[Epoch Times, August 25, 2021]The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has aroused criticism in the U.S. and internationally. In China, there have been discussions about Afghanistan as a “major power quagmire”. Why does a small Afghanistan become a “major power quagmire” that plunges the Soviet Union and the United States into one after another, and will the CCP succeed in the future? Of the three major countries in the world, the first two have been tried, and Afghanistan is the historical channel of the CCP’s “Belt and Road” plan. Will the CCP include Afghanistan as an important transit country for the “Belt and Road” initiative? This is a hot topic recently.
1. The international impact of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan
From the Obama era to the Trump era, the United States has been planning to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, and finally achieved the goal of withdrawal in Biden’s hands. But Biden messed up the planned and step-by-step withdrawal of troops, which aroused widespread international and domestic criticism.
When President Trump was in office, he prepared a conditional, step-by-step, back-up, and guaranteed withdrawal plan from Afghanistan, but it was put aside by Biden. What Biden carried out was a chaotic and sudden troop withdrawal. He neither negotiated with the German army in Afghanistan, but also left tens of thousands of American citizens and people from other Western countries aside, and hurriedly left a large number of sophisticated weapons to the Taliban, causing peace in the United States. International public opinion is in great uproar. In addition to Britain’s dissatisfaction, Germany internally criticized each other because its troops and citizens were too late to arrange the withdrawal in Afghanistan, and the pro-Democratic media in the United States also came forward to criticize.
What is more noteworthy is that this withdrawal has exposed serious problems. The U.S. military has long supported the former Afghan government and its army. From salary to weapons, from training to literacy, a lot of money was spent. As a result, the U.S. army went on its feet, and the government and its army immediately collapsed on the spot. It was not defeated, but scattered. Like an avalanche. The Taliban marched into various places and encountered no resistance at all in many places. The original government troops either fled one after another or surrendered.
In this situation, the Biden administration has been in office for more than half a year, so why didn’t he notice it beforehand? The questions left in it have not only caused a review of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, but also made U.S. allies worry about the ability of the U.S. to operate internationally. Although Bush’s decision to send troops to Afghanistan was Bush’s decision, the situation in Afghanistan is difficult to clean up. Successive administrations in the United States have long agreed and even predicted that the Taliban will come back after the U.S. withdrawal. However, Biden’s method of cleaning up the mess is so clumsy. Beyond the expectations of the international community. At the same time, there was a voice of gloating in China, and the Taliban went to Tianjin to meet with Foreign Minister Wang Yi of the Chinese Communist Party. Recently, they reiterated that it has close ties with the Chinese Communist Party, which makes people doubt whether the Chinese Communist Party will fill the vacuum left by the United States in Afghanistan. ?
2. The “Mire” in Afghanistan during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union
Afghanistan is not a good place, not because it is powerful, but because it is a big country quagmire. There is also an exaggerated saying that Afghanistan is the “cemetery of a big country.” How can a country with extremely weak national power become a “cemetery of great powers”? In fact, to say that Afghanistan is the “cemetery of great powers” means that once a great power is caught in it, it will be difficult to pull out its legs smoothly. It does not mean that Afghanistan can defeat the great power itself.
Fifty years ago, Afghanistan was the forefront of the US-Soviet Cold War and the Sino-Soviet Cold War. In 1973, a leftist regime supported by the Soviet Union emerged in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union wanted to weaken the CCP’s ally Pakistan by supporting this regime. In 1978, there was a military coup d’etat within this regime. The leader who came to power did not listen to the words of the Soviet Union and was killed by Soviet special forces. At the same time, the Afghan anti-government forces began to grow, and the new Afghan puppet regime was unable to deal with the anti-government forces. Guerrilla warfare, requesting the Soviet Union to send troops. Then the Soviet Union sent a large number of troops into Afghanistan to fight against the anti-government forces.
In the context of the US-Soviet Cold War, the United States actively supported Afghanistan’s civilian forces against the Soviet occupation forces by providing them with anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles, while the CCP provided conventional light weapons. In addition, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia also helped the resistance forces in Afghanistan. With the support of the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency trained 100,000 jihadist guerrillas from 1979 to 1992 and recruited many volunteers in Muslim countries. Go to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet army. Among them was bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian whose organization later evolved into an anti-American “Al Qaeda” organization. The CCP also sent military advisers to Afghanistan to assist in the training of jihadists, and also opened training camps for the Afghan resistance organization in China.
In order to invade and occupy Afghanistan, the Soviet Union established the 40th Army in Tashkent in December 1979. It governs airborne troops, motorized infantry, tanks, self-propelled artillery, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-aircraft guns, air assaults, aviation and other units, with a military strength of more than 100,000. people. This war with the Afghan jihadists cost the Soviet Union a heavy price. 14,000 people were killed, 53,000 disabled, and 118 fighters, 333 helicopters, 147 tanks, and 1,314 armored vehicles were lost. Military vehicles, 433 cannons and tractors, 13,000 trucks. The difficult and burdensome Soviet Union finally withdrew in May 1988 and completely withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989. Therefore, some people claim that Afghanistan is the “Vietnam of the Soviet Union.”
