Helmand incident

Taliban is opportunistically taking part in negotiations but is patiently awaiting the day it returns to full power.

In Afghanistan, the US and its Nato allies used to continually stress, not only the Taliban laying out a welcome mat for al Qaeda, but also the uniquely repressive nature of a regime that was merciless in dealing with those who strayed from its harsh interpretation of religion. This was a government that flogged football players, destroyed the non-Muslim heritage of its country and treated women like a lower form of a human being. Anyone who thought the Taliban might have learned a lesson from its original ouster from power was served a rude reality check this week as 17 villagers, including two women, were reportedly beheaded by local Taliban for the ‘crime’ of enjoying themselves at a ‘party’ in Helmand province.

The reaction to the incident by the Karzai government has been particularly galling. President Hamid Karzai himself said that the beheadings show  “that there are irresponsible members of the Taliban”. Even though the Taliban themselves have denied any involvement in the incident, surely, President Karzai, who has had to deal with the Taliban for over a decade and is intimately familiar with its ideology, knows that this is actually perfectly in line with what the former rulers of the country believe and practice. The US, too, has been forced to face the harsh reality that the only way it can withdraw its troops is by negotiating with the Taliban and accepting some role for it in the corridors of power.

Just because the US has decided on this face-saving course of action does not mean that the rest of us have to whitewash the Taliban’s actions. The group remains as committed as ever to its retrograde ideology and the only reason actions like the one in Helmand are relatively rare is because the Taliban is biding its time. It is opportunistically taking part in negotiations but is patiently awaiting the day it returns to full power, only to strike with full force again. As much as the US is trying to overlook that, there can be no hiding from the fact that the decade-long war will end up putting back in power the monsters who ruined Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2012.