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Man, it's almost like people prefer it when you come to their country to build vital infrastructure instead of going there to blow up their grandparents.
China does fight radical Islamic terror, that's the actual stuff going on in Xinjiang. there are several Turkestan Islamic organisations in Afghanistan. it's just that specifically the Taliban and China have no bad blood directly
Well China's history of generally dealing with anyone, even it's worst enemies
like Americawould point towards them being willing to mutually trade with whatever Afghan government there will be in the coming months. It's quite an interesting policy that I have to research more.Terrorist organizations like the Taliban or ISIS gain popularity because they provide better material conditions in an increasingly destabilized region. Sure they let you fight America, but they also give you food, shelter, security, and anything else that America blew up. If the material conditions of Afghanistan can be improved, the Taliban can lose popularity even if they are the dominant political organization, because outside of these necessities, they don’t actually provide a lot.
This materialist analysis flies in the face of the neoconservative thought that has dominated American foreign policy for decades, which assumes that liberal democracy, being so pure, is the inherent basis of all societies. This meant America could destroy whoever they wanted, because it was simply a given that true freedom loving liberal democracy would rise from the ashes. Of course, to the cynics among us, this is just :cope: that legitimizes imperialism.
So the West is 20 years at war in Afghanistan and tries to win hearts and minds. At the end China gets all the natural resources and is hailed as a friend. Seriously what kind of idiots are making our policies and strategies...
Reddit thread top post
The west literally cannot not think about other countries as resources to be extracted. Omg.
And they completely fail to see the disconnect between bombing a country to pieces and winning the hearts and minds of its people.
If they manage to pull this off without ending up in a ground war with terries they really will take over the world by 2050. This is something Russia, Britain and the USA couldn't do.
When even the Taliban doesn’t condemn the uyghur “genocide”, you should really stop to think
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan_independence_movement#Government_in_Exile
One of the most seminal events of the East Turkestan independence movement was the establishment of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile by a group of Uyghur, Kazakh, and Uzbek East Turkistani independence activists from across the globe in Washington D.C. on 14 September 2004.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salih_Hudayar
Salih Hudayar (Uighur: سالىھ خۇدايار; born 21 May 1993) is a Uyghur American politician known for advocating for East Turkistan independence. He founded the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement and has since been leading the movement calling for the "restoration of East Turkistan's independence." On November 11, 2019, Hudayar was elected as the Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed East Turkistan Government-in-Exile... At the age of 7, Hudayar came to the United States with his family as political refugees. He grew up in Oklahoma and joined the Oklahoma Army National Guard while enrolled in the ROTC program in hopes of becoming a military officer, he was later given a medical discharge due to a kidney condition. Hudayar studied International Studies & Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, graduating in January 2017.
the thing is that the Taliban are 1 group in Afghanistan. they represent 1 ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pushtu, and don't have much say or influence outside of that. there are many many small local groups including Afghan Uyghurs, remnants of ISIS, and so on, who do not follow the Taliban
Oh boy, this is going to cause one hell of a struggle session.
Also, I've seen some leftist takes that the US withdrawal is going to lead to China being sucked into "the graveyard of empires", so this development is pretty surprising to many on the left too.
I’ve seen some leftist takes that the US withdrawal is going to lead to China being sucked into “the graveyard of empires”,
This sounds some real Reddit-brain shit to me. It assumes China has the same ambitions of extractivist economic imperialism in Afghanistan that the United States did.
My understanding is that the US M.O. was basically to blow up key infrastructure, plug the country into the global free market system, create a space for western firms can operate with legal assurances, loan them a shit ton of money to pay those western firms to fix the shit they just broke, then have them pay back the loans over the next 100 years under a regime of austerity as the mineral wealth is siphoned out of the country.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the political economy of Afghanistan, but what I assume happened is 20 years into this quagmire, the cost/benefit analysis simply never added up. The US-aligned government in Kabul practically operated as an "autonomous zone" surrounded by a vast expanse of mountainous terrain it had little to no influence over. The prospect of building out mines, factories, and infrastructure throughout a mountainous, landlocked, hostile country never turned out to be a sound investment. Why would anyone pour western capital into building a factory in Afghanistan which needs to be guarded by coldblooded Blackwater mercenaries around the clock and where rugged trade routes need to be patrolled with military convoys, when you can reap the same level of exploitation with far less risk in a place like Bangladesh?
They could never get the country into a condition where it was a profitable investment for anybody other than the security contractors and political consultants. That meant there were insufficient foreign capital investments being made to really capture any usurious IMF loans. This in turn made it so the military invasion and occupation never offered a return on investment. Instead of being able to leave the people of Afghanistan paying eternal interest for the privilege of Coca-Cola and having their country destroyed, Uncle Sam got left holding the bag.
China likely has much different interests in Afghanistan than the US. They're likely much more interested in regional stability than they are in turning the country into a mining colony, reservoir of sweatshop labor, or military launchpad for imperial conquest. An autonomous but relatively stable Afghanistan is a net positive for them even if the cost of reconstruction comes at a break-even price or a loss. On the other hand, the only way the US invasion was going to pay off is if the country's economic system remained permanently under their thumb.
As a neighbouring country, dealing with whoever is in power is the path of least resistance, and as problematic as the Taliban is, for them it is much better than having US-aligned free-market fundamentalists chock full of military bases creating a non-stop stream of refugees and black markets (particularly of military hardware) right on your border.
Hell, assuming China does have selfish interests in the mineral wealth or labor power of the country, they still aren't in a position where they have an absolute need to capitalize on it at any cost for the relationship to be beneficial. There is no sunken cost they need to chase to the depths of hell.
While reading this, I started wondering how Iraq could connect up here, knowing it was on the other side of Iran. Looking at this wiki map, looks like before this Afghanistan stuff, they had a separate road through Pakistan and up through the other *-stans. Maybe with Afghanistan on board, they could make one nice central one through that whole area.
Also, the thought of China improving the material conditions of the Iraqis (and Iranis too) where the US mostly failed would make these combined things doubly hilarious.
The cope to this is absolutely delicious. The best and purest form of cope I've ever witnessed. Lmao.
It's amazing how badly the US is losing. Holy shit.
we tried to give them a better life. we've succeeded at it before! (Korea)
Unfortunately the Muslims are a lot more resistant to change. So we just have to deal with it.
:agony-deep:
It's pretty amazing. The scale of atrocities in Korea was very roughly on par with the atrocities committed in Vietnam. So while at least libs have some vague notions that we did bad things in Vietnam, no one in the US outside of socialists who have bothered to read up on it know how evil US actions were in Korea.
Literally the only thing I bet >50% of Americans know about the Korean War is that M.A.S.H. takes place in it.
"We've tried killing them in droves and we're all out of ideas! The barbarians simply have no concept of sanctity of life!"
I believe you're referring to Rambo 3, another Oscar-winning film from the brilliant mind of the same auteur.
Seeing as Rocky IV happened after the Sino-Soviet split, I'm seeing a theme here.
The US could very possibly begin to fund terrorist groups once they are kicked out of Afghanistan and China starts investing.
Just yesterday I was reading a thread (probably on Reddit) relishing in the idea that soon China will be drawn into the "Graveyard of Empires" just like the USA was! If a fraction of this news' potential comes to fruition, China will genuinely dominate the world stage by mid-century.
Who is the Taliban even today? Isn't it mostly warlords who attach themselves to far-right Islamism out of convenience rather than out of some heartfelt conviction?
