generalspeaking

Tch! Genteel, Peace-Loving Taliban Rejecting Evil ISIL

"We've used all reasonable chances and options for peace efforts, but apparently those people are not rational, and reconciliation and talks with them is not possible."
"[Daesh is] a scruffy and uncouth production of nations in the Middle East [having] no place in our community."
Zabihullah Mujahed, Taliban spokesman

"If there is any lesson from protracted wars, at one stage the sides will get together and talk rather than fight endlessly."
"[A solution to the conflict might be achieved for the Taliban to] fight for their cause politically rather than militarily in a democratic environment."
Abdullah Abdullah, Afghan Chief Executive Officer

"[Only if Pakistan stops sheltering the Taliban will ISIL cease to thrive in Afghanistan]. In that case, the Afghan government and its foreign allies will mainly have themselves to blame."
"At present, there is little space for ISIL to expand in Afghanistan."
Barnett Rubin, senior expert on Afghanistan and South Asia Affairs, Center of International Co-operation, New York University

A woman holds her daughter close by as they walk away after a blast near the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan [Reuters]

Pakistan's incurable desire to destabilize India has driven its agenda to influence Afghanistan's affairs. Pakistan sees Afghanistan not as a sovereign nation, but preferably as a satellite of Pakistan, one whose natural resources it can plunder, while asserting political domination, short of direct military intervention, to have as much control of the country's direction, and direct it against India, as it can muster.

Its support of the Afghan Taliban has ensured that the Taliban can withdraw into Pakistan whenever opposition to its offensive presence in Afghanistan becomes too challenging and then reassert itself once again in the spring when its arms and recruits have been restored to capacity. There is little doubt that Pakistan hardly expected its own home-brand Taliban to emerge out of the fierce hill tribes free of control by the central government in its tribal mountainous regions.

While stimulating the Islamist orthodoxy of the Afghan Taliban and rejecting the Pakistan version, Pakistan is now battling its own insurgency, even while continuing to support the one that threatens its neighbour. Afghanistan became a meeting place and in its backwater provinces where Kabul had little influence, jihadist training camps proliferated, where al-Qaeda developed its strategies for attack against Western interests.

Now, even while al-Qaeda and the Taliban are once again recruiting and training and growing their influence, another foreign Islamist group with even more fundamentalist strategies has set up camps with much of northern Afghanistan becoming Islamist-outlaw central. And while the Taliban had been in talks with Islamic State, ISIL has succeeded in recruiting members away from Taliban militias. And there is hard feeling.

The West remains involved, in training the Afghan national and regional police and the military. The endemic corruption that permeates every level of society from government administration to the police and the military and all civil orders, seems to eat into the social fabric to the point where cohesion and pride in nation is absent. Training police and military for the end purpose of defending themselves seems a Sisyphean task that will never bear the fruit of success.

Afghanistan seems fated to remain a failed state, its government failing the population, and endless conflicts roiling the social order, just as they have done historically in this Asian crossroads that has seen more than its share of debilitating war, occupation and dire living conditions as were experienced under Taliban rule.

Once all NATO and US forces depart, the return of the Taliban in strength seems assured and the social and political gains cobbled together by NATO and the UN will have dissipated. How the presence of Islamic State militias play out in this complex mix of state and would-be governance will be anyone's guess. The Pashtun majority do not appreciate the presence of Arab upstarts.

The resurgent Taliban streaming spring after spring into Afghanistan has the effect of satisfying Pakistan perhaps, but certainly not Afghans who most decidedly deserve a future to do their fture aspirations justice.

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Islamic State, Islamism, NATO, Pakistan, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 09, 2016