Posted on 07/15/2021 9:28:04 AM PDT by elpadre
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting of Foreign Ministers on Wednesday in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, may have been an under-the-radar affair, but it did reveal the contours of the big picture ahead when it comes to Afghanistan.
So let’s see what Russia and China – the SCO’s heavyweights – have been up to.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi laid out the basic road map to his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Haneef Atmar. While stressing the Chinese foreign policy gold standard – no interference in internal affairs of friendly nations – Wang established three priorities:
1. Real inter-Afghan negotiations towards national reconciliation and a durable political solution, thus preventing all-out civil war. Beijing is ready to “facilitate” dialogue.
2. Fighting terror – which means, in practice, al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS-Khorasan and the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Afghanistan should not be a haven for terrorist outfits – again.
3. The Taliban, for their part, should pledge a clean break with every terrorist outfit.
Atmar, according to diplomatic sources, fully agreed with Wang. And so did Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin. Atmar even promised to work with Beijing to crack down on ETIM, a Uighur terror group founded in China’s western Xinjiang. Overall, the official Beijing stance is that all negotiations should be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led.” (guts of story on link)
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
Good luck with all that.
Sounds familiar.
I hope Putin isn’t trusting Xi.
“Good luck with all that.”
Both of them are regimes that kill people who don’t do what they’re told. I think that A. The Afghanis understand and respect that approach, and B. Neither nation cares how many people they kill or who sends strong diplomatic notes regarding their approach. Afghanistan is about to become a slave state where, if people do what they’re told, they get to live. China and Russia will suck the wealth out, making the harshest British colonial rule look benign.
They all deserve one another.
“Afghanistan is about to become a slave state where, if people do what they’re told, they get to live. China and Russia will suck the wealth out, making the harshest British colonial rule look benign.”
Why do I like that outcome so much?
I think that is about what Afghanistan deserves.
And Russia and the PRC deserve a vicious Afghan resistance.
Though this time, we shouldn’t provide the mujahideen any support.
I hate to admit it, but I’d rather have the Taliban in concentration camps that to let them rampage through girls’ schools.
American “Liberals” deny the unchanging nature of world affairs - power vacuums are not left as a vacuum for long. They will be filled. You can chose to stand by as a bystander, to participate or to oppose. But denial is not a policy.
Am I saying we should aggressively counter Russian and/or Chinese moves vis-a-vis Afghanistan. Not exactly. But if we chose to be a bystander, we cannot pretend that there cannot be consequences that we could feel compelled, in time, to counter in some way, or see those power changes by Russia and/or China expand beyond Afghanistan. Our most likely response might be increasing efforts for military cooperation with India (east of Afghanistan/Pakistan) as well as continuing efforts against the Mullahs of Tehran (west of Afghanistan).
“Though this time, we shouldn’t provide the mujahideen any support.”
‘Ya, know? The CIA’s gonna be the CIA. They can’t help themselves. If the president doesn’t approve, he (she/it/67 other “genders”) won’t know about it.
I gotta wonder what Tom Clancy would say about the CIA these days?
When he was alive, he was oh-so-pro CIA. He said that they were heroes and we’d never know about their successes. His books were the best PR the CIA ever got.
Nowadays?
Why would you hate that?
The only way it could be better is if the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and their supporters were in mass graves.
In the case of Afghanistan, I say we cheer them on.
“The Taliban, for their part, should pledge a clean break with every terrorist outfit.”
That is a joke. In Afghan society their means of getting and keeping power IS by way of terror and the intimidation of terror that will result if cooperation not given.
“Nowadays?”
I suspect that the CIA is entirely up to date on their CRT, diversity and inclusion training. Like the recent Navy report that said the same for the Navy, but that the Navy was not ready or able to fight a war. CIA, not ready, able or even capable of helping America. My guess is they’re expending significant resources to keep tabs on the likes of Free Republic.
They are allies...pay attention.
You are 100% correct.
The CIA is doing no such thing. Their charter doesn’t extend to spying on Americans in America.
They let the Brits do that for them while the CIA spies on Brits and then hey trade.
/sarc
Also the FBI who’s responsibility does run spying on American citizens.
Did Ike and Churchill trust Stalin?
“The CIA is doing no such thing. Their charter doesn’t extend to spying on Americans in America.”
While working for Fairchild Weston, I was called to the lobby conference room. There were two well dressed men, in what at the time was practically a uniform. Three piece suit. The temperature outside was just shy of 100 with 100% humidity. They both rose, the FBI guy introduced himself and then the other guy, who presented credentials stating he was with the Defense Intelligence Agency. With that out of the way, they both removed their coats. They (well, the second guy) wanted to discuss something on a project I knew was a CIA contract. Therefore, the second man was a CIA agent. I knew through other sources that, at least at that time, if a CIA agent wanted something domestically, he had to be accompanied by an FBI agent. That was in Florida, so, pretty domestic. As for spying, I’d say if the NSA collected the data, it would be available to the CIA as well as the FBI.
From my own experience on dark projects, they considered themselves (the cleared people) to be above any laws or regulations. Such just didn’t apply to them. That was the attitude and I’m pretty sure it came down from the top. Of course, almost everyone I dealt with then was from either the WWII generation of the Korean War generation. The rules were indeed different. Or, at least their interpretation was.
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