Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a photo during their meeting in Tianjin, China, last month. Image: AP
Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a photo during their meeting in Tianjin, China, last month. Image: AP
Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a photo during their meeting in Tianjin, China, last month. Image: AP
Much has already been written about the abrupt Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the loss of political capital for western nations.
What is becoming clearer is that China in particular has an opportunity amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to make further progress on its long-term goal of being the main strategic partner for Asian countries.
China has moved quickly and its Foreign Minister Wang Yi met the Taliban’s co-founder, Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Tianjin at the end of last month. Mr Baradar said the Taliban could return to Kabul and regain power in 20-30 days. The rest is history.
To keep China on side, it would seem that Mr Baradar agreed at the Tianjin meeting that Afghanistan would join China’s Belt and Road Initiative once the Taliban regained control of the country.
Furthermore, Kabul will seek to become a full member of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation as soon as possible, as Afghanistan draws fully into China’s orbit.
Any new government in Kabul is already facing financial problems as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said Afghanistan will no longer be able to access the lender's resources, with a spokesperson saying it was due to "lack of clarity within the international community".
Resources of over $370 million (£268m) from the IMF had been set to arrive on August 23. These funds were part of a global IMF response to the economic crisis.
Access to the IMF's reserves in Special Drawing Rights (SDR) assets, which can be converted to government-backed money, has also been blocked.
SDRs are the IMF's unit of exchange based on sterling, dollars, euros, yen and Yuan. The Chinese, with their substantial foreign exchange reserves, are sure to fill a temporary gap in the Taliban’s finances until the rest of the world grudgingly recognise facts on the ground and begin to re-engage with the Taliban administration.
Besides Afghanistan, the Chinese have already set out their grand economic vision, under the Belt and Road initiative, to draw many countries in Asia and the Middle East.
The ill-conceived US withdrawal has set alarm bells ringing in many of these countries over whether, unlike the Chinese, any Washington administration has the long term staying power and commitment to its allies.
Mr Wang Yi took a six-country tour of the Middle East in March, visiting Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain.
Arab-Chinese relations are growing stronger and the two sides are working on arranging the next event of the triennial China-Arab Summit, as agreed at the ministerial meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum last year.
The summit is due to be hosted in the Middle East this time. This will presumably bring Chinese President Xi Jinping to the region for the first time since 2018, when he visited Abu Dhabi.
China is also hoping to push forward talks on a free-trade agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council. All six countries Wang visited have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, along with Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, and Yemen.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure scheme launched in 2013 by President Xi involving development and investment initiatives that would stretch from East Asia to Europe.
The project is designed to significantly expand China’s economic and political influence. More than 100 countries have signed agreements with China to co-operate in BRI projects like railways, ports, highways and other infrastructure.
According to a Refinitiv database, as of mid-last year, more than 2,600 projects at a cost of $3.7 trillion were linked to the initiative.
However, China said last year that about 20 per cent of BRI projects had been “seriously affected” by the coronavirus pandemic. There has also been pushback against BRI from some countries, which have criticised projects as costly and unnecessary.
But the temptation to copy others is always there and the US seems to have caught the bug of China’s BRI scheme.
US President Joe Biden said he suggested to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a phone call in March that democratic countries should have an infrastructure plan to rival China’s Belt and Road initiative.
The US has launched a new development finance institution to compete with China. Providing developing countries with more financing sources by itself will probably not change the picture very much, given the lessons of Afghanistan.
Developing countries have various funding sources already, and they prefer to use Chinese financing for big projects in transport and power for specific reasons. Private funding is too expensive and short-term (usually a maximum five years).
Western donors and their multilateral banks give grants or lend on extraordinarily generous terms. But these traditional donors prefer to finance social services, administration and democracy-promotion, as was the case in Afghanistan.
These efforts seemed to evaporate overnight with the Taliban takeover.
The westerners omitted hard infrastructure almost completely, providing the Chinese BRI an open field with visible projects.
Dr Mohamed Ramady is a former senior banker and Professor of Finance and Economics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran.
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
An arms embargo
A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
Evacuations to France hit by controversy
Over 500 Gazans have been evacuated to France since November 2023
Evacuations were paused after a student already in France posted anti-Semitic content and was subsequently expelled to Qatar
The Foreign Ministry launched a review to determine how authorities failed to detect the posts before her entry
Artists and researchers fall under a programme called Pause that began in 2017
It has benefited more than 700 people from 44 countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Sudan
Since the start of the Gaza war, it has also included 45 Gazan beneficiaries
Unlike students, they are allowed to bring their families to France
Favourite films: Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia
Favourite books: Start with Why by Simon Sinek and Good to be Great by Jim Collins
Favourite dish: Grilled fish
Inspiration: Sheikh Zayed's visionary leadership taught me to embrace new challenges.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024. It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine. Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages]. The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts. With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians. Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved. Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world. The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
1,228 - games at the helm, ahead of Sunday's Premier League fixture against West Ham United.
704 - wins to date as Arsenal manager.
3 - Premier League title wins, the last during an unbeaten Invincibles campaign of 2003/04.
1,549 - goals scored in Premier League matches by Wenger's teams.
10 - major trophies won.
473 - Premier League victories.
7 - FA Cup triumphs, with three of those having come the last four seasons.
151 - Premier League losses.
21 - full seasons in charge.
49 - games unbeaten in the Premier League from May 2003 to October 2004.
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
There are direct flights from Dubai to Sofia with FlyDubai (www.flydubai.com) and Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com), from Dh1,164 and Dh822 return including taxes, respectively.
The trip
Plovdiv is 150km from Sofia, with an hourly bus service taking around 2 hours and costing $16 (Dh58). The Rhodopes can be reached from Sofia in between 2-4hours.
The trip was organised by Bulguides (www.bulguides.com), which organises guided trips throughout Bulgaria. Guiding, accommodation, food and transfers from Plovdiv to the mountains and back costs around 170 USD for a four-day, three-night trip.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
