Written by Tyler Durden
Written by Andrew Korybko via Substack,
Foreign ministers of China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia met last week at the 3rd four-sided gathering on Afghanistan at the margins of the UN General Assembly. Joint Statement, which they released, severely criticized the Taliban on very delicate issues, thus showing that they were increasingly dissatisfied with them. They confirmed that global terrorist groups were inactive active in Afghanistan, despite Taliban claims, and called on them to fulfil their work to fight them.
The joint message of the 4 clearly states that Taliban should "eliminate all terrorist groups equally and without discrimination and prevent the usage of Afghanistan's territory against its neighbours, region and outside", suggesting that the Taliban attacks only those like ISIS-K that they consider a threat. Insinuations are that any of them, specified as TTP and BLA, which readers can learn more about Here., are protected by the Taliban, and even utilized by them as puppets against Pakistan, as suspected of Islamabad.
For this reason, Pakistani Express Tribune, which is 1 of the most reliable media in the country, described including this language as a "great diplomatic victory". The remaining criticisms of the Taliban were comparatively milder and included a call for their definitive establishment of an ethnic-politically inclusive government, which they promised to make a fewer years ago, to make conditions to facilitate the return of refugees from Iran and Pakistan and to reconsider policy towards women.
The remainder of the paper was hand-over and as expected blamed NATO for the hard situation in Afghanistan, but the above mentioned parts are the most important, to which observers should pay attention. They show that the honeymoon of these 4 countries with the Taliban has ended unquestionably and are no longer ashamed to pay attention to their links with global terrorist groups. They do not accuse him straight of sharing in them, but reading between the lines shows that that is what they think.
This is crucial due to the fact that it suggests that they would not politically argue any military measures that Pakistan could yet hotel to in order to defend its national safety interests against Taliban-backed terrorists. China, Iran and Russia are not as straight affected by this shameful state of affairs as Pakistan and each of them has its own reasons not to make their relations with this country worse, and Pakistan is the only 1 who can do something tangible in response.
China wants Pakistan to improve its interior safety situation in order to defend the CPEC flagship, Iran does not want Taliban-supported terrorists in Pakistan's Balochistan to spill into its half of this transnational region, and Russia wants a unchangeable environment where could possibly increase investment. The convergence of the interests of the 3 in this respect within Pakistan, despite their individual links with the Taliban, is the reason why they agreed to criticise the group so harshly in a joint statement.
Given that neither China nor Iran nor Russia will limit their ties with the Taliban to force them to take action against these anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, which follows that they do not want to lose sight of Afghan logistics and mining capabilities, the Taliban have no reason to comply. Their alleged deficiency of political opposition to any military measures that Pakistan can yet hotel to will not change the military-strategic dynamics between Kabul and Islamabad.
The 2 conflicting parties know this, and the last joint message should only be considered as a symbolic declaration of increasing discontent with the Taliban alternatively than something more substantive. Pakistan would proceed to carry out cross-border military activities if deemed necessary, even if the another 3 countries did not signal only that they would not argue it. Anyway, they'll realize better now why they can, which suggests that Such a scenario It might actually be.
