The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly. American strategic incompetence and military inability may have caused it grave image loss and showed how weak it is, the concrete specter of death haunts those left behind in a spectacular display of betrayal. There is as yet no formal government and the setting up of power and administration by the Taliban is as bad.
Not only have they failed to establish a government, rumors –already half confirmed, is that the Taliban is busy fighting each other within. The US departure was certainly unexpected but the Taliban infighting not so. It’s chaos upon chaos piled by one power group after another in Afghanistan. Some are local and some are international. To be honest, it looks like there may be a land and an Islamic Emirates but whether a state which never existed would come into being is doubtful. Meanwhile, many children and other vulnerable people may die.
The UN has made a call asking for donation pledges from various countries and some have responded though that is hardly adequate. The problem is that the easing phase of one government to another didn’t exist, making the transition from US occupation to Taliban occupation very difficult and awfully disorganized. To that, one may add the extreme hurry of the US and the complete lack of expertise of the Taliban. Together they have managed to produce a mighty circus. And again those forced to watch this circus and suffer are the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan.
The US has of course held back the money which is owned by the Afghan treasury on various grounds. However, the main objective is to make life difficult for the Taliban. While to the US and its allies, Afghanistan and Taliban are not the same, to the people down there, it makes no difference. It ends up as a shortage of cash for emergencies and survival which will make the children suffer most. However, it looks like they are going to be the victims of the economic war now in progress.
The Taliban by itself is not a capable governing force and basically a ragtag band of not so great guerillas. They really never fought after they were ousted in 2002 and came to power basically without fighting. The unwillingness of the Ghani government forces to confront the Taliban was so obvious that no war was necessary to oust them So the Taliban can hardly call themselves a great fighting force. And great military forces don’t make great administrators. Meanwhile Taliban factions are busy fighting each other in the true tradition of tribalism which the Taliban is.
Much more is on and much more can be expected but tragically, it’s mostly of the negative type which makes Afghanistan, the symbol of disaster that has been running on for decades.
