-savvy Taliban will strive to avoid the many dire mistakes of its 1996-2001 rule
By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times
The announcement by Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul of the acting cabinet ministers in the new caretaker government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan already produced a big bang: it managed to enrage both woke NATOstan and the US Deep State.
This is an all-male, overwhelmingly Pashtun (there’s one Uzbek and one Tajik) cabinet essentially rewarding the Taliban old guard. All 33 appointees are Taliban members.
Mohammad Hasan Akhund – the head of the Taliban Rehbari Shura, or leadership council, for 20 years – will be the Acting Prime Minister. For all practical purposes, Akhund is branded a terrorist by the UN and the EU, and under sanctions by the UN Security Council. It’s no secret Washington brands some Taliban factions as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and sanctions the whole of the Taliban as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organization.
It’s crucial to stress Himatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, is Amir al-Momineen (“Commander of the Faithful”). He can’t be a Prime Minister; his role is that of a supreme spiritual leader, setting the guidelines for the Islamic Emirate and mediating disputes – politics included.
Akhunzada has released a statement, noting that the new government “will work hard towards upholding Islamic rules and sharia law in the country” and will ensure “lasting peace, prosperity and development”. He added, “people should not try to leave the country”.
Spokesman Mujahid took pains to stress this new cabinet is just an “acting” government. This implies one of the next big steps will be to set up a new constitution. The Taliban will “try to take people from other parts of the country” – implying positions for women and Shi’ites may still be open, but not at top level.
Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, who so far had been very busy diplomatically as the head of the political office in Doha, will be deputy Prime Minister. He was a Taliban co-founder in 1994 and close friend of Mullah Omar, who called him “Baradar” (“brother”) in the first place.
A predictable torrent of hysteria greeted the appointment of Sirajuddin Haqqani as Acting Minister of Interior. After all the son of Haqqani founder Jalaluddin, one of three deputy emirs and the Taliban military commander, with a fierce reputation, has a $5 million FBI bounty on his head. His FBI “wanted” page is not exactly a prodigy of intel: they don’t know when he was born, and where, and that he speaks Pashto and Arabic.
This may be the new government’s top challenge: to prevent Sirajuddin and his wild boys from acting medieval in non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, and most of all to make sure the Haqqanis cut off any connections with jihadi outfits. That’s a sine qua non condition established by the China-Russia strategic partnership for political, diplomatic and economic development support.
Foreign policy will be much more accommodating. Amir Khan Muttaqi, also a member of the political office in Doha, will be the Acting Foreign Minister, and his deputy will be Abas Stanikzai, who’s in favor of cordial relations with Washington and the rights of Afghan religious minorities.
Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Mullah Omar, will be the Acting Defense Minister.
So far, the only non-Pashtuns are Abdul Salam Hanafi, an Uzbek, appointed as second deputy to the Prime Minister, and Qari Muhammad Hanif, a Tajik, the acting Minister of Economic Affairs, a very important post.
The Tao of staying patient
The Taliban Revolution has already hit the Walls of Kabul – who are fast being painted white with Kufic letter inscriptions. One of these reads, “For an Islamic system and independence, you have to go through tests and stay patient.”
That’s quite a Taoist statement: striving for balance towards a real “Islamic system”. It offers a crucial glimpse of what the Taliban leadership may be after: as Islamic theory allows for evolution, the new Afghanistan system will be necessarily unique, quite different from Qatar’s or Iran’s, for instance.
In the Islamic legal tradition, followed directly or indirectly by rulers of Turko-Persian states for centuries, to rebel against a Muslim ruler is illegitimate because it creates fitna (sedition, conflict). That was already the rationale behind the crushing of the fake “resistance” in the Panjshir – led by former Vice-President and CIA asset Amrullah Saleh. The Taliban even tried serious negotiations, sending a delegation of 40 Islamic scholars to the Panjshir.
But then Taliban intel established that Ahmad Masoud – son of the legendary Lion of the Panjshir, assassinated two days before 9/11 – was operating under orders of French and Israeli intel. And that sealed his fate: not only he was creating fitna, he was a foreign agent. His partner Saleh, the “resistance” de facto leader, fled by helicopter to Tajikistan.
It’s fascinating to note a parallel between Islamic legal tradition and Hobbes’s Leviathan, which justifies absolute rulers. The Hobbesian Taliban: here’s a hefty research topic for US Think Tankland.
The Taliban also follow the rule that a war victory – and nothing more spectacular than defeating combined NATO power – allows for undisputed political power, although that does not discard strategic alliances. We’ve already seen it in terms of how the moderate, Doha-based political Taliban are accommodating the Haqqanis – an extremely sensitive business.
Abdul Haqqani will be the Acting Minister for Higher Education; Najibullah Haqqani will be Minister of Communications; and Khalil Haqqani, so far ultra-active as interim head of security in Kabul, will be Minister for Refugees.
