The Taliban are no super power inside Afghanistan before whom everything is crumbling. In many cases, the opponents don’t want to fight because it’s not worth it. To be specific, there is no united enemy and no united ally so either so it’s all everyone for their own selves situation. About a month back Afghanistan was considered a conventional state about which no one bothered and a month later, it’s no longer looking like a state though no one still bothers.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is that it probably is not a state but had to pretend to be one for so long. Maybe some Afghans, particularly the Western types like Ghani, have begun to believe in its own fiction. It’s people that matters and not the usual trappings of the so-called sovereign state. Maybe now, Afghan people will have a chance to build a state or states within the country defining their own notions of sovereignty, prosperity and way of life.
However, Afghanistan is not on all minds because the Taliban identity dominates that of the state in many discourses. But people forget that these forces grew because they faced the invasion by the Soviets and later the US. It was the era of Soviet imperialism as was dubbed then and the result was the production of forces including the Taliban. What the Westerners didn’t see is that they were not products of ideology but resistance to foreign occupation, later their own.
Not a Western state
The Talibans are Pushtuns and the Pushtun way of life is what seems alien to the Western world. It’s backward in the conventional sense but that is their own problem. It’s also intolerant of others but pastoral tribesmen are famously intolerant as well. But it suited both the US and the USSR to call them Islamic extremists and wage what turned out to be losing wars. It’s more than a little bit ironic that the US basically raised them from childhood to adulthood and now handed power over to them.
If there is any example of waste of resources, it’s in investing in the Afghan military for 20 years and finding it has no interest in fighting against the Taliban who represent about 50% of the Afghans with 14-15 other tribal groups and all are resentful of each other. It’s not a functional conventional state as seen through Western eyes and that is one reason why the Western solution including its Westernized leaders never made it.
End of wars?
In this scenario, Russia without its socialist baggage and China are entering the scene with what one hopes is a more practical approach than the West. The Taliban has promised to behave and the peaceful entry is a sign that this isn‘t the old edition. Plus both China and Russia have ethnic insurgencies and the support has come after the Taliban promised not to promote in either countries. In return aid and economic support is expected to arrive.
For the first time in more than 2 decades, Afghanistan will be free from wars, external and internal. Before this it was either the Rusians, the Americans or the Taliban , all keen to fight each other. Now The US is gone, Russia is an ally and the Taliban in power. One hopes it will give the people a chance to decide their own power.
The other issue is that of the super powers now parked in their backyard. The difference between the US and the Sino-Russo power play is that the US was far away and had to depend on allies but both China and China are holders of common borders. Plus the Soviets were not very efficient and deeply troubled by their own failing internal system but now are much stronger after this. Meanwhile, China is rapidly proving to be the most efficient country in the world. Apart from that, China can be brutal in managing g insurgencies as the Uighur pacification has shown. So if problems break out, China will be much more brutal as it’s not an ideological war far away but the Uighur area is critical for its most ambitious project-BRI. The Taliban has been invited to it and it will accept but the price that comes with it will also be a reality that will impact on them.
Till date Kabul has seen no warfare and let’s hope that it remains so. Clearly, this is the result of understanding reached before the push began by the Taliban. One hopes that they are smarter this time and unlike the US realize that the USSR and US era are truly over and new realities mean a new way of doing things. If not it’s they who will pay the biggest price.
Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist, columnist and liberation war researcher. He received Bangla Academy Award in the year 2018 for his contribution to the liberation war literature.
