Time.news – Via by 31 August. Joe Biden has decided, the pressure of the allies is useless. A new chapter opens after an occupation that lasted twenty years. Afghanistan is no longer strategic for the United States (argues the president), but just ask any general who has entered the Pentagon and the answer will be the opposite.
It went like this, the stars said no, the commander in chief decided yes. The consequences are not only the immediate ones – the chaos at the Kabul airport and the drama of the refugees – because new forces of geopolitics have been set in motion. What is happening? Everything is in the news, as always.
Let’s start with a comment by General John Allen in the Financial Times: “With the withdrawal, America has lost almost all its influence as the main player in Central Asia,” observes Allen, president of Brookings Institution, one of the most influential think tanks. Americans.
Allen has experience in the field, he knows what he is talking about, he was commander of the NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. “Although the withdrawal decision is correct, history will be tough in judging the way we did it. Much of this judgment will depend on how the evacuations in Kabul are dealt with.
However – Allen warns – a crucial policy debate must quickly follow if the United States is to play a significant role in Afghanistan’s future and preserve any semblance of national security interest in the region. “
If there are those who go out, there are those who enter. The gaps in politics always fill up. What do you need to look at to understand what is happening in Afghanistan? To the Taliban, of course. The shape of the nascent government, as Allen notes, “will be one of the most important geopolitical developments of 2021” because their decisions will impact the balance in the region and throughout the Middle East which remains a powder keg. Everything is in rapid motion. And it burns.
We always look to the news. The clashes in the Gaza Strip do not stop (flash: Saturday demonstration on the border with 41 injured, on Monday fires set in Israeli centers, response from the Jewish state and one victim, a Palestinian teenager).
On August 22, Egypt closed the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only contact with the outside world not controlled by Israel. Let’s go north, same film, we are in Lebanon, on the border with Israel, launching rockets from one side and the other. Just four days ago, according to the Syrian regime’s media, Israel’s fighters would have operated from Beirut’s airspace, which filed a formal complaint with the UN.
On the escalation on the border with Israel, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, during the long TV speech on the occasion of the “fifteenth anniversary of the divine victory over the Zionist enemy”, said that any attack will have “an appropriate and proportionate response”, adding a quote “we do not want war. But we are not afraid of it. We are prepared and we wait for it every day, we will win it with God’s help”.
For Major General Stefano Del Col, in command of the Unifil mission – the United Nations interposition force on the Blue Line, which includes a thousand Italian soldiers – Lebanon and Israel are not looking for conflict but the region remains a santabarbara .
Another element on the page, Iranian oil sailing to Lebanon. Hezbollah makes the announcement with in mind trying to gain popular support in the country facing the most serious financial and humanitarian crisis in its history, but there is more. Thing? The resumption of oil exports from Tehran to Kabul (at the request of the Taliban) which confirms a new phase in the relations between the two faces of Islam (the Sunni and Shiite one), which began with the meeting between the then Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and the head of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, on January 31st. Dialogue sealed by the declarations of closeness made by President Ebrahim Raisi towards Afghanistan with which Iran shares a border almost a thousand kilometers long.
All these elements in the news have a consequence: US disengagement strengthens Israel’s enemies, starting with Tehran, despite the economic difficulties and pressure from the United States in the midst of the (stalled) negotiations for Washington’s return to the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement.
With uranium negotiations at a standstill and Americans mired in the crisis in Afghanistan, Israel fears that Iran will continue to develop the atomic program, without any pressure from the United States and Europe. Everyone is very distracted. A concern that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will expose to Biden when he meets him tomorrow at the White House. Bennett – who today will see Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin – albeit with the intention of making a difference from his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of allowing Tehran to get closer to the atomic bomb than ever, despite the harsh anti-ayatollah rhetoric, it will be clear: “I will tell President Biden that the time has come to stop the Iranians, not to give them lifeblood by re-entering the nuclear deal, which is no longer relevant, even by the standards of those who previously considered it as such “, anticipates the head of the Jewish state.
What is missing in our browse? The Beijing page. Everyone pointed out that in Afghanistan, China aims to fill the void left by Washington. There is the axis with Moscow, there is Pakistan, there are economic interests, the New Silk Road. Yet all this may not be enough for the Celestial Empire because Afghanistan is an opportunity for China, but also a danger.
In Beijing they do not like instability – even with Taiwan for now the situation is on standby – therefore here is China asking the United States for a commitment (which they will no longer be able to maintain) for the safety of the country they are leaving.
Why is Beijing worried? The key is in a strip of land shared precisely with Afghanistan, the “Wakhan Corridor”, about three hundred kilometers long and sixty wide, which winds along the Pamir mountain range. In the eastern part of this strip of land, the now fallen Kabul government began construction last spring of a road to linking Afghanistan to the Xinjiang region of China. The land of the Uighurs. That they are Muslims and are a concern of Beijing, accused of not respecting human rights in the region (“mass internment, torture and persecution”, according to Amnesty International reports).
Again, the key word is “stability”. Where the Americans no longer arrive (remember that the meeting last Monday between the head of the CIA, William Burns, and Ghani Baradar did not change the Taliban position on the date of withdrawal by one iota), therefore the Chinese are activated: the Daily People reported that the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, met with a Taliban delegation yesterday.
We are in a circular script: where the marines were and the stars and stripes flag waved, the diplomacy of Beijing arrives, that is the number one opponent of the United States, the threat that the Americans intend to face better precisely by leaving Afghanistan . It is the strategy of the paradox, a new Great Game has begun.
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