The next step will be much harder: to convince the urban, educated populations in the big cities – Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif – not only of their legitimacy, acquired in the frontlines, but that they will crush the corrupt urban elite that plundered the nation for the past 20 years. All that while engaging in a credible, national interest process of improving the lives of average Afghans under a new Islamic system. It will be crucial to watch what kind of practical and financial help the emir of Qatar will offer.
The new cabinet has elements of a Pashtun jirga (tribal assembly). I’ve been to a few, and it’s fascinating to see how it works. Everyone sits on a circle to avoid a hierarchy – even if symbolic. Everyone is entitled to express their opinion. This leads to alliances necessarily being forged.
The negotiations to form a government were being conducted in Kabul by former President Hamid Karzai – crucially, a Pashtun from a minor Durrani clan, the Popalzai – and Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik, and former head of the Council for National Reconciliation. The Taliban did listen to them, but in the end they de facto chose what their own jirga had decided.
Pashtuns are extremely fierce when it comes to defending their Islamic credentials. They believe their legendary founding ancestor, Qais Abdul Rasheed, converted to Islam in the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad, and then Pashtuns became the strongest defender of the faith anywhere.
Yet that’s not exactly how it played out in history. From the 7th century onwards, Islam was predominant only from Herat in the west to legendary Balkh in the north all the way to Central Asia, and south between Sistan and Kandahar. The mountains of the Hindu Kush and the corridor from Kabul to Peshawar resisted Islam for centuries. Kabul in fact was a Hindu kingdom as late as the 11th century. It took as many as five centuries for the core Pashtun lands to convert to Islam.
Islam with Afghan characteristics
To cut an immensely complex story short, the Taliban was born in 1994 across the – artificial – border of Afghanistan and Pakistani Balochistan as a movement by Pashtuns who studied in Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan.
All the Afghan Taliban leaders had very close connections with Pakistani religious parties. During the 1980s anti-USSR jihad, many of these Taliban (“students”) in several madrassas worked side by side with the mujahideen to defend Islam in Afghanistan against the infidel. The whole process was channeled through the Peshawar political establishment: -overseen by the Pakistani ISI, with enormous CIA input, and a tsunami of cash and would-be jihadis flowing from Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world.
When they finally seized power in 1994 in Kandahar and 1996 in Kabul, the Taliban emerged as a motley crew of minor clerics and refugees invested in a sort of wacky Afghan reformation – religious and cultural – as they set up what they saw as a pure Salafist Islamic Emirate.
I saw how it worked on the spot, and as demented as it was, it amounted to a new political force in Afghanistan. The Taliban were very popular in the south because they promised security after the bloody 1992-1995 civil war. The totally radical Islamist ideology came later – with disastrous results, especially in the big cities. But not in the subsistence agriculture countryside, because the Taliban social outlook merely reflected rural Afghan practice.
The Taliban installed a 7th century-style Salafi Islam crisscrossed with the Pashtunwali code. A huge mistake was their aversion to Sufism and the veneration of shrines – something extremely popular in Islamic Afghanistan for centuries.
It’s too early to tell how Taliban 2.0 will play out in the dizzyingly complex, emerging Eurasian integration chessboard. But internally, a wiser, more traveled, social media-savvy Taliban seem aware they cannot allow themselves to repeat the dire 1996-2001 mistakes.
Deng Xiaoping set the framework for socialism with Chinese characteristics . One of the greatest geopolitical challenges ahead will be whether Taliban 2.0 are able to shape a sustainable development Islam with Afghan characteristics.
“Islam with Afghan characteristics”
Isn’t this an oxymoron?
Can there be more than one Islam?
Don’t the Taliban consider themselves to be the followers (and enforcers) of true Islam?
What is Taliban other than ISIS with ‘Afghan characteristics’?
Yeah, one has to pardon my ignorance but I too wonder where all this romanticising of the crazy Taliban comes from. Taliban is just an iteration of weaponised islam.
Mahomed himself ‘prophesied’: “If you see the black banners coming from Khorasan, go to them immediately even if you must crawl over ice because indeed among them is the caliph, al-Mahdi.”
The banner of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ is the same as ISIS, except that it is deceptively white.
By afghan characteristics, pepe probably means the shariah adopted to the afghan society, it’s merger with the tribal codes like the pashtunwali. Muslims can practice their respective ethnic and cultural traditions as long as it does not contradict with the shariah, hence different muslim customs in different regions.
The black banner is as old as islam. Both black and white are used, the taliban has mainly used the white one. Calling it deceptive is hilarious. Saudi arabia uses the green one.
The difference between IS and taliban lies in their school of thought. The IS is composed of people who primarily practice wahhabi and salafi versions.The taliban is composed of people subscribing to different schools of though, but the predominant one is the deobandi version (as pointed out by pepe). Deobandi version started in the indian town called deoband, hence the name. They belong to the hanafi school of jurisprudence. Many talibs also belong to the naqshbandi sufi order. The majority deobandi taliban has never been comfortable with the salafis and are known to have troubled salafi preachers. Recently the taliban arrested a salafi preacher called Abu Ubaidullah Mutawakil but released him later. He was killed soon after his release and the salafis are blaming the taliban for killing him, but the taliban spokesperson zabiullah put out a tweet denying the charges (https://twitter.com/Zabehulah_M33/status/1434549005355298818?s=20). Salafism and wahhabism are probably the youngest versions and do not fall under the traditional four sunni schools of islamic jurisprudence, which are Hanafi, Shafi, Hanbali and Maliki. Salafism and wahhabism started because their originators were of the view that muslims were no longer practicing real islam, they wanted to bring back muslims to the original islam.
