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Kathmandu Monday November 19, 2001 Marga 04, 2058.
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Stop interference
After weeks of sustained aerial bombardment
in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance has rallied and recovered over half the country from
the Taliban. Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani has returned to Kabul close on
the heels of Northern Alliance forces. The Western powers led by the United States, which
have in effect engineered the downfall of the Taliban in the wake of the September 11
attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, are now trying to put together a
broad-based government. This in a country that has been ravaged by continuous war ever
since the massive intrusion by the Soviet Union in the late l970s to bolster a shaky
leftist government. The West seeks to include in any such government representation from
minority communities like the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Shiite Muslims as well as from the
dominant Pashtun community which has provided the support base for the Taliban. The
Western powers, which moved against the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden, the Saudi
dissident they hold responsible for the World Trade Centre and Pentagon outrages, have not
been able to catch bin Laden. But they have managed to create a power vacuum in Kabul.
However unpalatable the Taliban may be to others in Afghanistan and to people beyond, what
with their strict interpretation of Islam and its harsh implementation, one good thing
they did was give that rugged country a semblance of order and respite from the factional
fighting that has torn it to shreds ever since the Soviets left in defeat.
With the Taliban now in hasty retreat and
their last strongholds also under sustained assault from the air and on the ground, the
country is again in danger of relapsing into civil war, with the various factions proxying
for and being sustained by outside forces. That indeed is the double trouble that now
stares Afghanistan in the face. Afghanistan should be left to the Afghans to sort out in
their own way, with the outside world playing no more than a facilitating role through the
United Nations. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said as much recently and his words should
weigh with all who are genuinely for durable peace in our neighbourhood. The UN already
has an initiative under way for the future of post-Taliban Afghanistan. There has been
talk of convening a traditional Afghan council of all tribal and ethnic groups under the
auspices of exiled ex-king Zaheer Shah. There may be various other options. But whatever
option is chosen, outside powers including immediate neighbours should refrain from
interference. This will no doubt be easier said than done. In the past Afghanistan has
been an extension of the great game that was played out in central Asia by the big powers
of the day. In fact the little strip of Afghanistan sandwiched between the former Soviet
Union and Kashmir and linking up with China is said to have been deliberately designed to
keep the Russian and British empires from colliding with each other in the Hindu Kush.
Today neighbouring countries have their own agendas, axes to grind and proteges to promote
in this badly battered, land locked country. And the United States, the world’s lone
superpower, has its hidden agenda of using Afghanistan as a possible exit route for the
fossil fuel reserves that are believed to exist in central Asia. All the more reason then
for keeping any outside role in Afghanistan strictly under United Nations supervision.
This would also be one way of atoning for leaving the UN out of America’s war on
terror.
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