A Vietnam in Afghanistan

The US has withdrawn its forces from Afghanistan. The manner in which it is retreating is not dissimilar to something witnessed in Vietnam. If Taliban is not attacking the US forces, it is because it does not feel the need to do so. The Soviets must be chuckling a laugh or two at the American experience, something they had to undergo some three decades ago. Afghanistan continues to be the quagmire that traps the Western powers in its web. The Afghan history has a long story from the days of the Great Game when Britain and Russia sought to make inroads for their own strategic reasons. Russia needed then a warm weather port as it does now, and it felt, the road ran through Afghanistan. To Britain, any Russian moves in Central Asia would threaten their interests in their most jeweled possession and thus Afghanistan was to be a buffer state at the least. Britain had its own share of wars and they could not come to conquer Afghans though they managed to take a part of it, something that is known as Khyber Pakhtoonwa and lies in today’s Pakistan. The Sikhs did defeat Afghans an occasion or two but their rule was itself was transient.

The Soviets made their way in 1979, the counter of which was the jihadi forces backed by the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Taliban arose of these jihadi forces. Thus it was an American creation as much it was from Pakistan and the states of the Arabian Gulf. The Taliban offensive took most part of the country by the mid to late 1990s partly by coercion, partly by bribery, partly by war. It was the means to get Pakistan a strategic depth in its backyard. Taliban had all but the whole country in its sphere but for the 9/11 attacks. Days before the attack, Taliban had assassinated Ahmed Shah Masood, the Panjsher tiger who had organized the resistance and held the Panjsher valley together. The resistance by Northern Alliance would have all but fallen within weeks if not days but the 9/11 attacks changed the complexion with the US invasion and Taliban fleeing to safe sanctuaries in Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi among others. The US had a twenty year war whose outcome is nothing. The clock seems to be turning back onto the Afghan state. Any gains made in these twenty years seems to have neutralized in matter of few days as US makes a hasty retreat.

One wonders how long the current state of Afghanistan would hold against the Taliban advancements. There are of course views being expressed about the Afghanistan becoming the next Syria or Libya. That would be too charitable. Both Libya and Syria have not seen complete control being ceded to a single faction. There are multiple power centres at play. Yet as one looks at Afghanistan, it seems that all power centers at least at the moment seem to be disinterested and giving a virtual free reign to the Taliban. It remains to be seen how long the resistance would hold. If twenty years ago, the Northern Alliance held out, the current scenario is not encouraging given the Taliban capturing areas around the Tajik border including the Wakhan corridor. This brings to the questions on the fall of Mazar which had never fallen to Taliban. In fact it was through Mazar that India channeled its supplies to the anti-Taliban forces including the Northern Alliance. If Mazar were to fall alongside the Amu Darya, it might be days or weeks before Kabul surrenders. It is virtually a tenuous hold for the current Afghan administration. The key players like Russia or Saudi or UAE or Qatar either seem to be indifferent or running their own parallel negotiations with the Taliban. Uzbekistan or Tajikistan or Kazakhstan are unlikely to intervene without some sort of Russian backing. China has eyes on Afghanistan especially its mineral resources yet it is unlikely put its boots on the ground. China might be reluctant to use force but might attempt achieving depth in Afghanistan through its satellite Pakistan.

The only winner at the moment would be Pakistan though it must be seen whether the Taliban would follow an independent path aside of its Pakistan. Pakistan has certain leverage which it might seek to utilize in full. Pakistan came out on top thanks to the leverage on the US. The US failed in Afghanistan not because of Taliban resistance but because it failed to attack the roots of the cause. The roots lay in Pakistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives escaped to Pakistan, Osama lived in luxury yet the US virtually ignored the same. In fact, the US bankrolled Pakistan through these years. The US defeat in Afghanistan was orchestrated by itself. It was the US money that financed Pakistani interests which in turn was channelized through the Taliban routes for jihadi operations in Afghanistan. The US money was used to kill US forces. The US knew it throughout, yet it did little to stop it or punish Pakistan. The US simply could not handle the guerilla operations something similar to Vietnam. Neither it could wipe out those safe sanctuaries. Instead it found financing them.

The solution to the Afghan problem lies in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. US could have ensured a détente with Iran yet it did not. The route to Afghanistan lies to Pakistan and it exhibited the classic hold out. With Afghanistan being a land locked country, a rational solution from the US point of you was to have created Iran as an alternate counter-foil to Pakistan, something India sought to do with Chabhar but has its own limitations. Yet, over the years, US at best tried to do a moderate softening with Iran, something undone by President Trump. US neither has any great equations with Russia, a hangover of the Cold War which stops it from using the bases in Central Asia to organize resistance in Afghan territory. As the dark days begin to descend in Kabul and elsewhere, it would be pertinent to put across hundreds of questions to the Americans who neither invested in resources to create state capacity nor create conditions where the domestic forces could formulate an effective resistance to the Taliban and other Islamic forces. All it did was to abandon the Afghans to their fate and destiny.