AUGUST 16, 2021 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Reflections on Events in Afghanistan
The Taliban fighters posing for family photo and relaxing in the Presidential Palace, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug 15, 2021
1. Collapse of the Afghan Army
Social media reported that at the Kabul residence of the Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib who post-haste fled to Tajikistan on Saturday with President Ashraf Ghani, three Toyota Landcruiser SUVs were found stacked with American dollar bills.
Mohib was the shadow king of Afghanistan. He controlled the country’s defence budget. In the coming year, he would have handled over $3 billion, which the US has earmarked as assistance for the Afghan armed forces. The Taliban spoiled his party.
The mystery of the Afghan armed forces losing the will to fight is actually no mystery at all. The main reason has been the misappropriation of defence budget. In Ghani’s set-up, Mohib, his trusted flunky, controlled the Defence Ministry — not the Defence Minister — and he obviously did well for himself — and probably Ghani too. Time will tell.
The soldiers seldom received their full pay as officers pocketed the money and that explained the high rate of desertion from enlisted men. Soldiers often flogged their US-supplied weapons in the black market to earn a living.
Simply put, the army lost the will to fight for a decrepit government that lacked legitimacy, was inept and indifferent to people’s needs and grievances — and a leadership it held in contempt.
The contrast with the Afghan army built by the Soviets in the early 1980s couldn’t be sharper. Najibullah held out for three years after the Soviet troop withdrawal and stepped down only when Moscow cut off all assistance — even wheat flour to make bread. The army was disciplined, well-trained and politically indoctrinated, and the officer corps trained in the Soviet military academies commanded respect.
The Battle of Jalalabad (1989) stands out as its finest hour when Pakistan masterminded a siege on the city to capture it as seat for the Mujahideen provisional government, but failed.
Over the past twenty years, the US supposedly trained the Afghan army by NATO standards, 300000 strong, but when the battle was joined in May, it began crumbling under Taliban pressure.
When corruption eats into the vitals of a nation, the state structures decompose and collapse. And when the leadership loses respect of the people, the war is lost.
At the famous Mehdi Hasan show on MSNBC today, Afghan ambassador to Washington Ms. Adela Raz said that Ghani and his cronies simply emptied the Afghan Treasury and left with the loot. The Afghan finance minister Khalid Payenda’s resignation and escape from Kabul on August 11 falls in perspective! The poor man feared the day of reckoning. He didn’t even say where he was heading.
India’s policymakers couldn’t have been unaware that a cabal was ruling Afghanistan but deliberately chose to ignore it. This is incomprehensible. India stuck out its neck as recently as last Monday to set the stage for Ghani’s government to project itself to the international audience from the UN Security Council podium. It ignored a formal request from Pakistan to participate in the UN SC discussion so that Ghani’s people had a field day!
The best hope is that no interest groups existed within the Indian establishment, as happened to the US. The Washington Post has exposed that the Pentagon commanders lied and the ‘forever war’ continued. Evidently, a gravy train was running through Kabul.
Such things happen when the covert agencies of the state stand above law. A nexus formed between Kabul bigwigs like NSA Mohib and decrepit rogue elements within the US military and they thwarted all attempts to end this war. The disconcerting fact is, in India too, a determined lobby advocated the ‘forever war’ against all logic, and Mohib was our man in Kabul, too.
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THE INTERNATIONAL ANGLE OF THE NEW RISE OF THE TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN
16 Aug 2021 , 4:25 pm .
There has been the fall of Kabul at the hands of the Taliban. Ashraf Ghani was deposed, who fled the country and has been proclaimed the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" led by Abdul Ghani Baradar. All this unleashes a halo of uncertainties and possibilities on the international scene that will be woven on these facts without amendment.
For this, let us immediately take a superficial look at some key elements to infer what could happen outside the Afghan nation. But first you have to look inside the country.
AFGHANISTAN IN DEEDS AND IN ITSELF
The irrefutable fact about Afghanistan is that the Taliban, in symbolic, military and political terms, won the war by taking control of the country after the US withdrawal. Whether due to military failure or for reasons not yet openly determined, the Americans have abandoned a war front that lasted 20 years, and which for them proved to be a dead end, a loop.
War is, by default, unfeasible. Both for the results it has generated and for the fact that now the Taliban force has taken control of weapons, equipment, supplies, armored vehicles, heavy artillery, which the Americans inherited (and abandoned) for the Afghan army today defeated. In other words, the Taliban are more powerful than 20 years ago, when the invasion began.