3. After 9/11, the US military fell into the “quagmire” of Afghanistan
During the ten-year Soviet-Afghan War, Afghanistan was devastated by years of wars, a large number of educated elites were exodus, and poor people planted opium and sold drugs for their livelihoods. The Afghan countryside became one of the most backward and undeveloped areas in the world. Due to the religious and ethnic hostility among the ancient tribes of the country, internal conflicts and disputes continue.
The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist movement that originated in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan in 1994, began to rise and gradually developed into an armed group with political and religious influence. It finally captured the capital Kabul in 1996 and gained power. In 1997, the country was renamed “Afghanistan”. The Islamic Emirate” implements Islamic rule. But other tribes in Afghanistan who opposed the Taliban formed the “Northern Alliance” and occupied some areas. The Taliban provide shelter and assistance to terrorist organizations, especially bin Laden’s Al-Qaida organization.
After the September 11 incident in 2001, the United States and its allies began to support the anti-Taliban forces. At the same time, they sent troops to Afghanistan to directly attack the Taliban forces. As a result, the Taliban regime collapsed. The original purpose of the US military was to arrest members of terrorist organizations such as Bin Laden and punish the Taliban for supporting him. It was later discovered that the situation in Afghanistan was much more complicated than imagined. To some extent, the fate of the Soviet army is similar to that of the Soviet army. The US army can rely on its military advantage to achieve tactical success, but it cannot transform Afghan society. The Taliban forces still operate in remote mountainous areas of Afghanistan, launching terrorist attacks from time to time.
At the end of 2001, the main anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan gathered in Bonn, Germany, and established a government after returning home. In October 2004, the elected president was elected. But Afghanistan is still extremely poor, the warlords are separatist, and the government is corrupt. According to a 2016 report by Transparency International, a German organization, one-eighth of the aid funds provided by the international community to the Afghan government were embezzled by senior officials.
The recently collapsed Afghan government mainly relies on the support of the mortal enemy of the Taliban, the “Northern Alliance”. The “Northern Alliance” is an alliance of warlords composed of ethnic minorities (Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc.) living in northern Afghanistan. A large number of ethnic minorities in the north join the anti-Taliban military and police force, and the warlord’s management is the commander of the military and police. Tajiks account for 25% of the national population, 41% of military officers and 43% of police officers. This Afghan military and police force, which has suddenly disappeared recently, is not actually serving the central government and national interests, but under the command of tribal warlords. The former Afghan government had 350,000 soldiers and police on its roster, but only 250,000 people can be seen. The Afghan military has been vacant for many years, and the military and police choose this job purely as a “mixed meal”, without any loyalty, without discipline, and only cares about petty profits. They are generally not well educated, and four-fifths are illiterate. Such troops are naturally depressed, under-trained, and unbearable, but they are keen to sell U.S. aid equipment and materials (such as gasoline) to the Taliban for money. This is the reason why the US army just retreated, the government army was scattered.
In order to end this long and time-consuming war, Obama announced in December 2009 that he would add 30,000 troops to Afghanistan within six months, but the Taliban had not been completely wiped out. These men and soldiers came to serve the people, soldiers walked as bandits, sold drugs for a living, and rebelled for industry. In 2011, the US military found Bin Laden in Pakistan and killed him. Then the main U.S. forces began to withdraw gradually from the Afghan battlefield. By 2015, the main troop withdrawal was completed, and the force in Afghanistan was reduced from tens of thousands to 2,000. Recently, the last group of US troops was about to withdraw from Afghanistan, and the Taliban immediately entered the capital Kabul on August 15 and regained power. Objectively speaking, it was not the Taliban that caused the United States to lose so badly, but the former Afghan government.
4. The Taliban regime is still beset on all sides
Afghanistan is located in West Asia, with Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan of the former Soviet Union to the north. Only the northeast has a narrow Wakhan corridor leading to the Chinese border. Among Afghanistan’s neighbors, both the west and the north are potential “enemies.” Iran is the ruler in the history of Afghanistan, and Iran regards Shia as the state religion and is hostile to the Sunni Taliban. Therefore, Iran is not a friendly country to Afghanistan. The three countries to the north are not only religiously opposed to the Taliban, but are also anti-Afghan domestic counterparts. A member of the “Northern Alliance” of the Taliban armed tribe, plus the rear of the Soviet army during the Soviet-African War, it has both old feuds and new hatreds with the Taliban; Pakistan has always protected and supported the Taliban, but Pakistan’s own economic strength Deteriorating, unable to meet the financial aid needed by the Taliban to rule Afghanistan.