Another difference is that the taliban is open to work with other countries which are non-muslim but the IS does not cooperate even with muslims who they see as not practicing true islam.
But the major difference between IS and the taliban is that the latter is an authentic movement started by the afghans in their crusade against the corrupt and rapist warlords while the former is alleged to have been created by some peaceful, free countries and their devout muslim allies, which have been very much concerned about the falling democratic indices and human rights abuse by dictators put on the seat by the same countries.
As for ‘weaponized islam’, armed jihad is one of the integral parts of islam.
Interestingly when the illeterate arab prophesied it, islam had not entered the levant and not even covered complete yemen. Prophesizing that islam would one day reach afghanistan while the muslims were present in the hejaz and facing two massive empires (Byzantines and Sassanids) is a very auditious thing to do.
how will the rest of the muslim world listen to iran if the iranians are themselves leaving islam and choosing atheism and secular values? (https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-reveals-huge-changes-in-religious-beliefs-145253).
They supported the mujahideen during the soviet jihad, not when the taliban took over afghanistan. US-saudi broke relations with the previous taliban emirate. The taliban started in 1994. Their aim was to stop the criminal extorsion gangs which used to operate on the highways and harassed, kidnapped and raped people. They were very effective in eleminating the gangs and gained widespread support.
Thank u for that, needed information.
I have read that salafism incorporated wahabism and more. Deobandis to my untutored mind is also salafist, I have heard of berlevis (sorry about the spelling), from what I read India inspired demanding and berlevis) during UK occupation. But wahabism ws also created by UK.
It ws v sussesful as a policy to divide. But so many adher to ideology can it be reversed?
Sorry for long q
Many thanks for that!
True Islam is in Iran. Taliban are creation of US-Saudis.
Indeed, true Islam is in Iran. And the best the Taliban can hope for is to follow in Iran’s footsteps, and make Afghanistan an independent power.
Erm much like there is not a “singular” version of Christianity….
Applied religion is always an interpretation. so of course there are many “Islam”. Actually there are as many “Islam” as there are Muslims, same as with any other religion.
I imagine what is meant by true Islam is the religion which carved an empire from the Atlantic to Central Asia in a matter of years.
Which Islamic country today has quickly and greatly extended its imperial territories, reminiscent of the original Muslims?
Saudi Arabia? ISIS? Pakistan? Malaysia? Sudan?
In this day and age, conquering new territory is exceptionally difficult. The US can’t do it. Israel can’t extend its borders by an inch anymore.
Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khamenei’s domain encompasses practically the entire original Islamic heartland now, which are one and the same with the ancient Persian Imperial territories. And how long did this conquest take? Barely twenty years.
Give it another twenty years, and Saudi Arabia will be fully subjugated by Iran as well.
It’s time to teach the Saudis about real Islam, ie. the Islam of truth and justice, not the ‘Islam’ of rape and murder and child brides, and bending the knee to Israel, and whatever else Saudi-ISIS ‘Islam’ is all about.
They are connected to Iran and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. They will let the world know what they are soon enough.
Note to commentator … please read saker’s moderation policy about use of caps .. modified comment .. mod
Islam is like a variegated garden full of different varieties of flowers. It did not come to eradicate any culture or language but rather to confirm and accept what is good in each and every people and nation. Thus you have Islam in Afghanistan with Afghan characteristics and in Africa with African.
The essence of love and justice and what that entails forms its core. Whether you love to eat biryani or pulao or wear a pant or shalwar or love to sing sufi odes or qawwali – all these are welcomed and beautify it.
So long as trade is allowed and usury is forbidden, so long as government is limited to only core essential issues like these and does not pry into your homes and private personal lives, so long as a plain field is made available so that monopolies can’t usurp wealth and opportunities, so long as trade and markets and currencies and trade routes are not monopolized, so long as people are not allowed to be robbed into poverty by banks and corporations, so long as there are no taxes except the wealth tax ( zakaat), so long as justice prevails, so long as human dignity and honor is preserved, Islam welcomes everyone aboard and does not take any particular characteristics. It is cosmopolitan and welcomes everything good and wholesome.
So no it is not an Oxymoron. There is definitely an Islam with Afghan Characteristics.
It’s going to near impossible but I do hope they make it. Sadly Amerika and it’s puppets will do what they can to make it fail.
