According to remarks made last month by Haji Nooruddin Azizi, the country’s minister of commerce and industry, Afghanistan intends to participate in the BRI and CPEC plans. The Taliban government is constantly being attacked on issues such as women’s and girls’ rights, how Afghans are on the verge of extinction, and how the “unruly, fanatical Taliban” have little hope of assimilating into the international community.
Despite the unpalatable fact that the US and NATO have destroyed the Afghan people’s lives and livelihoods for the past 20 years, they have deposited $10 billion in their banks and refused to release it so that they can buy food and repair their deteriorating schools, hospitals, and roads, and they have barred Afghans from travelling to many Western countries.
Our PM is using terminology that the US, India, and all of its friends have been using for years now that CPEC is essentially halted and 20 years of successful diplomacy with the Afghans and the facilitation of peace talks have failed. Terrorism still poses a menace to the entire globe, not just Afghanistan and Pakistan, he wrote in a tweet.
The international community must maintain its vigilance. The urgent requirement is to increase international collaboration against the evolving terrorist threat matrix. This calls for the war on terror to be recalled. What reason do we have to pursue alliances with distant friends who have deceived us so frequently in recent memory when we may instead find strength in regionalism and our close neighbours? Or do we need this for puppets who are inept to win? Our presumed buddies appear to be trying to set fire to the very trunk of the tree while we are busy chopping the limbs we live on.
Read More: Taliban Point Finger at Pakistan
For example, according to a German publication, the ISI has been given the task of reigniting “the age-old animosity between the Achakzai and Noorzai tribes in the southwest zone… and starting an ethnic war among Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns throughout Afghanistan, as well as between the northern and southern directions.” Therefore, the Pakistan Army is aiding a revival of terror on Afghan territory while the PM and his cronies are calling for the Wild Wild West to get ready for another rescue. Unprecedented mayhem While all of this is going on in Pakistan, it appears that the ragged-tailed Afghans, whom the West accuses of being uncultured and radical, haven’t completely given up.
They appear to have learnt some lessons about independence and sovereignty as well as about finding strength in regionalism in place of dying globalism after fighting with two of the world’s superpowers for more than three decades. Afghanistan is making friends in the neighbourhood, as evidenced by the approval of the Chinatown Industrial Park project in April, the signing of an energy contract with Iran in July, and a hint at future agreements with Russia and Turkmenistan by the Afghan Ministry of Finance.
Additionally, the 80 recognised coalmines nationwide that the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum has identified have been encouraged to find purchasers for their coal. The construction of the multimodal route between China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan is another significant accomplishment. At the end of September, 12 containers carrying merchandise from China landed in the Kyrgyz Republic. They were then railroaded to Afghanistan.
At the beginning of this month, the Taliban inked a contract with Russia for around one million tonnes of gasoline, one million tonnes of diesel, 500,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and two million tonnes of wheat yearly, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi. Regarding diplomatic relations, Afghanistan is also being supported by Russia and China. The US was asked to release $7 billion in blocked Afghan cash by the two nations last month.
China’s foreign ministry (IEA) was also urging the international community to adopt an “objective attitude” towards the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. But is the fate of mankind, the fate of the oppressed, the downtrodden, and those who have been killed to protect the “interests” of the occupiers merely a question of conflict between strong nations? Additionally, it is in the occupiers’ best interests for the oppressed to allow the imperialists to use the wealth of their nations.
Does mankind as a whole have to remain mute, deaf, and apathetic observers? Or, does humanity have the right to defend and oppose the oppressors while standing up for its kind?
Read More: Afghanistan: The Economic Game Changer
And when we refer to humanity, we do not mean the United Nations or any of its other organisations, which have been pitifully failing the downtrodden for more than 70 years. “Humanity” refers to the masses who have been turned apolitical and mute by the relentless media barrage that tends to direct and control the desires, aspirations, and interests of the people.
And while it directs their interests, it makes sure that those interests serve rather than conflict with the “interests” of the powerful.