How is that even possible? Tho I heard the Italians and couple of other countries were paying the Taliban to avoid getting targetted and specifically their bases.. In that way they just became tourists
China's strategy in Afghanistan.
- Thread starter ohan_qwe
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How is that even possible? Tho I heard the Italians and couple of other countries were paying the Taliban to avoid getting targetted and specifically their bases.. In that way they just became tourists
solarz
Brigadier
It's interesting how there are such differences between perspectives. I have no reason to doubt either of your experiences, but honestly I am left with no idea what Saudi Arabia is really like.
Although I have seen some travel videos by Chinese in Iran, and they seem to agree more with @FireyCross's perspective than @Arnies.
I'll add that what @FireyCross described about Saudi Arabia sounds like a stricter version of what happens in China, where foreigners still need to register at hotels and it's a pain buying train tickets if you don't have a national ID card. Obviously the gender restriction thing in Saudi Arabia makes things even more difficult, but this is one of those areas where expectation makes all the difference.
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There are different opinions and everyone has the right to them... Lets stay on topic from here on out we sort of strayed away from the main topic
Dude even the US military was directly paying the Taliban not to attack their supply lines.
"It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials admits. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10% of the Pentagon's logistics contracts – hundreds of millions of dollars – consists of payments to insurgents."
Calm you may be, respectful you're not.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
I worked on a few Saudi projects in my day, most are good on paper but not very realistic once built. This city sounds like one of them.Well that is only you and each to it's own I guess. I have been to both countries and to be honest there are less than 100 westerners in Iran whereas there are almost 300k in KSA living there the difference is like day and night..
In Any case Iran is the past and KSA is the future model for humanity as it is making huge advancements. The Saudi Economy will not falter away as some like to claim it here but in fact increase. Linking a city to the suez-canal will be huge and not only that a city that will change mankind forever because of the way it is build ''The Line''
I have also been to both Iran and Saudi, and prefers Iran any day. The people in Iran that I worked with are genuinely friendly, and the place is buzzing.
Saudis are lazy, they don't do anything. All the work is done by foreigners, Indians for manual labor, Americans and Europeans for engineering. Saudis collect welfare checks or clock in time to get paid. Which is why there are thousands of foreigners there in the first place.
Yes there are thousands of foreigners like me in Saudi at any given time, 99% of us are in a foreigner exclusive area without interaction with locals (other than the office), so it seems nice. The real cities are big slums.
In Iran people do work, they don't need foreigners there. I was there for two weeks, one for consulting the 2nd for vacation. Never felt like it was dangerous anywhere I went. The air quality sucked, but it does kind of remind me of turkey or Egypt (but more open).
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Forgot to add, SA felt dangerous, not as Arnie advertised. Everyone was being watched. Not all those 20k are tourists, we were just there on tourist visa to do consulting. There is no sights to see or beach to hang at in SA, or stuff to buy. Really no reach for a real tourist to go there.
Iran on the other hand got awesome attractions that are open to non Muslim tourists. Food is great, and Persian girls are hot, I don't know what SA girls look like.
Iran on the other hand got awesome attractions that are open to non Muslim tourists. Food is great, and Persian girls are hot, I don't know what SA girls look like.
You have a very pervert definition of country being liberal, open or future by number of foreigners in the country.
In 2010, National population censors said that there were 593832 (500k) foreign nationals living in China (longer than 3 months) out of more than 1.4 billion in China. In 2019, UN estimated 720k foreign nationals in China (as residence defined above). KSA certainly has much higher foreign nationals percentage. Are you going to say KSA is more open and liberal than China? You can take South Korea and Japan to do the same math.
It is ridiculous to use such things as benchmark.
My company has office in KSA, our employees have long term contracts there, they live in westerner community only, that is effectively a country within a country. A westerners KSA is not KSA at all.
This would feel like a nation-building exercise for China, literally. Granted, it would be a very different model from the western one.
But the precondition would be Taliba control the country and can provide security and stability, which is still questionable at this time. Afghanistan will very likely still be a challenging place, with different internal and external forces fighting and competing for control and influence, if not utter destabilizing operations. Consider Pakistan is an extremely friendly country to China, yet Chinese and Chinese projects there are under regular attacks.
I guess the strategy is starting slow and steady, with low initial expectations. Begin with trade, and select investment projects carefully. Large-scale and long-term infrastructure investments should wait. Coordinate with neighboring and stakholding countries (Pakistan, Iran, Russia etc.).