Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation on the situation in Afghanistan. The Chinese media reported it. This is the first telephone conversation between the two heads of state since the Taliban took power in Kabul.
In the aftermath of the G7 – which certified the great flight of the West from Afghanistan – Beijing and Moscow are confirmed as leading players in the difficult future of a country devastated by over forty years of conflict. Compared to Western countries, engaged in the last twenty years in a confused war against terrorism but also against the Taliban themselves, the Chinese and Russians find themselves in a less compromised position and therefore with more room for maneuver. Furthermore, the lack of consideration of human, civil and political rights is a trait that unites both leaderships, eliminating the great question over which Westerners struggle: how to dialogue with those who threaten to cancel the progress achieved in the field of rights and instruction?
For months, Russian and Chinese diplomacy has had contacts with Taliban exponents, who see especially in Beijing the possibility of economic support in exchange for openings to investments and exploitation of the country’s mineral resources.
Beijing assures that it wants to respect “Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”, without interfering in internal affairs but aiming at “a constructive role” for a political solution. “China is ready to strengthen interaction and coordination with the entire international community, including Russia, and calls on all parties in Afghanistan to negotiate the creation of an open and inclusive political structure, to conduct a domestic and foreign policy moderate and contained, to completely dissociate from all terrorist organizations and establish friendly relations with all countries of the world, in particular with neighboring states “, said the head of the Chinese state, quoted by the China Central Television television channel, during the conversation with the head of the Kremlin.
The embrace between the Chinese and the Taliban, in fact, is possible but not taken for granted. The Chinese government is accused of having carried out one of the most serious human rights violations of these times, the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a Turkic ethnic group of Islamic faith. For Koranic students – this literally means the word “Taliban” – economically depending on a regime that oppresses Muslims ignites contradictions that can only be overcome with a strong dose of pragmatism.
Moscow has not ruled out the possibility of recognizing the new regime, even though the group is currently classified as a terrorist organization in Russia. The Moscow government reacted calmly to the change of power in Afghanistan: compared to the West, it was more prepared for the Taliban to seize power. “We are not worried,” commented the Russian President’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Samir Kabulov, while the European chancelleries watched in amazement at the great defeat in Kabul. The Russian embassy is one of the few to have remained open in the Afghan capital, together with those of China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, United Arab Emirates.
During a recent meeting with Angela Merkel, Putin took the chair by giving democracy lessons to the West. “You cannot impose your lifestyle on other peoples, because they have their own traditions. This is the lesson to be learned from what happened in Afghanistan. From now on, the standard will be respect for differences, because democracy cannot be exported, whether one wants it or not ”. Both he and Xi Jinping are now preparing to play their role in the Afghan crisis, pending an early G20 that the Italian presidency is working on.
“I believe that the G20 can help the G7 in involving other countries that are very important because they have the ability to control what is happening in Afghanistan”, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said yesterday to his colleagues, also citing Saudi Arabia, the Turkey and India. We work for a session in the first half of September, anticipating the expected development at the time set for 30 and 31 October.
It is Beijing, the stronger actor of the two, to underline the importance of cooperation between the Russians and the Chinese. The head of state stressed that Russia and China, linked by an all-encompassing partnership and a strategic commitment in the new era, must deepen cooperation to counter foreign interference and assess their future and destiny decisively and independently. “China strongly supports Russia in choosing a development path that corresponds to its national characteristics, and strongly supports the measures of the Russian Federation to ensure the protection of its sovereignty and state security,” the Chinese president underlined.
The axis of autocracies – the target of all the speeches in Washington and NATO over the past year – is here again, at the center of an international community that can do little without them.
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