The Taliban promises China it won’t allow terrorists to use Afghanistan as launching pad

[Valin]

FDD's Long War Journal

Bill Roggio

May 11, 2023

Yet again, the Taliban has promised that it will not allow foreign terrorist groups to use Afghan soil to as a launching pad to plot and execute attacks on foreign countries. The Taliban has made this false promise in the past, even before the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the United States.

Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, hailed an agreement signed by the Taliban at the 5th China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue in Islamabad, Pakistan on May 7 as “of great significance to the future development of China-Afghanistan relations and to counter-terrorism and security cooperation in the region,” according to Amu News.

The agreement is “the first multilateral document that has the participation of the Afghan interim government, and also the first time that Afghan Taliban made a written pledge of not allowing the ETIM and other forces to conduct terrorist actions and activities,” Wang stated.

Wang’s optimism and willingness to trust the Taliban to rein in the East Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIM, which is also Known as the Turkistan Islamic Party), is misplaced, as the Taliban has issued similar promises in the past, only to be caught red-handed in supporting or providing a permissive envirornment for Al Qaeda and other allied terror groups..............(Snip)