Afghanistan: Back to the Taliban

The granting of protection visas to allied translators in Afghanistan is probably an indication that the US and its allies, although may have come to an accord with the Taliban, do not trust the Taliban to act with impunity with the various accomplices of the allies in Afghanistan. But the act of granting protection visas now begs the question: Are allied translators the only entities at risk in Afghanistan?

In February 2020, the US signed an accord with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar to end the conflict in Afghanistan and to withdraw all troops within 14 months, if the militants upheld the deal. Under the agreement, the insurgents also agreed not to permit al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in areas controlled by them. The agreement included a pledge to release up to 5,000 Taliban fighters held in Afghan government prisons, in exchange for 1,000 members of the Afghan security forces held by the militants. At the time of the accord, the US still had 12,000 troops in Afghanistan, and had lost 2,400 troops (apart from the 1,100 troops lost by coalition partners) in the 18-year conflict with the Taliban.

The US war on the Taliban began when the US launched air strikes one month following the 11 September 2001 attacks, and after the Taliban had refused to hand over the brain behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden. It was followed by the US and its allies’ invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001, and the removal of the Taliban from power. But the Taliban began resorting to insurgency ever since, resulting in an 18-year-long conflict.. In 2014, the US ended its combat mission in Afghanistan, and was since involved only in training Afghan soldiers. But the US continued its own, scaled-back combat operations, including air strikes.

The Taliban can be traced back to the mujaheedin that was involved in a war of insurgency with the Soviet Union, after the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet Union, itself, turned invader out of fear that Islamic extremism was threatening the Central Asian region.

Pakistan’s ISI, with direct approval and complicity from the US, stoked the insurgency against the Soviets, channelling money and equipment to the mujaheedin. About 90,000 Afghans, including Mohammed Omar, the founder of the Taliban, were trained by Pakistan’s ISI during the eighties.

After the fall of the Soviet-backed regime led by Mohammed Najibullah in 1992, there was a brief civil war in Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996. In the period, the Taliban grew from strength to strength, recruiting Pashtun students from the madrassas (traditional Islamic schools).. These recruits were primarily educated in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s main aspiration for its overt support of the Taliban was to exert power in the region, and probably to open trade routes with Central Asia. In 1996, the Taliban controlled three-fourths of Afghanistan, shifted the capital to Kandahar, from Kabul, and enforced strict Islamic sharia law.

After 2001, with the fall of the Taliban from power, the continued support from tribal and other groups in Pakistan, the nefarious drug trade, and the seemingly small contingent of NATO forces, ensured that the Taliban survived. The Taliban’s modus operandi, to exert its presence, was through suicide attacks. About 241,000 people died in the Afghan-Pakistan war zone in the Taliban’s inglorious bloodletting since 2001. Over 71,000 were civilians.

What is worse, during the Taliban’s notorious rule from 1996 to 2001, it ruthlessly undertook massacres against Afghan civilians, denied UN food supplies to starving civilians and conducted a policy of scorched earth, burning vast areas of fertile land and destroying millions of homes. It also discriminated against ethnic minorities with the full force of cruelty. And its track-record of suppression of women was abominable. Apart from the cultural genocide it undertook, that saw non-Islamic monuments being destroyed including the famous 1500-year old Bamiyan Budda.

Now, with the US and its allies seemingly abandoning Afghanistan, it leaves the country vulnerable to Taliban’s atrocious onslaught again. Will it be a repeat of the 1996-2001 Taliban epoch again? The Taliban is not in power now, but its bellicosity can see it definitely make a comeback. In 2018, the BBC found that the Taliban was active across 70% of Afghanistan. Can it be disguised that the West is worn out by the conflict in Afghanistan, while the Taliban doggedly fights on? Each time it suffers a setback, it rears its head with a vengeance again.

Former US President Donald Trump said in characteristic acerbity, after the signing of the peace accord, that US troops had been killing terrorists in Afghanistan “by the thousands” and now it was “time for someone else to do that work …and it could be surrounding countries”. Have the US and its accompanists ever worried that a fire they conspired to stoke way back in the 80s, will now be causing depredation to the very countries the US plans to leave the onus with in future?

Does the US seek to be the moral ombudsman and ministrant of the world, only when it suits its strategic interests?