The head of the National Congress Party (NCP) of Afghanistan, Latif Pedram, told Chinese state propaganda newspaper the Global Times in an interview Friday that America is “a face of aggression, bloodshed, murder, looting, and crimes against humanity.”
Pedram effusively praised the Chinese Communist Party, in contrast, for “ancient wisdom” and “good neighborliness,” expressing hope Beijing would bring its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global debt trap scheme based on infrastructure development, to the war-ravaged country. He repeatedly praised late Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, arguably history’s most prolific mass murderer.
Pedram’s party, which he founded, reflects his opposition to both the Afghan government and the Taliban. An ethnic Tajik, he is part of a minority in the country and has advocated for greater representation of smaller ethnic groups in Kabul. He reportedly began his career as a Communist Party member but has — at least prior to his Global Times interview on Friday — attempted to rebrand as a “secularist” anti-American politician.
“For an intellectual or even ordinary Iraqi, Libyan, and Afghan citizen, the United States is a face of aggression, bloodshed, murder, looting, and crimes against humanity,” Pedram asserted to the Global Times. “For us, the American heritage is a devastated land and political system tainted with blood and hatred.”
Pedram blamed America for the “stunning rise of brothels, the collapse of individual morality, and prostitution” and condemned “American democracy and human rights.” He compared post-American-invasion Afghanistan to the depiction of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
“What Afghanistan has inherited from U.S. is poverty, a rising unemployment rate, the destruction of social services, the unprecedented increase in class distinctions, a wealth gap, the destruction of the middle class, a vast economic mafia network, an underground economy,” Pedram railed, “increased cultivation, production, and smuggling of drugs, addiction among more than 4 million young people, an ethnic war, the collapse of good values, the growth of a culture of corruption, money laundering, and lying.”
In contrast, Pedram expressed hope that communist China — currently believed to be imprisoning as many as 3 million Muslims in concentration camps and committing genocide against Muslim ethnic minorities in the country — would bring Afghanistan prosperity.
“China has no history of military aggression or occupation,” Pedram claimed, disregarding China’s current invasion and colonization of multiple territories in the South China Sea. “China has an ancient wisdom. China is a great economic power and our neighbor. China’s relationship with our country has always been based on good neighborliness, respect for each other’s sovereignty, and territorial integrity.”
“I have read almost all of Chairman Mao’s books, as well as works of other leaders,” Pedram asserted. “We agree with those plans and support the implementation of Chinese projects in favor of the establishment of a modern Afghanistan/Khorasan.”
“We trust China. This trust comes from the traditional and ancient relationship between us,” he continued. “Even before the Chinese socialist revolution, under the leadership of Chairman Mao (the person who changed the face of Asia and the destiny of Asia politically), our people traded with China in Badakhshan. This relationship is very old and this trust is very deep.”
Pedram concluded by praising the Taliban for its growing “wise and correct” alliance with Beijing.
Pedram’s harsh words for the United States come as President Joe Biden redeploys 3,000 troops to Afghanistan this week, allegedly to ensure the safe evacuation of American diplomats from Kabul. Biden had announced that the American military presence in Afghanistan would end on September 11, 2001 — the 20-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks that triggered the Afghan War — but recently recalibrated that deadline to August 31.
President Donald Trump, prior to the end of his term, brokered an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all American troops from the country by May 1, 2021, in exchange for the Taliban ceasing attacks on Americans and cutting ties to al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups. When Biden announced in April that he would break the deal, Taliban leaders stated they would also do so and launched a campaign to seize the entire nation out of the hands of the legitimate government in Kabul.
The Taliban has experienced tremendous success, including the takeover of several major cities with minimal bloodshed, in part because the Kabul government has, reports on the ground indicate, abandoned its own troops, failing to offer them even basic needs like daily meals. Taliban spokesmen have gloated that this success shows the popularity of the terrorist group more than its military prowess.
“The regions and provinces that are under the control of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] are, in fact, a sign of the popularity and acceptance of the Islamic Emirate by the nation,” an official Taliban statement asserted Friday, “because such great and rapid progress is not possible by force. This is, in fact, the victory of Allah and the great and wide support from our nation.”
Afghanistan’s former Finance Minister Mohammad Khalid Painda, who abruptly fled the country this week, revealed in May that Afghanistan’s officials embezzle $8 million a day.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed Kabul’s losses this month of the United States making the “sudden” decision to withdraw from the country 20 years after invading it. Biden responded by asserting that Afghans “have got to fight for themselves,” but deployed 3,000 troops to the country later in the same week.