{"id":202047,"date":"2021-12-27T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=202047"},"modified":"2021-12-25T04:17:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T04:17:02","slug":"will-the-islamic-world-save-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/will-the-islamic-world-save-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Islamic World Save Afghanistan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between the complex internal dynamics of the Taliban and the western trick of conditional aid, it is the Muslim world that must act to save Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An earlier meeting between Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi. Photo Credit: The Cradle<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Dec 2021 – <\/em>Afghanistan was at the heart of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers representing 57 nations at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).<\/p>\n

\n

It was up to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to deliver the keynote address to the session, held on 19 December\u00a0at the Parliament House in Islamabad.<\/p>\n

And he rose to the occasion<\/a>: \u201cIf the world doesn\u2019t act, this will be the biggest man-made crisis which is unfolding in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imran Khan was addressing not only representatives of the lands of Islam, but also UN officials, the proverbial \u201cglobal financial institutions,\u201d scores of NGOs, a smattering of US, EU and Japanese bureaucrats and, crucially, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.<\/p>\n

No nation or organization has yet formally recognized the Taliban as the new, legitimate Afghan government. And quite a few are frankly more interested in engaging in an elaborate kabuki, pretending to deliver some sort of aid to the devastated Afghan economy after 20 years of US\/NATO occupation instead of actually coordinating aid packages with Kabul.<\/p>\n

The numbers are dire, and barely tell the full extent of the drama.<\/p>\n

According to the UNDP, 22.8 million Afghan citizens \u2013 over half of Afghanistan \u2013 are facing food shortages, and soon, acute hunger; while no less than 97 percent of Afghans could soon fall under the poverty line. In addition, the World Food Programme stresses that 3.2 million Afghan children risk acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n

Imran Khan emphasized that the OIC had a \u201creligious duty\u201d to help Afghanistan. As for the \u2018hyperpower\u2019 that stunned the world with its humiliating withdrawal show after 20 years of occupation, he was adamant: Washington must \u201cdelink\u201d whatever grudges it may hold against the Taliban government from the destiny of 40 million Afghan citizens.<\/p>\n

Imran Khan did ruffle a few Afghan feathers \u2013 starting with former President Hamid Karzai, when he observed that \u201cthe idea of human rights is different in every society,\u201d referring to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city culture is completely different from the culture in rural areas \u2026,\u201d he said. \u201cWe give stipends to the parents of the girls so that they send them to school. But in districts bordering Afghanistan, if we are not sensitive to the cultural norms, then they won\u2019t send them to school despite receiving double the amount. We have to be sensitive about human rights and women rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was interpreted in a few quarters as Pakistani interference \u2013 part of a secret, devious strategic narrative. Not really. The prime minister was stating a fact, as anyone familiar with the tribal areas knows. Even Afghan Foreign Minister Muttaqi said the prime minister\u2019s words were not \u201cinsulting\u201d.<\/p>\n

Imran Khan also observed that there are already over three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Moreover, Islamabad is sheltering more than 200,000 refugees who overstayed their visas. \u201cThey can\u2019t go back. We are already suffering from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are not in a position to deal with an influx of refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would you ever trust NATO?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the ultimate nut to crack: internal Taliban dynamics.<\/p>\n

Diplomatic sources confirm off the record that it\u2019s a non-stop struggle to convince different layers of the Taliban leadership to allow for some concessions.<\/p>\n

Discussions with the NATO block are for, all practical purposes, dead: bluntly, there will be no help without visible concessions on girls\u2019 education, women\u2019s rights and the heart of the matter \u2013 on which everyone agrees, including the Russians, the Chinese and the Central Asians \u2013 a more inclusive government in Kabul.<\/p>\n

So far, Taliban pragmatists \u2013 led by the Doha political office \u2013 have been on the losing end.<\/p>\n

The OIC meeting at least came up with practical suggestions involving Islamic development banks. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was keen to emphasize the necessity of getting Kabul to access banking services.<\/p>\n

This is the heart of the problem: there are no solid banking channels after NATO departed. So it\u2019s technically impossible to transfer financial aid into the system and then distribute it across hard-hit provinces. Yet, once again, this is ultimately linked to those lofty western humanitarian aid pledges crammed with conditionalities.<\/p>\n

In the end, Qureshi, together with the OIC Secretary-General Hissein Brahim Taha, announced that a \u2018humanitarian trust fund\u2019 will be established as soon as possible, under the aegis of the Islamic Development Bank. The fund should be able to incorporate international partners, non-politicized westerners included.<\/p>\n

Qureshi put out his bravest face, emphasizing that \u201cthe need is felt to forge a partnership between the OIC and the UN.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taha, for his part, was quite realistic. No funds whatsoever have been pledged so far for this new OIC humanitarian operation.<\/p>\n

As Qureshi mentioned, there is one thing which Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and other actors may decisively help with: investment \u201cin the people of Afghanistan, bilaterally or through the OIC, in areas such as education, health and technical and vocational skills to the Afghan youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

So now it comes to the crunch \u2013 and fast. It\u2019s up to the OIC to play the leading role in terms of alleviating Afghanistan\u2019s dire humanitarian drama.<\/p>\n

The official declaration calling on all OIC member states, Islamic financial institutions, donors, and unnamed \u2018international partners\u2019 to announce pledges to the humanitarian trust fund for Afghanistan will have to go way beyond rhetorical flourish.<\/p>\n

At least, it\u2019s all but certain that from now on, it will be up to the lands of Islam to decisively help Afghanistan. A bitter, defeated, vengeful, internally corroded NATO simply cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n

Nobody today remembers that the Empire had concocted its own version of the New Silk Road over 10 years ago, announced by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chennai in July 2001.<\/p>\n

That was no \u2018community of shared future for mankind,\u2019 but a very narrow obsession on capturing energy resources \u2013 in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; \u2018stabilizing\u2019 Afghanistan, as in perpetuating the occupation; giving a boost to India; and \u2018isolating\u2019 Iran.<\/p>\n

The energy supply routes to the west should have gone through the Caspian Sea, and then across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey \u2013 the three actors of the BTC pipeline \u2013 thus bypassing Russia, which was already then being depicted in the west as a \u2018threat\u2019.<\/p>\n

All this is dead and buried \u2013 as post-occupation Afghanistan alongside the five Central Asian \u2018stans\u2019 are now back as one of the key foci of interest of the Russia\u2013China strategic partnership: the heart of a Greater Eurasia spanning from Shanghai in the east to St. Petersburg in the west.<\/p>\n

Yet to make it happen, it\u2019s imperative that the OIC helps Afghanistan as much as the Taliban must help themselves.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at <\/em>Asia Times and<\/em> columnist for<\/em> Consortium News and<\/em> Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he\u2019s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books. Pepe was contributing editor to <\/em>The Empire and The Crescent and<\/em> Tutto in Vendita in Italy and is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thecradle.co<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Dec 2021 – Between the complex internal dynamics of the Taliban and the western trick of conditional aid, it is the Muslim world that must act to save Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":202048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[93,94,133,1106,267,1126,487,1050,504,91,86,112,880,484,639,95,70,126,492,481],"class_list":["post-202047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-asia-2","tag-afghanistan","tag-central-asia","tag-cia","tag-drones","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-state-terrorism","tag-taliban","tag-uk","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}