We also literally left giant weapon caches for the Taliban to use. We will pay for that, but in a different way.
They have also invested heavily in their relationship with Pakistan. Pakistan protected Bin Ladin and are deeply involved in Afghanistan. China can lean on Pakistan to compliment its direct relationship with the Taliban.
Not to mention that the Chinese are significantly more motivated to make Afghanistan work.
As a sign of their influence, the Taliban has said that whatever happens in China’s borders is their business. This was in response to questions about the Uighurs, which, you know, if you’re an Islamic regime you might at least pretend to care about.
And let’s say China does somehow befriend the Taliban and build all this infrastructure, and import hundreds of thousands of workers that somehow the Taliban doesn’t decide are yet another empire to kick out. What do you think they do with these resources? They make iPhones. That westerners buy.
And again, even if they do somehow make this happen. Why should anybody care? It’s not like the US is losing these resources or something. And why would China, as large of a country as it is, need these resources? Is it even profitable to extract?
I keep seeing this narrative and it seems to me to be hugely superficial at best. China and Russia would probably prefer the U.S. just keep wasting money and attention in Afghanistan.
in the same way that the klu kluk klan are american but America isn't the klan.
I hate to be flippant here but this really shows a continued western misunderstanding of how people in places like Afghanistan live.
And even if they did all of that, what good is it exactly? Is China out of resources in China and now will build mountain passes and teach Afghanis how to drive trucks and all of that to mine resources? Sure sounds like nation building to me.
And why would the Taliban agree to this anyway? They could just do the mining themselves.
I agree with you. It is not a straightforward and foregone conclusion. Taliban has clearly shown that it can play a very long game. That said, so can Chinese.
US can barely handle one news cycle lately.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/21/china-taliban-afghanist...
A sister comment already noted the mineral resources, but don't forget the main function of Afghanistan as a nation: production of heroin. Narcopolitics are so fantastically more significant than ever gets any attention from "surface" media, but this is the name of the game. Chinese fentanyl has taken over the global opiate black market, so they have every incentive to support the Taliban who will repress the rival heroin trade over the US-backed government who supported it.
But, China probably still has the upper hand in the opiate business here, because fentanyl is far easier to smuggle.
In bad years, they don't expect any taxes.
(It does look like the Taliban has lightened up a bit, but time will tell. Every news station is bashing every aspect of the Taliban.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanis...
> The opium trade spiked in 2006 after the Taliban lost control of local warlords
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...
> Ironically, the only power that has demonstrated an ability to cripple the Afghan drug industry is the Taliban.
> In July 2000, when the Taliban controlled most of the country, its reclusive one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, declared that opium was un-Islamic and imposed a ban on growing poppies.
> Much to the surprise of the rest of the world, the ban worked. Afraid to cross the Taliban, Afghan farmers immediately ceased planting poppies. The United Nations estimated that poppy cultivation plunged by 90 percent from 2000 to 2001.
Indeed! The speculation is that there are people very high up in Chinese system who are cashing up on industrial scale fentanyl production.
Syrian Assad family now makes more money on captagon than they were doing before the war from all their businesses.
Putin Vladimir, the Russian president, made his early fortune on providing legal cover to drug trade in Saint Petersburg, and later delved into the business himself. Russia now runs a state business of drug smuggling through its military missions abroad, and diplomatic missions.
And of course, most famously, Great Britain used to be the biggest narcostate in history. Fortunes of many modern day British elites were built in these times.