Features
Afghanistan’s human costs on steady rise
Afghanistan’s current agonies may aggravate into one of South Asia’s most staggering humanitarian crises in modern times unless swiftly contained. Human displacement in war ravaged Afghanistan may be nothing new but its present proportions in the wake of the Taliban’s ruthless return to power in the country could prove exceptionally unsettling for those sections that empathize with the Afghan civilians’ suffering.
Those graphic images in the media over the past few days of displaced civilians in their thousands fleeing the country in vehicles or on foot told the story of a hapless people who have been left entirely to their devices by local rulers as well as international powers, such as the US and its NATO allies, who purportedly acted in the best interests of Afghanistan over the years.
However, while the country’s local rulers have fled to safety in some neighbouring countries, the civilian populace of Afghanistan has been abandoned to an existence of harrowing hazards, as seen in the pictures of Afghan civilians scrambling desperately to get on board flights leaving Kabul.
These scenes are proof of the horror instilled in the hearts of most Afghan civilians by the Taliban over the past two decades. Not coming within clutching range of the Taliban seems to be foremost among the needs of a substantial number of Afghans and their fears are fully understandable, considering the fundamentalist group’s past excesses in its efforts at governance. However, the stark fact is that the Taliban is back in power and the democratic world in particular is now obliged to figure out as to how it would be working in the best interests of the Afghan people in its dealings with the Taliban regime.
It is some time since the Doha process began and the hope of the humanist is likely to be that the above international players would be focusing primarily on the wellbeing of the Afghan civilian populace who would be seeing themselves as being alone in the world. In the first instance, a ceasefire needs to be called and the cooperation of the Taliban enlisted to ensure the satisfaction of the immediate needs of the Afghan people.
Second, as the US and some other powers have indicated, there ought to be a systematic transfer of power in the country and a broad-based government, representative of all legitimate political stakeholders in the country, brought into being. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken underscoring these and other aims recently told his Chinese counterpart Wang YI: ‘The Taliban should announce a clean break with extremism, opt for an orderly transfer of power and establish an inclusive government. ‘
The above conditions that are being put to the Taliban could be considered as highly idealistic, considering Afghanistan’s travails over the past 20 years in particular. An ‘inclusive government’, for example, would be one of the best things that could happen to Afghanistan but a government of this kind could be anathema in the ears of the Taliban whose sole aim over the years was to be the sole governing power in the country.
In fact, in action and ideology, the Taliban made it abundantly clear that its aim was to establish itself as the sole governing power in Afghanistan. To do this, it was prepared to fight long and ruthlessly. The bloody conflict in Afghanistan over the past 20 years or more was fuelled and sustained by this Taliban ambition. Would the Taliban be willing to relinquish this pet aim now, when a long fought military victory has been achieved by it? It would be naïve on the part of the powers that matter to overlook this question. Besides, the Taliban has made it clear that it aims to declare an ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ‘. Accordingly, all the relevant international actors have a tough job on their hands on ending the strife in Afghanistan, particularly when the obduracy, fighting capability and fire power of the Taliban is taken into consideration.
On the other hand, the international powers mentioned consider a stable Afghanistan to be in their best interests. For the US and Russia, Afghanistan is of great strategic interest. Afghanistan is at the veritable crossroads of a number of politically and militarily important south west Asian states: China, Iran, Pakistan, the former Central Asian republics of the USSR and India.
It was this strategic location of Afghanistan that prompted the former USSR to invade it in the late seventies, resulting in it getting into more than a decade long military quagmire. The same reasons accounted considerably for the invasion of Afghanistan by the US in 2001. However, prior to the Russian and US involvements in Afghanistan, Britain took an abiding interest in the territory during its empire-building years for primarily the same strategic considerations.
China would not want Islamic fundamentalist forces to destabilise its interior and its borders. Currently, it is in an effort to quell religious fundamentalist unrest in some of its regions inhabited by Muslim adherents. A Taliban regime in Kabul would come to be seen by China as not being in its interests, in consideration of these internal security factors. Likewise, Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is a witness to religious fundamentalist inspired unrest. A Taliban regime is likely to exert a sustained influence in these border areas and pose continued security concerns for Pakistan.
Accordingly, the international actors mentioned are likely to act in concert to some degree to bring a measure of stability to Afghanistan, although they would prize such stability for different reasons. However, if the suffering of the Afghan people is overlooked in the quest for state stability nothing would be gained because a disaffected populace would always prove vulnerable to anti-democratic, divisive political forces. Moreover, humanity would be undermined for the sake of state stability. Eventually, the forces of civilization would be defeated by the runaway currents of global disorder.