FUTURE PROSPECTS AND SOLUTIONS AND UNCERTAIN DIRECTIONS
The global situation is at a very critical crossroads, but nowhere is this more apparent than in our own region. To the common observer nothing makes sense. And the chaos all around worries the common citizen. Nobody can tell what is happening, why — or where it will all lead. People are trying to use outdated conceptions and the emotionally charged propaganda of various quarters which is loaded with agendas and far from reality… to try and interpret events that are beyond them but which are directly affecting them. Hard realism is not the common man’s piece of cake.
The manner in which matters have changed in the past three years after the Covid pandemic — Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and the downturn in the Pakistani situation…has shaken everything to the core, and yet people are at a loss to connect the dots.
I will begin by presenting the views of a Russian expert Andrew Korybko on the current possibilities of Afghanistan and what considerations will likely guide the policies of major powers such as his country with regard to Afghanistan, and what it poses for the coming times. For this purpose, I am directly reproducing a recent comment of his below, in his own words. They might come as a shock to most, and dismay many:
TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT AFGHANISTAN ON THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF THE TALIBAN’S RETURN TO POWER
The Taliban returned to power three years ago on 15 August 2021 after capturing Kabul amidst the panicked Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. Most of the world has since forgotten about that country due to the Ukrainian Conflict, however, which is why it’s worthwhile updating everyone about what’s happening there. What follows are the ten things that folks should know about Afghanistan:
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1. American Sanctions Remain a Major Impediment To Socio-Economic Recovery
The US continues to sanction Afghanistan and freeze those of its assets that that the former government placed within its jurisdiction. This has impeded the country’s socio-economic recovery, though that was precisely the point. The US hopes that the difficult living conditions that it contributed to creating might one day give rise to a rebellion that could threaten the Taliban’s control of the country.
2. The Taliban Has Yet To Form an Ethno-Politically Inclusive Government
The Taliban previously pledged to form an inclusive government, which observers interpreted as a commitment to elevate the roles of ethnic minorities and the opposition, but that has yet to come to pass. They’ve also imposed restrictions on woman since returning to power. These policies have served as the pretext for the international community’s refusal to recognize their government’s legitimacy.
3. Afghanistan’s Astronomically Large Rare Earth Deposits Are Still Untapped
The lack of formal recognition has complicated the Taliban’s plans to profit from the estimated $1 trillion worth of rare earth minerals under Afghanistan’s soil, which could make it integral to global supply chains one day. Its economy could also be revolutionized if production facilities are established inside the country and these serve as anchors for more diverse foreign investments.
4. Opium Production Is Practically Non-Existent After the Taliban Banned It
The Talban banned opium cultivation eight months after returning to power, which led to a whopping 95% reduction in production. Afghanistan is now no longer the world’s opium capital, but it’s struggled to replace this crop with other ones, thus leaving some farmers out of work. They might in turn become more susceptible to joining terrorist groups in order to replace their lost income.
5. ISIS-K Hasn’t Been Wiped Out Despite the Taliban’s Best Efforts
ISIS-K is the only force inside of Afghanistan capable of toppling the Taliban, but they haven’t been wiped out despite the latter’s best efforts over the past three years. They continue to recruit new members over social media, train some of them, and plan attacks from their sanctuaries there. The Taliban requires more intelligence and better arms in order to quash this global threat once and for all.
6. The Taliban’s Ties with Former Patron Pakistan Have Deteriorated
The expectation that some had of Pakistan restoring its influence over Afghanistan upon the Taliban’s return to power were shattered after the group turned against its patron by hosting “Pakistani Taliban” (TTP) militants that Islamabad considers to be terrorists. Tensions between these two have pushed them to the brink of war, but cooler heads have prevailed thus far, though they might not prevail forever.
7. A Planned Canal Has Worsened Relations with The Central Asian Republics
Afghanistan’s ties with Pakistan aren’t the only ones to deteriorate over the past three years since the Taliban’s planned Qosh Tepa Canal has worsened relations with the Central Asian Republics. Ties with secular Tajikistan were already troubled since it objects to the fundamentalist Taliban’s alleged mistreatment of its co-ethnics but this brings Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan on its bad side too.
8. India and the Taliban Surprisingly Patched Up Their Prior Problems
Taliban-Pakistani tensions aided the group’s rapprochement with India, against whom it used to train Kashmiri militants, but integration into its North-South Transport Corridor has yet to be completed due to the aforesaid problems with the Central Asian Republics and Iran. Even so, this might have influenced their decision to recognize Kashmir as separate from Pakistan, which aligns with India’s interests.
9. Russia Might Become the First Country to Recognize the Taliban’s Government
Economic and security interests are responsible for Russia officially considering lifting the Taliban’s terrorist designation and subsequently recognizing its government. The Kremlin wants to tap into Afghanistan’s astronomically large mineral deposits that the Soviets first discovered, utilize the country’s transregional connectivity potential, and facilitate the Taliban’s anti-terrorist operations against ISIS-K.
10. Afghanistan Can Play a Pivotal Role In Eurasia’s Multipolar Integration
Last but not least, the restoration of Afghanistan’s independence after two decades of Western occupation enables it to play a pivotal role in Eurasia’s multipolar integration, though ties with its neighbors must improve before that happens. In that event, it can facilitate North-South trade between Russia/Central Asia and Pakistan/India and East-West trade between Iran and Central Asia/China.
