The Biden-Harris administration is participating in the ongoing United Nations COP29 climate conference alongside Taliban terrorists, who are attending the conference in Azerbaijan in hopes of receiving substantial green technology funding from wealthy Western nations.
Senior administration officials from over 20 federal agencies are traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the two-week summit this week to "highlight U.S. leadership on tackling the climate crisis" and negotiate global climate commitments. White House climate adviser John Podesta, who recently replaced former Biden-Harris climate envoy John Kerry, is leading the delegation.
Conference attendees will work to facilitate agreements in which the West forks over billions of dollars in climate finance to poorer nations, U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday. If such agreements are secured, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and other developing nations could benefit.
Kabul University professor Abid Arabzai told the Associated Press that COP29 was an opportunity for Afghanistan to secure substantial international assistance for climate projects. "Afghanistan can clarify its climate actions and commitments to the global community, enhancing its international reputation," he said.
The Biden-Harris administration's decision to participate in a conference that could benefit the Taliban highlights how the administration's "whole of government" climate agenda often trumps other policy considerations.
"We have had four years of John Kerry and John Podesta lecturing us about 'investing' in the climate, and the result has been astronomical debt, record-high energy prices, and unaffordable utility bills," Daniel Turner, who leads the energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Washington Free Beacon.
"Yet here we are again, another U.N. Climate Conference, the same doomsday countdown clock, the same hand-wringing, all while globalists take private jets to a country with rampant human rights abuses," Turner continued. "How is it still a question in the minds of the elite that the Biden-Harris agenda was so overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate just days ago?"
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Afghanistan is participating in its first international climate summit since the Taliban returned to power during the Biden-Harris administration's disastrous withdrawal from the country in 2021. "All the countries must join hands and tackle the problem of climate change," Afghan environmental official Matuil Haq Khalis told the Associated Press.
Since it took back power, the Taliban has banned girls from attending school, imprisoned journalists, committed widespread extrajudicial killings, and has seemingly looked the other way as Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis has worsened, according to Human Rights Watch.
COP29's host nation, Azerbaijan, has committed its own share of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch concluded in its 2024 report on the nation. In the lead-up to the summit, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, whom American intelligence cables once likened to a mafia crime boss, spearheaded an intense campaign of repression punctuated by arrests of journalists and dissidents, the New York Times reported this month.
Ali Karimli, the leader of the Azerbaijan’s main opposition party, penned an op-ed in September accusing Aliyev of hosting COP29 as a way of "laundering his reputation."
"Aliyev hopes that Baku’s polished image and Azerbaijan’s participation in global climate negotiations will distract from his regime’s darker side: more than 300 political prisoners, a crushed media and civil society, and the absence of fundamental political freedoms like free speech, freedom of assembly and due process," Karimli wrote for the Economist.
In June, meanwhile, Reps. Anna G. Eshoo (D., Calif.) and Chris Smith (R., N.J.) authored a resolution condemning Azerbaijan for perpetrating ethnic cleansing against its Armenian population. "Azerbaijan's genocidal campaign against the Armenian people continues with the ongoing destruction of religious, historical, and cultural sites," Armenian Assembly of America congressional relations director Mariam Khaloyan said at the time.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project named Aliyev the inaugural winner of its Organized Crime and Corruption Person of the Year award in 2012. The organization recognized Aliyev for how he used his government to secure large personal ownership shares in Azerbaijan's key industries. The watchdog group noted Aliyev "is referred to as a dictator by many analysts."