EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2021
Afghanistan: A Turning Point in History After the Failed Regime-Change Era
July 30, 2021 (EIRNS)—Central Asia was once known as “a land of a thousand cities.” With the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 20 years, will the region become a crossroads for development and peace? That is the intention of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Founder of the Schiller Institute, and it is the topic of the Schiller Institute conference taking place today at 10 a.m. EDT.
A flurry of diplomatic activity is unfolding, including a Taliban visit to China, and diplomatic events in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in July and an upcoming Central Asian Summit in Turkmenistan in August. Agricultural cooperation, cultural studies and exchanges, and development policies to replace drug trafficking are relevant topics. Afghanistan’s neighbors and other nations with security interests in the region—Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and the Central Asian Republics—have a profound interest in turning a zone of conflict, warfare and drug production (Afghanistan produces some 80% of global opium), into one of regional connectivity and peaceful growth.
The Malthusian policies of geopolitics and “green” death threaten war and starvation, but this old paradigm, which opposes growth, particularly of rivals, can be swept away with the promise of a better future already being delivered through the renaissance of infrastructure growth and physical economic productivity that has lifted China’s population entirely out of severe poverty, and which points the way toward realizing, today, the World Land-Bridge proposals developed and advocated by Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche over the last three decades.
The reality check provided by blackouts and flooding make clear that a protected human environment comes through increasing our involvement in developing a nurturing, synthetic, crafted environment. Protecting “natural” rivers means floods and droughts, while improving water systems means stability, electricity, and plenty. Solar power was all we had 200 years ago (wind, water, and agriculture are all solar-powered), and our expanding life expectancies, improving health, and growing culture have come about through decreasing our reliance on the Sun and fickle weather.
The green, geopolitical chaos promoted by the British Empire can now be overcome, and Afghanistan can serve as “the theater of world history” where a new course of human development is charted.
“We face an extraordinary moment, of further descent into chaos, or the beautiful potential of Afghanistan becoming the seed-crystal of a new era of international cooperation so desperately needed in the wake of growing disease and famine worldwide,” begins the Schiller Institute conference invitation.
“Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of an era—the division of the world into nuclear armed blocs hostile to one another—so also the utter failure of the 20-year misadventure of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, and in the other failed colonial wars in Southwest Asia, poses the question: Can the great nations of the world cooperate in the transformation of Afghanistan, and the other war-torn nations, into modern economies, participating in co-operative development through the New Silk Road process, exemplified by China’s Belt and Road Initiative?
“Leading voices, from veterans’ groups and whistleblowers, to experts on the danger of global narcotics plague and on international political relations, will join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in dialogue, to impel the United States and Europe to join the growing international cooperation that is coming together. We can use this opportunity to make the turn from 50 years of failed policies, and instead to embark on the path required to achieve a new paradigm for mankind.”
Keynoted by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and moderated by Dennis Speed, the conference will feature top-level speakers from the UN, Afghanistan, the United States, Pakistan, China, Iraq, and Europe.
Share it with your friends and colleagues, and join the collaboration to build a new paradigm. Here is a partial list of speaker:
• Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder and President of the Schiller Institute
• Pino Arlacchi (Italy), Sociology Professor at Sassari University, former Executive Director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention; former European Parliament Rapporteur on Afghanistan
• H.E. Ambassador Hassan Shoroosh (Afghanistan), Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Canada
• Ray McGovern (U.S.), Former analyst Central Intelligence Agency; co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
• Danny Sjursen (U.S.), U.S. Army (ret.); Senior Fellow Eisenhower Media Network; author, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War
• Hassan Daud Butt (Pakistan), CEO of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Board of Investment & Trade
• Dr. Wang Jin (China), Adjunct Fellow of the Charhar Institute
• Hussein Askary (Sweden/Iraq), Southwest Asia Coordinator for the Schiller Institute
