Well, now the Chinese can take advantage of all of this Afghan mining infrastructure that we built!
The War in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Well, now the Chinese can take advantage of all of this Afghan mining infrastructure that we built!
You can't take bribes for allowing something that's legal in the first place, and the Taliban sure need new income streams.
Not sure they are prepared to deal with Taliban's bullshit either.
Because it's a people problem. Russia thought they can get a whole massive land with still mostly passive, easily bullshitted people of ex-soviet indoctrination windfall. They were late.
Afghans though? No one who tried so far was both willing and able to "do what needs to be done" to deal with the Taliban problem, and they are not reliable, trustworthy business partners themselves by the standards of modern, large scale business.
The Taliban might be more inclined to bow to the Chinese fist in exchange for economic aid. China doesn't make human rights a condition of its own economic aid, after all. That makes China different from the West, at least to some extent.
Very late. While they might have succeeded in the early 1990s or even the late 1990s, they failed by the early 2020s.
Yeah, fair point.
True, but lately we have seen a bit of what kind of statesmanship Taliban use, and China would not like it. Namely they like to press their partners for extra money whenever needed, with violence or threat of it being a main tool. CCP does not fancy being put in a situation where Taliban renegotiate the mining deals by offering "aid" in locating conveniently kidnapped Chinese engineers or something like that.
2014 was the very last moment really, above all by Russia's own making. The public opinion was already mostly turned against them, but there was some doubt and chaos to take advantage of. But they didn't realize the consequences of what they did and how little window of opportunity it left them afterwards, Putin has failed to take advice from Machiavelli - "Never do your enemy a minor injury".
In 2014 and afterwards Russia did just enough injury to Ukraine to shift its status from ally to some, an exploitative partner to most, and despised enemy to few, to being a despised enemy to most and a partner in crime to few. And then gave Ukraine few years to take this recalculation of foreign relations into account.
Maybe the best chance then is for China to overthrow the Taliban and replace them with more pliable pro-Chinese leaders? There's still an insurgency in Panjshir even right now, after all. Maybe its leaders could form the nucleus for a new pro-Chinese Afghan government?
What do you think would have happened had Russia went all-in back in 2014?
If only leaders like that were around...
Even if China could buy them, they have little to no influence outside of Panjshir, which is not a huge place.
Something between Belarus and Troubles era Ireland.
That's why I implied that China should help the Panjshiri rebels conquer the rest of Afghanistan.
Belarus in the south and east, Troubles-era Ireland in the center and west?
With what? Even if China supplied all the hardware, they don't have the men to hold even half of Afghanistan.
And China knows what Soviet Union tried and failed at.
Pretty much, though the extreme West may get to Balkan level.
China could try ethnic cleansing, no? Not that I myself would actually approve of this, of course. But China appears to have much less moral scruples about this kind of stuff, as the current situation in Xinjiang shows. The US was initially able to take over Afghanistan with a very light footpoint. The heavier footprint was only needed later on because the US obviously refused to engage in ethnic cleansing there.
See: Xinjiang. Even when they are, they are trying to be secretive about it. Can't hide invading and occupying Afghanistan lol... Perhaps later, once they perfect their methods in Xinjiang, if their methods turn out to work well. And very well at that - the Uyghurs weren't particularly islamist to begin with, controlling and indoctrinating Pashtuns would be far worse. Also there are only 13m Uyghurs in whole China, compare that to Afghanistan's 40m population, vast majority of it more challenging than Uyghurs.
Out of Afghanistan's 40 million people, only around 15 million or so are actually Pashtun, though. Pashtuns are around 40% of Afghanistan's total population.
FWIW, here's where the idea of China using Xinjiang-style methods in Afghanistan originated from:
Of course, he also subsequently aggressively criticized the US:
Since he's a Russian nationalist, though, he expected a Russian cakewalk in Ukraine the next year but ended up getting a second Russian version of Afghanistan instead!
Russians can into Shaheeds!
What Next in Afghanistan?
[Epistemic status: Low, I don\'t know much about Afghanistan, nor does it interest me much (except for the fascination multiple empires seem to have in expending their treasure there]. There appears to be a near consensus that the Taliban will take over most of Afghanistan soon after the US...
www.unz.com
Of course, he also subsequently aggressively criticized the US:
Afghanistan: 20 Years, $2 Trillion, 20 Days
First thought is that the US spent 20 years and $2 trillion trying to build a democracy in a half-literate country of goatherders that disintegrated within 20 days. Think what you could have done with that (dependent on your preferences). \
www.unz.com
Since he's a Russian nationalist, though, he expected a Russian cakewalk in Ukraine the next year but ended up getting a second Russian version of Afghanistan instead!
Russians can into Shaheeds! But there is no shortage of various islamists around the rest of 99.7% Muslim population.
They (or their ancestors) did fight against the Taliban back in the 1996-2001 time period, though.
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But that is irrelevant to the current conversation. Even now the Taliban have a turf war with the local branch of ISIL, but that doesn't mean ISIL isn't islamist, or would be allies to China.
The Northern Alliance was more moderate and West-friendly, no? Massoud certainly was.
Again, deceptively small compared to their fame group sticking to the north as the name implies, which is the wrong place for a resource grab.
How many times do i have to explain this, no one is going to be occupying Afghanistan with this kind of numbers, unless you have a way to turn them into space marines or something.
Even though 2001 wasn't their best days, low tens of thousands is just missing a zero at least.
By classic military standards that's less than a division of mostly light infantry with poor training. There isn't much this can do, and controlling a mountainous country almost twice the size of Germany is definitely not something you can do with that even if you gave them the best heavy equipment in the world.
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Worst Earthquake to hit Afghanistan in Twenty Years. Estimated at least a thousand dead.
www.aljazeera.com
Epicenter was South of Kabul near the city of Khost. 5.9 on the Richter Scale.
Afghanistan reels from devastating quake as death toll tops 1,000
Afghanistan’s deadliest earthquake in 20 years injures 1,500 people in the remote provinces of Paktika and Khost.
Epicenter was South of Kabul near the city of Khost. 5.9 on the Richter Scale.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Not looking good for them. I found some footage of it. Probably Taliban biased.Worst Earthquake to hit Afghanistan in Twenty Years. Estimated at least a thousand dead.
Afghanistan reels from devastating quake as death toll tops 1,000
Afghanistan’s deadliest earthquake in 20 years injures 1,500 people in the remote provinces of Paktika and Khost.
Epicenter was South of Kabul near the city of Khost. 5.9 on the Richter Scale.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Afghan TV anchor seen selling food by the roadside in poverty-struck Afghanistan
Musa Mohammadi has an ill mother to feed, says his colleague
www.independent.co.uk