As the future of Afghanistan lies in the balance, a nine-member delegation led by Taliban leader Mullah Baradar Akhund met Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi on Tuesday (July 27) and he assured the Chinese that the Taliban will not allow Afghanistan to be used against the security of any country.
Mullah Baradar is the senior-most leader of the Taliban and his meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on July 27, means this Sunni Islamist group is seeking the support of Beijing to get control of Afghanistan with the assurance that the Uighur extremist movement will not get any shelter in Afghanistan through the Wakhan corridor.
This meeting is taking place when the United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin is visiting India. Taliban said in a statement that Mullah Baradar travelled to China for two days as the head of a high-ranking delegation and held separate meetings with Wang, China’s deputy foreign minister and Chinese special representative for Afghanistan.
“The meetings focused on political, economic, and security issues related to the two countries, the current situation in Afghanistan, and the peace process,” the statement added.
What this actually means is that the Taliban is trying to assure the world that no Pakistan-based terror groups and pan-Islamic groups like Al Qaeda will use Afghanistan to establish terror training camps for targeting countries opposed to radical Islam.
This is contrary to the Taliban because, during its first term in power from 1996-2001, the Taliban gave shelter to majority of pan-Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Ansar, HuJI Bangladesh, held training camps for Pakistan-based groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the 9/11 terror attack was planned from its soil by Osama Bin Ladan who was later killed in Pakistan.
The Taliban delegation thanked China for its continued cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
However, the most important agreement the Taliban wants from China is to help them establish an emirate in Afghanistan, but at the same time, this Islamic group thinks the US may have second thoughts after reports of large numbers of civilian casualties killed by the Taliban.
The US has already declared that it will leave Afghanistan on August 31. “While Pakistan is trying to leverage its influence on Taliban to get close to revive its ties with the US, the Sunni Islamist group is piggybacking on Islamabad to strengthen its ties with China. The Chinese, on their part, are looking towards expanding the Belt and Road initiative into Afghanistan and thereon to Central Asia for taking a grip on bilateral trade with Afghanistan and exploiting resources like coal, copper and iron ore in that country,” said diplomats based in US and India.
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