In strictly military terms, a force well armed and trained by the United States, with 300 thousand men, ceded the country in just days and practically without dispute in many cities. This is a string of events that could seem "inexplicable" in military terms, as they are far from many forecasts, including those held by US President Joe Biden himself, who assured on July 8 that the Afghan government would not fall. .
From within Afghanistan, there seems to be recognition of the fact that all-out war is no longer viable, once the invading power has left.
During the last years of entrenchment and nucleated resistance of the Taliban in specific areas. Let's say, of detente against the United States and against the Afghan government forces, the Taliban undertook a political process of adding tribal forces. A process that accelerated since February 2020 with the signing of a Peace Agreement with the United States and the Afghan government, which gave them greater room for maneuver.
Specifically, the Shiite Afghan Hazars who were enemies and persecuted by the Taliban are now integrated tribes. In addition, there is now a "Tajik Taliban" to the north, where skirmishes between the Taliban in the 1990s with ethnic groups on the border with Tajikistan were common in the past.
According to Alastain Crooke for the media Al Mayadeen , "the Taliban today are no longer a simple instrument of Pashtun hegemony; perhaps up to 30% are Tajiks, Uzbeks or Hazara." This assertion suggests that, in fact, tribal composition, with a special rural support base, is a fact in Afghanistan and has largely been the explanation for the new rise of the Taliban.
Unlike the Taliban of the 90s, which consisted of a small Pashtun ideological-identity-ethnic stronghold, which managed to impose itself by force throughout the country, the current situation is largely different. The current Taliban is "inclusive", and the quotes are in their own words. As recently emerged, in an interview with Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban, who spoke directly to the BBC , they declare that their rise to power has intentions of "tolerance, inclusion, national unity, peaceful existence and reconstruction."
There should be no confusion, they have admitted that a clerical and conservative government will come, but they have pointed out that although women and girls will have to use the hijab (one of the Islamic veils), women and girls will continue to have the right to education, work and other individual freedoms that will be determined by the new government.
In comparative terms, the new Taliban government proposes a style of social order founded on religion that we must consider not so different from the one already held by the Sunni clergy over Saudi society. However, everything remains to be seen.
Beyond these details, it is essential to look at the composition of the current social support base for the Taliban as one of the components of its vertiginous rise to power, based on an explicit declaration of the end of the war and its unviable nature. So consistent is this declaration that it is endorsed from the facts, that is, they take power after controlling two-thirds of the country in just weeks, practically without using weapons.
THE INTERNATIONAL ANGLE OF THE NEW TALIBAN RISE
This Monday, August 16, at a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya eloquently declared that "there is no reason to panic," adding that the complex Afghan painting demands detailed observation of the actors and events. In other words, it cries out for prudence, in clear disagreement with the rhetorical scaremongering of Western actors, largely responsible for current events.
The prudence of the Russians is justified by their knowledge of the picture on the ground and by the framework of possibilities that stem from the indisputable facts that the war failed and that the current Taliban are not exactly the same as they were in the 1990s.
According to Alastair Crooke, "The Taliban are engaging in extensive diplomacy with Iran. Tehran, apparently, is no longer apostate (for the Taliban), it is no longer an ideological and theological enemy. The Taliban now seek to integrate Iran into their broader strategic interests, "he says.
"Instead of having tunnel vision limited to the narrow territory of Kandahar, the new young Taliban leaders want to play the strategic 'Great Game'," Crooke notes of the new Taliban leadership. And that claim is patented by facts on several fronts.
On July 28, a delegation from the Taliban led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is the new leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, visited China , where he met with the Foreign Minister of that country, Wang Yi, for two continuous days. of intense conversations. Understand, that according to the lapses of the agenda of Chinese diplomacy, there is much to infer from such a prolonged meeting.
On that occasion, the political spokesman for the Afghans, Naeem Wardak, said in a statement that Baradar arrived in China at the head of a delegation made up of nine members after being officially invited by Beijing. "Points of view were exchanged on both countries' political, economic and security issues, as well as the ongoing situation in Afghanistan and the peace process," Wardak said.
China, according to the version of the Taliban, "affirmed the expansion and continuity of its aid to the Afghan nation" and that it "will not interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan." Beijing also pledged to "help solve problems and bring peace" and rebuild Afghanistan, in clear foresight of the times that have now ended.
China has been developing a very active agenda in recent months, anticipating the objective realities that the Afghan cadre has been generating. Indeed, the Belt and Road Initiative project has a central emphasis on Central Asia and it is inevitable that the Chinese will look to the "land of Afghans" (etymological origin of the name of the country).
