It is a diplomatic embrace with the Taliban that could give President Xi strategic influence in central Asia. The first indicator of China’s rehabilitation of Afghanistan has come in the form of pine nuts.
A shipment of 45 tonnes of pine nuts have been dispatched from Kabul to China, the first since the Taliban seized control, forcing western forces into a hasty retreat. The delivery was hailed by Wang Yu, China’s ambassador, as “greatly benefiting many Afghan farmers”.
Wang attended a brief ceremony at Kabul airport yesterday, along with senior officials from the Taliban. He said that the two sides overcame “numerous difficulties” to make the flight possible and that the shipment to Shanghai would be the first of tens of thousands of tonnes of pine nuts.
This, he said, would give the Taliban “hundreds of millions of US dollars” in income. It comes after China’s highest-ranking diplomat, Wang Yi, met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy prime minister, for trade talks last week in Qatar.
After the Taliban seized power Washington froze more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank reserves held in the US. Other countries which have not formally recognised the Taliban government continue to put trade on hold.
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China’s ambassador, Wang, however, hailed the opening of a “pine nut air corridor” between the two nations. “The little pine nuts bring happiness to Afghan people and good taste to Chinese people,” he tweeted, adding that the exchange showed the “important bond of friendship between our two countries”.
Deliveries of pine nuts to China were first formalised in 2018 under the western-backed government in Kabul, with exports worth up to $700 million a year, according to Tolonews, an Afghan news channel. Before that Afghan pine nuts were smuggled into Pakistan to be repackaged and exported to China under Pakistani trademarks.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s deputy minister of information and culture, said: “The Islamic Emirate is responsible for preventing the smuggling of pine nuts and for facilitating factories to process pine nuts in Paktia and neighbouring provinces.”
China has pledged that Beijing will help “rebuild the country” under certain conditions. One is that the Taliban must combat “terrorist threats” and crack down on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and other terrorist organisations that pose “risks to China’s national security”.
