The lessons of history do not always play out. History shows that civil conflicts normally end when the rivals see that there is no more to be gained from yet more death and destruction and that their families and by extension their country needs peace to recover, to give their children a decent chance in life.
But in Afghanistan, it is different. Afghans have been at war with themselves since 1979. In 38 years of conflict, tens of thousands have died, many more have been injured, often maimed for life, and hundreds of thousands have been made homeless.
The multiple ethnic make-up of the country has always meant local conflicts and rivalries. The daunting geography has created pockets of power and local warlordism. The rulers in Kabul had to govern through a judicious mix of bargaining and force, the latter generally only a last resort, since no central government has ever had the resources to subdue rebellious chieftains entirely.
It has also been the misfortune of Afghans that their country was long considered an essential piece in the Great Game played out between the Russians and the British and more recently between the Soviets and the Americans.
It is approaching 40 years since Afghans were plunged into bloody conflict with the Russian invasion. Washington fought a proxy war with the Soviets by arming the mujahideen through Pakistan. Many of the same fighters who brought about the humiliating Soviet evacuation in 1987 morphed into the Taliban who later seized Kabul and fought what they saw as the US-led invasion after 9/11.
Because George W. Bush then turned to his father’s unfinished business with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the possibility, and it was only ever that, to secure the country and also to deliver on all the promises to transform the economy with vast amounts of aid and support, was thrown away. Afghans, every bit as much as Iraqis, therefore became victims of Bush’s ill-considered Iraq invasion.
As a result the Taliban regrouped and returned. Over 15 years, they fought US-led NATO forces to a standstill. Despite being faced with the most modern military technology, they survived in their mountain fastnesses. NATO quit because it claimed that it had trained Afghan government forces to secure the country. The monstrous Taliban hospital attack in Kabul followed by last Friday’s murderous attack on a supposedly closely-guarded base at Mazar-e-Sharif, demonstrated the hollowness of that claim. Ten Taliban fighters disguised as military personnel were able to kill some 170 Afghan soldiers in a raid that has done much to damage the already low morale of the army.
Indiscipline, incompetence and maybe also collusion contributed to these disasters. But the bickering coalition government of Ashraf Ghani and his political rival and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah has probably done as much to undermine both military and civilian enthusiasm for the fight against the Taliban. Were it not for the residual presence of the Americans, it seems likely that the Taliban would sweep in to the major cities and once again seize power. At which point their rivals would take to the hills and the whole bloody cycle would begin again with or without foreign interference. Afghanistan’s tragedy is that there seems to be no one on either side with the courage and wisdom to call a halt to the bloodletting and explore the path of peace.
