During a meeting he convened on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi allegedly encouraged the leaders of Afghanistan's rebel Taliban group to "make a clean break" from all terrorists, including the anti-China East Turkistan Islamic Movement, or ETIM.
Taliban deputy political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who oversees the group's headquarters in Qatar, led a nine-member team to the talks in Tianjin, according to officials on both sides.
According to some commentators, the encounter demonstrates Beijing's deepening connections with the Islamist militant group and the Taliban's rising worldwide prominence.
According to the Chinese foreign ministry, "Wang pointed out that the Afghan Taliban is an important military and political force in Afghanistan and is expected to play an important role in the country's peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process,"
The negotiations took place as the US and NATO withdrew nearly all of their remaining soldiers from Afghanistan. The military withdrawal is the result of a historic February 2020 deal between Washington and the Taliban.
However, the slow-moving US-brokered peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government that followed failed to produce any results, fueling fears that the intra-Afghan conflict could devolve into a full-fledged civil war after all foreign soldiers leave the country.
"The hasty withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan actually marks the failure of the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan," Wang added. Beijing has emphasized the importance of foreign soldiers staging a "responsible withdrawal" to avoid creating a security vacuum.
Since the US-led coalition forces formally began their withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban has launched a massive onslaught against Afghan security forces, capturing significant swaths of the nation. Because of the deteriorating security situation, there are fears that transnational terrorist groups would exploit Afghan land to plan worldwide assaults.
In their agreement with the US, the Taliban promised to terminate relations with all terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, and to avoid the use of Afghan soil to endanger American national security interests. However, according to critics and the newest United Nations findings, the Taliban has not yet cut connections with terrorists.
"We hope the Afghan Taliban will make a clean break with all terrorist organizations, including the ETIM, and resolutely and effectively combat them to remove obstacles, play a positive role and create enabling conditions for security, stability, development, and cooperation in the region," Wang said.
According to the Chinese hosts, Baradar assured them that the Taliban "will never allow any force to use Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China."
The ETIM has been declared a global terrorist organization by China and the United Nations. In China's western Xinjiang province, the terrorist group claims to represent and fight for minority Uyghur Muslims.
The crackdown by Beijing on the terrorists has resulted in extensive international accusations of human rights violations in Xinjiang. China denies the allegations.
The Taliban recently took control of seven border crossings utilized by Afghanistan's landlocked country to trade with neighboring countries. Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, China, and Pakistan are among those countries, potentially denying the US-backed Afghan government of millions of dollars in customs money.
With the exception of Pakistan, insurgent commanders have traveled to all of these countries to reassure their governments that Taliban advances have remained within Afghan territory and do not pose a threat to regional stability.
Wang underlined the importance of negotiating a peace agreement between warring Afghans in order to provide security to their war-torn country and ensure regional stability.
"The Afghan Taliban is fully committed to working for and achieving peace. It is willing to collaborate with other parties in Afghanistan to develop a broad-based, inclusive, and popularly supported political framework that protects human rights, particularly those of women and children," Baradar said.
While the Afghan government has protested to the Taliban's recent excursions to neighboring nations and Russia, the foreign ministry said Wednesday that Beijing had informed Kabul of the rebels' two-day visit to China in advance.
"With a U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the inability of [Afghan] President Ashraf Ghani to secure the country's borders, neighbors and regional powers have to hedge their bets regarding the future," said Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government adviser.
While the Taliban offers security to Afghanistan's neighbors, Kabul continues to call for assistance. This image of a beleaguered President Ghani isn't flattering, to say the least, "Farhadi made a point."