Just to make sure I am clear, when I wrote, “- but let’s just throw it” :
I was referring to the literary literation – of Pepe being stranded on the (unknown) island somewhere stuffing “What 2 expect from Taliban 2.0” on charcoal enshrined parchment paper back in the same bottle, and heaving it back into the sea, against all hopes, thinking it will float back to the little sandle wearing girl, who will against all probability, will heave it into Atlantic Ocean , where Saker will be walking his pet “parakeet” and against all probability, will find it- and you we will eventually read it — hence the “but let’s just throw it ” part (only now realize it was not clear what I was trying to say)
Most countries in The Empire of Deluded Fools separate church from state, personally I’d go with no church, while I’m hopefull for Afghanistan now being able to join in with the win-win BRI/SCO to me a sovereign state who’s law is religion is anathema!
Church and State is separated in the west, that is for sure. That word church, as only to be separated, leads other religious groups to think that they can push their agendas because they are not a “church”. The real separation should be ” religion and state”.
We have no real separation of “religion and state” in the west. Nancy Pelosi said ““I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” The 1776 rebels would be turning in their graves to hear that.
Biden said “You do not have to be Jewish to be Zioinist”. Well, that thinking is not “separation of religion and state”.
These are two example of the endless pandering to Zionism by other “elected” officials in the “separation of church and state” west. There is no separation of religion and state in the west. We are in the “high Middle Ages of the Religion of Zion” in the west though.
When this era is over, people will be scratching their heads about how stupid people could be to fall for this nonsense.
God works miracles!
Like 20 years ago… time would had to have stood still, for writing like this to float in bottle encapsulated, unprotected, somehow made it to shore, and someone would have had to have found the unprotected parchment, get some little girl in sandles to hide it from “evil” modern world, paddle boat it over to a bearded fellow, held up on an island somewhere (who knows where) and translates like, what seems like child scribble, 40 years later, has a dream to type it, and author says to himself:
“What the heck, I’m trying to square perception with reality (modern world) which doesn’t really “square” …
but let’s just throw it – it will all make more sense in a 100 years from today — a lot more sense– so just be patient- we are just biding time, since “tides” are not waiting.
( I scanned seems ok…might b a 1st, God willing)
What happens in the time to come is pure geopolitics at its crudest low.
China, who has developed a great financial relation with Pakistan, is banking on stretching the new silk road through the 50 or so kms of border that it has with Afghanistan (while investing heavily in development and growth of this scarred nation) and across to Pakistan with the price being: access to the Arabian sea; while the US will do anything in its power to prevent that from happening.
So, as Pepe mentioned in past interviews, the future war in Afghanistan will be a CIA — and maybe even nato — project resembling a shadow war.
The US cannot prevent the BRI now.
What they can do is make sure it goes through Pakistan and not Iran.
And what the Artsakh war accomplished was to pave the way for another line of the BRI to bypass Iran.
//What they can do is make sure it goes through Pakistan and not Iran.//
That won’t happen. Since Iran and China are in a 25-year strategic partnership, trade networks will be extended to Iran from China through Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, the empire will try sabotaging ops with their jihadist proxies.
Well, they gave interior to a Haqqani. That means its going to crush any form of dissent with maximum force. Reading anything else here does not matter. Be ready for a bloody decade. No matter which taliban terrorist is the Prime Minister, President or Pasha of Afghanistan. It’s going to be bloody and the brutal pakistan taliban and ISI have a good seat at the table. All sponsored by you know who. Now the onion gets peeled you can see the players at the table and the cards they hold.
No matter which taliban terrorist is the Prime Minister…
Well I don’t know. I’d call the man who ordered the bombing of a wedding party that killed mainly women and children a terrorist too, and a bigger one at that. Only difference being the bomb guy enjoys a burger with ‘freedom’ fries and a beer while listening to Buddy Guy singing the blues after the event; while the Taliban one enjoys flat bread with chai while listening to nasheed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airstrike
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airstrike
“I’d call the man who ordered the bombing of a wedding party that killed mainly women and children a terrorist too, and a bigger one at that. ”
Indeed and more drone warfare to come….
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/09/08/americas-longest-war-is-not-over/
I wonder why would anyone want to side with the freedom bringing NATO troops and support the terrorist taliban. The price for freedom is very minimal.
why wouldn’t anyone support killing civilians and collected their fingers as trophies?
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers)
Why wouldn’t anyone want amrullah saleh as a president, who assisted the US invasion bombings that killed 10000 afghans?
Why wouldn’t anyone support the afghan national army, which sexually abused afghan children (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html) and had a big percentage of drug addicts?
Why would anyone oppose the northern alliance’s dostum, who killed 2000 surrendered talibs? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasht-i-Leili_massacre)
Why would anyone oppose torture by death in US custody in afghanistan?(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghan-prisoners-were-tortured-to-death-by-american-guards-491534.html)
Why wouldnt anyone want ghani as a PM who ran away to UAE with afghan money?
why wouldnt anyone want air strikes that kill innocent civilians?
Why would anyone reject all these freedom fighters and choosing a terrorist like haqqani?
Good thing this is an interim cabinet because it doesn’t look very promising.
