“We will smoke them out their hiding holes,” said US President George W. Bush before launching his war on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2001. Six years have gone by since the war was declared. Perhaps, Bush himself might have forgotten these words as the Western army is still busy fighting the Taliban extremists in the hilly areas of this South Asian country. Recent reports say that the Taliban is on the rise in the South. Though, the NATO led forces have been deployed across southern Afghanistan, the kidnapping of 23 Korean Christians on the country’s main highway last month illustrates the burgeoning influence of Taliban.
After six years of relentless fighting, now it’s almost clear that the victory against Taliban militants in Afghanistan is not as easy as expected. The puppet regime in Kabul is still struggling, despite the military support of the western troops, to expand its authority beyond the boundaries of Kabul city. President Hamid Karzai is more or less acting as Kabul mayor. Outside the capital, large swathes of the country remain under the control of tribal warlords. Across the south, the regrouping Taliban fighters gain influence. On the eastern side, Taliban has hideouts in the tribal areas of Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. Though the Musharraf regime claimed to have taken strong action against Taliban in Northern Pakistan, the attempt has proven failure as the militants still unleash bloody attacks in the border areas. The militants also control the opium trade out of which they can generate funds for their operations.
Britain has at least in principle accepted this reality. Brigadier John Lorimer, the Commander of UK forces in Helmland province of Afghanistan recently told The Observer that it would take minimum 38 years for the British troops to withdraw from the war-torn country. The British army’s largest mission in its military history is the 38-year long Northern Ireland operation. If Brig Lorimer foresees a larger military operation in Afghanistan than the Ireland adventure, it’s only because of the worsening conditions of Afghanistan.
However, the US, the largest ally in the Afghan mission, appears to be in no mood to accept the grim reality in Afghanistan. Earlier this month US Assistant Secretary of state for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher seemed so confident while he talked to reporters about Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is in a much better position now than it ever was before as a nation,” said Boucher. However, Boucher’s optimism proved hollow as the latest report of the Human Rights Watch depicted the grim picture of Afghanistan. According to the New York based group, the western army has dropped more than 400 bombs on Afghanistan in the past three months. Some other military sources reveal that more than 6,000 people have been killed in the fight between the army and the militants in the past one and a half years.
Without taking any concrete steps either to build a functioning democracy or to cope with the growing insurgency, the Americans, as well as the Afghan forces, are now trying to turn the heat on Iran. The Afghan military leaders recently accused the Islamic government of Iran of trafficking weapons and other explosives to Afghanistan in order to help the Taliban fight the western forces. Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, head of the border police of for western Afghanistan recently said that the “Iranian made armour-piercing roadside bombs” were found in the frontier town of Islam Qala, near Herat on the Afghan-Iran border area. The US military leaders have also expressed concerns over the alleged “Iranian influence” in Afghanistan. In the words of Colonel Thomas Kelly, an American under the command of the NATO, the improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were found in Afghanistan, “were not manufactured in any other place to our knowledge than Iran.”
The US is hitting the Islamic Republic with fresh allegations without producing any evidences. Earlier this year, the newly appointed Secretary of Defence Robert Gates had accused Iran of supplying the Iraqi militants with the IEDs. As they repeat the same allegations in Afghanistan also, one might get confused of the sincerity of this blame game. Furthermore, many analysts are of the view that the ideological differences between the Iranian Shiite regime and the Sunni Taliban prevent both sides from any engagement. It’s better to be recalled that the Islamic Republic had cooperated with the Americans when the latter launched the Afghan invasion in October 2001. Iran has always been a hardcore critic of the Sunni Taliban politics particularly since the massacre of Shiites in Herat under the Taliban rule.
However the Bush administration, which failed terribly both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, is busy spending its energy and time in the international blame game against Iran without trying to rectify its own mistakes. It’s pretty contradictory to know that the US which is waging a global war against Islamic militancy is not even able to rein in the situations in Afghanistan where it has started the war six years ago.
Stanly Mambilly
