The Taliban will attend China’s Belt and Road Forum next week, a spokesman said on Saturday, underscoring Beijing’s growing official ties with the administration, despite its lack of formal recognition by any government.
Taliban officials and ministers have at times travelled to regional meetings, mostly those focussed on Afghanistan, but the Belt and Road Forum is among the highest-profile multilateral summits it has been invited to attend.
The forum in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious global infrastructure and energy initiative, billed as recreating the ancient Silk Road to boost global trade.
No they didn’t. Most Afghani people laid down their weapons and didn’t oppose them when the Americans left. They stormed through the country so quickly because there was almost no resistance - in no small part because they were against Bacha Bazi and vowed to stop the practice.
I agree that it’s incredibly unlikely that the Taliban can be changed. However, I wasn’t particularly referring to social change via democracy. Either way, it’s up to the Afghani people to sort it out.
In Kabul, sure. The rest of the country, no.
Edit: As for the people wanting them, I should probably expand on that. They probably didn’t particularly want the Taliban as their ideal choice, but saw it as the better of the options available to them.
The Afghan people are not fighters, my guy. They lack enough homogeny for that. At least that’s what my brother who existed amongst them for nearly a decade told me when he got home from protecting them.