Troubling prospects in Afghanistan

Relevance: Resolution of the Afghan issue is important for ascertaining peace in South Asia. India will also suffer from the spillover of this issue.

Synopsis: An air of uncertainty surrounds Afghanistan, and it needs to think over the future of its land.

Background:

• The United States recently handed over the Bagram airbase to the Afghan authorities.
• It marked a symbolic end to its military presence of the U.S.A.
• However, forces completed their withdrawal ahead of the September 11 deadline, announced by the American President.

What are the consequences of the USA’s intervention?

• First, it was a costly misadventure of the USA.
  • No one predicted that the USA’s military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 would get embroiled in an endless war for 20 years and
  • Now to exit safely, it negotiated with the Taliban.
• Secondly, the war effort has cost over billions and the USA has also spent on reconstruction, security forces, governance and on counter-narcotics and humanitarian relief works.
• Third, the real price of war has been paid by the Afghans.
  • Afghans bear the brunt of 130 daily Taliban/IS Khorasan (IS-K) attacks.
• Lastly, socio-economic developments are at risk due to the growth of Taliban.
  • Today, eight million children attend school and a third are girls.
  • Literacy is up from 12% in 2002 to 35%.
  • Life expectancy from 40 to 63 years.
  • Urbanisation is 26%.
  • Today, tarred roads cover 10,000 miles.
  • Infant mortality rates are down from 20% by over half.
  • With a median age of 18.5 years, a majority of Afghans have grown up in a post-Taliban era.

How Taliban gained legitimacy?

• Firstly, the objective was to build a stable, strong, effectively governed Afghanistan.
  • However, the U.S. shifted from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency, Afghanistan turned into Vietnam.
  • Eventually, U.S. President Barack Obama diluted the objective to preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for global terrorism.
  • He oversaw a successful operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden in 2011, implemented an unsuccessful military surge concluding with an end to combat operations in end-2014 and Taliban opened the Doha office in 2013.
• Secondly, S. President Donald Trump saw himself as a deal-maker and initiated direct negotiations with the Taliban by setting out four elements.
  • A ceasefire.
  • Cutting ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
  • Intra-Afghan peace talks.
  • A withdrawal of all foreign military forces,
• Thirdly, slowly the Taliban had cut down the U.S. demands and got a withdrawal timeline not linked to the other factors.
• Lastly, the U.S. President Joe Biden was convinced that the U.S. had to exit from its forever wars.

This way the U.S. ended up legitimising the Taliban at the expense of the government.

Challenges ahead:

• Civil war due to hasty withdrawal: The U.S. commander in Afghanistan indicated that Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualised.
• Increasing Taliban presence: The Taliban military strategy has been to target districts that enable them to surround provincial capitals.
• Power sharing: there is no clue about changes in Taliban ideology and Taliban unity as the distances have grown between the Quetta shura, the Doha negotiators and the fighters who want to guard their individual preserves.
• Question about integrity: If opportunistic leaders are tempted to strike their own deals with the Taliban, it will hasten the collapse.
• The Pakistan factor: there are question about Pakistan’s role and its persuading abilities.
  • Is Pakistan still seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan, or has it realised that a Taliban-dominated Kabul will home be for extremists.

Hence, hasty withdrawal of the USA has left the Afghanistan and its immediate neighbours in an uncertain scenario.