Afghanistan: Why PEACE is difficult to achieve.
The prospects for peace in Afghanistan in the near future are slim.
As the capital and the largest city of Afghanistan, Kabul, inches close to falling in the hands of the Taliban, peace is yet to come for the Afghan people. While writing these lines, the negotiation of peaceful transfer of power is happening at the moment in Kabul and Qatar.
The Taliban took over all the major cities of Afghanistan at such a speed that stunned the military and diplomatic experts in the West. The ‘highly trained and equipped’ Afghan National Defense and Security forces (ANDSF) couldn’t hold a single city for more than a few hours and some provincial capitals were Surrendered without firing a single bullet. That surely reflected the poor misjudgment of the USA and West on leaving the country without any political settlement or interim government.
The question here is, even in a possible interim government, in which the Taliban will take the major share, peace will not be possible. The answer lies in the geopolitical location of Afghanistan. The country is so important to its neighbors and other powers in the larger region that it will continuously destabilize the country in near future. Why is peace in Afghanistan so difficult to achieve, here are some reasons.
The Great Game continued
Russia is very sensitive about its former states where there is a Muslim majority. Almost ten percent of Russia’s population is Muslim. China is very sensitive about its Muslim-majority province, which connects it to Central Asia. Pakistan is very sensitive to Pashtunistan and the 2,670 km long Durand Line border and potential new Afghan refugees.
Iran is very sensitive to an extremist Sunni government in its neighborhood. India wants to encircle Pakistan on both the largest borders and is very sensitive to his twenty years of investment in Afghanistan. The United States wants to close the chapter of Afghanistan and focus on restoring its rapidly declining global power. Turkey wants to increase its influence in the Central Asian Turkic Muslim population by stepping into Afghanistan after a possible failure in the Middle East. It could provide Turkey with an excellent bargaining chip with Russia, China, and the West.
The Afghan Taliban are trying to gain more and more power on the ground and keep their upper hand in bargaining with outside powers.
Regarding the Afghan government that served the nation in past twenty years, Anthony Cordesman, an American strategic analyst known for his clinical detachment, wrote in a recent report for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, the government in Kabul “is dominated by leaders more interested in competing for power than in the nation’s future, and it cannot govern or make effective use of its funding, most of which comes from U.S. and outside aid. The political structure of the Afghan central government remains a corrupt and divided mess.”
Every power that has an interest in Afghanistan would like to install a government that can serve its purpose only. Hence the great game played for centuries in unstable countries continued. For all these reasons, Afghanistan’s future is less in the hands of the Afghan people and more in the hands of external powers. The prospects for peace in Afghanistan in the near future are slim.
When everyone is fighting for the only chair in the room, I would prefer to sit on the floor. Old Afghan Quote told by Ahmad Shah Massoud (the lion of Panjshir).
