An unending misery

Calls to the Afghan Taliban to observe a ceasefire during Ramazan have fallen on deaf ears

Calls to the Afghan Taliban — and presumably every other iteration of the Taliban — to observe a ceasefire during Ramazan have fallen on deaf ears. The Taliban have been on a roll for 18 months, steadily advancing across the map of Afghanistan with ever more of the country coming under their direct control or influence. The Afghan National Army (ANA) is indifferently led, poorly equipped and leaking men and materiel like a sieve. The Taliban are equipping themselves with re-purposed American equipment, either taken direct from ANA defectors or simply stolen. The Humvee has become the Taliban vehicle-of-choice. Economically the country has returned to a narco-regime, the poppies that have sustained it in the past enabling it to again to lead the world in opium production. The Afghan government struggles bravely to put a positive spin on anything other than a complete disaster, but any thought of peace breaking out in the foreseeable future is in reality nothing more than fantasy.



The Taliban rejection of the ceasefire can come as no surprise to any of the players. The rejection also underlines the increasing irrelevance, indeed impotence, of external actors when it comes to influencing or controlling even in small measure, ground events. The Taliban remain ideologically rock-solid even though there are some murderous internal divisions and tensions that occasionally break into internecine warfare. In their statement rejecting the ceasefire call they said that jihad was an obligation and that Ramazan was not going to get in the way of that. Figures from the past, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are back onstage advancing their own agendas as well as securing places for their offspring in any future dispensation. Others such as Habibur Rehman and Amin Karim (who unhelpfully is Europe-based) also shuffle around, uncoordinated and not always reading from the same playbook, never mind being on the same page. None of this presages well for the ordinary people of Afghanistan who must count as some of the most war-weary in the world. The deeply unappealing truth is that the Taliban remain on the front foot and currently there is no viable force that would reverse that paradigm.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2016.

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