KARACHI:
The US President Donald Trump recently announced that the remaining US troops in Afghanistan will return latest by Christmas. With such an announcement coming at the backdrop of the coming Presidential elections, it is clear that Trump is eager to rally his support base and deliver his campaign promise made in the last election.
While the exit of foreign troops in Afghanistan is a desirable initiative which all the stakeholders involved in the peace process look forward too, wise pessimism is better than bitter optimism. Withdrawing the troops was a promise that both Bush and Obama had made in their respective presidential campaigns but failed to deliver. It is important to realise that taking such a decision in haste without any realistic political settlement and a legitimate de facto Afghan government may plunge the country into an anarchic state, since the government at Kabul will be vulnerable to deadly attacks from the Taliban and the ISIS – who have already increased their foothold in the eastern provinces. This complex scenario sheds light on the fact that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may turn out to be a sensitive matter even for the US, and therefore should not be used as a tool to boost the approval ratings of the US presidential candidates. According to media reports and think tanks, the US war on terror has cost US taxpayers $1.2 trillion while its duration has surpassed that of the Spanish War, the American Civil War and the First and Second World Wars combined, with little to demonstrate by way of success. Moreover, by signing the peace deal with the Taliban at the start of this year, the case in point was made that for the US the war is unwinnable. Oddly, the more one talks about it the more absurd the situation seems to become.
Thus, in order for sanity to prevail, it is imperative that US officials work prudently with the regional stakeholders, the Taliban and the Afghan government to ensure that the final withdrawal of troops should be a well-ordered affair. If history be the maxim, leaving a power vacuum in Afghanistan could lead to instability and chaos.
Hadia Mukhtar
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2020.
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