TURMOIL IN AFGHANISTAN 🇦🇫

Speaking to a news reporter, Saifullah, a local Afghan resident, said more than 22,000 Afghan families had fled from their homes in the Taliban captured city of Kandahar and went to Kabul or some foreign countries for their safety and security. Today, the Taliban have hit the headlines of almost all the newspapers and media outlets and the major news coming in was that Taliban have captured one city after another, soon the Afghan National Army retreated. So before dwelling into the present ambience in the war torn country of Afghanistan, let us put the spotlight on the reasons that led to the US and NATO troops involvement in the country and also about the history of the militant outfit i.e Taliban which is wreaking havoc, as it would lead to a catastrophic impact on the country as well as in the region. 

Afghanistan:Graveyard Of Empires 

 

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is also popularly known as the Graveyard of Empires because many influencial and powerful empires of their times had attacked or invaded the country for multiple reasons and indeed retreated from it empty hands without gaining much. If we go around the nineteenth century when there were two powerful empires -- the British Empire and the Russian Empire, Afghanistan acted as a buffer zone between them and was caught between the two powerful empires which was known as The Great Game. Both the empires looked at each other with suspicion that the other would invade Afghanistan and would bring it under its influence. So, Britain invaded it which led to the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-1842 which resulted in the defeat of British armmed forces despite having advanced military equipments. The Second Anglo-Afghan War which begun from 1878 and lasted till 1880 led to the victory of British forces. The British led the Afghans to run their internal or domestic affairs which could maintain stability but took the power of running the foreign policy into its hand. In 1919, Third Anglo-Afghan War or Afghan War of Independence took place in which the British gave the power of running the foreign policy from their hands and thus Afghanistan became a fully sovereign state. The British couldn't gain anything much from invading the country. 

   Then, came the era of Cold War, Communist ideologies and political parties like people's democratic party of Afghanistan (PDPA) etc were flourishing in Afghanistan, the father of communism i.e. the USSR had the responsibility to protect it from Extreme Islamist ideologies which were carried out by the other section of the society. In 1979, when  Communism were under threat and to bring the country under its influence ( by keeping US out of it) USSR invaded the nation. USSR carried out attacks by targeting Islamist militants, so as to thrive communism and to add the country into its list of allies. But US watched the scenario closely and started to provide monetary as well as military assistance to those fundamentalist Islamist groups to counter USSR's influence in the country. American intelligence unit CIA, United Kingdom's MI6, Pakistan's ISI provided its utmost support to those militias so that it could damage as much as it can to the Soviet forces. With time, due to heavy losses inflicted on the Soviets forces and also of its ailing economy as well as of its internal disturbances, during 1988-1989 it withdrew from Afghanistan without gaining any significant out of it .

   With the gradual passage of time, those Islamist extremist militant outfits became very powerful due to the support from these countries and thus came to be known as Taliban. In Pashtun language Taliban means 'Students'. Gradually Taliban begun to control the country and imposed stern Sharia law in which they banned Cinema, tv, music, football, chess, kite flying, most of the paintings, photography, clean shave for men, foreigners, UN offices, education for girls etc. Taliban didn't allowed the women to go outside of their houses without a male accompanying them. Taliban also begun to shelter global terror outfits like Al-Queda. It allowed them to carry out terror attacks from its soil. 

 

Then occurred the most infamous terror attack of 9/11, in which on 11 September 2001,series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks were carried out by Al-Queda on American soil which was the deadliest in the US history. Thousands lost their lives and also of their dear ones. Al-Queda leader Osama Bin Laden justified the attack as a revenge on US as it commited crimes against muslims and rest of the world. Soon after the heinous attack the then US President George W Bush declared America's War on Terror which was used to describe America led global counter terrorism campaign in retaliation to 9/11 attacks. Soon, in late 2001 US invaded Afghanistan and was supported by its allies, as in 2003 NATO became involved as an ally. US carried out air strikes, gunned down many terror insurgents and inflicted  colossal harm to Taliban. In 2011, the leader of Al-Queda Osama Bin Laden was killed by US forces under operation Neptune Spear. US carried out democratic elections in Afghanistan as to set up a democratic regime and to some extent peace and tranquility was established. That's marks the United States entry into the Afghanistan and lived nearly 2 decades there fighting with the insurgent groups and spent nearly $2 trillion on Afghan War. 

