America should repeat its mistake

They say repeating the same mistake is foolish and wouldn’t yield different results. However, that is not true in Afghanistan.

In The Bear Trap, Mark Adkin and Mohammad Yousaf stress that it was the genius of General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, who single-handedly made a meticulous plan about the kinetic strategies for defeating the mighty Soviet Red Army. The very thought sounded ludicrous and scared many but General Rahman had convinced General Zia that “death by a thousand cuts” would eventually give a heavy blow to the Red Army. The rationale for accepting such a bold idea was that a recalcitrant and unchallenged Red Army was an existential danger to Pakistan’s security.

The Mujahideen became freedom fighters in American mainstream media. President Reagan hosted the ferocious looking Mujahideen at the White House and declared them the “moral equivalent” to the founding fathers of the United States. I still wonder which one of them had Reagan equated with Thomas Jefferson because that man was a great reader.

The CIA and University of Nebraska printed books on Jihad; teaching Afghan children about the killing of infidels in the name of Jihad, the very ideas the Americans later came to abhor and tried to distance themselves from. After mid-1980s, the war was shifting in favour of the Mujahideen, primarily due to stingers — the leading weapons in shooting down Russian gunships; the horror in the skies of Afghanistan for satisfying the human hunting urges of Soviet pilots.

During a 1985 visit to the UN, one Mujahideen commander named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, refused to meet with president Reagan. Hekmatyar’s rationale was that he did not want to paint his Jihad as a paid fight, which was the Russian propaganda then. Not being able to get public acknowledgement from a man the Americans paid for dearly, Uncle Sam was furious and convinced that these recalcitrant and stubborn men cannot be trusted. As far as the Americans were concerned, Afghanistan was more acceptable as red (communist) than green (Islamic), argued Adkin and Yousaf.

They write that by the time the Americans were leaving town, all that was needed was a gentle push in the form of continued support for the Mujahideen to march to Kabul and take charge of the country. But that was never allowed to happen. The Mujahideen became local warlords battling each other over territories. A few years later, the Taliban were born.

Today, the Americans are planning to leave Afghanistan again with an insurance policy against being attacked. There is a very simple way: just as in the late 80s, the Americans made an unwritten tacit agreement with the Soviets (enemy) so as not to let the Mujahideen (allies) become the rulers of Afghanistan, today the Americans can make the deal again with the Taliban (enemy), to prevent the opportunistic clowns of Kabul (allies) from holding Afghanistan’s fate in their dirty hands.

What America needs is honest and self-supporting men in charge of Afghanistan rather than the disingenuous propped up lot that currently occupies Kabul. The people who fought, bled, and died for their honour, code (Pashtunwali), and religion would stick to their word as opposed to those who justify a foreign occupation of their land just to keep wearing those designer suits and hang on to duffle bags full of dollars. Leaving Afghanistan in the hands of such used-car salesmen would be a mistake because they would go to every length to keep America worried so they can keep going to the bank. It wouldn’t be surprising that these clowns would harbour terror groups just so they can market their raison d’être as saviours against terrorism. America must repeat what it did at the end of the previous Afghan war to get it right this time.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2021.

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