US foreign policy a total failure – China
BEIJING: US President Joe Biden might find that the first year of his term is going to be completely different from his previous plan – at least in the field of foreign affairs – as the pullout from Afghanistan now becomes a hasty and chaotic situation with heavy casualties of US troops and local civilians that makes the humiliating ending of the US-launched war even more humiliating and embarrassing, said experts amid another explosion that hit a house near Kabul airport and US latest military strike in Kabul on Sunday after a major terrorist attack at the airport on Thursday.Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday urged the United States to take practical action to help Afghanistan to control terrorism and stop violence rather than engage in double standards or selective fighting of terrorism in a phone with call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.On Sunday, another explosion rocked an area near Kabul airport following the one that killed 13 US service members and at least 170 others outside the airport on Thursday. Reuters reported the blast appeared to have been caused by a rocket that hit a house in the northern said of the airport.Meanwhile, US forces launched a military strike in Kabul on Sunday targeting a possible suicide car bomb that was aiming to attack the airport, US officials said, Reuters reported.The strike initially appeared to be a separate incident to the one at the residential property north of the airport, though this is yet to be confirmed, media reported.Biden warned on Saturday that another terrorist attack on Kabul’s airport is “highly likely in the next 24 to 36 hours,” hours after the Pentagon said two “high profile” ISIS targets were killed and another was injured in a US drone strike in retaliation against the terrorist attack on Thursday, CNN reported.”This strike was not the last,” Biden said in his statement. He vowed to “hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.”Shortly after Biden’s statement, the US Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert, urging all US citizens in the vicinity of Kabul airport to leave the area immediately, citing “a specific, credible threat,” the alert read.A series of attacks in Kabul is continually damaging the US’ image as it has failed to protect its troops, Afghan locals and other foreign nationals of its allies who want to leave with Americans.Although the United States could launch retaliatory attacks against ISIS-K, who claimed that an ISIS militant carried out Thursday’s suicide attack at Kabul’s airport, it still cannot effectively improve the situation at the airport, said Chinese analysts, adding the embarrassing and terrible handling of the Afghan issue would make Biden and the Democrats lose badly in the midterm election next year.In a phone call with Blinken on Sunday, Wang Yi urged the United States to take concrete actions to help Afghanistan eliminate terrorism and end violence and not practice double standards to counterterrorism. This is the second phone conversation between the two on the issue in recent two weeks after one on August 16.”The facts have proven that the US war in Afghanistan has not accomplished the mission to eliminate terrorists in the country. The hasty evacuation of the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops will very likely provide new opportunities for terrorists groups in Afghanistan to stage a comeback,” Wang said.”The US should take concrete actions, based on the precondition of respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan to help the country to eliminate terrorism and stop violence rather than practice double standards on counterterrorism or selectively strike terrorists,” Wang said.Wang said it is necessary for all parties to engage with the Taliban and actively guide them. The US, in particular, needs to work with the international community to provide much-needed economic, livelihood and humanitarian assistance, he said.The situation in Kabul is a complete mess with unnecessary bloodshed as some civilians were not killed by the terrorist attack but were reportedly shot by US troops in the subsequent confusion.Secunder Kermani, BBC correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, tweeted on Saturday a video of interviews with the locals and survivors of the attack that, “Many we spoke to, including eyewitnesses, said significant numbers of those killed were shot dead by US forces in the panic after the blast.”Meanwhile, market assets sold off significantly amid a sudden push higher in US Treasury yields in 2013 when then-Fed chairman Ben Bernanke first mentioned the idea of tapering the Fed’s pace of asset purchases.”Emerging markets remain vulnerable to tapering by the Federal Reserve as less support for the US economy could tighten financial conditions across the globe,” Jonathan Fortun, economist at the Institute of International Finance, said in a note earlier this month.”Despite the bleak outlook, we believe that contagion risk is less severe than during the EM (emerging market) sell-off in 2018 or during the 2013 taper tantrum,” Fortun said, noting the importance of emerging market policy credibility will be paramount in the months ahead, especially if interest rates rise.
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