Quiet clash over Afghanistan may presage more US-China tensions at the United Nations

Yahoo

15-02-2025

The US and China are facing off at the United Nations over control of Afghanistan policy and aid, with the outcome likely to set the tone for relations between the two giants at the global body, analysts said.
"An obscure diplomatic dispute over who should draft United Nations Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan is turning into a major row between the United States and China," said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group.
The debate, he said, had significant implications "not only for how the UN engages with the Taliban in Kabul, but also for how Beijing positions itself as a leading power in the Security Council".
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Tension has been brewing for months, Gowan said, but escalated after the new Donald Trump administration took office in January. At issue is who should initiate and guide UN resolutions and mandates, which in turn influences how the Security Council handles peace operations or sanctions regimes.
Beijing has significant interest in Afghanistan, and not only because of the central Asian nation's location on its southern border and history of hosting restive members of China's Uygur minority.
Afghanistan also has rich resource potential, with an estimated US$1 trillion worth of mineral deposits, including copper, iron, gold, lithium, and rare earth elements.
"The Taliban have been forced into a very pragmatic posture, since their Chinese and some non-Chinese interlocutors are chomping at the bit to start expensive drilling into what are mostly unknown geologies," said Gordon Feller, a global fellow with the Smithsonian Institution.
"The main impediment comes down to simple math: what money will come to the regime, and the numerous others who want a piece of these deals."
Like most countries, China does not recognise Afghanistan's Taliban government, which returned to power as the US withdrew in 2021 after a two-decade "forever war" that cost Washington an estimated US$2.3 trillion.
But in late 2023, China was among the first countries to host an ambassador from Kabul and is a main source for the modest number of tourists visiting Afghanistan.
That has raised Western fears that Beijing is edging toward full diplomatic ties despite Kabul's dismal human rights record and treatment of women.
"China clearly has strategic interests at stake in Afghanistan - spanning counterterrorism to mineral extraction and infrastructure investment under the Belt and Road Initiative - that make Beijing especially keen to play a leading role in bringing Kabul in from the international cold," said Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group.
"It is not surprising that US-China competition has also bled over into the UN, where Beijing's push for a greater role in multilateral forums is pushing up against the US resistance to cede any influence to China," added Chan, formerly a US diplomat posted in Shenyang.
"It is more notable that China is attempting to play a leading role at all on Afghanistan than that the US is wary of ceding influence to Beijing."
Neither China's UN consulate nor the US State Department immediately responded to requests for comment.
The UN's presence in Afghanistan, maintained since 2002, continued after the US withdrawal three and a half years ago. It provides aid and seeks to prevent terrorism, safeguard regional stability, curb opium production and promote human rights.
"This is the complex and challenging context in which we work," Roza Otunbayeva, the UN special representative for Afghanistan, said in December - characterised by limited international leverage or influence.
But, she added, "isolation is not the solution, and we must continue to engage to build trust for the benefit of the Afghan people".
China and the US are among the five permanent members of the Security Council, but Beijing has rarely taken the lead on resolutions, known as "penholding" in UN-speak. Of the 24 issues focused on a specific country that the council considered last year, the US and Britain each led on six and France on seven.
"Experts on China's behaviour at the UN have long wondered when Beijing would try to pen a resolution," said Gowan in a report for Just Security, the online policy and rights forum. "The answer came last fall."
At that time, in a break from its usual diplomatic approach, Beijing signalled it wanted to take the lead on Afghanistan, according to Just Security.
But the US has opposed that action, both during the Joe Biden administration and now during Trump's.
Two weeks ago, China and Pakistan circulated a draft resolution on extending the UN's assistance mandate in Afghanistan for another year, prompting the US and South Korea to respond with their own version.
The "duelling drafts" are essentially the same, with Washington's version reportedly containing some slightly different human rights language.
Earlier this week, the Security Council tried to find a compromise behind closed doors but deadlocked as both sides refused to back down.
The main issue is not what is being said, Gowan noted, but who is saying it.
"However this diplomatic game is resolved, it is obscuring the question of how the UN can best engage with Afghanistan," he said. "The current debate will not help."
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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