The Taliban have been on a regional diplomatic blitz over the last month, visiting Tehran, Moscow and the Turkmenistan capital Ashgabat for talks with officials, as their military ascendancy in Afghanistan has grown. The increasing legitimacy bestowed on the insurgents by regional leaders has been met largely with public silence from the Kabul government, and Wednesday’s visit to Beijing was not an exception.
The visit to Tianjin was the Taliban’s most significant diplomatic coup yet.
Chinese officials have met with Taliban envoys before, including a meeting in Beijing in 2019, but not at such a high level and in such a public way. This meeting underscores how much the former rulers of the country, who were toppled by the United States 20 years ago after the Sept. 11 attacks, have succeeded in reshaping how international powers deal with them.
The foreign ministry and the Chinese state news media showed Mr. Wang warmly greeting Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Taliban, and also posing with other Chinese diplomats and all nine members of the Taliban delegation.
Intentionally or not, the display was a sharp contrast to the frosty reception that he and other Chinese officials had offered in Tianjin two days earlier to Wendy R. Sherman, the American deputy secretary of state.
Barnett R. Rubin, a former State Department official and United Nations adviser on Afghanistan who is a senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, said the meeting in China was not a show of support for the Taliban but for a peaceful end to the war.
cyprus1962 on July 28th, 2021 at 19:02 UTC »
Anyone got the full text? Paywalled.
MrStrange15 on July 28th, 2021 at 17:40 UTC »
I think the question is here, how far can the Taliban be trusted? China clearly has a need to secure its Western borders and to make sure that Taliban money, weapons, and men will not support ETIM/TIP. At the very least, good (or simply better) relations with the Taliban gives China some breathing room, so that it can focus on its other many problems with its neighbours. Taliban obviously wants recognition and funding. But how far can these two trust each other? What happens when a more extreme faction of the Taliban (or ISIS, or any other Islamic terrorist group in Afghanistan/Pakistan) conducts attacks against a BRI project in Afghanistan? Religious fundamentalism is not an ideology, which can be tempered that easily.
Regarding the title (I know its NYT's) it was the US that raised Taliban's prestige and clout. Lets not forget that the US almost met with Taliban leaders at Camp David in 2019. Once the US started engaging directly with the Taliban at this level, it became legitimate for everyone else to do the same.
Just as an extra note, this seems to me to be the first time in a long time (if ever?) that China has met with insurgents at such a high level. To the best of my knowledge, China generally does not meet with insurgency groups/ethnic armies publicly. It is known that they have long supported groups in Myanmar, such as UWSA, but as far as I know they don't meet high level diplomats (Wang Yi is in the Politburo). And UWSA is a lot more 'clean' than the Taliban is. They even have good relations with the Tatmadaw. The fact that America had/almost had high level meetings with the Taliban must have meant that China felt confident that it could meet the Taliban without issue. Nonetheless, the fact that the meeting happened with Wang Yi is an interesting development in Chinese foreign policy. It raises the question if this is an isolated incident, or if we can expect a more active Chinese diplomacy in other places, such as in Myanmar?
LateralEntry on July 28th, 2021 at 15:46 UTC »
Submission statement: China recently welcomed a delegation from the Taliban to Tianjin for talks, with the Chinese foreign minister posing for photos with a Taliban Mullah. China stated that the Taliban conceded it would not allow Afghan territory to be used for attacks against China, presumably referring to Uighur groups (Afghanistan borders the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang).
What are the implications that China is negotiating with the Taliban rather than the internationally-recognized Afghan government? That China is presenting a Taliban official on equal footing with its own foreign minister? While the article doesn't discuss mining and resource exploitation, that's likely an interest of China in Afghanistan - what do Chinese direct negotiations with the Taliban imply for the future of Afghanistan and the US role there?