China's new silk routes for the 21st century (Photo: El País)
The project's railroad routes and trade corridors, which comprise a major infrastructure development, run through Pakistan, Turmekistan, and Tajikistan, which border Afghanistan.
China had developed intentions with the now deposed government of Afghanistan to further integrate this country into the grand initiative, and it seems that the pragmatism of Chinese diplomacy could give the new Taliban government an opportunity to develop a credible and complementary roadmap. as well as the well-justified possibilities of instability that have been generated by the new Taliban rise.
The meeting in China took for granted several statements: "We hope that the Afghan Taliban will make a clear break with all terrorist organizations, including ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) and fight them resolutely and effectively to remove obstacles, play a role. positive role and create conditions conducive to security and stability, development and cooperation in the region, "said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, reported the Global Times .
Baradar, for the Afghans, told Wang that "the Afghan Taliban will never allow any force to use Afghan territory to engage in acts harmful to China. The Afghan Taliban believe that Afghanistan should develop friendly relations with neighboring countries and the international community." .
The rise of the Taliban, which involves the reconstruction of a "refuge country" to terrorism, according to what is widely pointed out by the West, of course concerns China considering the record of sources of instability that have arisen in the southwest of that country through skirmishes of the country. Chinese state with members of the Uyghur ethnic group in Xinjiang.
The position of the Chinese is straightforward and probably clearly coincides with the possible vision of the new Afghan leadership. The Chinese foreign minister has said that "the hasty withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan actually marks the failure of US policy on Afghanistan. The Afghan people now have an important opportunity to achieve national stability and development."
The equation assumes that, if the Taliban are outlined in the development of an inclusive government within themselves (which to a certain extent already is) and if they do not lend their territory to promote international instability, they will have the recognition, support and investment of several countries. These possibilities have already been raised by China and Russia, who have played the modulating role after NATO's withdrawal.
On this, days ago Mohammad Suhail Shaheen spoke on behalf of the Taliban to India Today from Doha in Qatar, where he indicated that the policy of his organization was not going to favor any group in the rivalry between India and Pakistan.
For his part, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, referring to the "disaster" generated by the Americans, reaffirmed Pakistan's determination to continue all efforts in support of an inclusive political solution in neighboring Afghanistan.
The vision of the actors in the region is overall. In clear anticipation of the inevitable rise of the Taliban, an important meeting took place that went unnoticed. This occurred in mid-July and was a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, called "NATO of Asia", in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
This was attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, Mukhtar Tileuberdi; Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; the Foreign Minister of Tajikistan, Sirojiddin Muhriddin; and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with Taliban mission leader Abdul Ghani Baradar on a visit to China (Photo: Global Times)
According to the analyst and journalist Pepe Escobar and in the analysis of this meeting , the approach to the strategic partnership between Russia and China in Afghanistan is "cautiously realistic." The Taliban have had a "real diplomatic boost" based on the recognition of the real dimensions of China and Russia, as well as other relevant complementary actors and supporters of their policies, such as Pakistan and Iran.
According to Escobar, in reference to the "demands" of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to Afghanistan, these start from two key points:
Real negotiations between Afghans towards national reconciliation and a lasting political solution, thus avoiding an all-out civil war. Beijing is ready to "facilitate" the dialogue.
Fight against terrorism, which means, in practice, the remnants of al-Qaeda, ISIS-Khorasan and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Afghanistan should not be a haven for terrorist groups, again. The Taliban, for their part, must promise a complete break with all terrorist components.
The offer in return for the Taliban is economic integration, reconstruction and regional security.
Afghanistan will continue to be a territory that must consolidate its pacification, considering that there are internal factors willing to fight now a war of resistance to the Taliban from within and that, in addition, under the US occupation, a great "opium highway" was consolidated that is composed of by a network of international drug trafficking actors with armed preparation in situ . It is not exempt from risks or from new forms of retaliation by the West and NATO.
But the unassailable reality of the new Taliban rise is nuanced and chained to unfolding events that will undoubtedly reconfigure the balancing and unbalanced factors in Central Asia.
For the international community in this part of the world there is a new force of gravity. Faced with the rise of the Taliban and the objective fact of the failure and unfeasibility of the war in the Afghan country, the most relevant actors in the axis of geographical influence of the conflict necessarily bet on politics as an inexorable destiny, from now on, when it can be done, to which is essential to have to look at Afghanistan with new eyes, like it or not.
The new painting demands a deep insight into the internal Afghan realities and its components.
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