Azimi

Afghans like to deal with China because China is willing to help Afghanistan, and will never count on the US which is the "evilest", an Afghan businessman H.Qayoum Azimi told the Global Times on Friday.

Azimi was born in Parwan province, Afghanistan, and grew up in the capital Kabul. Since the 1980s, Azimi's family started to purchase commodities like bicycles and gate locks in China to sale in Afghanistan. To expand the family business, Azimi came to China in 1998 and is now the president of his company, Azimi Brother's Group.

Azimi has over 100 relatives living in Kabul. He said that after the Taliban swept into the capital, the social security situation worsened. But along with the increasingly steady situation, some markets resumed operations, he said.

Commenting on the desperate scenes of the Afghan people climbing onto a moving US Air Force plane in a bid to flee the country, Azimi said that even if they flee to the US or Europe, they are considered as parasites by local people.

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

 
"Many of these people have never left Afghanistan and have no idea what the outside world is. They think that the US or Europe are paradises," he said. "I have been to over 60 countries and regions including the US and Canada. I know they will not be welcomed in these countries. Locals will look down on them and consider them parasites."

"This is not life," Azimi said, noting that no one in his family departed Afghanistan after the Taliban retook power. "We love our country," he said. He spent almost half a year in Afghanistan after he came to China to do business in 1998, and even the pandemic did not hinder him from returning home.

Azimi told the Global Times about an incident that annoyed him when he led several Chinese solar panel makers to Afghanistan in 2019 in a bid to generate power for local people. The cooperation failed. He later found out that it was the Americans who intervened because they did not want the Chinese to do business there. "For their own political purposes, the US never cared about the people."

"The US is really a headache. They are not here to help but to cause trouble," Azimi said, noting that the chaos in Afghanistan was not that Afghans love war, rather it's provoked by foreign powers. He said that the US wants to see a chaotic Afghanistan so as to realize its own political pursuits.

Azimi said that he hopes the government can bring safety for people and build sound ties with other countries no matter who takes power. "Afghanistan has experienced social unrest for years and the ordinary people are desperate for a peaceful life."

Azimi also said that he wants to boost exchanges and cooperation between Afghanistan and China when the situation in Afghanistan becomes stable.