Gathering storms around Afghanistan

The UN-led shadow play at Washington’s behest is aimed at promoting an ‘inclusive government’ in Kabul. In the Afghan context, inclusive governance is a heavily loaded concept that is inconsistent with Afghan culture and history

Afghanistan is reverting to its a priori history of foreign interference. Mark Twain is often credited with the aphorism, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes’. Which means, while details change, circumstances change, settings change, and names change, similar events will essentially recycle — in this case, they are tragic events haunting the memory of anyone who witnessed them as Afghanistan descended into chaos since the fall of the communist government in 1992.

Thirteen months after the Taliban take-over in Kabul, a Track 2 process commenced in Vienna on September 15, 2022, where Western powers, spearheaded by the United States and Britain, brought together representatives of different Afghan opposition groups living in exile to explore the potential for ‘democratic future’ for their country. Another conclave followed in April and a third event — all in Vienna — on December 3-5. The salience of the December meeting, which was attended by erstwhile Northern Alliance leaders, including Ahmad Massoud who leads the Panjshiri faction, was its acceptance of the legitimacy of armed resistance to the Taliban. The meeting presented a ‘roadmap’ to create a platform to integrate the opposition forces and asked for international support.

The Vienna process is skating on thin ice, as the self-styled opposition forces traumatised by the dramatic takeover by the Taliban in August 2021 are stuck in the crowded Afghan bazaar, desperate for Western support to secure habitation and a name. The Western powers see it as a promising development that a large political umbrella consisting of all anti-Taliban groups is taking shape at all. 

Meanwhile, a compilation by the so-called UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of intelligence inputs provided by various countries that is being bandied about as a ‘UN report’ in the Western media since last month began propagating a stunning threat perception of Al-Qaeda “under Taliban patronage … (which) continues to pose a threat in the region, and potentially beyond.” Shades of 9/11 attacks! 

Interestingly, a recent report in the South China Morning Post also highlighted that “Al-Qaeda’s re-emergence is a big concern globally,” and claimed that Pakistan and China are strongly urging the Taliban to take “concrete and verifiable steps” to counter various terrorist forces within Afghanistan. 

It is against such a complex backdrop that UN Secretary-General António Guterres called a meeting in Doha on February 18-19 aimed at creating three mechanisms to navigate the engagement of the Taliban by the US and its allies: a “large group format” comprising member states’ special envoys on Afghanistan; a “smaller contact group” selected from and linked to the larger group; and a UN Special Envoy who would focus on diplomacy between Afghanistan and international stakeholders and advance ‘intra-Afghan dialogue’.

In the event, however, the Taliban rejected the UN report and refused to attend the Doha meeting, which it viewed as a booby-trap. The Taliban alleged that the report is a US fabrication to spread false allegations and that “Unfortunately, a regular program of accusing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has begun from the address of the United Nations, which is always spreading propaganda. This is a misuse of the UN, which unfortunately the member states are allowing.” 

The UN-led shadow play at Washington’s behest ostensibly aims at promoting an ‘inclusive government’ in Kabul. Of course, diplomatic intervention for inclusive governance in a post-conflict situation is not unusual. But, in the Afghan context, inclusive governance is a heavily loaded concept that is inconsistent with Afghan culture and history. Equally, the UN’s reputation is in the mud after the Mujahideen takeover in 1992, and the transfer of power in Kabul orchestrated via the Bonn Conference 2001, unseating the Northern Alliance government and replacing it with a vassal — above all, using the UN as a fig leaf to facilitate NATO’s brutal occupation of Afghanistan that lasted for two decades and ended in ignominy. In the process, the exiled and reviled Afghan warlords had a second coming. 

It is not only the Taliban but the voiceless Afghan people who will be horrified at the prospect of the return of those scums of the earth in the name of ‘inclusive governance’. What Afghanistan needs as top priority is that the international community provide the Taliban authorities with the requisite capability needed to curb any surge of terrorist groups. The government is coping as well as it can with its limited resources. The country is at relative peace with itself today after four decades of civil war and foreign occupation. 

(MK Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.