Taliban Praises the Role of Beijing in Afghanistan

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A Taliban spokesperson has praised Beijing for its role in Afghan politics during an interview with Chinese state media.

“[The Chinese regime] conducts a very important role in the transaction of Afghanistan, and also in peace reconciliation,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman in Qatar,  told Chinese state-run CGTV in English on Thursday.

“[Beijing] has appointed a special envoy to Afghanistan, with whom we had regular contacts,” he said.

Shaheen said that the Taliban and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had long been in contact.

“Of course, we  have had different visits to China … [The Chinese regime] conducted a very important role in the transaction of Afghanistan [from the democratic Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the theocratic Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan],” he said.

Shaheen also revealed that Beijing had appointed a new official as a contact person with the Taliban.

“We have contact with him. Recently, our delegation had a meeting with him,” Shaheen said.

The interview comes some 20 years after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001. The repressive Islamic fundamentalist group is now reestablishing its rule over the country, and Beijing is playing a role while gloating over the U.S. withdrawal.

On the surface, China hasn’t been involved in any of Afghanistan’s conflicts in the past century, unlike the United States and its NATO allies who tried to establish and defend democracy for 20 years, and the Soviet Union which occupied the country from late 1979 to early 1989.

But from the shadows the CCP regime has long supported the Taliban both in arms and technology, according to a report by the Population Research Institute from September 2001. As an example, the report said that Huawei, China’s largest telecommunication company, allegedly contributed  to building telecommunications networks for the Taliban, which supported Osama bin Laden and his terrorist attacks against the United States.

Waheedullah Hashimi, a senior Taliban commander, pauses while speaking with Reuters during an interview at an undisclosed location near Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Aug. 17, 2021. (Stringer/REUTERS)

After the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, Waheedullah Hashimi, a senior leader of the Taliban who has access to the group’s decision-making, told Reuters that the Taliban regime would be a theocracy and have a similar power structure as per 1996 to 2001 when it then ruled the country.

Chinese foreign affairs minister Wang Yi met with Taliban leaders earlier on July 28.

In public, Beijing had in the past expressed concern that Taliban-controlled territory could harbor separatist troops from its western Xinjiang region where Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims live.

But in recent weeks, the regime has changed its tone, and even openly declared its willingness to establish “friendly ties” with the group who is now in control of the country which has trillions of dollars’ worth of rare earth metals.

“China respects the Afghan people’s intention and choice … China will keep contact and communication with the Afghan Taliban,” said Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry, on Aug. 16.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying attends a news conference in Beijing, China, on Oct. 9, 2020. (Thomas Suen/File/Reuters)

At the same time, the CCP regime and its state-run media welcomed the Taliban’s rise and exulted in the American’s “defeat” in Afghanistan.

“[The United States] indeed is very much like a ‘paper tiger,’” Xinhua commented on Aug. 16.

It mocked the U.S, saying that the failure of the democracy in Afghanistan shows that it is weak, and claimed that China controlled its border tightly, “even a bird is hard to fly over from Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, the acting president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, and military leader Ahmad Massoud are leading the Panjshir resistance to fight the Taliban.