afghanistan-iran

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Harrow, Kenneth

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Aug 26, 2021, 10:42:06 AM8/26/21
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turns out paul zeleza was right, according to this piece i just saw in Le Monde the iranian govt has backed away from its former criticisms, softened its tone, met with taliban leaders. they are seeing in the retreat of the americans an occasion for them to find rapprochement with afghanistan. i wonder how relations with pakistan will follow.
ken


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Gloria Emeagwali

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Aug 26, 2021, 4:46:41 PM8/26/21
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Pakistan is quite pleased and so are China and Russia. Afghanistan has a trillion dollar worth of deposits in lithium for the battery hungry world, and I foresee China moving in to exploit it. They don’t steal minerals as the West did during colonial rule.They pay for them. China may also want friendly relations with the Taliban to calm  down its Chinese Muslim population-hoping that they are not inspired by the Taliban success.

I predict that the US itself may soon try to make the Taliban a new friend given that the two have a deadly enemy in Isil-K. I notice that the Europeans more than doubled the amount of aid to the Taliban government in a bid to rival the US?

So in the light of all this Iran would 
be stupid to stay aloof.

Just heard there was a third blast in
Kabul.

Gloria Emeagwali 


On Aug 26, 2021, at 10:42, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:


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Harrow, Kenneth

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Aug 26, 2021, 4:51:49 PM8/26/21
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not sure i agree about china not stealing minerals, given conditions under which minerals are  being extracted and sold in many parts of the continent., burundi is now renegotiating, and e congo is pure theft all around. but i agree w gloria's overall assessment. i don't know that i agree that the future conditions under china or russia or any of the future partners would be better than the west. i'd like to hear someone expert in afghan to explain it. i did read the taliban made much of their money w opium; i wonder what will happen with that.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 3:11 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - afghanistan-iran
 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Aug 26, 2021, 6:20:44 PM8/26/21
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Zeleza may be right or wrong about Iran's strategic realpolitik trumping their concerns about theological and other political differences within the global family of al-Islam, I'm thinking of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Shia, in particular, his long-time accusation that

“Iran is responsible for the spreading of Shiism across Afghanistan “ -

his later reconciliation and the role he may be likely to play in the Taliban led administration. I seem to remember when he ran his own prison in Afghanistan, as the self-appointed mini-supreme leader in his state within the state.

More importantly, in tune with the politics of the friend of my enemy is also my enemy, I wonder what an Iran-Afghanistan rapprochement could mean for Beloved Israel ( the only democracy in that noisy  neighbour ) and of course with due consideration – and respect for the Palestinians dreams of self-government in the near future

Here's a near-accurate translation of key extracts from DN's (always succinct ) foreign correspondent Michael Winiarski's article from two days ago, “Smekmånaden med talibanerna kan bli kort” ( Iran's honeymoon with the Taliban could be short-lived”) updated and published 21-08-24 :

“The Shia Muslim ayatollahs in Iran welcome the Taliban's rapid takeover, despite the fact that the new rulers in Kabul are extreme Sunni Muslims. From supporting the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Iranian leaders have changed footing and approached their former sworn enemy.

(This is a commentary text. The author is responsible for analysis and positions in the text.)

Iran is the country in the region that has perhaps the most complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Prior to 2001, the Shiite clerical regime - like the United States and Russia - supported the armed opposition to the Taliban regime, known as the Northern Alliance, a group of former Mujahideen warriors and warlords.

In the eyes of pure Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims are really "worse than dogs". Iranian hatred of Afghan Sunni extremists culminated in 1998, when the Taliban murdered eleven Iranian diplomats in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Tehran did not oppose the US invasion in the autumn of 2001, but instead helped the United States with intelligence reports on the whereabouts of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

And after the Taliban were ousted from power, Iran helped form a new government in Kabul.

In 1998, the Taliban murdered eleven Iranian diplomats in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. It diluted tensions between Iran and Afghanistan. The picture shows Iranian soldiers participating in an exercise near the border with Afghanistan in November 1998.

But in time, the Iranian leaders changed their footing and began cautious approaches to their formerly sworn enemy. Iran gradually strengthened its contacts with the Islamic Emirate, Afghanistan, the Taliban's fundamentalist-ruled state of God.

While maintaining diplomatic relations with Ashraf Ghani's Western-backed regime in Kabul, Iran called for dialogue with the Taliban. In Tehran there was a good knowledge of the society, culture and politics of the neighbouring country; the largest language Dari is a variant of Persian. In addition, large parts of today's Afghanistan are historically part of the Persian Empire.

Therefore, the Iranian leaders were well informed that the Taliban were taking over ever-larger parts of the Afghan countryside. And they knew something that President Joe Biden did not want to admit - that the Taliban would take over the whole country at lightning speed as soon as the US military had packed up.

This week Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi spoke only positively about the regime change in Kabul: "The US military defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan is an opportunity to restore life, security and lasting peace in the country."