There’s been talk of the Taliban exploring the idea of either modifying the present constitution or drafting a completely new one. Either way it shows the Talibs have not thought through the idea of how to govern the country.
Like I said in a previous comment the leaders are mainly mullahs — and not trained to a very high level at that, although there are exceptions — and not much else. They need help.
But as Pepe says, they’re wiser and more travelled now and perhaps they’ve learned something about erm…nation-building or rather, how not to go about implementing national development. I would think Karzai and Abdullah are eminently placed to give them some good pointers on what to avoid in their endeavours.
The Afghan people want security, as their number one priority.
Inclusive government, elections, women’s rights, etc, are all secondary concerns for the average Afghan.
My Afghan worker went back to his native Kabul for a visit 3 years ago, and a bomb went off in the street, so close to him, that the wave knocked him down. Many died. He got on the first bus back to Tehran, and has vowed that he will never go back until it is safe there, like Iran.
Even the people who are distraught by the lack of inclusiveness in the new cabinet, are distraught because they worry that this cabinet will not be able to bring security to Afghanistan.
The Taliban have to make Afghanistan a safe place to live now. Democracy and women’s rights comes after. And if they follow in Iran’s footsteps, where a bunch of mullahs took power, and fought hard to make Iran safe, during a period of intense terrorist activity, where many of them were assassinated in bombings, and Ayatollah Khamenei himself lost an arm in a bombing, but eventually brought security to Iran, even amid an 8 year war with Iraq, and also brought women’s rights and democracy in due course, then they have a very bright future of non-stop victory ahead of them.
And if Afghanistan openly comes out as part of the Resistance, calling for the liberation of Palestine, what shall the US and Israel do then?
You are on the spot with Karzai and Abdullah.
Only time will now tell how things go in Afghanistan.
“Pashtuns became the strongest defender of the faith anywhere”.
The statement above, can be interpreted in many ways, bearing in mind that as individuals we understand words differently. The word , “Faith” occupies a very special place in is monotheism, hence it is worth examining how Pepe used it above.
I understand “Faith”, to be a state of “surrender”, automatically arrived at by an individual after life experiences brought a realization of their utter “no-thingness / Renunciation”. Faith is non hierarchical and it cannot be taught, shared, spread , owned nor defended.
So in my opinion Pepe’s statement above, is a misuse of the notion of “faith”. Ordinarily I dismiss such misuse as trivial but in this instance I can’t because human life is at stake. After careful analysis I therefore conclude that Pepe’s statement above is an example of a subtle programming / brainwashing technique intended to mislead trusting people into committing inhuman acts whilst believing that it in line with the dictates of the creator. It is through tactics like this that the “empire” institionilized religion and turned it into dogma/theocracy/tyranny.
What is the most important – surely, possible disintegration of Afghanistan is far behind us. Another thing, possible civil war, also (paly attempt in Panjshir valley failed).
Now, we have a new cabinet, interim or “acting” (“Spokesman Mujahid took pains to stress this new cabinet is just an “acting” government”), and this is a good (the first) sign of stability and primary signal to everybody, despite the fact that the cabinet is all-Taliban and almost all-Pashtun.
They claim that the next step will be a new constitution and, consequently, reconstruction of government, more inclusive. I am prone to believe them. Another good sign.
Let them practise and apply Islam, in Afghan version, it doesn’t matter.
What matters – there is no US to meddle in, in their destructive manner.
Afghanistan is the geostrategic heart of Asia, the transport node, at least. It proved it with so many and so long wars. What is badly needed is stability and peace. Waves of refugees will not yield any good to anybody (not to speak of population management, all across Asia (and Europe)).
Another thing is brain drain(age). I put earlier in my comments that there is a huge young population (0-14 years 42% (2020), 15-24 years 22% (2016)), which does not remember pre-American time, infected and inflicted by liberal, attractive and sticky (especially for youth) American culture. Urban-rural split is also very important (many people have tasted and seen what comfortable life looks like).
The Talibans should be skilful enough to calm down the situation. We can notice a bit of hurry in establishing the government, for me it is a sign that they are aware of where they are.
Surrounded by mighty neighbours, all of which are in efforts and tension of cooperation and progress, a small room is left to Afghanistan to play its individual game, but only that one left to Afghanistan’s chessboard square.
I think the figures on the Asia’s chessboard were arranged long before the transition in Kabul. Can we read it in the following manner: China-Pakistan partnership, Pakistan-Afghanistan tight relations (eg over the Pashtuns) . . . (compete the sentence at your will).
(see a grain of it, for example, https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/the-china-pakistan-partnership-continues-to-deepen/ )
Won the war but closer to losing peace. It recalls the majority of African countries independence days and days-after from 1950-1965.
Honestly, there is nothing exciting about these primitive fanatics coming to power. The Nato hubris deserved its put down, but that does not make the lunatic band of lunatics an interesting spectacle.
