War and Diplomacy – Part II: A Way Out of Afghanistan?

Afghanistan is a crossroads of civilizations and an almost bewilderingly complicated place.

Over the past few centuries, however, it has more often than not been treated as a pawn in the “great game”.  The country has also developed a reputation as the “graveyard of empires”, not least because outsiders’ forces have never succeeded in pacifying the place. Internal stability, such as it has ever existed, has been predicated typically upon de-centralized, and frequently shifting political arrangements between a weak centre and roiling periphery.

Reeling from the shock of 9/11 and in the absence of adequate reflection,  in late 2001  NATO in effect took sides in a complex ethnic, tribal, sectarian, and geographically rooted civil war. Nine years later, the coalition not only has failed to prevail, but the continuing presence of foreign forces, viewed widely as occupiers by the population, has exacerbated the conflict. The Russians learned the same lesson not long ago, and at great expense.

Such is the burden of history.  Yet today – if it ever was – Afghanistan is no longer the epicentre of transnational  terrorism. That pretext for contemporary Western involvement no longer exists, and indeed, was achieved by early 2002.  Al-Qaeda camps had been dismantled and the membership dispersed . The Taliban, for their part, had and still have mainly national goals with neither the capability nor the intent to threaten international security. The two organizations should never have been conflated.

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