Can Afghanistan recover on its own economic conditions? From the 1950s to the 1970s, a school of “modernization theory” emerged in the American social sciences, which believed that sooner or later all countries in the world would embark on a Western-style modernization path. The view of this genre gradually declined, because facts have proved that more countries can become modern countries in Asia and less in Africa. There will always be some countries that will fall into civil strife, ethnic struggle, corruption and chaos. If we say that some backward countries in Africa are relatively low-civilized and cannot always become modern countries, which is understandable, then there are actually such places in Asia. Afghanistan is an example.
There are people in the cities of Afghanistan who are educated and willing to embrace modern civilization, but there are also a large number of uneducated people in the countryside who grew up in ethnic wars, and the latter are more numerous. Those who live in remote areas and once served as guerrilla fighters against the Soviet occupation forces will only shoot and rob in this life. This has become their way of earning a living and the social foundation of the Taliban. Just as the CCP rebelled on the mainland, a large number of poor people in the countryside were instigated to fight and shaken the National Government. The CCP uses class struggle views to brainwash and incite such people, while the Taliban uses Islamic fundamentalism to incite the same people. The two are essentially the same. The Taliban, like the CCP, only believes in “government from the barrel of a gun” and hates modernization. However, the Taliban also differs from the CCP. They are not pursuing the Soviet model, but wanting to restore the ancient ruthless Islamic fundamentalism. In the future, ethnic rivalries and armed conflicts in Afghanistan will not disappear because of the Taliban’s seizure of power. Now the “Northern Alliance” people have fled, but they returned home with weapons. In the future, civil war will continue between them and the Taliban.
The Taliban and the CCP are very close, how will they seek to survive after they seize power? Will it become highly dependent on the CCP? Will the CCP endeavour to turn Afghanistan into its own sphere of influence?
The key is whether Afghanistan can survive on its own. As the civil war in Afghanistan continues, there is no hope for economic recovery. Moreover, Afghanistan simply has no conditions for economic recovery. Over the years, Afghanistan’s economy has mainly relied on three sources. One is Western aid, which accounts for about a quarter of the gross national income; the other is opium cultivation. According to a report by the Voice of America on January 2, 2008, it accounts for more than half of GDP. ; The third is limited mine rental income. The reason why the Taliban can survive the attack of the US military for a long time is because it vigorously develops opium cultivation in the controlled area and obtains large amounts of funds from it.
Afghan opium is refined into heroin in Iran and Pakistan and sold to Europe in large quantities. Of its income from the opium economy, growers receive 10%, drug producers receive 15%, drug traffickers receive 33%, and 42% of the income is protection payments to the Taliban. Since 2001, Afghanistan has become one of the world‘s drug manufacturing and drug trafficking centers. 90% of the world‘s opium poppy is produced in this country, and its cannabis production is also the world‘s largest. Now that Western aid is over, can drug sales support the Afghan economy? As long as European countries continue to take drugs, Afghanistan’s drug economy can survive, but it can only feed the tens of thousands of Taliban, but it cannot support the normal lives of tens of millions of people in Afghanistan.
If it is said that in the future, Afghanistan, the “major power quagmire”, will fall into new powers, then the most likely one is the CCP, which wants to “rise” and advocates the “Belt and Road” initiative. The Taliban regime definitely wants to get a large amount of aid from Beijing, and that’s why it frequently shows good to the CCP. However, for the CCP, the Taliban regime’s geopolitical use value is very limited, because Afghanistan’s neighboring countries are the targets of the CCP’s attempts to woo the CCP. If the CCP uses the Taliban to disrupt the stability of West Asia, it will only create new things for itself. Geopolitical dilemma.
The CCP is currently financially distressed. Will it rush to carry the heavy burden of feeding Afghanistan? If the CCP wants to include the rebellious Taliban in its bag, it will have to bear the burden of long-term large amounts of financial aid, and this is a bottomless pit. Although Afghanistan has some non-ferrous metal resources, it is extremely difficult to transport ores abroad. There are no modern roads in the rugged mountainous areas, and industrial activities cannot be carried out by donkeys. What’s more, the CCP is still jealous of the Taliban. So far, it has refused to build a highway in the canyon leading to the border with Afghanistan, for fear that after convenient transportation, the influence of the Taliban will infiltrate the Xinjiang region.
In fact, both the CCP and Russia regard the Taliban regime as a troublemaker and an object that must be guarded at all times. European countries are now wary of the re-emergence of a large number of Afghan refugees (including those evading the Taliban and those who took the opportunity to escape poverty) into Europe, indicating what new troubles the troublemaker may cause in the next step in Afghanistan. The CCP and Russia are very aware that the corruption of various forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan economy are beyond hope. The Soviet Union suffered a big loss in the past, and Russia will never repeat the mistake of the last time. The CCP is not ignorant of the Soviet Union’s lessons.
The Epoch Times
Editor in charge: Zhu Ying
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