Divide-and-conquer

The U.S. and Pakistan-supported Mujahideen, or holy warriors, were eventually too much resistance for the Soviets, who began their withdrawal in 1988 and completed it in 1989. The Americans invaded in 2001 and have been withdrawing since 2012, having failed to defeat the Taliban, but also having established a relatively successful but dependent electoral democracy in Kabul.

Provincial and district governors are also elected, but across the spectrum from center to periphery, Afghanistan is corrupt. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Afghanistan a dismal 173rd out of 180 countries for 2019.

China covertly sold millions of dollars worth of AK-47s and 107-mm multiple rocket launchers to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1980s, so they could be given to the Afghan Mujahideen, used against the Soviets and not tracked back to the United States. There was no communist solidarity on China’s part with Soviet Russia. Neither did they donate the arms to the U.S. side. They were apparently just in it for the money.

Those countries that sought to sit on the fence in the messy alliances of the Cold War between the United States and its primarily democratic allies on one side, and the Soviet Union and its autocratic allies on the other, had little effect on the outcome. In their arguably cowardly and self-serving stance of nonalignment in the face of a threat to democracy, they could only hope that their independence would be respected by the victors.

As democracies were victorious over the Soviet Union in 1989, the nonaligned countries got lucky. Their sovereignty would likely not be so intact had the outcome been the other way around.

Afghans fought the Soviets and won, but had they lost, and had NATO lost, they would have no vote, no government, and no Taliban. Afghanistan would have been under Soviet control.

China fought the Soviets briefly over a border dispute in 1969. Had the Soviets won the Cold War, China would have been under pressure of Soviet expansion, fueled by Soviet access to global resources.

Afghan hospitality: the ancient Pashtunwali code of Melmastia

Today, China is more influential in Afghanistan than is Russia. And it shows. The “One China” line pushed by Ambassador Wang for example, has real-world negative consequences for Taiwan, a democratic country composed of the remnants of fleeing Chinese Nationalists who lost China to the communists in 1949. They democratized in the 1980s, making them a democratic and wealthy example of what China could be. Rather than emulate Taiwan, China seeks to suppress the country and absorb it. China is doing the same to Hong Kong today, with disastrous consequences for that city’s security and economic growth.

In Afghanistan, China’s policies against Taiwan are conflicting with, and triumphing over, the ancient pashtunwali code of melmastia, which requires the prioritization of hospitality to visitors. In 2018, Afghan officials demanded proof from nine Taiwan tourists, in the form of a “non-objection certificate” from China, that Chinese permission had been given to travel. Taiwan citizens don’t need such permission as Taiwan is a sovereign nation independent of communist China. So, the Taiwan tour company, which has been leading such tours without trouble in Afghanistan for Taiwan tourists for 15 years, did not of course have any such certificate. The company hastily sent their clients home two days ahead of schedule.

It’s imperious of China to make such a heavy-handed demand of Afghanistan, pushing its laws in an extra-territorial manner onto Afghan soil. They apparently did it without any warning to Afghanistan or Taiwan, causing an awkward diplomatic situation and real inconvenience to these Taiwanese travelers. It’s a sad reflection of China, which requires exit visas of its citizens, all but imprisoned within the mainland’s territorial boundaries. Teachers throughout China, along with people in Tibet and Xinjiang, have had their passports taken from them over the past years. They’re typically seen as a flight risk and now can’t get out of the country.

This is one reason that scholars and journalists are now calling Xinjiang an “open air prison.” The term applies to much more in China than just Xinjiang.

It’s also a reflection on the officials in supposedly democratic Afghanistan, who apparently enforce such illiberal Chinese laws against Taiwan. Don’t these Afghan officials have enough backbone to resist near-imperial Chinese demands against innocent tourists in Afghanistan? Apparently not.

China is muddying the sense of right and wrong for these officials, their Afghan patriotism, the sovereignty of Afghanistan, and the ancient Afghan cultural norms of hospitality. This is not the “melmastia of pashtunwali”, the legendary welcome that the Afghan code requires for all travelers.

The lack of welcome given to Taiwan travelers makes Afghanistan an unwelcoming place not only for Taiwan, but for the rest of the world that could provide increasing tourism revenues. Afghanistan used to enjoy such revenues. There was a golden age from the 1930s to the 1970s when Afghanistan was relatively free and safe. It was then known as the Paris of Central Asia. In the universities, and on the streets of Kabul it is often remarked, Afghan women wore miniskirts (it would not be solely tongue-in-cheek to say that the ability of women to wear miniskirts is the definition of “freedom” in the west). European hippies and dharma bums made Afghanistan a destination, driving through in their Volkswagen vans on their way to enlightenment in India and Nepal.