by Christine Douglass-Williams
A watershed event in the region.
Russia is hosting international talks with
the Taliban, and will include representatives of ten nations. Among
them: Pakistan, China, India and Iran. America is absent “due to
logistical reasons.” The meeting’s aim is ostensibly to promote the
establishment of “an inclusive government” and to prevent a
“humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.”
The problem is that everything about the Taliban is the opposite of
“inclusive” and “humanitarian”; the group’s capability or interest in
fostering such is no better than that of Iran, which the Taliban has mimicked in establishing its brutal Sharia governance, even installing a Supreme Leader of Afghanistan: Hibatullah Akhundzada.
It is also noteworthy that no global efforts are dedicated to the “humanitarian crisis” sparked by the Islamic State in West Africa, where Christian persecution is at genocide proportions. That’s because the meeting Russia is hosting really isn’t about humanitarianism at all — a word of great appeal in the West. The United Nations has also been appealing for “humanitarian” aid for Afghanistan, all while Africa is ignored. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, surveys last year showed 5.6 million people displaced in West and Central Africa, and growing fast.
Everyone knows, or should know, that donations to “Afghanistan” go straight to the coffers of the Taliban, not to build the Afghan economy and infrastructure, but to boost the power of the Taliban, and to further its jihadist ambition to expand the scope of the Sharia, while abusing women and minorities every step of the way. Taliban commander Muhammed Arif Mustafa has vowed jihad against the whole world.
In the eyes of Islamic supremacists, Westerners continue to function as nothing more than useful idiots and cash cows who aid in their own destruction, both at home and internationally.
Despite talk about “inclusiveness” and “humanitarianism,” the Moscow meetings will supposedly be about how best to keep the Taliban under some level of control and reach an understanding mutually agreeable to each player. Much will be hashed out in the interests of the nations present. For the Taliban, its immediate interests are legitimization and securing funds. Western donations will be necessary in the long term, so language will be carefully crafted to get to the pockets of Western donors.
The Taliban delegation will be headed up by its acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, a senior Taliban leader who stated that the meeting is “very important for the stability of the region.” It is indeed very important to try to keep the Taliban restrained at least to some degree, without triggering a momentous confrontation between competing interests.
The geopolitical importance of Afghanistan, “The Graveyard of Empires,” is paramount. As the term implies, it has been no stranger to fierce wars, battles and skirmishes since the 1800s, resulting in egregious losses all around.
In the current era, Afghanistan is important for the security and interests of significant global players including China, Pakistan, India, Russia and Iran. As an aside, note that it’s jihad terror that threatens Afghanistan, the Near East, Middle East, the Far East, Africa and the West. But the West is limited in focus, obsessed with its own reflection in the mirror and parroting the Left’s claim that “white supremacism” is the chief global problem today. One must dance around the real global jihad threat, or be deemed “Islamophobic.”
A fracture between Communist and Islamic interests is observable, while these ideologies remain ever-present threats in the West, in what is recognized as the red-green axis. To review a few of the salient concerns for countries that will be present in Moscow, starting with China: the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is the terror group that China fears the most. The group now has a golden opportunity to proliferate. Based in Xinjiang province, the ETIM are former Uighur separatists who are seeking an independent Islamic state . Many have now joined ISIS-K, and their proliferation spells trouble for China. “ISIS-K” refers to the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group, covering the parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan referred to as Khorasan. The Kabul Times has identified ISIS-K as the most extreme and violent of all the jihadist groups in Afghanistan.
China has long targeted the ETIM as a Uighur terrorist threat, and used that threat to justify its brutal crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang. China’s actions were undoubtedly excessive, while the West characterized them simplistically as nothing more than “Islamophobia.”
In May, when ISIS-K set off an explosion outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, killing over 60 Afghan civilians and at least 13 American service members, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying blamed America’s “abrupt” withdrawal as a factor in the attack, stating that the US needed to withdraw its troops “in a responsible manner” that avoided “inflicting more turmoil and suffering on the Afghan people.” Although she was correct, what she omitted was important in understanding Communist China’s true perspective. According to the Asia Times, what “China fears the most” is the revival of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) “and its cross-border agitation and terrorism in China’s volatile Xinjiang region.”
