Atone For Afghan Agony

Divide and rule over various issues is a practice known since the deep ancient times. Afghanistan’s case is a textbook play staged in one of the poorest but fiercely independent nations, known for having rejected, prevented, repelled and defeated foreign forces down the ages. 

Afghanistan: Samrajyaharuko Chihan (Graveyard of empires) by Rabi Raj Thapa, a retired Additional Inspector of Armed Police Force, is all about Afghan agony in a nutshell. The read makes a fast-paced narrative, rich in facts, events and dates analysed with an eagle eye and meticulous mind. Released in December, it presents a perspective that turns out to be a critically hard-hitting portrayal of the repeated onslaughts and raids made on the sturdy and never-say-die Afghan people’s fierce sense of possessive national independence.

In August 2021, the mighty superpower troops quit in disgrace. They paid the price of ignoring history, which, since the 18th century, saw the country as the graveyard of empires. September 11, 2001 suicide attacks against the US were the immediate cause that triggered the war. For the first time, NATO invoked its Charter that made all its members mandatory to join a fellow constituent in the consequent war in the landlocked, least developed and nonaligned South Asian nation. 

Political movements for reforms prompted King Zaheer Shah to order the 1949 general election in Afghanistan. Some sections were, however, chagrined that, in the name of education and modernity, their traditions were trampled upon and indigenous culture was getting decimated in a conservative Islamic society. Confusion and dissatisfaction were the resultant backlash. Amidst unrest in 1953, Zaheer dissolved parliament and appointed his hardliner nephew as prime minister.

Geo-politics

Landlocked, non-aligned and one of the world’s poorest nations, Afghanistan's political landscape is witness to many ups and downs. In an exercise of gross absurdity, NATO in 2003 committed the blunder of allowing history to repeat itself by trying to plant their banner of force on the Afghans. Local pawns and proxies were deployed before the invading forces got bogged down in a conflict of their own making, much to their eventual embarrassment.

Sabotage and subversion are tactics used with money, power and military muscle. Foreign forces have supervised state agencies, NGOs and INGOs in drafting laws, formulating another country’s constitution, and replacing local customs and culture that aligned with “modern, democratic” practices. Customary procedures and age-old practices were dismissed as outdated, if not blatantly ridiculed. Strategically placed in the big power game, Afghanistan draws a familiar parallel with some significant events in Nepal since 1951.

 At times, to invoke the lesson that history repeats itself might sound an understatement. Author Thapa recommends that Nepal cultivate soft power to deflect any security threat. Six weeks after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, US President George W. Bush thanked his troops for the “good work” done in completing the Afghan war and ending military activity.  The few contingents of able fighting forces in the Afghan security were deployed in Iraq at NATO’s behest, thus further weakening the regime installed with Western support in Kabul. Corruption corroded all public institutions, placing the country in the lowest rungs of the world corruption index. 

Thapa’s book makes an accurate portrayal of how power-play wreaks havoc in a target state and its people who bear the crushing brunt of armed conflicts. The world’s most powerful country, which played a decisive role in ending the two World Wars after fighting for hardly seven years, was entangled in a 20-year war in Afghanistan, only to end up defeated. The uncontrolled rut in the administration is indicated by the quadruple rise in opium cultivation from 2002 to 2017, with Kabul and foreign backers not able to do anything to check it. 

Sales of the banned drugs were the Taliban’s major source of financing their fighting. Some Western news channels labelled the country a “Narco-state” while the regime in Kabul and foreign forces were unable to check it. Thapa draws an eerie parallel with similar situations elsewhere in the region and beyond. He notes: “When a nation gets completely reliant on foreign loans and donations to run, it automatically breeds inequality.” The US plunged into a full-scale war. Hamid Karazi, with the full backing of the US, had three dozen provincial governments installed but run by employees, 80 per cent of whom were illiterate. 

Talks ignored

Thapa quotes a team report underlining the invading powers’ fatal mistake. He concludes that, had the Taliban been brought to the negotiating table instead of being them like permanent enemies not to be associating in government formation, the conflict could have ended in 2002.  Formed in 1949 with 12 members four years after World War II ended, NATO’s primary objective was to check Soviet communism from spreading in other countries. However, the defence organisation was not dismantled even after the Soviet disintegration and consequent collapse of the Warsaw Pact of east European communist states in 1991. 

The foreign powers invited themselves to run for their fragile safety in an unseemly haste as soon as their Man Friday and former World Bank staffer, Ashraf Ghani, shed his presidential wear on August 15, 2022, to flee on a helicopter to an undisclosed destination without taking into confidence even his cabinet members. NATO forces abandoned all their weapons as the Taliban approached Kabul’s gates. 

The response of the Joe Biden administration to the severe setback to the US-led NATO’s military reputation at the Taliban’s hands was a scorched-earth policy designed to cause maximum amount of economic damage to what was already one of the world’s poorest countries.

Today, when the Taliban rule is back, the US decided to freeze Afghan state assets and sternly warned of sanctions against financial and other foreign companies engaged in Afghan partnership. It involves halting payments from the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Critics call it a humanitarian crime. Thapa’s work on South Asia’s strategically-placed state should make a special read for political scientists, experts on world affairs, geo-strategists, and defence experts in particular.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)