A Conundrum

As per one report by the UN, there is a danger of one million children succumbing to death as a result of the forthcoming winters. The question is why is all this happening to a country which was relatively normal in all these years? The answer to this remains shrouded in the way the United States extricated itself from the land it had been controlling for two decades. The staggering haste and hurry displayed while vacating this land was unprecedented. It is no secret that Afghanistan has always been a complex and heterogeneous society having intertwining issues emanating from its ethnic and tribal base.

These issues which make up the bedrock of the Afghan civilization remained unaddressed, unresolved or rather intentionally swept under the carpet. The United States, though, had signed a peace deal with the Taliban at Doha, nevertheless, it failed to recognize its legitimacy. This is because the United States thinks it has an interest in attempting to preserve the many political, human rights and security gains that were achieved in Afghanistan since 2001. Despite the peace deal, the United States does not utterly come to terms with the Taliban, fearing that it could once more turn Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven. This is particularly owing to its conviction that the latter still continues to maintain ties with al-Qaeda. This trust deficit gave the United States the very excuse to freeze 9.5 billion US dollars languishing in the Afghan central bank (mostly accumulated through international aid) for fear of it being used in terrorist activities. Not only this, but owing to United States’ sanctions and restrictions, the rest of the donating organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, etc. are also not empowered to extend financial help to Afghanistan.

For centuries, Afghanistan’s economy depended on trade with neighbouring China, Pakistan, India, Persia and Transoxiana (the historical region of Central Asia which covers the territories of five countries: western Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, southern Kazakhstan, western Kyrgyzstan and north-western Turkmenistan). They provided the major chunk of sustenance and livelihood to the Afghan people. International isolation resulting from the two-decade-long war put a lock on this age-old trade too. Today, Afghanistan cannot officially trade with any country. At this point, should the international community fail to interfere, there looms a bigger danger of triggering a bloody civil war that might deluge the entire region. The world will see a blast of refugee crises coupled with unbridled terrorism.

“This humanitarian crisis could kill more Afghans than the past 20 years of war. It’s larger than what we see in Syria, or Yemen, or Ethiopia,” says Senator Chris Murphy, Chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia. “In this moment of crisis, the UN and international organizations on ground are racing to scale up the humanitarian response. Some time ago, the UN released an appeal to international donors for $4.4 billion to meet the humanitarian need in Afghanistan. This is the largest single country UN appeal in history, and that tells you something about the scale of the crisis,” he further added.

The bitter truth is that the United States which calls itself the harbinger of freedom, human rights and democracy had exploited the Afghans for 20 long years, first by waging a futile war against the hapless people though this had nothing to do with whatever the world was made to listen. They stayed there as long as it suited them, and then to safeguard their own interests, left and let the country have a freefall. This was the juncture when the people of Afghanistan were badly mauled in the clutches of poverty and hunger. Owing to the pressures of the international community in the wake of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe, the US State Department has shown its willingness to work in collaboration with the United Nations to provide humanitarian aid in a manner that it be spent on alleviation of poverty and help prevent an economic disaster. The anathema, however, befalling the Afghan nation does not finish here. International analysts and pundits concur that only economic aid is not the panacea to the problem, nor would it ever help finding a permanent solution. The present interim Taliban government is itself part of the problem, which is not seen as the sole representative of the entire population.

The Taliban only represent the Pushtoon segment, whereas the other ethnicities and linguistic groups cumulatively constitute 50% of the population and are completely and conveniently ignored. Today, the common man does not seem to enjoy any confidence in the Taliban government, which is primarily because the regime is not seen as a forward-looking, progressive system where people, especially the women, enjoy freedom to work and to education. It is about high time that both the US and Afghanistan should learn from their past mistakes. There is a dire need on part of the Taliban to form a broad-based government, including all ethnicities and linguistic groups. They need to ensure human rights, especially empowering women to work and get education, failing which would be utterly difficult for the people to accept this regime.

Back in 2003, shortly after it all started, Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defence, had said what now fully validates the advantage of hindsight; “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan or Iraq” he wrote, “I read all the intel from the community and it sounds as though we know a great deal, but in fact, when you push at it, you find out we haven’t got anything actionable. We are woefully deficient in human intelligence.”