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Martin Rodriguez Ossés
Graduated in International Relations and member of the Globalizar Foundation
The scenes of the Kabul Hamid Karzai Airport they threw desperate images. Hundreds of people crowded onto the main runway, literally hanging from the fuselage of a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft. To understand the scale of the case, the characteristics of this aircraft speak of a transport capacity of 187 passengers. Yesterday 800 people were transported in a single flight. The word that resonates is lack of control.
Several articles and television programs have already mentioned the origin of this situation and the necessary debate on the errors made by the various American administrations. the how will this story unfold This is the real unknown to be deciphered. To the obvious problem of human rights, in particular the plight of Afghan women, we must think about the foreign policy challenges in the region. Because Afghanistan is not an encapsulated conflict within its own territory, but an underlined and daring item on the standing agenda of its most powerful neighbors. (Pakistan, India, Russia and China) but also naturally from their close neighbors (Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan: the STANs). It is a radioactive cloud propelled by a hurricane with no specific destination.
The transition of power in Afghanistan takes several years. The Chinese authorities have been in meeting with the militias since September 2019, the Russians at least since August 2018. the Taliban were already part of the talks as legitimate actors – Even when they are considered a terrorist organization – for years and this has highlighted not only the obvious consideration of the future powers of Afghanistan but the need to channel the relations in an institutional framework.
Taliban-Pakistan Relations Well Known; was born from the genesis of the conflict with the Soviet Union in 1985 by the hand of the organization Harkat-ul-Mujahideen -HUM- (which we know from Rambo 3) and which were recently identified as a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997. HUM is transcendent because it is an organization which pursues the annexation of Indian cashmere. Along with this relationship, we must consider the alliance between Pakistan and China born from the opposing interests that the Asian giant has with India for the control of its southern border in the area called Aksai Chin and which last year intensified giving us proof of clashes with palaces (!) in the mountains between his two armies.
India, a rival who has already acquired the status of sworn enemy of Pakistan and nuclear power, has acquired a value geopolitical and geoeconomic vital. Added to the value acquired due to its enormous market potential is its position of containment in the face of Chinese advance in the region. A value appreciated by United States, through QUADS – the union of the powers of the Pacific with Australia and Japan, but also Russia which considers it a strategic partner, not only because of its relationship on the arms market but, as the pandemic has demonstrated, as a producer partner for its vaccines.
The Iranian case is much more complex. Paulo bottaA specialist in the region drew up a precise report specifying the difficulties which lead to oversimplifications concerning Iranian influence in Afghanistan. The consolidation of the Taliban in your country represents, in fact, a complication of Iranian foreign policy objectives because they compromise and widen the distances between the Shiite minorities and the other Persian-speaking minorities who inhabit Afghanistan. On the other hand, Iran has sought to consolidate itself, with the help of India, as Pakistan’s substitute for Afghan foreign trade to Central Asia. This privileged position is threatened today.
The Russian case must also be taken with the utmost consideration. For Russia, the upsurge in violence in Afghanistan represents a threat to its containment zone established in the various STANs mentioned above. It should be mentioned that Russia is deeply concerned about the deployment of fundamentalist terrorism in the region, which already suffered from the Chechen threat in the late 1990s. So much so that Russia has been the United States’ first ally. in 2001 by authorizing the use of bases and corridors for the deployment of US forces. Today, the scenario of this relationship is very different and this American deployment capability has had to be changed. On the other hand, being today a fundamental actor in the region, it has its eyes seen in the escalation of conflicts between India and Pakistan and, by nature, with China.
And all without investigating the headache that Afghanistan poses for the United States after its decision to surrender in its mission and withdraw. What will be the new role of the system tutor in this country? Will he give a bigger and more active role to the United Nations Security Council? Will it carry out a buckpassing exercise – transfer of responsibility – and transfer the costs of the conflict to China and Russia? But basically: how will he reduce the wounds open internally in a country which does not know how to accept frustrations and where its deployed soldiers have already pronounced in 2006 the brutal phrase: “The United States is not in war. We are at war. They are at the mall ”.
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