'War is not over', says Vice Prez : Taliban 2.0 - Back to Darkness, Tyranny
New Delhi:
The facade of a modern and moderate face the Taliban tried to project for itself has fallen flat easily.
Within hours Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban chief spokesman, tried to put up a neo-face of tolerance and allowed himself to be interviewed by a woman Afghan journalist, all women journalists were sacked.
In rural areas, executions and firing have started no sooner, he had made a big claim that - "We will not seek revenge..All those on the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z".
In Jalalabad unarmed protestors and common Afghan civilians were fired upon on Wednesday
when they resisted the Taliban move to replace the country's 'national flag' with the Taliban White Flag.
Two people were killed.
Meanwhile, from his 'virtual hideout', Amrullah Saleh, Afghan vice president, has raised his voice and banner of resistance to Taliban and asserted, "The war is not over".
"As per the constitution of Afghanistan, in absence, escape, resignation or death of the President the FVP becomes the caretaker President. I am currently inside my country & am the legitimate caretaker President. Am reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus," he tweeted.
His audio interview given to western media has gone viral on social media and TV channels across the globe.
A follower of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, Saleh has blasted the “Pak backed oppression and brutal dictatorship”
“I can never be under one ceiling with Taliban," he said adding,President Ashraf Ghani has 'fled' the country.
Ghani has now landed in the UAE.
Saleh has come up the ladder fighting rivals and through hard work. Picked up in 1997 by Ahmed Shah Massoud, he was asked to liason with the Northern Alliance. In 2004, Saleh became the head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. He has been also highly critical of then-President Hamid Karzai’s pro-Pakistan tilt.
In 2018, Saleh became Interior minister in 2018 and in February 2020, the country’s vice president under Ghani.
Saleh is now stationed in Panjshir Valley, the only well known locality which has still not fallen to the Taliban.
Can he really cobble up a strong 'anti-Taliban force', however, remains to be seen.
"I am not ready to be part of the humiliation and shame...,I am standing for my country" he maintained and rather put up a brave front.
Notwithstanding an effort made by the spokesman to present the Taliban as 'different' from the one in its previous avatar, the Taliban is now omnipresent in Kabul and other key hubs.
They were found on Tuesday and Wednesday in amusement parks, outside foreign embassies.
Women have gone indoors for the last four day and their words are being taken with a pinch of salt by Afghans, especially the women and the international community.
The mad rush in Kabur airport is a clear testimony that how much use of phrases like Shariat law and Islamic values are made, Afghan civilians do not trust them at all.
Everyone wants to just leave Afghanistan and fly to any corner of the globe.
Among the international community, India has called back the envoy and other diplomats. So it makes clear that their repeated assurances that diplomats would not be harmed has no takers.
Indian Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon on arrival in India told reporters at Jamnagar air base on Tuesday, “As you know, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan no longer exists and the situation is quite fluid now".
The message being - it's a new world in Afghanistan; and this neo-world following medieval practices is again well known to the world.
The brutality and human rights violations have certainly started.
Other facts have also come out lately. A few of them suggest that a significant number of Al-Qaeda leaders do reside in Afghanistan-Pakistan borders and the nexus with the Taliban would be revived soon with the help of Pakistan.
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| Ghani: A failed Prez, who 'fled' |
How US blunders and Pak 'empathy' changed the Taliban game ?
"By going deep inside Pakistan and being able to stay with their families and enjoy other hospitality for months showed that the Taliban had a place to hide and recover from injuries and adversaries. These have proved game-changers in a real sense".
Of course looking back it could be easy to find fault with Pakistan for extending all sorts of logistic and moral support and healing touch to Talibans, but it also goes without saying that the Americans ought to look inwards for ignoring such warnings.
Reuters snap
Moreover, there were many in the Bush administration who were only too happy to launch war against Iraq and Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden had given them the windows of opportunities.
It was reported at later stages by various US military experts and retired officers that the fact that the Taliban always had a place to 'go back' to put them outside the reach of NATO airstrikes and get a 'healing touch' in Pakistan has in the ultimate proved a crucial turning point in the battle against terrorism.
These views are endorsed by Indian experts and former soldiers too.
One Indian official says, if Osama bin Laden's intention to attack Twin Towers was to precipitate confrontation between the West and the Islamic world, the "launching" of these wars in Iraq and also Afghanistan by Americans kept the confrontation alive.
"Robin Cook, a former British Minister resigned from the cabinet of Tony Blair on March 17, 2003 in protest that he could not be part of a war based on false prospectus. If today, the US got a bad taste of handling things badly, they have to blame some of their bad decisions," he says.
Others say the US was arrogant and 'overconfident' in the beginning little realising that while they had weapons and economic support, Taliban as a fighting force and other regional chieftains were 'warlords'.
Modi chairs a key meet
Fighting has been an in-thing among Afghan young men and so when the Bush administration and even Barack Obama initially opposed the idea of building a 'professional' Afghan army, it was clear that an erroneous policy had been adopted.
The military strategy seemed to have been drawn out on the assumption that military prowess would prevail and that after Al-Qaeda, the Taliban would be weak and at the same time justify all actions on the claim that they were still a threat.
The confrontation between US-led West and Talibans and Al Qaedas were also seen as 'civilisational war' -- the Jehad.
Like any self-respecting nation, Afghanistan too did not entertain the idea of seeing foreigners 'dominating' on their soil. Obviously, this attitude sharpened a little bit worse when two sides are not from the same religion.
So, the Taliban campaign that the government of Ashraf Ghani was a government of 'puppets' had overwhelming acceptance even among those Afghan civilians who did not approve of Taliban..
Some problems the Americans and NATO forces faced were peculiar and typical to Afghanistan and the society.
A large section of natives were antagonized in Taliban's rural strongholds because of the US-inspired administration and authorities who rely heavily on opium poppy cultivation to survive and the US had pushed for drug 'eradication' programmes. This did not go down well with vested interests and powerful lobbies.
There was yet another technical fault line as the Americans promoted a powerful federal government in Kabul, but Afghanistan is a country where for centuries the tribes enjoyed local autonomy.
Moreover, there were strategic lapses and more with the timing. .
The move to invade Iraq diverted attention. Instead of working to secure Afghanistan against a resurgence of the Taliban, the Bush administration had to diverted military resources, time and personnel just to prove that Saddam Hussein's authoritarian government had illicit weapons of mass destruction.
"The United States did become distracted by the war in Iraq for several years," said Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst.
In the ultimate, as Taliban men hoist their white flags and even the US embassy was shut down, one can go back to what Robin Cook told British parliament in 2003: "History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition".
ends
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