On the contrary, it is extremely interesting to see whether the Taliban movement is going make Afghanistan stable enough in order to pursue their “third road” vision, thus creating a new Emirate, not following the western model nor the typical middle-east Sunni model (just like Mullah Omar envisioned in the first place).
Are they primitive? Who cares, modernized societies are not necessarily better than ancient ones.
Are they fanatics? Who cares, the american people already demonstrated themselves to be utterly fanatical and moralists, thus being a real danger, contrary to the poor Afghans.
Are they lunatics? They are not. At least not more than your narrow-minded comment.
It might not be that Taliban would harbor terrorists in Afghanistan. More worrying is that its so-called victory is taken as a sign of a victory of Islam over the ‘kafirs’ and a source of inspiration for the jihadis at large.
Yes, sure. In fact one should encourage the flight of as many Afghans from the hell-hole prepared for them. Let’s the world see that people don’t want ‘sharia law’.
Let the world see that Israeli’s are threatened by Sharia law, you mean?
Steve
I share the same opinion with you, how ever I would put it this way ; Forcing your will on others is Inhuman whether practiced by , NATO, Taliban, a God or whatever. it is Inhuman.
Right now, people in Mozambique are being butchered in the name of Islam, an Ideology which is completely foreign to that land.
It’s very simple. The Taliban won the war. They have driven out the foreign occupiers and fifth columnists and the utterly corrupt “government” imposed by the occupiers. Therefore, they are entitled to form any government they chose without external criticism or interference.
As to what that government will do and how it will behave–wait and see. It’s not the West’s business.
I will point out one further anomaly. It is quite impossible for one suicide bomber, or even two, to kill nearly two hundred people. If the people were packed together, the force of the explosion would be sharply limited by the mass of bodies. If dispersed, it would take something the size of a mini-nuke to kill that many. Yet the West ignore these facts, and also the many credible reports that the occupying troops panicked and fired (from watchtowers) down into the crowd, killing dozens of civilians.
There was nothing honorable about this war or the West’s leaving of it. Nothing.
SHOW ME THE LAND WHERE THE BUDDHA DWELL
In a world as diametrically opposed as Americans and Taliban Afghans are in their ethical and religious philosophies, the two forces find solace in each other, even merging on the same foundation of their existence. Pity the Afghans who must now endure both….
Reply to Pepe Escobar (Also see footnote #1)
RULER ON A HUMVEE
Taliban is on notice from both China and Russia that it can, and should, do more to unite and reconstruct Afghanistan, hence to bring back sanity. Anything less is just gas. As things stands, the two countries will deal with Taliban selectively but not (yet?) as a whole, national government. (Note #2) For one thing, the new Taliban government lineup demonstrates that it rules Afghans from a horseback.
That old Chinese saying - you can’t govern a nation from a horseback -refers to the varied Xiongnu tribes that had regularly raided villages, cities and border military garrisons since Han China for silk, iron, grain, and women. Today, substitute horseback for humvees.
From that starting point, i.e. the humvee, one sees the Taliban and the West, the US in particular, identical in their concept of rule. It is, they believe, power ultimately flows from the barrel of the gun. This Western (plus Arab) mind can never conceive power in any other way or form. Power might be crowned differently, given legitimacy in Afghanistan as coming from the Sharia, in America via the ballot paper, but we all know their track records.
Whether in a humvee or on horseback, one can’t think, plan, much less write poetry or edicts. These are herculean efforts, requiring literacy and culture, deliverable only by a civilization which neither the US nor the Taliban has any historical record. (#3) The US government - and Taliban catching up - lay at the bottom in the scale of civilizations: the first having helped create the second in the 1990s, after which to nurture and bribe, even paying the salaries of soldiers, notably during the Clinton regime, 1993–2001.
So-called ‘think tank’ American academia groups, namely the Wilson Center, Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute, and Georgetown University may issue reams of paper work. You can liken them to empty tin cans with which you beat hard, like drums, before America goes to war.
China has reassured the Talibans that it will keep its promises to assist Afghans, whoever is the government. Taliban’s problem is that it will be held to a higher standard of governance (than, say, the one in Washington DC or Riyardh) for the reason Afghanistan was once a great civilization. (#3) Making a claim to rulership means nothing, anyone can do that. It is but the first step in the journey of a thousand li to recreate Afghanistan from scratch. The Taliban is not the end point in the American withdrawal as if they have won, they have arrived and that’s it. Nor does the group represents a blueprint in governance. If China took 5,000 years to create a state, and it is still working at it, who then does the Taliban think it is? God-anointed like George Bush or Mike Pompeo?
