Afghanistan — still in post-US trauma

L ast month, Afghanistan’s Minister for Commerce and Industry Haji Nooruddin Azizi said that Afghanistan hopes to join BRI and CPEC programs. This comes in the midst of a slew of negative propaganda against the Taliban regime that is facing constant bashing upon: women and girls’ rights; how Afghans are at the brink of survival; and how the “unruly, fanatic Taliban” have no chance of blending in with the world community.

Notwithstanding the bitter truths that the US and NATO have devastated the lives and livelihoods of the people for 20 years; have staked away $10 billion in their banks, refusing to give them back for buying food and constructing their broken schools, hospitals and roads; and sanctioned the Afghan from entering many of Western countries.

Isolating Afghanistan has been set up as the missionary work of the Pentagon and RAW since the day of the withdrawal in August last year. Immediately, India-funded Daesh and its Khorasan branch, ISIL-K, were made to resurge.

According to a UN report, the number of Daesh recruits may have come to 10,000 in this new wave. This is like forcing a nation to behave introvertly by prompting proxies against own governments internally. The other way was to cut off its jugular with its adjunct supporter state, Pakistan, by backing a regime change in the country — a means of obliterating its democracy, its sovereignty and bringing it to the brink of default.

Now that CPEC is practically stalled, and 20 years of positive diplomacy with the Afghans and peace talk facilitation is down the drain, we find our PM uttering the same language that the US, India and all their allies have been uttering all these years. He tweeted, “terrorism continues to threaten not just Afghanistan & Pakistan but also the world.

The international community should not let its guard down. Strengthening global cooperation against changing threat matrix of terrorism is need of the hour.” This means a recall for the war on terror. One wonders what need we to pursue alliance with far-off allies that have betrayed us so many times in the near past; what need we not to find strength in regionalism and our next-door neighbors. Or do we need exactly this, for incompetent, puppets to prevail! While we are busy sawing the branches we reside on, our self-assumed friends all around the world seem to be attempting to lit fire on the very trunk.

For instance, a Germany-based outlet has claimed that the ISI has been tasked with refurbishing “the age-old enmity between the Achakzai and Noorzai tribes in the southwest zone… and start an ethnic war among Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns across Afghanistan, and between the northern and southern directions.” So that, while the PM and his lot are calling the Wild Wild West to prepare for another rescue, the Pakistan Army is abetting resurgence of terror in Afghan soil… unparalleled chaos! While all this happens in Pakistan, it seems that the ragged tagged Afghans, whom the West alleges to be extremist and uncultured, haven’t lost all their grounds.

After warring with two of the world’s superpowers for over three decades, they seem to have learned some things about freedom and sovereignty and about finding strength in regionalism in place of a dying globalism. So, Afghanistan is finding friends in the neighbourhood — in April, the Afghans approved the Chinatown industrial park project to be located in the country’s capital; in July, the Afghan Ministry of Finance made an agreement with Iran to purchase 350,000 tons of oil and gas, and signaled upon a coming oil deal with Russia and Turkmenistan.

The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum has also invited buyers for its coal, coming out of 80 coalmines identified across the country. Another milestone is the implementation of China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan multimodal route project. At end of September, 12 containers with cargo from China arrived in the Kyrgyz Republic and subsequently sent by rail to Afghanistan.

And at the start of this month, Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi announced that the Taliban have signed a deal with Russia for around one million tons of gasoline, one million tons of diesel, 500,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and two million tons of wheat annually. Russia and China are also holding Afghan hands in the diplomatic front. Last month the two states called upon the US to return $7 billion in frozen Afghan funds.

And China’s foreign ministry urged the international community to take an “objective stance” over the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). But is it really just a matter of clash between big powers that will keep determining the fate of the less powerful — the fate of humanity, the fate of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the ones that have been slaughtered just to secure the ‘interests’ of the occupiers! And the interests of the occupiers are that the downtrodden should open the resources of their countries to the service of the imperials!

And does the humanity, as a whole, needs to stand mute and dumb, a silent, apathetic observer. Or, does humanity have the right to stand behind its own kind, shield it from oppression, and vie the oppressors!

And by humanity, we mean not the United Nations and its multiple organisations that have been pathetically failing the oppressed all over the world for over seven decades now. By humanity we mean the masses that have been rendered apolitical and voiceless, to the continuous media-onslaught that tends to control and channel the interests, hopes and ambitions of the masses.

And as it channels their interests, it ensures that those interest do not undermine the ‘interests’ of the powerful, but subserve them.