In Afghanistan, is it China's turn?

The first thing this question will naturally prompt is another question: "whose turn for what?" Let us put it this way:

One face of the conspiracy theories set in motion around the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is still in pursuit of arguments and minds that will renew their faith in the power of the US. They believe so much that the US withdrew according to a plan, despite everything, that they can even think of the damage to its image and the loss of prestige that the US has suffered in the world through this withdrawal as an investment of this plan.

Let them go on thinking so. But no one in the US thinks that way. Let alone the image they will give the world, the actors of this withdrawal have put their own political careers at great risk inside their own country. What kind of plan could be worth risking paying such a heavy price?

Meanwhile we must note that, although it is true that the US lost the war on the ground, and even if it suffered a rout in the war, this does not show that its power has ended or that its hegemony has come to its end. Moreover, the US has not completely given up its plans for Afghanistan, its calculations concerning it. Perhaps the US's colossal power proved insufficient on the ground to establish an order and sustain power in Afghanistan in spite of the Taliban. But this does not change the fact that it still possesses the most destructive power and has, with the many instruments it holds, the capability to carry out the most effective operations in many parts of the world. Furthermore, if it is to have any relationship with Afghanistan from now on, this too must be within a framework of respect for the will and the right of sovereignty of the Afghan people, and within this framework it may have many relationships it can maintain and many accounts it can settle. But these accounts will now take place not as an occupying power but at the level of an equal and legitimate relationship between the US and Afghan administrations

On the other face of the conspiracy, we are asked to believe that it was not the Taliban that won but China or Russia. What is seen here as the red line of an unquestioned faith is that the US cannot lose and that the Taliban, in this primitive state of it, cannot win. The only thing that suggests there is Chinese support behind the Taliban's success is, in the end, the thought that China or Russia will come out ahead from the positions the US has vacated. This part of the matter is of course not wrong. With the US gone, China can build good relations with Afghanistan and make plans over the country's minerals, can enter into some exchange with Afghan administrators, and can come out very much ahead in the long term as a result. But this does not show that the side that fought, and won the war, was China.

Those who say that at the end of this affair it is not the Afghan people or the Taliban but China or Russia who won the war against the US, once again by believing in another superpower, have never managed to try believing in the strength of the Afghan people. Moreover, when it is obvious that the Taliban, having expelled the US, will not bring Russia and China into Afghanistan in their place under the same protocol, that is, as occupiers, how such an interpretation can be made is a cause for amazement. After all, the most important value that has motivated the Taliban's resistance and establishes its legitimacy today has always been freeing the country from occupation. This value presumably would not allow it to substitute China, Russia or any other power for the US.

Of course it is quite clear that in this new balance China and Russia are pleased that a US presence right next to them has moved away and think they will come out ahead, but this does not mean, as some suppose, that they will be substituted for the US. It is said that Afghanistan has very rich underground resources and that China is interested in these resources. True. Everyone who has made plans over Afghanistan has coveted these resources, but so far no one has come out with a gain equal to the investment they buried in Afghan soil for it.

China or another country may take an interest in Afghanistan's underground resources from now on, and will. But everyone must have learned clearly enough that if this interest takes the form of seizing these resources, it benefits no one. Of course Afghanistan will have not a loss but a gain from the operation and sale of its own mines. Moreover, in the free market not only China but everyone will be able to be a buyer of these mineral assets. Provided only that this interest does not take the form of seizing these resources by way of occupation and of holding the country back from initiatives through which it could put its own resources to use for its own development.

There is a very serious difference between the two. This is generally the way direct or indirect occupiers exploit a country. If Afghanistan's legendary underground resources were put to use by its own people, the country would need no one else. Afghanistan has resources equal to, perhaps even richer than, those held by the Gulf countries. From now on, by its own will and of course through commercial or joint-investment processes it can establish with other countries, it can put them to very serious use for the country's development. If it does so, it will quickly stop the economic migrations from Afghanistan that are being experienced toward every part of the world, and may even reverse them.

Until now, however, these resources have not been properly utilized because of constant occupations and internal turmoil. In fact, if even the US needed these resources, instead of occupying it could have approached within a framework of trade, respecting the Afghan people's right of ownership and sovereignty. Had it done so, it would neither have had to endure such an adventure whose outcome was disappointment, nor, in trying to seize everything, would it have lost even what it had.