Although President Biden says he is utterly convinced the government in Afghanistan will be able to brush off the unavoidable Taliban offensive scheduled to begin the moment US Troops leave Afghanistan, the truth is that the government is almost certainly going to fall without US military support; and, as noted by former President George W. Bush, the consequences for the millions of women and young girls in the nation will leave the world gutted if it can dare to look. Although it is a mistake for the United States to leave Afghanistan, the government and military of Afghanistan have nobody to blame but themselves after nearly 20 years of preparation. Since the US-led coalition first established an interim government, the political and military leaders have lined their own pockets with US taxpayer dollars and robbed Afghanistan of the future it deserved. Many of these false leaders are going to seek and pay for asylum in foreign countries as soon as US troops leave because those that stay behind will surely be executed as collaborators the moment the Taliban reasserts itself over whatever territory they call home. They'll be among the first victims of the resurrected Taliban.

For a while, Afghanistan will remind the world of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia with the support of the Communist regime of China. However, Afghanistan is not a densely populated country; and at some point, they're going to run out of people to fill their mass graves. That's when their attention will turn overseas.

The world in 2021 has changed significantly over the 20 years since the Taliban were forced into caves along the sparse Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and not in ways the Taliban are likely to be pleased by.

The Sunni Taliban were likely unenthused by the fall of (albeit secular) Sunni-Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein and the country being turned into a puppet state of Shia Iran. They're likely furious by Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates officially recognizing the State of Israel. Although the Islamic State (ISIS) was technically a rival organization in many ways, its military failure and rejection by residents was a warning of the limit of their ideology. While the United States is finally leaving Afghanistan after nearly two decades of cultural and political corruption, they leave in their wake a generation of women and young girls who are educated and opinionated.

With the United States gone, they're unlikely to try to provoke the anger of the US military like they did when they harbored al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden in 2001. Likewise, international terrorists seeking refuge in Afghanistan are going to find funding significantly more difficult following the international reforms made in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Unfortunately for the Taliban, Israel and all of the Muslim nations mentioned above exist quite some distance away on the other side of an Iranian state very intolerant of their Sunni ideology. If they can wrestle control of Afghanistan from the final pockets of an aged and largely disarmed Northern Alliance, they'll need a new enemy.

It's not necessarily easy to get to either, but in the last 20 years, China has made itself a very attractive target for the Islamists.

China has challenged the United States in Afghanistan from very early on, ridiculing how the war was fought, the US occupation of Afghanistan, the transition to democracy, and the continued involvement of US troops in the country. However, now that the US is leaving without defeating the Taliban, China has suddenly changed its tune. Suddenly, China thinks the US leaving the country is a mistake. The reason why is obvious.

As long as the United States had troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban were occupied trying to kill Americans and their supporters. Now that the US is leaving, they're going to be a far less attractive target. Once the ideological cleansing of Afghanistan is complete, the Taliban and the Islamists they host are going to shift their attention to the only nation in the world that literally enslaves Muslims in death camps, re-educates them with their atheist propaganda, and actually (slightly) borders Afghanistan.

China.

Thanks to the proliferation of technology and the internet, the horrors imposed by the cruel Chinese communists against the Uyghur Muslims in that country have become known to the world (including the Islamists). To call the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs anything less than genocide would be disingenuous. With the United States no longer actively engaged in the occupation of Muslim countries, the Taliban's public enemy #1 might just be China.

To put this in perspective, Israel's occupation of Palestine impacts a population of roughly 5 million Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In contrast, China's Uyghur genocide impacts more than twice as many Muslims (12 million). While infiltrating Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories will be next to impossible, the mountainous terrain between Afghanistan and China (though undoubtedly difficult) is more than passable for an organization that survived in rough and rugged mountains for 20 years waiting patiently for the United States and coalition troops to leave.

While Muslims in oil-rich capitalist nations with booming tourism markets are unlikely to support the radical Islamist ideology of the Taliban, that ideology is going to appear much more appeasing to a population brutally murdered and oppressed by an atheist regime.

Because they aren't sending fighters to the oil-rich nations, there's actually a chance money might get funneled to them in their fight, as a war of "liberation" (liberty being relative) against a brutal atheist dictatorship far away may actually appear heroic, even if it is an equally brutal Islamist sect doing the "liberating."

For China, the timing couldn't be worse. China has been increasingly cracking down on non-state sanctioned Christian churches in recent years. As we've all seen, China is also busy trying to stop the Democracy movement in Hong Kong. China has also laid claims to international and foreign waters in the South China Sea and is being actively challenged by the US Navy and the Navies of off coast nations who need their waterways free of Chinese influence. At the same time, the tensions between China and Taiwan are at their worst in decades and of all the US Presidents since the 1950s, Joe Biden may be the least likely to honor the US agreement to protect Taiwan when the first guns are fired. Meanwhile, India is emerging as a free market, ethical, and democratic alternative to Chinese industry and a bitter mountainous land dispute between the countries is going to strain China's ability to keep troops trained in mountain warfare if Islamists started infiltrating the country.

Relative to Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, India, and trade and Naval disputes with the US Navy, China really can't be bothered to worry about a handful of extremists crossing the border.

It's a perfect opportunity to play the hero, resurrect the tarnished reputation of the Mujahedeen, and re-establish the myth of the Islamist freedom fighter.