Photo source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront C hina has been showing a keen interest in investing in Afghanistan after the takeover of the Taliban. In January 2023, a Chinese company agreed to provide 450 million dollars to explore and develop oil reserves in the country. After that, another Chinese company in April 2023 wanted exploration and development of Afghanistan’s lithium reserves. In contrast to the previous military adventures done by American, Soviet, and British into the Afghan frontier, China’s involvement is focused more on the economic and diplomatic side, with a negligible military element. Furthermore, China seeks to expand its political and economic influence in the region as part of its Belt and Road initiative in Afghanistan which for a while has been a weak link in this chain. Moreover, trade frictions with the US and other countries have increased the pressure to open other markets for China’s goods. The Belt and Road is an effective channel to ...

Photo source: The Guardian By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Afghanistan has plunged into a middle of a ravaging famine, after a severe drought.  Unlike past humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, that received credible worldwide attention, this one has not, amid a nose diving revenue. A country which is left to drug trade, with opium as the only cash crop, and having an addiction to remittances, a question arises: are Taliban fit to govern? They are actually denying the scale of the famine. The question of their competence in pacifying the crises comes at a time when common Afghans are selling their children and kidneys for survival. Infact, the unregulated kidney selling practice has already nicknamed a nearby settlement in Herat as ‘one kidney village’. Some are willing to sell their kidney for as little as fifteen hundred US dollars to brokers, who have wealthy patients by their side. The irony is that even after selling a kidney, they still are trapped in poverty, as the mon...

Photo source: Guardian By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront The Taliban swept the whole of Afghanistan in less than a week in August 2021. The capture was an ominous one, and the most significant coup d’etat in the region. It all began when a Taliban commander won a fight with Afghan forces in the southwestern border capital of Zaranj. Zaranj’s fate then set a pattern, as Taliban insurgents overrun state defences in a continuous effort. Within a matter of days, other cities such as the key city of Kunduz in the north, Pul-e-Khumri and Ghazni, sitting on the strategic approaches to Kabul fell, too. Then, in the most devastating blow, the second and third largest cities of Kandahar and Herat would also fall to the Taliban. Taliban’s advance in 2021 has also brought stories of horror, including details of reprisals against former government workers, summary executions, beheadings, and kidnappings of girls for forced marriages. There were bodies lying in the prisons, with dogs next to t...

Photo source: Business standard By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront L ike Bush, Barack Obama wanted to win the war in Afghanistan ‘at all costs’. He deployed hundred thousand troops during the surge in 2010, which gradually went down, but the presence remained there. Trump’s policy, however, was of a contradistinction, where he wanted to end the ‘forever war’. The Biden administration took a step further, and announced a decision of withdrawal, as  he intended to extricate some 2,500 American troops, who are on the ground in Afghanistan, leaving a small force to guard the US diplomatic mission in Kabul.  Comparisons of US leaving Afghanistan have been made to the US withdrawal from Vietnam, just like in the Iraq war in 2011.   President Biden in April 2021 had announced that all American troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan   by September 11, 2021.   Unlike Trump, Biden had included NATO in making his decision to withdraw, and dispatched his Secretary...

Photo Source: Washington Source By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront In February 2020, the United States signed a peace deal with Taliban in Qatar, and agreed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, in following fourteen months, provided Taliban upheld the conditions of the agreement, including distancing itself from Al-Qaeda. The U.S. said that it was also committed to close its five military bases, within one hundred thirty five days, and also expressed to end economic sanctions on the Taliban, by August 2020. The Afghan government, which was not party to the deal, rejected the US and Taliban call for a prisoner’s swap, in March 2020, because President Ashraf Ghani believed such a swap would require a further negotiated agreement, and that it should not be implemented as a precondition for future peace negotiations. However, Ghani contradicted his statement on March 10, 2020, and eventually signed a deal to swap fifteen hundred Taliban soldiers, provided they did not retu...

Photo Source: Foreign Policy By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front The historic ceasefire in Afghanistan in June 2018 was a respite for men with arms from both sides. It allowed them to visit their homes and family. Since this brief interlude of peace, people hoped for a longer ceasefire, so that both parties involved could think of peace and reconciliation in the longer term. The calm of Eid-ul-Fitr gave an impression of the peace that Afghanistan could have in the future. The three-day truce was something historical because it happened nearly after a decade. Since the US invasion of Afghanistan, despite the highs and lows of Taliban insurgency, it finally seems that the Taliban is dominant in the country, exerting its rebel and political influence. The US, on the other hand, cannot think of wiping out Taliban, sooner or later. The only way out right now is a sustained political dialogue. Compromises have to be made by either of the parties involved. But...