December 11: Nagaland, Putin, China, Hydrogen, Afghanistan

China-Japan tension: Abe’s comments on Taiwan prompt Beijing threat to ‘reconsider’ bilateral relations Relationship challenged by former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s remarks that neither Japan nor the US could stand by if island was attacked by mainland ...... Japan’s chief cabinet secretary says ‘there is a need for China to understand that there are such thoughts within Japan’

What is green hydrogen and can it help China meet its carbon goals? Most of the element used in industry is produced using fossil fuels ..... The country’s western regions are shaping up to be hubs of an industrial transformation ....... Hydrogen is the lightest and most common element in the universe. When used as fuel, it produces no direct emissions of greenhouse gases or pollutants. ........ Grey hydrogen is the most common form and is generated from fossil fuels. About 96 per cent of the hydrogen produced around the world falls into this category. ....... Green hydrogen is generated entirely by renewable energy such as solar and wind power and accounts for just 4 per cent of the total. ........ Green hydrogen has the potential to be used as a replacement fuel for coal in smelting and steelmaking, or as a raw material for petrochemical products in the decarbonisation of the industry. .......

hydrogen’s contribution to China’s energy mix is expected to increase from about 3 per cent in 2018 to 20 per cent in 2060

. ....... China is aiming to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 ........... by 2050, green hydrogen could be the cheapest production method for steel ....... Chinese iron and steel manufacturing conglomerate HBIS Group said last year that it would operate the world’s first direct reduced iron production plant powered by hydrogen-enriched gas. .......... hydrogen from renewables would fall as low as US$1.3 per kg by 2030 in regions with high-quality renewable resources, making it comparable with the cost of hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture and storage ...... to be used in sectors where electrification is difficult to implement, including long-haul transport, shipping, aviation and buildings. ........... Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group says its overall cost of producing green hydrogen is about 0.7 yuan (11 US cents) per standard cubic metre. It is comparable with hydrogen production from fossil fuels in China, which cost about 0.6 yuan per standard cubic metre.

As the U.S. withdrawal approached, analysts thought it would be months before the Taliban brought the fight to Kabul. Over the years, the capital’s elite had retreated deeper behind concrete walls topped with concertina wire; sometimes they even added a layer of Hesco barriers on the sidewalk, forcing me into the street as I passed. .......... Should we stay or should we go? Afghans had endured the agony of displacement and exile for 40 years ......... She majored in women’s studies and religion at the University of Virginia and considered herself a proud feminist; that was also when she chose to start wearing the hijab, which strengthened her connection to her faith. ........ her father became Kandahar’s mayor as the streets filled with American soldiers and the war intensified. In 2011, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber. ........ After a couple of years, the school’s success had attracted the capital’s elite. That, she believed, was why she received a call last year from the president. She thought Ghani wanted to know about Mezan’s online learning programs for the pandemic; instead, he asked her to become his minister of education. ......... Until then, Rangina had resisted joining the Afghan government; it was dominated by warlords who, she believed, were responsible for killing her father, more so than the Taliban. ........... Those who took part became corrupt themselves, or else were hounded into leaving. ........ she became Afghanistan’s first female education minister since the Communists, who brought radical new opportunities for women to go to school and work in the cities, gains that were wiped out after they were overthrown by American-backed Islamists in 1992. ............. He proposed a caretaker government and new elections overseen by himself, a nonstarter for the Taliban. ...... the Islamists were simply running out the clock until the U.S. forces left. .......

In the West, Ghani was hailed by many as an educated reformer, co-author of the book “Fixing Failed States.”

.......... “Young, educated, well-spoken, corrupt” ...... a 40-year civil war fueled by foreign superpowers, malignant corruption and the Pakistani military’s covert support for the Taliban. ......... the U.S. occupation had created a state dependent on American troops and foreign money. .......... Another initiative was the creation of thousands of fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter dedicated to promoting the government and attacking its critics, work known by the Pashto term Facebookchalawonky. ......... Afghanistan’s vibrant cyberspace must have been attractive to officials cloistered within blast walls and armored cars, but it failed to capture the reality of the countryside, where only a fraction of the population had access to the internet. ..........

many working for the council clung to the belief that the United States would never leave Afghanistan

........

