Eric Draitser: China playing mediating role in Kabul-Taliban talks
Press TV has conducted an interview with Eric Draitser, the founder of stopimperialism.com in New York, to ask for his take on the issue of Taliban’s new leadership.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Is it significant that the leadership of the Taliban has changed now?
Draitser: Absolutely it’s significant. And there is a number of reasons why. As your report indicated, one of the central conflicts now in Afghanistan is the growing fight between Afghanistan and the so-called Islamic State or ISIS. This developing conflict - and it has multiple theaters throughout the country especially in the north of the country bordering some of the former Soviet Republics - this growing fight is really the central battlefield now for control over some of the most strategic parts of the country and so the fact that there is this change in leadership is significant because, of course, the Taliban cannot be isolated internationally. If they are to be isolated internationally, if they are to have their sources of support cut off, then you are going to see the Taliban losing more and more fighters over to ISIS, which would be better funded, better trained and better equipped because of their international connections.
So, the change in leadership is quite significant and I would pose one other point here that I think is really critical, and I’ve written about this subject myself, and that is the role of China and China’s ally Pakistan here, because China has really begun to take a central negotiation process, opening channels with direct negotiations between the Afghan government in Kabul and the Taliban forces and not simply Taliban representatives in Qatar, but actual Taliban forces on the ground.
If China is playing this mediating role and China is signing off on this new leadership for the Taliban, that means you could actually see a real substantive political solution in Afghanistan, wherein the Taliban would be able to not only fight off the forces of ISIS but actually begin to make substantive progress towards peace with the government in Kabul, which could actually lead to some kind of conflict resolution, which ultimately is what both China and Iran have been working towards. Iran has also heavily involved in Afghanistan, Iran has a vested interest in seeing that this conflict is resolved in a peaceful way with the ejection of NATO forces.
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