READERS familiar with my work as a foreign affairs reporter will know that I have a long-term love affair with Afghanistan and its people. In the four decades that I have watched this long-suffering nation’s fortunes unfold I could count on one hand the number of times there has been any real respite from the agonies its people have endured.
The Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the bitter, destructive factional fighting of the 90s after the Russians left, then of course the coming to power of the Taliban and the presence of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda prompting yet another war, has all meant a seemingly endless passage of pain.
And still that hurt is unrelenting. Last weekend saw rocket attacks against residential areas in the capital Kabul, and more yesterday on an outdoor market in the central city of Bamiyan, usually considered one of Afghanistan’s “safest” areas, that killed at least 14 people and wounding 45, mostly civilians.
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This week saw, too, the assassination of Aliyas Dayee, one of the country’s bravest and most respected reporters, after a magnetic “sticky bomb” was placed under the wheel arch of his car. And then there were the revelations from far-off Australia where the findings of a landmark investigation into allegations of war crimes levelled against Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan were described as “sickening”.
It exposed how junior troopers were forced to kill Afghans, mostly civilians, in a practice known as “blooding” to allow them to achieve their first “kill”.
While this international dirty work often takes place in the remote villages of Afghanistan, ostensibly away from view, other dirty work is carried out in the more sterile corridors of power in places like Washington.
There outgoing US president Donald Trump’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban and agree to a US troop withdrawal once again threatens to leave ordinary Afghans at the mercy of a deteriorating security situation.
Oh and before anyone starts thinking that Joe Biden will be some white knight coming to the rescue, then think again.
It’s worth remembering that this is the same Biden who rejected the notion that America had any moral obligation to improve the lives of Afghans or prevent civil wars.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity to the independent policy research organisation Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), one senior Obama administration official summed up Biden’s attitude as follows: “He had that empathy for the people in the Balkans. He even had it for people in Iraq. I never saw it in Afghanistan.”
This is the same Joe Biden who also famously resisted efforts to tie US engagement to any duty to protect Afghan women, says AAN.
In 2010, when Biden was vice-president and with a son in the military, he met then US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, who recorded this choice quote: “I am not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights, it just won’t work, that’s not what they’re there for.”
I do get it that the object of the US-led coalition intervention was to defeat al-Qaeda and punish their Afghan Taliban hosts. But if Trump has his way before he leaves office, then Washington will also ensure that American troops leave Afghanistan, abandoning its people to that very same Taliban US forces troops came to neutralise. While constant mutterings from the talks between the US and the Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha tell us that “progress” is being made, the reality on the ground in Afghanistan tells a very different story.
As a recent headline in The Economist aptly summed it up, this is all a tale of “guns and poses”. While the Taliban postures and talks they also continue killing Afghans. While the US talks, its coalition allies in the shape of Australian Special Forces also go about killing Afghan civilians. Is it any wonder that ordinary Afghans don’t know who to trust or rely on anymore?
It’s not that their own government right now is much better, riddled as it with corruption and political divisions. The more that the talks in Doha go on, the weaker that same Afghan government gets. Already the Taliban in these negotiations have managed to wrangle from the US the release of 5000 prisoners, partial US troop withdrawal and international legitimacy. In return the Taliban have given up next to nothing. If anything the Islamist group holds the key cards right now and has all the leverage. After years of military engagement in Afghanistan, the Taliban also holds swathes of territory and to some Afghans is all but a shadow government.
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As if all this were not bad enough, this week’s major international donor conference, conducted virtually in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday, was not as forthcoming as many had hoped.
WHILE pledging billions of dollars in civilian aid, many countries imposed tough conditions pending on progress. Their frustration is understandable and for sure such provision cannot be made without a degree of accountability.
But what this tells us is that these donors recognise the uncertainty that lies ahead and that any compromises needed for peace in the Doha talks might lead to backsliding on human and women’s rights.
In other words, they see the writing on the wall and are wary about making long-term commitments in a country which at best has a failing administration and in a worst-case scenario could see the Taliban re-establishing itself and again becoming rulers.
It goes without saying, of course, that for ordinary Afghans the prospect of such a regime or any new and regenerated civil war is the last thing they want.
On my last visit to the country I again met many people who have never known a single day of peace in their lives these past 40 years. It’s a terrible indictment of the international community that Afghans are no strangers to being used as pawns and human collateral in the great games super powers and brokers play in their otherwise beautiful country.
How I wish it were not so, but once again I fear they risk being thrown to the wolves.
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