The U.S. military had spent billions to train and equip a force in its own image, heavily dependent on foreign contractors and air support.

........ But the Afghan Army’s notoriously corrupt generals stole their men’s ammunition, food and wages .......... while security forces were supposed to total 300,000, the real number was likely less than a third of that ........ “Latest Report: 98% of Government Officials’ Families Live Outside Afghanistan.” ........... the president — whose children grew up in the United States ......... Out of 27 cabinet ministers, it claimed, only two had families who resided in Afghanistan full time. ...... Torture had long been common in the republic’s prisons, as documented since 2011 by the United Nations. ........ included waterboarding and sexual assault, much of it carried out by the N.D.S., which was advised by the C.I.A. and British intelligence (both agencies have denied any involvement with torture). ..........

But as much as Kabul’s journalists feared violence at the hands of the government, some worried that if the republic fell, worse would follow.

........ Criticism, like objectivity, made sense only within a shared set of values. “If we’re talking political philosophy, and the question of a republic versus an emirate, well, that’s different,” he told me. “We’re liberals. We believe in freedom and democracy.” ......... Zaki feared that freedom of the press and women’s rights would be the first areas of compromise. ......... “I said that things are falling apart, the chain of command is broken and people are not telling the truth to you,” Nadery told me. “He answered, ‘Yes, it will take another six months for us to turn it around.’” Stunned, Nadery left the palace wondering what kind of information the president was getting. ............. There were increasingly strident assertions about what a Taliban takeover would mean: stories about the forced marriage of young girls and widows to their fighters, even sex slavery. .............. It would mean a return to the brutal days when men without beards were flogged in the streets, when women were not allowed to leave the home without a guardian, of public executions in soccer stadiums, of stoning and amputations, a massacre for everyone who had worked for the foreigners, a genocide for Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. .......... Even after the last troops left on Aug. 31, a 650-strong security force was supposed to remain behind to protect the massive embassy complex. ............. But now the rebels were advancing as fast as their motorcycles could carry them. ......... On Thursday, Biden ordered the embassy to shut down, and diplomats began destroying classified materials and shifting operations to the airport, where 3,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines were being flown in to evacuate American citizens and their allies. ..........

People from neighboring districts were pouring into the capital, fleeing ahead of the Taliban, who the U.S. Embassy had warned were committing war crimes.

.......... he knew how vicious the Taliban had been with their opponents in the 1990s. He was ready to give his life to protect his wife and daughter; he also knew that might not be enough. ......... Many of the foreign nationals based in Kabul left the country during the pandemic to work remotely, but the few who remained had been

as surprised as everyone by the sudden collapse of the government

. ............ The decision of the U.S. Embassy to pull out meant that most other Western organizations were evacuating, too, although the embassies of Iran, Russia and China — America’s rivals — were going to remain. .......... “They’re rational. They have advisers from Pakistan, from China, from Russia. You think these guys with the long beards are making decisions?” ......... Jim and I stockpiled everything from canned goods to buckshot. ........ The former president, Hamid Karzai, sat in a semicircle with leaders of the mujahedeen, former Communists, contracting barons — men who were handed power by the Americans in 2001, when their enemies, the Taliban, seemed utterly defeated.

They had presided over two decades of plenty, when a rain of billions from abroad had enriched a minority, even as poverty among the people had grown.

Now they faced the ruin of the republic. ............ The republic’s forces, utterly demoralized, were simply laying down their arms, allowing the rebels, after their long, lean years in the mountains, to take possession of billions of dollars worth of vehicles and weapons bought by the United States and its allies. ......... By now, cities were falling without a fight, surrendering after a mere phone call. ............ Saleh, the vice president who had run security meetings for the capital, had secretly escaped to his home province of Panjshir, which helped throw the chain of command in Kabul into disarray. Local criminal gangs — many of them connected to the police — were waiting for their chance to start looting. ........... Shortly before 10 o’clock that morning, the president sat in the shade of a courtyard at the palace, reading a book. ...........