                              Hasty Withdrawal Of US and NATO Troops 

 

During the tenure of 2 decades in Afghanistan, United States lost more than 2500 soldiers and if we take NATO troops into account the number goes upto 3502. In US, over the past years many voices begun to raise about the high death toll of US army. People in US questioned its government that what leds the US born man travel thousand of miles to an unstable country and fight with the militant outfits for such a long duration of time without gaining any significant conclusions out of it. Also, US spent colossal amount of its budget in Afghanistan every year, without getting any return, which led to its huge economic loss.This leds Senior Government officials to ponder upon the option of US troops withdrawal from Afghanistan and ending its decade old war. Many US presidential candidates begun to promise to bring US troops back from Afghanistan. Like in 2016, during US presidential election campaigns Donald Trump promised to bring back all of its troops back home and this proved to be a impetus for his presidential run for the oval office. After being the president , Trump's administration appointment senior Afghan- American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad so as to reconcile with the Taliban and to establish a peace deal, so that US troops could withdraw from Afghanistan. In December 2018, The Taliban and the US had started discussion about a roadmap for peace but the negotiations proved complicated as Taliban defied to negotiate with the Afghan democratic government. As this was Trump's election promise, and as November 2020 presidential election was around the corner his administration somehow needed to sign a peace deal with Taliban so that US troops could backpedal from the Afghan soil. In 29 February 2020, in Doha the US and Taliban signed an agreement to bring peace in Afghanistan which would enable all US and NATO troops to withdraw in 14 months and in return the Taliban leaders commited that it would not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups including Al-Queda to use the Afghan soil to threaten the security of US and its allies. After this deal, the foreign forces begun to withdraw from it. When the democrats came in the oval office, by winning the 2020 presidential election, in 14 April 2021, there was proclamation from incumbent US President Joe Biden that by 11 September all US forces would withdraw from  Afghanistan. Joe Biden continued the Afghan policy from his predecessor's administration but Many foreign governments as well as senior US military officials warned that such hasty withdrawal would provide a ground for the Taliban to capture more Afghan Territories and Afghan National Army is not that equipped to fight with the Taliban. But US president turned a blind eye to it and the US forces started retreating. As a result, Taliban captured more than 80% of the country including important cities like Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif etc. As today US is going to end its one of its longest war, many strategic thinkers pointed out What did US achieved by sending and sacrificing thousands of its troops, also by spending trillons of dollars because Taliban hasn't been eradicated. This leds to US retreat from Afghanistan empty hands and thus US gets added in the list of superpowers like United Kingdom and Russia which invaded Afghanistan with a purpose but the fulfillment of that purpose remanins very unlikely. 

                                                                          Reinforcement Of Taliban 

One might contemplate that Superpower United States has the world's strongest military , why it couldn't completely eradicate Taliban from Afghanistan despite staying 2 decades fighting there. Let's dig out the reasons. Local people are manipulated by Taliban and they win trust of the people easily. When Taliban looses large number of militants in the war they easily recruit the locals and refill the gap. Other reason is being the utmost support provided by Pakistan and some countries like Russia and China. When US and NATO forces started to combat against the Taliban, many of its leaders escape from Afghanistan and took shelter in Pakistan and it acted as a safe haven for them. US forces couldn't carry out operations against Taliban in Pakistan as it didn't provide them permission. That's why Taliban wasn't eradicated from such a long time. Another reason one can provide is that Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer and most of the opium poppies used for 

heroin are grown in the Taliban captured areas and so the insurgent outfits makes billions from this. Thus the money needed to buy military equipments are brought from this money and also from their other illicit activities. One should also keep in mind that Afghanistan being a mountaineous region and Taliban was pretty good at Guerrilla warfare thus making US forces difficult to neutralize them. These are some of the reasons that kept the Taliban to carry out its nefarious activities throughout the decades. Today, the foreign forces are expeditiously retreating from Afghanistan leaving its Government and people on its fate. Taliban is capturing the country with rocket speed with falling one city after another into its hand. Due to United States hasty and short-sighted view, they kept their advanced military equipments like armoured vehicles, sophisticated guns on their bases , which eventually fell into Taliban's hand. This acted as fillip to them and help capturing most of the Territories. More than 80% of Afghanistan comes under the ambit of Taliban with US intelligence speculating that Kabul could fall under the Taliban's regime in 90 days. As the days passed by, a very shocking as well as a distressing news came, which proved the speculation of US intelligence agencies completely erroneous and took the entire world by storm.The Taliban had Captured the whole country of Afghanistan including the capital in 15 August 2021, a few days after the US intelligence agencies made their analysis. The Political as well as the Military leaders fled the country leaving the innocent civilians to come under Taliban's hand. The Taliban took the control of whole of Afghanistan and even changed the country's name from Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan while the International Community kept on watching without doing anything much.

     Bleak Future For Afghanistan 

The Intra Afghan war took lives of millions, displaced people and forced them to take refuge in neighbouring countries and pushed the innocent civilians to extreme destitution. It is one of worst crisis in human history. The International Community should play a vital role to minimise the impact of the war. United Nations could deploy peace keeping force in Afghanistan so that civilians are protected from the disastrous impact of the war. United Nations Security Council should design out some mechanism to immediately halt the war and can call for ceasefire.The whole world should come together at this critical juncture which is proving lethal to the human lives and should force the Taliban to immediately end its atrocities. Now, since the Taliban had captured the Whole country of Afghanistan, the world should pressurize the militant outfit to give more freedom to its citizens and also to not allow terror outfits like Al-Queda to flourish from its soil. 

Disclaimer -- Afghan crisis has a very long history and lots of events took place, it impossible to cover them meticulously but I tried to touch the major developments .