The events that the governments of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have been increasingly dreading in recent weeks have begun to happen.
The Afghan government has fallen to the Taliban and despite the Central Asian governments having had years to contemplate and plan for such an occurrence, the initial shock waves from south of the border seem to have particularly caught Tajikistan and Uzbekistan off guard.
When the Taliban swept over Afghanistan, Russia was ready for the rapid developments after working methodically for years to lay the groundwork for relations with the group that it still officially considers a terrorist organization.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized this week that Moscow was “in no rush” to recognize the Taliban as the new rulers of Afghanistan, but he added there were “encouraging signals” of their readiness to let other political forces join the government and allow girls into schools.
The Taliban violently dispersed scattered protests for a second day Thursday amid warnings that Afghanistan’s already weakened economy could crumble further without the massive international aid that sustained the toppled Western-backed government.
The Taliban have sought to project moderation and say they want good relations with the international community, but they will face a difficult balancing act in making concessions to the West, satisfying their own hard-line followers and suppressing dissent.
The Taliban has placed security for the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the hands of senior members of the Haqqani Network, which has close ties with foreign jihadist groups including a long-standing association with al-Qaida.
Western intelligence officials say the assignment is alarming and undercuts Taliban promises to tread a more moderate path than the movement did when it ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.
Syrian government forces shelled a village in the country’s rebel-held northwest on Thursday, killing five people, most of them children, opposition activists said.
Russia’s top diplomat assured his Libyan counterpart Thursday that Moscow supports the withdrawal of all foreign fighters from the North African country and is prepared to help work out the details with other countries.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the talks in Moscow with Najla Mangoush that the Libyan leadership “is forming a consultative mechanism … to formulate the concrete parameters” under which the foreign forces will leave.
Air raids came after Lebanese media outlets had reported low-flying Israeli jets over Beirut.
Israeli air raids targeted the Damascus and Homs regions in Syria late on Thursday, official Syrian news agency SANA reported, saying that the country’s air defences intercepted several Israeli missiles.
President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday urged European countries to take responsibility for migrants coming from Afghanistan, adding Turkey had no intention of becoming “Europe’s migrant storage unit” amid turmoil in the country after the Taliban’s takeover.
In the days following the desperate evacuation of US troops from Afghanistan, the corporate press has launched an international propaganda campaign raising concerns for the “human rights” of residents of the Central Asian country.
For the last 20 years, the corporate media and imperialist powers of the world raised no objections as the United States killed over 100,000 people, set up black site torture chambers, carried out drone assassinations and robbed the country of its resources. The major imperialist powers joined the US in the invasion and occupation. The corporate press facilitated the commission of horrific crimes by promoting the war as a “just cause,” a necessary response to September 11, 2001. Those who exposed the real character of the war in Afghanistan—including Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Daniel Hale—were locked up in prison.
As in Iraq, as in Libya, as in Mali. It is time to finally bury the doctrine of the so-called “responsibility to protect”, which was coined at the time of the beginning of the Afghan war, and to brand it as what it was from the beginning: a neocolonial project.