Now China finds itself in a position where it is rather willing to boost the Taliban (at least for now) in its own interests to fight against ISIS-K, all while investigating its full opportunity to expand its Belt and Road Initiativeto facilitate trade in Central and South Asia.
Russia likewise has security concerns, namely “the threat from uncontrolled weapons transfers to the Taliban, the threat of extremists among Afghan refugees crossing into Central Asia, and concerns about the drug trade.” But Russia also views itself as the great American replacement. Its “officials routinely assert that Moscow is rightfully the region’s chief security provider,” and it’s quite prepared to scapegoat America strategically. According to a Carnegie Endowment report, should “security threats to Central Asia or Russia arise out of the Taliban takeover, they will be the fault of the United States. By preassigning blame, the Kremlin is trying to give itself an excuse should it have to resort to cross-border strikes inside Afghanistan itself.”
Now for Pakistan, the chief sponsor of the Taliban: Pakistan has long aided and protected the group. The mullahs of Pakistan are currently pushing for Taliban recognition worldwide in their support for the universal “application of Shariah law.” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has gone so far as to assert, absurdly, that the Taliban can be America’s partner for peace. Simply put: Pakistan and the Taliban share the interest of Islamic expansionism everywhere. Turkey, too, shares that vision. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made no secret of his goal of a revived Ottoman Empire. He has already proclaimed that Turkey has nothing that contradicts Taliban beliefs, and according to International Christian Concern, Turkey is now in the process of “recruiting Syrian mercenaries for deployment to Afghanistan in order to minimize their own casualty number and create a degree of separation between Turkey at home and Turkey’s actions on the ground.”
In the case of India, its ongoing tensions with the jihad-sponsoring state of Pakistan are no secret. India has also been facing the threat of proliferation of the Islamic State in Kashmir. At the same time, India fully understands the real likelihood of Pakistan-based jihadist groups expanding their breeding grounds in Afghanistan. Also important to India is the sudden diplomatic shift in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over. India had enjoyed a close relationship with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and invested billions in development projects. Since the Taliban takeover, major investments and revenue are threatened or lost. India has much to lose in the reorganization of regional dynamics with America’s departure.
For Shia Iran, its priority in the meetings will be “securing its eastern border” from “narcotics,” and a large refugee influx. According to the RAND Corporation, Iran “is particularly anxious to prevent a total Taliban victory in Afghanistan and the expansion of Pakistani power.” There’s also the well-being of the largely Shia Hazara population in Afghanistan to consider. In the recent past, the Taliban has singled them out for persecution, and nothing will change in that regard in the foreseeable future. Last month, the Taliban ordered 800 Shia Hazaras out of their homes.
The Moscow meetings are a watershed event in the region. The US under Biden is nowhere to be found; nor is it wanted at the meetings. Its only usefulness is its donation money for so-called “humanitarian” and “inclusiveness” purposes. The outcome of the meetings will rest on carefully marketed “negotiated” terms, but outcomes would be about as authentic and reliable for Western interests as the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, a deal that Iran violated by its own admission and has trampled repeatedly on its way to making a nuclear bomb. In the end, a further global erosion of the West’s power will coincide with the Taliban’s implementation of its vision of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a strict mullah-run society. Dhimmi dollars will be used, generated from an effective sales pitch about “humanitarian relief,” in conjunction with significant help from Pakistan and Turkey to expand the reach of Sharia. China, on the other hand, has already shown the world by its treatment of the Uighurs how far it is willing to go to protect its Communist regime as well as its own global ambitions, so it will be astutely watching. Right on the heels of Biden exiting Afghanistan, China’s military conducted assault drills in the high seas near Taiwan “with the People’s Liberation Army saying the exercise was necessary to safeguard China’s sovereignty.” Afghanistan, “the Graveyard of Empires,” will likely provoke a more observable fracture between Communism and Islam, two ideologies that share in common only the oppression of freedom and sanctioned brutality.
Christine Douglass-Williams
Source:https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/russia-hosts-intl-talks-taliban-supposedly-about-christine-douglass-williams/
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