A Chinese envoy said Thursday that only history can do justice to what has happened in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, saying military interventions and power politics have failed.
As an ancient civilization in Central Asia, Afghanistan has experienced many vicissitudes of life. Over the past 20 years, Afghanistan's peace and development have been fraught with twists and turns and challenges, and the Afghan people have suffered immensely, said Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.
"Twenty years on, the various Afghan factions have failed to achieve unity, only to see their internal differences widen. Twenty years on, terrorist forces in Afghanistan have not been eradicated and terrorist organizations have become increasingly emboldened and rampant. Twenty years on, the Afghan people have been denied development and dignity and have been teetering between poverty and instability," he told the Security Council.
Only history can do justice to what has happened in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, he said. "The recent abrupt changes in Afghanistan remind us once again that military interventions and power politics cannot gain popularity, and foreign models and democratic transformations are hard-pressed to gain a foothold."
What relevant countries have done in Afghanistan in the past 20 years has ended in failure. They should seriously reflect on it and correct mistakes in a timely manner, rather than walking away from the problems of their own doing and leaving them to Afghanistan and other countries in the region. After all, they bear the inescapable political, security, economic and humanitarian responsibilities for Afghanistan and are more obliged than other countries to help Afghanistan maintain stability, prevent chaos, and embark on the road of peace and reconstruction. They should earnestly honor their commitment to the Afghan people and take concrete actions to participate in the international community's assistance efforts in Afghanistan, he said.
The international community should play a constructive role in Afghanistan's peaceful reconstruction on the basis of respecting the sovereignty, independence and territory integrity of Afghanistan, respecting the will of the Afghan people, and adhering to the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned principle, said Geng.
There should be more dialogue with and guidance to the new authority in Afghanistan. The international community should guard against conceiving presumptions, or worse, creating difficulties. The international community should urge and help the Taliban to honor its commitments in the areas of politics, development, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and human rights, he said.
In particular, the international community should prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a hotbed of terrorism and base for terrorists. All countries should abandon double standards and, in accordance with international law and Security Council resolutions, resolutely combat all terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State, Al-Qaida, and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, so as to prevent them from conglomerating and stirring up trouble in Afghanistan, he said.
