Afghanistan - Back to Square One

 

It is uncanny how, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Case in point is the situation in Afghanistan.

Never the most stable of countries, Afghanistan has defied the stereotype country politically and in all other aspects. Historically the country has been a bit of a pariah. It could never be convincingly conquered by any of the big powers. Britain at the height of its power had a considerable presence in Afghanistan, but hey never could administer it say, like say India.

Afghanistan was always ruled by clans. These clans guarded their independence and their fiefdoms fiercely to say the least. None of the invading powers could convince the clans that their rule was better than what the domestic groups administered. The clans had their own private armies who were fiercely loyal to the leadership but often were bought by money.

Money was made by taxing people and selling agricultural produce. Drugs were also traded to supplement the income. In fact, most of the invaders were fought off by raising money this way.

After the British came the Russians. They too floundered in this country. The cold war was at its height.

Afghanistan has a lot of mineral resources which is part of the reason why the powers that be tried to invade it in the past. However, if the clan chiefs knew this fact, they probably were not interested. Exploiting the resources meant bringing in technology which only the big powers could provide. It was inevitable the powers would try to dictate the terms to the local chiefs. The chiefs did not want to relinquish their power. So, no foreign powers could ever enter Afghanistan.

When the Russians came into Afghanistan the American establishment typical of the cold war mentality, feared that country would become communist. As the Americans could not directly intervene in Afghanistan, a political via media was found. Pakistan was to act as a conduit for American help to the freedom fighters. This was the Taliban. The Americans wanted Afghanistan to be turned into the Russian Vietnam.

However, things seldom go according to plan, especially in clandestine campaigns. The Americans succeeded in ousting the Russians from Afghanistan but the Taliban and the Al Qaeda were left without an enemy. A political vacuum which nobody was willing to fill, not even the Americans. The result was chaos. Now the local commanders had money and weapons provided by the Americans through the Pakistanis.

Matters would not have come to a head if Saddam Hussain would not have invaded Kuwait. But he did and set a chain of events which would culminate in the US going into Afghanistan again. As American army poured into Saudi Arabia in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, one of their proteges did not like it, to say the least. This protégé was none other than Osama Bin Laden, He did not like the Americans stomping on the holy land of the Muslims. Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian had fought against the Russians in Afghanistan with American help. Now he turned against the Americans. His revenge was 9/11.

The Americans came back to hunt for the September 11 perpetrators. The Pakistanis were supposed to help them.  The Al Qaeda and Taliban were hunted and made ineffective. However, the top Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership were now friends of the Pakistanis. Pakistan’s position was akin to ‘hunt with the hounds and hide with the hare’ as most of the Taliban leadership took refuge in Pakistan (where Bin Laden was later killed in a secret military operation). Some say that Bin Laden was given away by the Pakistanis to satisfy the American thirst for revenge.  

Bin Laden had become a powerless exile by the time he was killed. The mantle had already fallen on his next-in-line, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.  Zarqawi wanted his own organization to fight the Americans in Iraq after Saddam Hussain’s death. He founded the ISIS or the Islamic State which Bin Laden had opposed earlier. So now the Al Qaeda had morphed into the Islamic State. The ISIS is mainly concentrated in the Iraq – Syria area, but American withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves the door wide open for them to spread their tentacles in this area and could make the American campaign in Iraq redundant.

The US withdrawal leaves the Afghan people in a bigger mess than they were in before the Russian invasion. With the ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the whole of West Asian neighborhood could reap a grim harvest in the coming years.