[Worried about the war in
Afghanistan, China has stepped up diplomatic efforts with the government and
the group to encourage a political settlement after the U.S. withdrawal.]
Chinese officials began two days of
talks with a delegation of Taliban leaders in Tianjin, a coastal city in
northeastern China, significantly raising the group’s international stature
after steady
military gains that have taken advantage of the withdrawal of American
and NATO combat forces from Afghanistan.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi,
called the Taliban “a pivotal military and political force,” but urged their
leaders “to hold high the banner of peace talks,” according to a
statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He pressed the group to work to
burnish its diplomatic image and extracted a public pledge that the group would
not allow fighters to use Afghan territory as a base to carry out attacks
inside China, according to the statement.
The Taliban have been on a regional
diplomatic blitz over the last month, visiting Tehran, Moscow and the
Turkmenistan capital Ashgabat for talks with officials, as their military
ascendancy in Afghanistan has grown. The increasing legitimacy bestowed on the
insurgents by regional leaders has been met largely with public silence from
the Kabul government, and Wednesday’s visit to Beijing was not an exception.
The visit to Tianjin was the
Taliban’s most significant diplomatic coup yet.
Chinese officials have met with
Taliban envoys before, including a meeting in Beijing in 2019, but not at such
a high level and in such a public way. This meeting underscores how much the former
rulers of the country, who were toppled by the United States 20 years ago after
the Sept. 11 attacks, have succeeded in reshaping
how international powers deal with them.
The foreign ministry and the
Chinese state news media showed Mr. Wang warmly greeting Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Taliban, and also posing with
other Chinese diplomats and all nine members of the Taliban delegation.
Intentionally or not, the display
was a sharp contrast to the frosty
reception that he and other Chinese officials had offered in Tianjin
two days earlier to Wendy R. Sherman, the American deputy secretary of state.
Barnett R. Rubin, a former State
Department official and United Nations adviser on Afghanistan who is a senior
fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, said the
meeting in China was not a show of support for the Taliban but for a peaceful
end to the war.
“It is an effort to use China’s
influence to persuade the Taliban not to seek a military victory but to
negotiate seriously for an inclusive political settlement,” he said.
China has showed growing
concern about the fate of Afghanistan. It shares a short border with
China at the end of a narrow, mountainous region called the Wakhan
Corridor. Last month, Taliban forces seized much of the province, which
borders Xinjiang, a largely Uyghur Muslim region in western China where the
government has detained hundreds
of thousands in the name of fighting extremism.
Mr. Wang once again on Wednesday
criticized the United States and its NATO allies for a hasty withdrawal that
could again plunge the country into chaos, according to the ministry statement.
Although it has not said so
explicitly, China appears to be trying to act as a mediator between the Afghan
government and the Taliban, encouraging some sort of political settlement.
China has long sought to
play a larger diplomatic role in Afghanistan, but it was always
overshadowed by the outsize influence of the United States as the leader of the
military mission supporting the government in Kabul. That may be changing now
that the Americans have largely withdrawn combat forces and the Taliban appear
to have the military initiative.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke by telephone with Afghanistan’s president,
Ashraf Ghani, on July 16, and also urged his government to find “an Afghan-led
and Afghan-owned” solution.
Although China long criticized the
American military involvement in Afghanistan, it also relied on it to help
contain what it considered crucial to its security: the use of the country as a
base for extremists fighting for the independence of Xinjiang, which
separatists call East Turkestan.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the
United States designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist
organization, in part to cultivate China’s support for American efforts in the
“war on terror.”
The Trump administration revoked the designation last year, saying there was no
evidence that the group continued to carry out attacks, an assertion that China
disputes. China has cited the threat of Uyghur extremism as a reason for its
mass detention camps in Xinjiang.
China has other interests to
protect in Afghanistan as well. It has made considerable investments in the
country, including a pledge to spend $3 billion to develop the Aynak copper
mine. Many of those investments have remained stalled because of the
country’s instability.
Chinese officials have in recent
months signaled that Afghanistan could benefit from development projects under
the country’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global effort to invest in
infrastructure.
The Taliban, in previous
statements, have said they would welcome Chinese investments. On Wednesday, a
spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, Mohammad Naeem, thanked China for
extending an invitation to meet, according to a statement posted on Twitter.
The group appeared eager to address China’s main concern.
“The Islamic Emirate,” he said,
“assured China that Afghan territory will not be used against the security of
any country.”
Najim Rahim and Adam Nossiter
contributed reporting. Claire Fu contributed research.