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As can be seen, while Afghanistan no longer functions as a US airbase in the Eurasian Heartland, it’s now a source of unconventional threats to the region after the Taliban returned to power via its hosting of the TTP, its controversial canal plans, and failure to defeat ISIS-K. Nevertheless, Afghanistan has more geostrategic potential than ever before, but it must resolve these issues in order to capitalize upon this.
Such realist pragmatism is born of sheer necessity and one cannot blame Russia for thinking like this. The diplomatic representatives of China and Iran also attended the recent Taliban’s recent parade to celebrate the third year of their takeover from the American puppet Kabul regime or “republic” as they like to call it.
In the light of what has been said above, it is clear that all those involved and arrayed in this region are at a major historic crossroads of immense consequences, unlike ever before. And yet the way forward is as murky, confusing and horrifying as it ever could have been to most people. Further, those affected most of all by this predicament are the potent characters central to the events and problems of our local context — the Pashtun-Afghan ethnicity.
The Pashtun-Afghans are a people who are fractious in nature. They are predators and raiders descended from ancient Scythian Steppe horsemen, and thus far their great majority remains unsettled and primitive in their way of life. Even those of their tribal populations that have taken root in certain lands remain in a constant state of turbulence and flux, and are governed by a criminal outlook on life and partake of a low maintenance lifestyle as a result. This of course has imparted to them the “invincible” quality for which they are universally known….but has also resulted in their lack of institutions and true historical narrative which are the necessary pre-requisites for any civilisation worth the name. Nobody cares for, nor is aware of the proper antecedents of vicious raiders who live in constant strife and turmoil and who have arrived here in the manner of a pack of growling wolves in the night, ready to pounce and devour any prey that comes their way. One is constrained to think of the reasons for why Providence has created such people, but the observations of the medieval Muslim scientist and philosopher Ibne Khaldun come to mind regarding his ideas about the rise and fall of civilisations and the mechanisms involved. The Pashtun-Afghans seem to have been created in this form purely as the specific agents of the mechanism to destroy and regenerate decadent civilisations and societies, and of this we have ample evidence when we study their past actions in history. Certainly for us in the present, it is enough and it is gratifying that they defeated the evil power of America in Afghanistan after a twenty year occupation, whatever else the costs involved may be. My friends may not agree, but then reality gives one nothing for free.
But the situation cannot forever continue like this. The CIA Jihad in Afghanistan devolved pivotally on the Pashtun-Afghan ethnicity, and its fires still burn fiercely after 45 years with all being at a loss of how to deal with these consequences, most of all the perpetrators. Pashtuns-Afghans have been around in this area for a good two millennia; they were previously not prominent or dominant because they lived on the peripheries of great Turco-Iranian empires, which were in the control of proper governments and mechanisms of administration. All those with commonsense, friends and enemies both, realise the fact that the highest and most characteristic modern political achievement of the Pashtun-Afghan ethnicity on its own is the Taliban form of government. But that has its obvious drawbacks.
Before contemplating the solutions of the problems that now face us, we need to realise the fact that as the Pashtun-Afghan people are a Turco-Iranian people — but in and of themselves they lack their own history. We therefore need to integrate them into the larger mainstream of Turco-Iranian history as a whole before anything else, which documents their actual role here, whatever that may or may not have been. The menace has to be pacified by bringing it under the umbrella of a larger Turco-Iranian entity, as it always was before — till about 500 years ago when Timurid policies and interference stirred the Afghan pot and made it boil over. That would in turn contribute to the spirit of a renascence and reorganisation of the Turco-Iranian entity as a whole.
Current socio-political concepts in vogue or acceptability do not seem to be able to address the chronic crises posed by the Pashtuns-Afghans. Perhaps that is the very reason why fate has forced a confrontation with them. Or why such people are around to try us in the first place. After all, the amount of corruption committed under American auspices in this region over the past 45 years has been legendary to say the least…..as America struggled frenetically to wrestle the Russians into the dust of history. But didn’t succeed. Every thing has a reason, but the perpetrators of all this epochal chaos and filth have tried to obfuscate facts and cover their tracks. But brushing facts under the carpet doesn’t get rid of them, and they soon start to stink there. Justice has a way of stating its case. The Americans are in fact worse marauders, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. They employed their corrupt and cutthroat Pakistani and Mujahedeen hirelings who ruthlessly used the Pashtun-Afghan Gog-Magogs to sabotage the reformist and humanist Soviet Union. In doing so they created a menace which still assails the world, and with which we will now have to deal effectively 45 years later.
That said, there are few in and around our immediate region who would welcome any such prospect of a great or imperial renaissance of Turco-Iranian Central Asian power (even if it is as a sub-unit on the Eurasian level). The Indian ethnicity (both of Pakistan and in India proper) who were affected in the past by successive Turco-Iranian empires, and were the beneficiaries of the protection and empowerment granted to them by the old Anglo-American imperial order over the last 200 years will now be horrified and dismayed at the crumbling of that order, and the uncertain prospects it will bring for them. Both Pakistanis and Indians are sure to get together and make their plans to thwart such a massive political and cultural reorganisation….although this time around I foresee any Turco-Iranian Central Asian power as being a sub-unit of Eurasia and under greater Russia’s European influence, and not as marauding Islamic empires as was previously the case, if all goes well! But unless the Turco-Iranian socio-political paradigm is born anew, I see no hope regarding the chronic and grave problems assailing our region.