Yet, that’s what the Taliban believes it is, wedded to the notion they are the Chosen Ones. Witness how the Taliban deploys Al Jazeera, the Qatari Arab US mouthpiece, much like the Pentagon deploys the New York Times. Via Arabs, it hypes up itself as progressive and nationalist, a two-in-one, with financial and economic clout in China’s support. But, since when did China promised the Taliban full backing and thus to deserve its ‘invitation’ to a pseudo investiture ceremony? (#4)
Only the common Afghans are deserving of China’s material support. Afghanistan is not synonymous with Taliban, not by a long shot. It is thereby clear to China that the Taliban pronouncements are intended for Yankee ears, via Al-Jazeera underlings. To Central Asian scholar Qiu Wenping at the Fudan University, the Taliban is saying, ‘If Americans don’t give us money we will go to China.’ Another analyst adds, “The Taliban may keep some terrorists in the country as bargaining chips to make deals with other neighboring countries and major powers.” (#5)
Such deceitful Taliban thinking is the stuff of gringos and CIA and it is no way to cultivate friends. Worse, it jeopardizes the welfare of common Afghans, treating them as ‘collateral’ pawns instead of regarding them as people that demands top priority in government care. Let’s be real, the Taliban could not have ‘defeated’ the US, if the latter so chooses. Nor, should the Taliban play power game Go with us Chinese. The Chinese invented the game and have 3,000 years of practise at it.
As early as 2012 when US-China relations were more amenable than it is today and Barack Obama was contemplating a US pullout of Afghanistan, the only people across the table from the US was the Taliban. Nothing substantial transpired for reasons that have nothing to do with returning sovereignty and respecting people’s rights. The opposite truth was instead this: America wanted to know, and sought assurances from the Taliban over it, who might stood to gain in a US withdrawal. China refuses this kind of framing.
Here is what one Steven LeVine of the Atlantic Council, the Democratic Party mouthpiece, had flaunted the American dilemma in a magazine article at Foreign Policy (FP). The article’s title: ‘Why the U.S. should hand over Afghanistan and Central Asia to China’. (#6) Wrote LeVine, citing a US official “with knowledge of the process”: “‘There are lots of China bashers who don’t like the idea of China being involved at all.’ The omission makes this (withdrawal and putting China in its place) already far-fetched plan less realistic.”
On a similar vein, and also pushing the same agenda, was the Washington Quarterly, with a 2011 an article by Evan Feigenbaum, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, later an advisor to Mitt Romney. He was unabashed at involving China in Afghan affairs. “The United States and China don’t need joint approaches to pursue strategic cooperation, just mutually beneficial ones,” he wrote. “And in Central Asia, where Russia has had a near-hammerlock on the region’s oil and gas, China’s new assertiveness comes primarily at Russia’s expense.”
That time, again, Afghanis weren’t at the top of the agenda. Instead it was about Russia.
Reread the FP title and quotation. It wasn’t just that Afghani welfare is never in the heart of any US withdrawal plan, their sovereignty much less. No, rather, the centerpiece of any American foreign policy calculation, Afghanistan in this case, is entirely geostrategic: which country stood to make the most money. It is as if Afghanis were a plaything to be tossed around.
China has no interest in such machinations so that almost a decade later, when the Doha Agreement was signed on Feb 29, 2020 (#7), it was glad not to be a signatory (the Chinese have learned never to trust US agreements anyway). The agreement strictly involved only the US and Taliban in the person of Abdul Ghani Baradar, today the interim deputy prime minister. In it, there was no Ashraf Kleptocrat Fraudster Ghani, no China, and no Russia although the Agreement was lodged in the UN Security for legitimacy purpose.
Never mind about feeling good in defeating US imperialism. But, the truth of the matter is, there was no ‘sudden’ withdrawal nor was there defeat. America chooses whether it is defeated.
Between Obama and Biden, there has been a sea change in US Central Asia objectives. One, if the US can’t get their oil and gas and transit pipelines going after 20 years, then there is no good reason to give them up to China, its declared enemy. With a bit sabotage, there was no good reason to believe China will succeed.
Two is the American avowal to destroy China. Instead of doing so itself, it rounds by gangs and uses these proxies and client states in combination - Japan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia. If them, why not a Taliban Afghanistan? Or an ISIS-K? Imagine an Afghanistan as a spearhead into the belly of Central Asia, thrusting north and eastwards.
Three, America has nothing to lose giving up Afghanistan. Using it instead, the US understood that a hit anywhere on the Belt and Road Initiative is considered a hit on China. Witness at least three bombings in Pakistan this year. Or, consider how the Guardian, the premier British propagandist, puts American slash and burn strategy around China, a strategy that has so far affected North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan. In combination they would crush China, it said, “three ongoing crises in the neighborhood… all failing states.” (#8)
In a post-colonial Taliban Afghanistan, China is made to wear American shoes. China’s best course of action is simply not to play such games although the reasons for doing so are cultural and ethical, not strategic nor political….
JIAN CALLED
For days now troops and military vehicles have been moving north and east, crowding along the 900-km stretch of the coastal parts of Guangdong to Zhejiang, wherever the rail tracks took them and wherever they can find space. The bulk of this mobilization has fallen along the Fujian coast facing Taiwan.
At train stations they queue up like ants around its nest. The auxillary militia has also been called up, and then to be retrained to fire anti-aircraft guns and operate assorted equipment. Passing the mountains, Jian was sure she had seen missile and defence weapons jutting out of the forest trees. She recognizes these things from stories from her father and pictures in the PLA.
