Iran, Qatar, Pakistan, Taliban: a dangerous neighborhood
Goodbye America?
In our time, among politicians, especially Western and large, it is somehow not customary to memorize something seriously and for a long time. In which case, in a democracy with a regular change of parties in power, everything can be blamed on the predecessor.
However, the current owner of the White House on the Afghan issue himself messed up so much that you can't blame Donald Trump. Although it was under Trump that the Americans signed a promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan either in May or, in general, by May 2021.
Not taken out. They seem to have forgotten, although how can this, in general, be forgotten?
For which you have to pay with the current discord and global shame. And now Biden is already sounding panic predictions about ISIS attacks or the introduction of Al-Qaeda into Afghanistan.
The stake on Marshal Dostum and the attempt to recreate the Northern Alliance failed almost immediately. From Washington, expecting the bad consequences of the big exodus, they promptly tried to hang Afghanistan on neighboring Pakistan.
However, an immediate refusal followed from there. Moreover, it was so tough that it immediately forced the Americans to accept for granted the transition of an old trusted ally to the camp of a global competitor - China.
The prospects for cooperation there are too tempting. There is "One Belt - One Road", no matter what paths he takes, and a number of projects that promise the half-forgotten Pakistan just the same bright Chinese dawn. And by the way, the first hundreds of Chinese billions have already arrived in Islamabad.
The Turkish project, which we have already written about (Sultan Erdogan's Afghan intrigue) is unlikely to be viable due to geographic, ethnic, and religious reasons. But Russia is close by, albeit behind a huge official buffer.
Do the Russians want?
The Taliban do not seem to even suspect (or pretend not to know) that in Russia they are, in fact, considered a banned, that is, a terrorist organization. For example, they go to Moscow for negotiations, although, according to the law, they should, in fact, be arrested there.
Now they are asking for mediation in negotiations with the rebels of Saleh and Masud, who, remaining in the Panjshir gorge, do not pay any attention to the flight of the Americans. And by the way, the Taliban have already forced the CSTO officials to talk.
Do I need to remind you which countries are listed there? And why should this structure be the one to deal with all the Afghan chaos now?
The CSTO is the Collective Security Treaty Organization, it's like a bone, almost in the throat of NATO, but it's just far from the Atlantic.
However, why is it too far away? Generally speaking, it is close from Russia to anywhere in the world. And what other country, if not Russia, know and remember how close it is from Afgan to Europe. CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas does not just warn about the "danger of a long-term civil war in Afghanistan with difficult to predict consequences."
It was just a little over a year ago. Photo: Sergey Lavrov / Facebok
It is characteristic that experts have already been found who believe that civil war is the best scenario for Russia and its allies at the moment. Allegedly, it will save from attempts at expansion in the territory of the former USSR. However, such analysts forget that the export of war is the simplest among others, even simpler than the export of dollars, and even more so - drugs.
Looking from Tehran
Having settled in Kabul, the Taliban commanders and their superiors simply could not help but look around. Is this perhaps why the first thing from the Taliban seized Kabul came reports of a 70 percent reduction in the customs tariff on oil products from Iran?
After that, Hamid Hosseini, a board member and representative of the Union of Exporters of Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products of Iran, said that the export of oil products resumed almost immediately.
But the Taliban, and not only the Qatari inmates, quite obviously take into account not only the fuel, but also other features of Iran. It is not only a country that has opposed the United States for many years. This is a country with so deep traditions that it was not difficult to shake them, but practically impossible.
And with a millennial history, in which the Islamic revolution of 1979 became only one of the last pages, albeit at the moment and decisive. However, in Afghanistan, with traditions that some may even really dislike, there is also complete stability for several decades.
And these years are a completely logical continuation of the distant centuries with a small vacation at the end of the XNUMXth, Christian, mind you, century, to instill democracy and liberal values. The vaccine didn't work.
Just as the attempt of Soviet ideologists to make the Afghans happy with the construction of a kind of Central Asian socialism did not work later either. This is when the bai are sitting in the chairs of the chairmen of collective farms. And a dozen wives each have deputies.
And looking from Doha
It should be recalled here that the Taliban leadership, precisely as a terrorist organization (we will use the official terminology accepted in Russia today), has long settled in Qatar. Everyone now knows this country with its capital in the tourist Doha as the organizer of the next - already the 22nd World Cup.
But Qatar is hardly known as an almost complete satellite of Iran. The leaders of Qatar, where the 4th emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (pictured) is now in power, went to bow to Iran because of ideological and economic disagreements with neighbors - Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Let's go, having, in fact, considerable wealth - in terms of GDP per capita, this small country is the world leader. But Qatar for a long time was in the conditions of a complete economic blockade by almost all other Arab countries.
With colossal oil and gas reserves, the country experienced (and is still experiencing) very serious problems with water. Iran and shared with Qatar the desalination technologies that came to it from the USSR, and to many others.
And in exchange, he actually got his own offshore, where there is less than three million people. Something like "our" Cyprus or San Marino among the Italians. This, among other things, and today helps Iran to bypass all kinds of sanctions.
And, apparently, even now, when the "best" representatives of the organization have seized almost the entire territory of Afghanistan, the "ideological Taliban" are in no hurry to get out of Qatar. And not because the Afghan wilderness is not exactly the prey of that caliber.
This was Afghanistan on April 13 (burgundy indicates territories controlled by the Taliban)
This is how he became at the end of August
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