Ghani’s frequent reading breaks had become a joke between him and his friends.

............ but they’d still been waiting for years to go to America under the Special Immigrant Visa program for local employees. There was a backlog of some 20,000 applications. ..........

The Taliban were as surprised as everyone else by their lightning success

; they weren’t prepared to take control of the capital and feared a confrontation with the Americans at the airport. ......... I had a sudden sense of the fragility of the social contract that bound us; our shared reality was melting into air. I was as worried about being robbed or shot by them as I was about the Taliban. .......... “Remember, this is not Saigon,” the secretary of state would say on television later that day. .......... Earlier that day, the guards at the main prison in the city had fled, and the prisoners had broken loose — the same thing happened at the detention center in Bagram, north of the capital. ........... Jim and I had looped the whole Green Zone: the ugly concrete maws of its compounds stood open, the barriers upraised. Across the city, soldiers and police officers took off their uniforms, laid down their weapons and walked off into the evening light. ..........

by lunchtime many of Kabul’s police stations had been abandoned, becoming targets of large, organized groups of looters.

............ Khalilzad and the Taliban had been getting messages from Afghan politicians in Kabul, begging for someone to take charge of security before the looting and violence got worse. Everyone feared what might happen come nightfall............. The police had the giddiness of condemned men granted a reprieve; they crowded shyly around the Talib, who seemed annoyed by his duty but not in the least concerned about being surrounded by armed men who would have shot him a day ago. ............ After flying for more than an hour, the three presidential helicopters arrived at the Uzbekistan border and landed; confusion ensued at the Termez airport as they were surrounded by soldiers —

the Uzbek government had apparently not been informed of their arrival.

Eventually, the president, his wife, Mohib and several aides were taken to the governor’s guesthouse, but the rest of the 50 or so people on board spent a miserable night out in the open by the helicopters, relieving themselves on the tarmac. The next day, a charter flight arrived and took them all to Abu Dhabi. .................. The U.A.E., which had deep business ties with Kabul’s elite, was a close ally of Ghani’s; according to three sources within the administration, Abu Dhabi had secretly helped fund his election campaigns. ......... … Mujahedeen are not allowed to enter anyone’s home, or harass anyone.” .......... The sudden fall of the city had caught the Taliban leadership without adequate forces on hand. ........ In all, according to one senior Taliban commander’s estimate, the rebels took command of Kabul with well under a thousand men — less than the number of Marines at the airport, let alone the tens of thousands of Afghan security forces who had deserted their posts. ...............

There was a widespread belief that if you could only get inside the airport, you’d make it to Germany or Canada

, and in fact, many had gotten out in the chaos of the first night, when, in order to clear the runway, people were bundled onto planes indiscriminately and flown to Doha. ............... some of the jeans reappeared, while the Taliban donned a patchwork of uniforms that had belonged to the republic. ........ Ghani was in Abu Dhabi writing a book, a follow-up to “Fixing Failed States,” perhaps. ....... Ramin and his wife were given an artist’s residency in a French farmhouse, where he was writing of his longing for his city, a Kabul that now lived on in the imagination of a new diaspora. .......... The farther we traveled from Kabul, the less nostalgia people seemed to have for the republic. In Panjwai, outside Kandahar City, the farmers had dug up the I.E.D.s and were planting crops. Everywhere, white flags fluttered above the graves of young men. ......... For ordinary people in the countryside, the fall of the republic had at least brought an end to the fighting. ......... In Kandahar, I was told about a quiet campaign of kidnappings and assassinations of former police and intelligence officers by Taliban fighters — which their leaders denied — some driven by local disputes, others by revenge. ....... The economy was in free fall, the banks were out of cash; it had been a drought year,

and everyone feared the hunger that winter would bring

. .......... I thought about my visits there, when the runway was crowded with jets, and tried to remember the brash generals who’d explained, year after year, how they were winning — they just needed more troops, more money, more time. .......... We kept driving to Nimruz and reached the Iranian border. Here the desert began. A great exodus was underway. We watched as the migrants crowded onto trucks, heading west.