[Welcoming Remarks | Afghanistan/Taliban – China Relations Forum | September 28, 2021, 3:00 pm.]

Recently US  President Joe Biden delivered a speech at a General Assembly of the United Nations basically to assert that the future belongs to those who share the values of freedom, human rights and democracy that America upholds.  He called for unity among those who share the same values to address the major problems of the pandemic, climate change, and the egregious attacks on global economic political structures that would protect equality, human dignity and human rights. 

In his talk he never once mentioned China.  But he clearly portrayed China as a counterfoil to American values, that would seek advancement through the domination of the weak, through the expansion of its territory on land and sea, through economic coercion and disinformation.  He even spoke of investments in infrastructure in weak countries that was of low quality, corrupt, and destructive of the environment. 

The reference was so clear that shortly after XI JInping sent in a videoed message rejecting the American portrayal of his government as authoritarian, predatory and expansionist.  He insisted that China supports peaceful development for all peoples.  Democracy is not a special right reserved to an individual country like the USA.  There is a diversity of political and economic systems through which the interests of the peoples of various sovereign nations are served.  Human rights and the common good can be advanced in ways different from the manner in which the US and its allies appreciate human rights.  China has no interest to impose or even urge its manner of communist party led self-governance on other countries.

It was an ironic rejoinder to the missionary Biden's pitch for global democracy and freedom, when in his country democracy had not been able to proclaim him as President without the relentless and disruptive assertion of the former President, Donald Trump, allegedly without basis, that the election had been rigged and so invalid.  His preaching about human rights and the importance of individuals rung hollow in the background of the "black lives matter movement" against manifest systemic injustice and racism targeting blacks, browns, and yellows in  the US.  Indeed radicalized white supremacy  was now formally named by US Intelligence as the most serious security threat in the US;  this was on full display in the January 6 insurrection against the US Capitol, whose masterminds have yet to be held accountable. Meanwhile, human rights and individual freedoms in the US apparently embraced the right of ordinary people to own high-power military-grade firearms – and day in and day out to use them in mass shootings.  The loss of lives, the tears, and the outrage against such occurrences are impotent to stop them against the powerful private interests of the National Rifle Association.  At the same time, the Statue of Liberty's lofty message of hope and welcome, "Give me your tired your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me.  I lift up my lamp besides the golden shore," is totally belied by the image of uniformed border patrol mounted on horses whipping Haitian mothers and children to prevent them from reaching US shores and huge C-17's deporting them back to Haiti by the thousands without benefit of asylum processing as provided by US law. 

If this is the future that America and its allies offer the world, who wants it?

After Afghanistan spawned the Al Qaeda terrorists that twenty years ago launched the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the US would have liked to have re-created Afghanistan in its political and cultural image and likeness.  So too Russia.  But both countries failed.  Twenty years ago, the US and its NATO alliance booted out the so-called terrorist Taliban from Afghan rule;  twenty years later, the US, after investing trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to shape Afghanistan in its image and likeness, fled Afghanistan with the Taliban back in control.  Shaping Afghanistan in its image and likeness manifestly included corruption in its surrogate government and the relentless pursuit of self-interest "in the image and likeness of US lived democracy."   Emblematic of its ignominious withdrawal was its inability to prevent an ISIS-K led suicide bombing attack which killed 13 US Marines and hundreds of Afghans wishing to flee into the US heaven.  In trying to make sure another such attack would not be launched, an over-the-border missile attack, meant to take out terrorists intent on bombing the airport, killed a family of ten, most of them children.  Their intelligence indicated the driver had loaded lethal explosives against the US in his van.  The truth was he had only loaded water for his family.  The US military has meanwhile admitted the error of this "righteous" attack and has said, "Sorry."

Biden did not even blush as he rehashed his "America is back" rhetoric at the United Nations to save the world in closest collaboration with its allies and friends – even as it had just blindsided its oldest ally, France, as it announced the Australia-United Kingdom-US (AUKUS) nuclear submarine agreement to trump Chinese interests.  In doing so it not only diminished France as a European ally but pulled Australia out of a delicate nuclear-non-proliferation zone, with serious consequences for the Australian people in case of nuclear war.  And in making Australia nuclear, was it not itself proliferating nuclear arms that it rails against except when it is in its perceived self-interest?

All this is not irrelevant as we contemplate the role that China is not only willing to play but is actually playing in Afghanistan's reconstruction.  The relationship between China and Afghanistan goes back 15 centuries to the Silk Road which traversed Afghanistan as the inevitable Eurasian link between east and west.  Its history witnessed Chinese monks bringing Buddhism to Afghanistan.  Between China and Afghanistan there has always been a sturdy mutual respect and appreciation;  never did one side attempt to take over the other.  Indeed, while Russia and the United States were preoccupied trying to shape Afghanistan in their image and likeness, China was busy building up vital commercial relations  with the Afghan people.  China today is Afganistan's largest investor in its energy and mineral resources.  Both former president Hu Jintao and today's Xi Jinping of China have declared China's willingness to help in the reconstruction of Afghanistan – not through an imposition of its political and cultural image and likeness – but through recognition of Afghanistan's difference and independence from China, and their willingness to find common ground in such as minerals management, infrastructure and communications development. 

Yet, is China's respect for diversity strong enough to allow it to deal with the "terrorist" Taliban from which the US shielded it during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan? And how will China protect itself from possible Taliban adventurism in its politically sensitive Xinjian Autonomous region while opening its crucial border to Afghanistan for increased trade? Will China's commercial and financial strength and farsightedness allow it to withstand the temptation of subjugating Afghanistan through a pernicious debt spiral?

It is in this context that we welcome all of you to this online forum on Afghanistan-Taliban – and China relations sponsored jointly by the Department of History and Political Science, the Department of International Studies and the Center for Political and International Affairs. 

We are today most privileged and grateful to especially welcome to this forum Professor Shrikanth Kondapali of Jawalharlal Nehru University.

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