According to Afghanistan's Toro News, the US Special Inspector General's Office for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a federal watchdog, has revealed in its regular report that China has held more than 200 meetings with Taliban terrorists. reported this weekend.
SIGAR published this information in its quarterly magazine report Officially released on October 30, it summarizes the current situation in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the amount of money the US is currently spending in the country, and the country's dire humanitarian and economic situation. The report says the Taliban has passed a set of strictest “morals” laws since returning to power in 2021, giving terrorists the power to abuse civilians for alleged violations of Islamic law, including inappropriate male beards and public speaking. He pointed out that he gave. Public for women.
SIGAR detailed that the Taliban, despite an increasingly long list of atrocities against its own people, has made significant diplomatic advances, largely with support from communist China.
“Despite the Taliban's repressive rule, the group continues to build relationships with regional countries,” the SIGAR report explains. “According to a new report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Taliban has announced 1,382 diplomatic meetings with at least 80 countries from August 2021 to February 2024, with the majority of them being held by regional partners. It was done.”
“China had the most diplomatic ties with the Taliban at 215, followed by Turkey (194), Iran (169), Qatar (135), and Pakistan (118),” the report said. he pointed out.
The Chinese Communist Party, although officially an atheist state organization, enthusiastically supports the Taliban, which is a Sunni Islamic jihadist terrorist organization. In December, Beijing became the first capital to host an official Taliban ambassador, but Bilal Karimi received the position without China formally recognizing the Taliban as the Afghan government. Chinese officials, like the Iranian government and several other neighboring countries, have accepted the Taliban as an “interim” government, but it is not an official government and the Taliban does not represent Afghanistan at the United Nations.
Taliban terrorists seized control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, after a swift and highly successful operation to overthrow the then US-backed Afghan government. After President Joe Biden announced he was terminating an agreement between Kabul and the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from Kabul by May 1, 2021, the Taliban launched an attack on defunct Afghan forces in April of the same year. started. predecessor Donald Trump's administration.
From the early days of the Taliban's return to power, terrorists eagerly embraced the possibility of collaborating with communist China, and were eager to support the Chinese Communist Party's ongoing campaign against Uyghurs and other majority Muslim ethnic groups. It has ignored, and in some cases supported, the genocide. On the other side of the Afghan border, occupied East Turkestan. Taliban leaders began seeking Chinese funding for their operations soon after the capture of Kabul, and were especially interested in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The scheme is a global lending project in which China provides predatory loans to poor countries for expensive infrastructure development. Each country then takes control of the project and its land when it becomes insolvent. Last year, Taliban leaders hinted at the possibility of formally joining the Belt and Road Initiative.
In October, the Taliban's official ambassador to China, Zhao Xing, announced that the Communist Party was preparing to establish “zero tariff” trade with the Taliban. Taliban ambassador to Beijing, Bilal Karimi, reportedly said, “We will promote Taliban products in the Chinese market, including products such as almonds, apricot grains, pine nuts, and figs, as well as saffron, sweet-smelling herbs, and yarlan.” Therefore, he attended an exhibition held in Shanghai on Sunday.'' ,” According to This was reported to the Taliban's Bakhtar news agency.
In addition to China, the SIGAR report noted that the latest countries to host some kind of diplomatic representation of the Taliban are Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two countries that have traditionally had friendly relations with the United States. . Russia is also working to improve relations with the Taliban, which requires a formal process to be removed from the official list of foreign terrorist organizations (the group is not on the U.S. equivalent list).
“In July, President Putin publicly stated that Russia considers the Taliban an ally in the fight against terrorism,” SIGAR added.
The highest-ranking government official in the world to have visited Taliban officials in Kabul so far is Uzbekistan's Prime Minister Abdullah Alipov, according to the report. Although the United Nations does not officially recognize the Taliban as representing Afghanistan, it maintains contacts with the group, which is said to provide humanitarian aid to Afghans. Citing criticism from other observers, SIGAR lamented that the UN Security Council was pandering to the Taliban's unwarranted demands to conform to its fundamentalist interpretation. shariaor Islamic law by “sending an all-male delegation to the conference.”
Taliban leaders celebrated in September that they now control 39 Afghan missions around the world, even though they do not recognize any single country as Afghanistan's legitimate rulers.
“Calls on the international community and the United Nations to assess Afghanistan based on current realities; [Taliban official] “Mawlawi al-Muttaqi called for a more pragmatic approach in diplomatic relations with the Islamic emirate,” the Taliban's Bakhtar News reported.
The United Nations has invited the Taliban to participate in the Conference of the Parties' (COP29) climate change alert summit, which begins this week. Taliban leaders have repeatedly claimed they are interested in combating the alleged “climate crisis.”
“This is the first time we have been invited to such a conference since the establishment of the Islamic Emirate,” said Matiul Haq Khalis, chairman of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS). said Afghan news agency Toro News reported this week. “We aim to share the scope of Afghanistan's climate impacts and related challenges in various ways during this conference. This is an opportunity to strengthen our relationship.”