We are preparing for war, and have been doing so the past 18 months or so. The coastal defense is final stage in this preparation. The air is palpable with the smell and sight of war. But everyone is upbeat: people talk of the day when they and vehicles could cross the Taiwan Straits without worrying about the Yanks.
These defense preparations aren’t about Taiwan, though. In the grander scheme of things, Taiwan is just a fly you swat dead. Within a day, we’d cripple both its military and civilian communications, Google network, flatten their barracks, and leave no airport, sea port and military installation standing.
This coming war is, to all intents and purpose, with America first and foremost, so we’ll see what they are made of since the peninula Korean war. Everyone understand this as well. So there is no illusion that an attack on Taiwan is war among brother and sisters. “We should settle this matter once and for all. The sooner the better,” one reservist told Jian.
There are families on both sides, though. Those on the mainland have been told to register, and to identify relatives and kin in Taiwan. Politicians in Taiwan have been told time and again via informal channels to leave while they still can. Still, they hang around despite Beijing’s promise to round up and put them on trial for insurrection. When that day comes, leaving Chinese territory would be impossible. They delude themselves. They refuse to see that, if matters come to a head, the Chinese in the mainland would rather take back a totally destroyed island, even a barren place, than put up with scoundrels scurrying like rats from hiding place to hiding place. A law similar to the National Security Law in Hong Kong has also been enacted. This requires the Chinese state to bring in such people, as in DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen, and then to try them for sedition, treason and subversion. The heaviest penalty is death.
Even so, Tsai et al continue to sell lies to the Taiwan public. Bejing is bluffing, they’d say, and America is round the corner and would come anytime when Taiwan needed them. We’ll see about that. When that day comes, China will call their bluff. Moreover, events in Kabul have also exposed her lies. Consequently, she now says Taiwanese must rely on themselves to defend Taiwan. Amid this puffing up, we see that in their Hong Kong bank accounts, they have been moving vast sums of money around, some of it going to America.
Take your money with you, but leave. We have sworn to our ancestors: Not an inch of property will go to traitors.
There is nothing else to be done now but wait for orders.
Almost everyday, America and its gang are turning at China’s sea borders and sending warships and planes into its 12 nm territorial zone; the latest being the Meiji Reef in the South China Sea (#9). The US occupied colony of Japan has in the past two months offered to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf because, say not one but five Japanese officials, it is “too near” Japan. Even so, from as far as a globe away, puny Lithuania and has-been Britain have similarly vouched to join America in a war against China. People can’t wait for them to turn up. One American official after another, from vice president Kamala Harris down, have been trooping up into Cambodia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Japan and South Korea threatening China with fire and brimstone.
Jian ends the call. She wants to go shopping. Tomorrow she will call again to update me on the situation.
NOTES
#1 This and other replies are not intended as a put-down to contributors on this site such as Pepe Escobar. Think of these replies as yin-yang 陰陽 dialectics (‘long and short, day and night, being and non-being define and make each other’) with which we Chinese otherwise have no time to engage with if not because they are deserving of response. Also, these days, references to China in the gringo media, good or slanderous, rational or vile, shall not go unanswered. We Chinese are done with the West, done with the calumny and falsities from idiot savants and propagandists alike, particularly from barbarians and their Anglophile poodles (namely Asia Times, Anglophile and an Anglo stooge). No pearls ever come out of the rabid dog’s mouth. English version, Don’t throw pearls to swines. For Escobar to assert there is a Taliban 2.0 is to suggest that there was a Taliban 1.0, like a Quran 1.0. If so, this would mean that, being ‘social media savvy’, the Taliban might prefer to slice off throats inside a cave? How about blowing up the next Bumiyan Buddha statue? How do you make that media savvy?
#2 On China, holding Taliban to its pledges https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233644.shtml?id=12. On Russia that the ‘new Taliban govt raises concerns’ http://inforos.ru/en/?module=news&action=view&id=131598. Other matters, see this: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233754.shtml
#3 ‘Show me the land where the Buddha dwell’: The world might not know it but we Chinese have seen, documented and lived the splendor of that part of the world. See: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/datangxiyuji.html. For some ideas into the characteristics of a true, great civilization, before even the birth of Taliban’s God, or America’s, see 玄奘 Xuan Zang’s ‘The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions’ 大唐西域記 (c.650 CE).
#4 See: https://tass.com/world/1334331
#5 See latest on US bullying, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233756.shtml. Also, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233754.shtml
#6 https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/06/27/pax-sinica-why-the-u-s-should-hand-over-afghanistan-and-central-asia-to-china/
#7 Doha full text in PDF: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf
#8 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233805.shtml
#9 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1233756.shtml
Postscript Note: Song to the Afghans: 《别知己》. ‘Even the sky lights up without knowing why…’
Excellent overview from someone who can see the situation not through the lenses of ‘Zionism’ (either pro or con). I can’t wait for ‘Jian’ to call again.