The U.S. is finally withdrawing from Afghanistan, making good on another prediction made two years ago by former Chinese Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, rumored to be the head of China’s Strategic Fooyou Agency (SFA). He said back in 2019 that he estimated the U.S. could completely withdraw from Afghanistan as early as 2021.
This prophecy came from the program “Zhang Zhaozhong Says,” posted on Sept. 20, 2019, and the topic of that episode was ” A Great Comparison of the Sino-India-US-Russian Army,” in which Zhang said, in addition to his daily mockery of India:
“The war in Afghanistan has been fought from 2001 to now, and it hasn’t ended in 18 years, and I estimate that it will be finished in 2021 at the earliest, and if the US can withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021, isn’t that another 20 years, isn’t that ‘the law of cause and effect’?”
This passage was said lightly, but with a certain tone, which shows that Zhang Zhaozhong was confident in his prediction.
And in 2019, the U.S., though trying to get out of Afghanistan, looked a long way off. At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet broken out, and Donald Trump was firmly seated in the U.S. presidency. The U.S. military faced a dilemma: stay in Afghanistan and continue to burn through huge amounts of military money or withdraw. Trump prefers the latter, and he planned to have U.S. troops withdrawn from Afghanistan during his own term. But the withdrawal plan was opposed by the U.S. military, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper delivered a classified memo to Trump saying that the U.S. military brass agreed that it could not withdraw from Afghanistan if the conditions were not met. Esper served as vice president of Raytheon, and the arms dealer made a fortune in the war in Afghanistan. The memo made Trump furious, who fired Esper.
Trump’s withdrawal plan had also been opposed by Congress, the biggest voice of opposition was even from Senate Republican leader McConnell, who believed that the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan would be like the U.S. military’s “humiliating withdrawal” in Vietnam, and the consequences could be more serious than the withdrawal of troops from Iraq ordered by Barack Obama.
While the U.S. military was mired in Afghanistan and the U.S. political scene was arguing over the withdrawal, “the mysterious force from the East has seen through everything,” Chinese Internet users joked.
Zhang Zhaozhong was active on the Chinese web but suddenly disappeared about a year ago, rumored to have been recalled by some mysterious authority of China.
Zhang’s successful predictions also include, but are not limited to: Hillary Clinton’s possible defeat by a dark horse in the U.S. presidential election, Indian aircraft carrier catching fire, Japanese F-35 crashing due to pilot oxygen deprivation, anomaly in the main power shaft of the new British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, and Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov, having an accident on its way to the Mediterranean on an expedition in late 2016 (a MiG-29K carrier crashed into the sea).
However, before the J-20 was confirmed, Zhang said on a TV program that the J-20 does not exist, but is only an improved version of the J-10, and later argued that even the US military was fooled by him into thinking that China was not capable of developing stealth fighters.