Taliban Prepares to Send Top Diplomat to Beijing

The Chinese Communist Party invited Taliban “foreign minister” Amir Khan Muttaqi to Beijing this weekend following assurances Beijing will offer continuing support for the jihadist rulers at a meeting in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Muttaqi accepted and will visit the Chinese capital “later this month,” the Afghan outlet Tolo News reported.

China sent its top diplomat on Afghanistan issues, Yue Xiaoyong, to meet with senior Taliban officials this weekend on a number of issues, most prominently expanding economic cooperation and China helping legitimize the Taliban as the formal government of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has been in power in the country since August 15, 2021, when the American-backed government of then-President Ashraf Ghani collapsed, sending Ghani fleeing abroad.

The Taliban had waged a campaign of conquest throughout that year featuring tens of thousands of attacks that had effectively dismantled the Afghan armed forces in response to then-American President Joe Biden announcing he would extend the 20-year Afghan War beyond the end date established under predecessor and successor Donald Trump.

While the Taliban approach four years in power uncontested, no foreign state has recognized the Sunni jihadist terror organization as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and many of the world’s international financial and diplomatic institutions have refused to incorporate its leadership. The United Nations allows the defunct Ghani government to keep diplomats at its outposts in New York and Geneva, although it has invited Taliban terrorists to its annual summit on climate alarmism, the Conference of the Parties (COP).

While not officially accepting the Taliban’s legitimacy, the U.N. Security Council voted to approve cooperation with “relevant Afghan political actors” by its members in 2022; the Taliban are the only “relevant political actors” left in Afghanistan.

China has led the few countries willing to interact with the Taliban by accepting their status as an allegedly “interim” political vehicle and is the only country in the world to formally welcome a Taliban ambassador representing Afghanistan, Bilal Karimi.

Yue visited Kabul in this context, alongside a representative of the government of neighboring Pakistan. Taliban leaders published photos showing Yue and Muttaqi, the top Taliban diplomat, greeting each other warmly as part of the meeting.

According to Tolo News, Yue “discussed the expansion of political and economic relations and emphasized that Beijing will continue supporting Afghanistan at the international level,” presumably meaning support for the world to recognize the Taliban as a bona fide government. Yue also reportedly “extended an official invitation to Muttaqi to visit China.”

A Taliban spokesman said that Muttaqi “warmly welcomed” the invitation to visit Beijing “later this month” and was expected to make the trip. Afghan media reports did not specify if Muttaqi would be visiting in the context of a larger international event or the Taliban travel to China would be its own diplomatic event.

Muttaqi is no stranger to diplomacy with China and has spearheaded efforts to bring the Taliban deeper into China’s orbit. In 2022, the Taliban terrorists visited Tunxi, China, to attend an event dedicated to empowering the Taliban, led by China but attended by other regional actors. Muttaqi used the opportunity of addressing the “Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan Plus Afghanistan” diplomatic event to demand legal recognition and condemn the United States for not funding the success of the Taliban.

“Afghanistan expects its neighboring countries to offer the Afghan Interim Government diplomatic recognition as soon as possible,” Muttaqi said at the time, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “[T]he United States has undermined Afghanistan’s political and economic sovereignty for a long time and destroyed and damaged facilities during its hasty withdrawal, which has made Afghanistan face great difficulties at present.”

“Afghanistan is no longer willing to slavishly dependent on others and will no longer count on the alms-giving of the Western countries led by the United States,” he proclaimed in his comments. “It urges the United States to immediately lift the freeze on Afghanistan’s overseas assets and unreasonable sanctions against Afghanistan, and hopes that the international community will provide support and help for Afghanistan.”

Muttaqi met with his then-counterpart from China, Foreign Minister Qin Gang, in April 2023, almost a year after his visit to Beijing.

China’s ambassador to Afghanistan Zhao Xing (C) looks on during a ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate a Mes Aynak copper deposit mining project, in Shast Bandari area of Mohammad Agha district at Logar province on July 24, 2024. Chinese engineers and the Taliban government broke ground in Afghanistan on a project to mine the world’s second-largest copper deposit after a 16-year delay caused by war. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty)

During that meeting, taking place in Uzbekistan, Qin assured Muttaqi that China supports the Taliban, claiming Beijing “respects Afghanistan’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the independent choice made by the Afghan people.” The Chinese government has consistently referred to the Taliban’s violent overthrow of the Afghan government as a “choice” made by “the Afghan people.”

Qin also declared that China would help the Taliban, a radical Islamist terrorist group, build “inclusive and moderate governance” and welcomed the Taliban to “advance the Belt and Road cooperation.” While genocidal dictator Xi Jinping has since purged Qin out of his government, China’s policies towards the Taliban has remained supportive. The Taliban formally sought membership in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2023, expanding its business opportunities with Beijing. The BRI is a global debt trap scheme in which China offers predatory loans to poor countries meant to be used to pay Chinese companies to build onerous and often unnecessary infrastructure projects. China’s BRI is especially active, and destructive, in neighboring Pakistan.

A representative of the Pakistani government reportedly joined meetings this weekend with the Taliban and China’s envoy. Afghan outlets reported that the three “reportedly agreed to limit India’s strategic footprint in Afghanistan,” a notable move given India and Pakistan’s recent hostilities following a terrorist attack in India’s Jammu and Kashmir. Meanwhile, China’s footprint in Afghanistan has expanded dramatically. As Afghanistan’s Amu TV reported this weekend, “Taliban authorities have awarded Chinese firms deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including a gold mining concession in Takhar Province and a cement project in Logar.”

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