The Future Beckons

S.K. Sood

It is almost a fortnight since Taliban took control of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the US forces. The commentators are having a field day either denouncing the takeover because the Taliban are a terrorist group or telling the world to adopt a wait and watch approach as they are reformed.

A tweet by Ghazala Wahab that Taliban has a legitimate stake in Afghanistan drew a lot of attention of trolls for her unconventional view. I personally find this view rational irrespective of the fact that Taliban is a declared terrorist organisation. The involvement of the Taliban in not only sheltering the 9/11 terror attack’s master-mind Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan but refusing to give him up to the US despite warnings is no secret.

It is widely believed that the US had financed and armed Taliban in cahoots with Pakistan to fight their proxy battle in Afghanistan to force Russians out. Taliban were thus helped into power by those very international players against whom it went rogue in early this century compelling the US to send their forces and throw them out of power after they had ruled Afghanistan from 1996 till 2001. It is a fact that the known views of the Taliban about women and education are regressive. However, their utterances since their return to power appear much sober.

The US can never be a true ally of anyone. It has its own interpretation of ‘national interest’. It has a history of helping rogue regimes until its interests are served only to ditch them once their usefulness has reached the expiry date. They did this with regimes in Iraq and Libya amongst others. This is what they have apparently done in Afghanistan too. They created Taliban, then treated them as pariah and later when they found that continuance in Afghanistan had become untenable, they started negotiating with them.

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By talking with the Taliban in Doha and reaching an agreement for peaceful transition of power, the US granted legitimacy to them. In fact, they effectively delegitimised the then Afghan government by directly talking to the Taliban. The US gave a clear message that the then Afghan government was too weak and therefore did