America and the Taliban

The writer is author of The Gun Tree: One Woman’s War (Oxford University Press, 2001) and lives in Bhurban

Well well well! The undisputable fact is that ‘His Master’s Voice’ has, yet again — punching other nations in their excruciatingly vulnerable guts in a last-ditch attempt to salvage American pride — surfaced from the realms of supposed ‘secrecy’ to headline news around the world. And everyone, it seems, is supposed to stand up and shout ‘Hip Hip Hooray!’.

Come on Mr Barack Obama! Surely, in this particular instance, you can’t realistically expect to calmly wash your hands of the explosive situation you have artificially created in Afghanistan, give the country back to the murderous thugs known as the ‘Taliban’, walk away leaving yet another civil war in your wake and expect to be greeted with cheers?

The rabid predator, disguised as Uncle Sam, has been deeply involved in ‘secret’ negotiations with the Taliban for most probably, two or three years, as has Saudi Arabia, which has its own colonising axe to grind and has, reportedly, supported the Taliban from the very first day of their unholy inception. The news that the Taliban are currently in the final stages of opening an office in Qatar has let the cat, well and truly out of its ridiculously transparent bag. However, what has come as a complete surprise, a shocking one by any measure, is that this ‘peace’ office and ensuing negotiations, has the full support of the US, the UN and, here’s the nasty — Amnesty International — a body that yelled ‘human rights abuse’ until it was blue in its face when the Taliban ran riot in Afghanistan from 1996-2001. So what the hell — for hell it surely will be, for the innocents caught up in the inevitable civil war to come, if and when the Taliban are allowed to set so much as a toe-nail in the Afghan parliament — is going on?

Aside from the astronomical financial costs, it is public knowledge that America has paid for its ‘Afghan adventure’ with the deaths of at least 1,800 American service personnel since it ‘invaded’ the country in 2001. But this amounts to zilch — no offence intended to the families of the dead — in comparison to the literally thousands of innocent Afghans killed during ‘insurgent’ action, or by American and allied forces who have developed a penchant for annihilating wedding parties, along with the death and displacement of thousands more due to war-related issues; including starvation, lack of medical assistance, disease and exposure. And just when this wrongly-maligned country is, at long last, beginning to breath with a modicum of hope, the Americans decide to hand the remnants of their indigestible mess right back to those they used as an excuse for inviting themselves in the first place!

Shuttle diplomacy — as jetting around the globe at taxpayers expense is known (when a Skype conference would serve the purpose equally well) with participants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, America, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, possibly Turkey and a few other interested parties — is currently in full swing. Unfortunately though, as politicians, bureaucrats and generals play their complicated game of one-upmanship on the global stage, those who will be most affected by the outcome — the Afghan people — are left to wring their hands in fear at the spectre of a civil war that they neither want nor have the blood left to pay for. All these people desire is peace, but are unlikely to get little of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2012.