However, there are cracks in the Iranian facade; the most conservative Shiite priests have openly expressed their hostility towards the Taliban. Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani, has been warned that "it would be a grave mistake to trust a group whose history of evil, murder and slaughter is clear to the whole world."

For Iran, the US farewell to Afghanistan provides an opportunity to continue to strengthen its position in the region. In Tehran, the retreat is interpreted as part of the US withdrawal from Central Asia / Middle East. Joe Biden has promised to withdraw all combat troops in Iraq - the United States' second-longest war after the Afghan one - by the end of the year. There are also many indications that the last American soldiers in Syria will soon be taken home. In these two countries, Iran already has a large military and political influence, and it can now be expected to become even greater.

For Iran, the US farewell to Afghanistan provides an opportunity to continue to strengthen its position in the region. In Tehran, the retreat is interpreted as part of the US withdrawal from Central Asia / Middle East.

Iran's courtship of the Taliban can be seen as an example of how results-oriented political, economic and strategic needs can trump religion or sectarianism. In practical terms, the established relations with the Taliban have enabled Iran, like Russia, to maintain its embassy in Kabul.

This is for the same reason that Iran has long supported Palestinian Hamas, which is a branch of the fundamentalist Sunni movement Muslim Brotherhood.

Of course, Iran has an interest in a stable neighbour, on the other hand, the largely unattended 900-kilometre border between countries.

There are a number of difficulties emanating from Afghanistan, and the future relations between the Ayatollahs and the Taliban will depend on the extent to which the new leadership in Kabul can control them.

(Tens of thousands of Afghans are fleeing the Taliban. Pictured: Afghans travelling to the province of Sistan and Baluchistan in southeastern Iran.) 

The refugees. Iran currently houses more than three million Afghan refugees and undocumented migrants, and there is a clear risk of a new wave of refugees if the Taliban unleash a reign of terror of the kind that prevailed during their five-year rule in 1996-2001. Drugs. A difficult scourge for the Iranians. The neighbourhood of the country that is currently estimated to produce 90 per cent of the world's opium and heroin is a crucial explanation for Iran's millions of drug addicts. In 2000, just before the Taliban's Islamist regime was overthrown in the US-led invasion, production in Afghanistan was down to about 200 tonnes of opium. Ten years later, the amount had increased exponentially by 40 times; to close to 8,000 tonnes per year. Thousands of tons of drugs, which are one of the world's most profitable commodities alongside weapons, oil and trafficking, reach Iran.
Terrorism. On the other side of the border, there are Sunni Muslim terrorist groups such as the Islamic State Khorasan, which is the Afghan Pakistani offshoot of IS. In the peace agreement reached between the Donald Trump administration and the Taliban in February 2020, the Taliban pledged to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a platform for international terrorism (as in the context of the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001). This concern is shared by the Iranian leadership, which demands that the Taliban prevent jihadists such as IS and al-Qaeda from becoming a threat to Iran.
Minorities. The constant wars in Afghanistan have a sometimes overlooked component: the ethnic divide between Pashtuns (the majority people who are the Taliban's base) and minorities such as Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Iran pays special attention to the Hazaras, who are largely Iranian Shia Muslim allies. The Hazaras are a historically persecuted group in Afghanistan, not least by the Taliban. A large part of the thousands of unaccompanied Afghan children and young people who have sought asylum in Sweden are Hazaras who came via Iran. So far, there have been conflicting signals about how the Taliban intend to treat Hazaras and Shia Muslims: Last week, Taliban commanders in Mazar-i Sharif allowed the Shiites to hold an Ashura procession on Shia Muslims' most important holiday.
But at the same time, the Taliban blew up a statue of Abdul Ali Mazari in the city of Bamiyan. Mazari was a leader of the Hazaras killed by the Taliban in 1995.
It is not unlikely that Shia Muslims and Hazaras in Afghanistan will continue to be persecuted, despite the Taliban's assurances of "amnesty" for all opponents. In addition, Tehran fears that there are geopolitical risks, such as increased influence from arch-rival Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan. In that case, Iran's honeymoon with the Taliban is unlikely to last long.

Facts. Sunni and Shia
The division between Sunni and Shia Muslims is almost as old as Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, a phalanx — those who became Sunnis — considered the most competent person to be the new religious head. The other phalanx, the Shiites, considered the rightful heir to be Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali.

Since then, the rift has only deepened between Sunnis, the largest branch of Islam, and Shiites.
The most powerful in Sunni Islam is the Saudi royal family, which applies the fundamentalist variant of Wahhabism.
The Iranian ayatollahs present themselves as the correct interpreters of the Shia Muslim variant.
Both sides have exploited the religious divide for political purposes. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have armed and funded Shia militias in Iraq and the terrorist movement Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. While Saudi Arabia has supported the Sunni Muslim Taliban in Afghanistan and the terrorist network al-Qaeda.

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Aug 26, 2021, 6:20:52 PM8/26/21
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"  I notice that the Europeans more than doubled the amount of aid to the Taliban government in a bid to rival the US?"

