Listening to Paul Rogers being interviewed today on Novara.
Writes for Open Democracy. He thinks Taliban will come to agreement with China. China potentially could help the Taliban government economically. China could use Afghanistan as a trade route.
There has already been meeting with Taliban and China at China inviatation.
A working partnership would require Taliban not to support Uyghurs.
Rogers is pessimistic on outcome for human rights in the region
Afghanistan’s future path to be determined by a corridor of power
This article was written before Taliban takeover.
The West is out of the picture now.
To add more up to date article by him.
The US will fight the Taliban from the air – but there’s no sign this will check the paramilitaries on the ground
www.opendemocracy.net
So he is saying if the Taliban can quickly get agreements with China then it could entrench its regime.
I reckon the withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of the US strategy to contain China.
US is shifting its focus from the Middle East and Central Asia to East Asia.
A major part of this is "the Quad", a kind of proto-Asian NATO of Australia, the US, India and Japan.
However, being in Afghanistan means that the US is somewhat dependent on Pakistan for airspace and sea access. Pulling out of Afghanistan allows the US to ditch Pakistan entirely and build much closer military cooperation with India, which Pakistan would otherwise object to.
Additionally, the Pakistani Taliban and other Jihadist groups have carried out attacks on Chinese targets in Pakistan. The calculation that I think the US have made is that pulling out of Afghanistan is a bigger problem for China and Russia than it is for the US. If the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, then this impacts on Chinese interests in Pakistan, and also on Russia's near abroad.
Also worth highlighting that Pakistan is very important to China. China is not self sufficient for energy or food, and they are afraid that an attempted invasion of Taiwan could result in a naval blockade through the South China Sea. This is what the One Belt One Road efforts to build infrastructure through Central Asia is about. China's geopolitical calculation is that they could split the US from Europe, and in the event of a naval blockade they could replace the US market and bypass the blockade with access to Europe and Africa overland. Pakistan is particularly important to China because it provides ocean access through the west of China. The crackdown in Xinjiang is kind of motivated by securing this alternative sea route.
The US pulling out of Afghanistan is, I think, intended to destabilise the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, shift the focus from Islamic radicalism from the US to China and Russia, force China to spread their military thinly by requiring them to secure their interests in Pakistan, and also potentially cause friction between China and Russia by drawing China deeper into Russia's near abroad.
China seems to be responding to this by courting the Taliban. The question is whether Afghanistan under Taliban rule will turn out to be a stable client state of China, in which case the US have miscalculated and been outmanouvered; or whether Afghanistan under the Taliban will prove to be a radical and destabilising force for the region, being a source of instability leaking into Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc, causing a headache for China and Russia and nurturing conflict between them, while the US focuses on building an East Asian version of NATO centred on Japan, India and Australia.
averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com
www.wired.co.uk
en.m.wikipedia.org
