Comment from Former U.S. Diplomat
On ‘Project Ibn Sina’

by Ambassador Chas Freeman

[Print version of this transcript]

Asked about Helga Zepp- LaRouche’s “Project Ibn Sina” proposal for international cooperation to address the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, former Ambassador Chas Freeman responded in a November 30 interview with EIR. The hour-long video and transcript of the Nov. 30 interview with Ambassador Freeman are available here.

I think there’s a very strong case to be made that the effort that the Russians made, and then we made, to modernize Afghanistan, to promote the rights of women, to improve education and health care, can only be effectively carried out on a multilateral basis. It cannot be carried out as Moscow and Washington attempted to do with an occupation force engaged in pacification over resistance.

So I think the idea of a multilateral approach to Afghan development is an excellent one, and probably the vehicle for this—given what, I’m sorry to say, is a degree of petulance and vindictiveness in Washington that is, in my view, unconscionable, by which we are withholding the Afghan national reserves from the de facto government in Kabul, and thereby pushing Afghanistan into a state of famine and anarchy, which I think is intended to punish the Taliban, but which will probably provide fertile ground for the growth of Daesh—the ISIS, Islamic State elements—who regard the Taliban as milquetoast.

I think the most likely vehicle, unfortunately, does not involve the United States, but it’s probably the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes most of the countries who would be needed for such an approach. We are creating a terrible humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as we speak. Europeans may be more willing than Americans seem to be, to step forward to cooperate with others in the region to address this. So far, the Biden Administration has shown a degree of cold-hearted disdain for the suffering of Afghans, that I find really reprehensible.

Now you ask, does this have implications for Taiwan? I don’t think so. I think Afghanistan has to be approached in its own right, and the Taiwan issue is one that involves factors that are quite different from those in Afghanistan.