Where did you hear this glorious news? 

Never mind their  trillion-dollars worth of deposits in lithium for the battery hungry world", over here, for now, the prevailing melody is, " not a penny of Swedish foreign aid money to the Taliban" 

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Aug 26, 2021, 7:21:20 PM8/26/21
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Euro news,France24,  maybe RT..... but not CNN.
I was surprised and thought I misheard.
Then I heard it again. They mentioned conditions 
about the education of girls.  Meanwhile the World Bank went in an opposite direction.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 6:12 PM
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Gloria Emeagwali

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Aug 26, 2021, 10:12:57 PM8/26/21
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Ken,
You are right to a point.There is indication of gold theft by a Chinese mafia  group in the Congo and individual pilfering. But my reference was to state directed colonial occupation and compulsory evacuation of resources.

China did not send in gunboats and weaponry to create colonies from which  they evacuated vegetable oils, 
and minerals at their will, under the protection of the military, as done by the British, French, Italians,  Germans,Spaniards, Belgians, Danes (?)and Portuguese. In the case of the Congo,  Kabila and his supporters made a deal with the Chinese for infrastructure for minerals.I believe this was from a free negotiation platform. They had the choice of 
switching over to the Brits or French etc and rejecting the deal, but did not. During the colonial era there was no option. 

Gloria Emeagwali 
Prof of History/ African Studies


On Aug 26, 2021, at 16:51, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:



Harrow, Kenneth

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Aug 26, 2021, 11:37:58 PM8/26/21
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gloria,
it feels a little like apples and oranges. hmm, or some other metaphor might be better, since apples and oranges are both good.
there was not very much good one could say about colonial expropriation of african wealth, forced labor, etc. maybe by the 1950s it had improved. but i know the horror stories much more than any positive development stories,

but that was then. i';d be more interested in asking about the post-independent period, and whether by the time of neo-colonialism, and then later, as the global economy takes hold, how the capitalist system worked, and how it compared with the chinese entry.
my impression is that one of the hot topics of contemporary african studies is china, is it good or bad. my impression is that the decision is still out. i hear bits and pieces; some ugly things about chinese arrogance; some grousing about how extensive the chinese projects are now, everywhere. i don't really know for sure that i could say that it works to african states' benefit or not. if you feel comfortable about pronouncing on it, i'd be interested in hearing more.
the only place i know for sure it is bad is the giant trawlers that scoop up the fish off the coast. but the chinese are merely doing what europeans and others are doing there too.
as for western trade, i've learned the french have not faded into the EU, still maintain extensive trade and production, including agricultural crops. are their deals better or worse than those of the chinese? i don't know. how do the chinese make their deals? i don't know.
of course we all know about SAP, but those days are largely over.
is there much venality in the chinese insertion in the continent?
but i'd like to learn, and am willing to withhold judgment until people who know the situation better than i can address it.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 9:46 PM

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Aug 27, 2021, 8:02:51 AM8/27/21
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"but that was then. i';d be more interested in asking about the post-independent period, and whether by the time of
 neo-colonialism, and then later, as the global economy takes hold, how the capitalist system worked, and how it compared with the chinese entry."


Ken,
 You have just moved the goal post.  I was comparing the  rapacious colonial era
with the present,  to challenge the assumption that  China's actions today are
equivalent to the era of British or French colonialism.

Now  that is not to say that the Chinese are without blemish in their dealings with African countries at present. In fact
they have been  rapacious in Zambia and Ghana, reasonable in Ethiopia, racist in Kenya, fairly benign in South Africa,  and in Nigeria,
maybe of mixed  record. It all depends on the region and even the time of focus. As I said before they were not liked 
around 2010 in Ethiopia but made a change for the better a few years  after that and got better reception from the population in return.

 We have a fair amount of research emanating from scholars on this issue. I see a strong correlation between a  government's
transparency and  deal making capacity and resolve, and Chinese response. Now  this is also a wait -and-see situation. If the Chinese
 decided to send troops in to collect debt by invading and occupying regions, as the US did in Latin America in the early 20th century,  
 the report card would  have to change. 

 The fact is that the World Bank and the IMF failed African countries by their  monetarist economics and  onerous conditionalities,  high interest rates 
and dirt cheap payment for primary resources,  paving the way for China's entry.

BTW those large fish trawlers you mentioned  are also  of Korean, European and Russian origin. These illegal  trawlers were doing the same   
in the Red Sea-  until the Somali counter "pirates" got into action. But that is another story.


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 


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Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 10:31 PM

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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - afghanistan-iran
 

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gloria,

Harrow, Kenneth

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Aug 27, 2021, 9:47:36 AM8/27/21
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this makes sense to me, gloria. it's always easiest to say, this is exactly how it is: one description that covers many things. it seems much more convincing to say, well, at one time and in one place the chinese were like this, and then like that.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 1:05 AM
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