THE American control of Afghanistan collapsed on August 15, 2021 when its capital, Kabul, fell into Taliban hands. All the drama and tragedy of the fall has been recorded the past two weeks in countless hours of news and videos of crowds swarming into Kabul airport hoping to ride a flight out on massive U.S. C-17 Globemaster IIIs.
The parallels to Saigon’s fall in the hands of the communists and the US’ hasty retreat in 1975 and other dramas have been correctly made; the story now shifts to the massive task of peace and rebuilding of Afghanistan.
Rebuilding Afghanistan, its peace and society, its economic and development now falls on the shoulders of the peraahan tunbaan (Afghan shirt and pants outfit held up by a cloth cord) and the turban clad Taliban officials of the new government in power.
The rebuilding seems an impossible task as the rival Northern Resistance Front announced its armed opposition to the Taliban while the U.S. freezes $ 10-billion of the Afghan government’s assets in the U.S.
The Taliban took no time in announcing that they had surrounded the Panjshir Valley stronghold of the Northern Resistance Front, which they could easily do with even only the overflowing remnants of the $24-billion military equipment (thousands of Humvees, trucks, weapons, tanks, planes etc.) the Americans left behind.
But with the $10-billion sequestered by the U.S. and the World Bank, IMF, ADB shutting their spigots off, where are the funds to run the government and the economy to come from?
The answer? – China! Why should we be surprised?
The Taliban already had China in mind many, many months before the fall of Kabul and the final exit of the U.S.
On July 28, 2021, the world was witness to the spectacular sight of a dozen men in turbans and peraahan tunbaan so distinctive of the Afghans, walking into the magnificent halls of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs backdropped with spectacularly wide panoramas of the mountains of China.
The Taliban, through spokesman Suhail Shaheen said, “China, our great neighboring country, can have a constructive and positive role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and also in the economic development and prosperity of the people of Afghanistan.
“It is expected [that] China [will] play its role.”
China’s foreign ministry spokesman said on August 31, “China will support the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan on the basis of respecting the wishes and demands of Afghanistan.”
While Afghanistan is dirt poor today with unemployment at 23% that will get worse as Western aid (on which 43 percent of the Afghan economy in the past depended) collapses.
However, its future seems assuredly secure with prosperity that could come in tapping its estimated $ 1-trillion of minerals and rare earth (from iron and copper to lithium and exotic earths lanthanum, neodymium etc.) much coveted in this era of high-tech smartphones, EVs, satellite communications, electronic warfare hardware, etc.
Some estimated that Afghanistan will take ten years to develop its mining industry to extract the minerals for the development of its nation, which is just a wink of an eye in the continuum of history.
Essential to this enterprise that will ensure the stability and prosperity of Afghanistan is the only outside country today that has the capital, technology and interest in developing Afghanistan – China. Fortunately, the interest of the two nations perfectly coincides today.
While the Wests and the United States have engaged for the past 500 years in the “racket” of war and plunder, recalling the book of World War I American general Smedley Butler “War is a racket”, that has earned the West trillions, China has found an even more profitable “racket” – the racket of building peace and prosperity but earns not only China stupendous wealth but as significantly the nations where this “peace racket” is brought to – essentially, today, through China’s philosophy of creating a multi-polar world and the Belt and Road Initiative.
The fall of Kabul and transition to the indigenous leadership of the Taliban which is also now initiating the building of an “inclusive government” embracing all Afghans, signals the continuing end of the Age of Imperialism and wars.
It is also, hopefully, the blooming of China’s vision of a “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”, and Afghanistan will be a shining model of this peace and development when it succeeds in the years to come.
Let us support the efforts of the Taliban and China to make a success of the Afghan liberation, celebrate the advent of a new link and development hub foreseen for Afghanistan with the BRI. What prospers one nation prosper all nations and mankind.
(Samahan si Ka Mentong Laurel at mga panauhin sa “Power Thinks” tuwing Miyerkules @6pm Live Global Talk News Radio (GTNR) sa Facebook at sa Talk News TV sa You Tube; at tuwing Linggo 8 to 10am sa RP1 738khz AM sa radyo).