Afew days ago, screaming newspaper headlines announced the surrender of Kabul to Taliban forces. Gut-wrenching visuals of Kabul airport emerged showing thousands of Afghans thronging runways and aeroplanes, in a desperate bid to escape from their own country. Soothsayers outdid themselves in predicting a dire future for Afghanistan – as if it had been the most modern and progressive nation in the world earlier, rather than a desperately poor, war-ravaged country.
Fake news peddlers had a field day posting videos of women being auctioned (turned out to be a movie sequence) and Taliban committing horrifying atrocities (turned out to be an old Iraqi video). The Americans, who had abandoned Afghanistan to its fate, were surprised by the capitulation without any resistance of the Afghan army, one that had been nurtured, financed and equipped by the US for the last twenty years.
For the record, the Afghan army numbered 3,50,000 soldiers armed with the latest American weaponry, while the Taliban were a rag-tag band of 75,000, moving around in rundown pick-up trucks. The Taliban, that had no air force, no navy, no tanks and little resources, got the better of the most modern army in the world, with covert financial support from middle-eastern countries who saw in the rise of the Taliban the dawn of an Islamic Caliphate, and the not so covert assistance from Pakistan that wanted a friendly regime in Afghanistan for strategic depth against India.
Hard put to explain the Afghan debacle that cost 2,448 US army men’s lives and more than 20,000 wounded (plus 1,250 NATO soldiers) and close to $3 trillion, the American press laid the blame on the duplicity of the Afghan people and corruption of the Afghan leadership. Probably, the Americans failed to realise that no country likes being ruled by foreigners, least of all Afghanistan that had proved to be the graveyard of British, Russian, and now US ambitions.
On 29 February 2020, under the Trump Presidency, the US and Taliban signed an agreement titled: “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America.”
The agreement had four inter-related conditions: (1) Taliban to take counterterrorism measures to ensure that Afghan soil was not used by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to plan attacks or train terrorists or raise funds for terrorism (2) a conditional timeline for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, (3) commencing intra-Afghan talks, and (4) to move towards a permanent cease-fire.
The US-Taliban agreement effectively sealed the fate of the Ashraf Ghani-led Afghan government, because the agreement clearly saw the Taliban as putative rulers of Afghanistan ~ rather than the legitimate Government. Talks between the Taliban and the US continued desultorily at Doha but US troop withdrawal on 1 May 2021 accelerated the timeline; belying the US hope that the Afghan army would offer stiff resistance to the Taliban or even overwhelm them.
Kabul fell to the Taliban on 15 August, without a shot being fired. The Americans had clearly miscalculated; as late as July 8, in an interaction with the press in the White House, President Biden had said: “the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped ~ as wellequipped as any army in the world ~ and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It (a Taliban victory) is not inevitable.” Post the Taliban takeover, the suddenness of which caught him unawares, President Biden tried to put on a brave face, saying that the US withdrawal did not diminish America’s stature in the international community.
President Biden also tried to absolve his intelligence operatives of any failure on their part. Rather, he squarely blamed his erstwhile ally Afghan President Ghani for fleeing Afghanistan and the Afghan army for timidly surrendering to the Taliban despite a huge numerical and armaments superiority, conveniently forgetting the treatment Taliban fighters mete out to their vanquished enemies. No one can fault Ghani for leaving Afghanistan in a hurry; in a video statement Ghani said that he did not want the Taliban to hang him from a lamp post like his predecessor, Najibullah.
The Afghan army saw the writing on the wall when their US benefactors started hotfooting it from Afghanistan; surrender of the Afghan army definitely saved Afghan lives ~ fighting for a lost cause is romantic but almost always futile. Currently, the Taliban are busy making dovish statements, averring that they will give all kinds of freedom to Afghans, respect women’s rights and not allow Afghan territory to be used for terrorism.
A Taliban spokesman has gone so far as to promise that the Taliban would not interfere in Kashmir, which according to the spokesman, was a problem only between India and Pakistan. Given their violent history, the Taliban’s protestations of peace and goodwill cannot be taken at face value. On the other hand, the sober public statements of the Taliban do reveal a new-found maturity. Probably, after their previous experience of ruling Afghanistan between 1996 to 2001, when they intentionally riled the international community by random violence, repression of women and needless vandalism like blasting the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Taliban have decided to try for greater acceptability.
Beyond some casual instances of violence, the Taliban have been a restrained lot so far. A key reason for seeking international approval may be that the Taliban have long term plans for ruling Afghanistan, which may not be possible without the willing concurrence of the US and other superpowers, as also countries in the neighbourhood. A more immediate motivation may be the desire to lay hands on cash reserves of $10 billion of the previous Afghan government that are held in London.
Another bloody chapter has ended in the ‘great game’ played between superpowers, which has been the bane of Afghanistan since British times. What the future holds for the beleaguered country can only be a matter of conjecture. In a case of sour grapes, the Western press is crying itself hoarse for what it foresees as the imminent descent of Afghanistan to a theocracy, a terrorist haven, a manufacturer and exporter of illegal drugs and a virtual prison for women.
Since most of the Islamic countries in the Middle-East that have influenced the Taliban practice varying degrees of theocracy and have a poor record of women’s empowerment, we would definitely see a movement of Afghan society in that direction. However, the other policies that the future Afghan Government would follow are not clear since key Government personnel have not yet been decided upon. Hopefully, Taliban 2.0 may prove different from its previous incarnation because the present leadership wants other stakeholders on board. In a bid for consensus, a delegation of the Taliban led by Anas Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani component of the Taliban, met former Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, the old government’s principal peace envoy Abdullah Abdullah, Chairman of Afghan Senate Fazal Hadi Muslimyar and others.
Another plus point in the emerging situation is the big power engagement with Taliban. Russia and China, directly and through Pakistan, are talking to the Taliban, as it is not in the interest of either that Afghanistan should degenerate into a terrorist state. The primary interest of Russia and China in ousting the US from Afghanistan was not to have the US breathing down their necks in their own backyard. Pakistan wanted the US out of Afghanistan because India was expanding its interests in Afghanistan on the back of the Americans.
The relative maturity of the present leadership, that has taken care not to antagonise America needlessly by hampering the evacuation of US troops and their sympathisers, may suggest a more moderate course. The US too seems to be open for business with the Taliban. Keeping these factors in mind, one need not be too pessimistic about Afghanistan’s future. But the world should definitely oppose motivated US interference in the affairs of smaller nations on various pretexts, which ruins them and disturbs the peace the world over.
The following quote sums up the situation beautifully: “First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So, who’s next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end? If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.” (Daniel Kofman, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq).
(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax)