Chinese Netizens Appalled By Beijing's Embrace Of The Taliban

China is struggling at home to sell the Taliban as a suitable partner for a country waging a war on alleged Islamic extremism, and Chinese netizens are appalled that Beijing is embracing an Afghanistan led by the militant group.

Photo Insert: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Meets with Head of the Afghan Taliban Political Commission Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar

State media and diplomatic attempts to paper over the group’s past and present it as the “people’s choice” have met sharp criticism at home from those familiar with militant organization’s history of violence and repression of women.

Beijing has long linked the Taliban with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which it has blamed for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, Bloomberg News reported.

The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, posted a brief video history of the Taliban on Monday without mentioning its links to terrorism. The 60-second clip said the group was formed during Afghanistan’s civil war by “students in refugee camps” and expanded with the “support from the poor,” adding that it “has been in a war with the US for 20 years since the Sept. 11 event.”

The post, which was later deleted, became the fifth-ranked trending top on Weibo, after prompting a huge backlash from users questioning why the party newspaper tried to whitewash the group. Some cited its violent past, including beheading people in the streets, destroying the famed Bamiyan Buddhas, and banning women from work and study.

Foreign Ministry comments professing China’s respect for “the will and choice of the Afghan people,” suggesting the Taliban had popular support in the country, similarly raised questions.

A post on the WeChat blog “Philosophia” asking “Is Taliban the choice of the Afghanistan people?” was read more than 100,000 times, and widely shared on social media platforms, before it was censored Thursday. After a female Afghan filmmaker’s plea for the world to pay attention to her country was scrubbed from Chinese social media sites, some users lashed out.

“The voice of Afghan people has all been censored by you!” one woman wrote.

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