generalspeaking: Returning to Abandoned Afghanistan ... Taliban Rule

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Returning to Abandoned Afghanistan ... Taliban Rule

"The visit by President Ghani and Dr.Abdullah will highlight the enduring partnership between the United States and Afghanistan as the military draw-down continues."
U.S.White House statement

"They [Ghani and Abdullah] will talk with the U.S. officials for preservation of their power and personal interest."
"It won't benefit Afghanistan."
Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesman

"Those districts that have been taken surround provincial capitals, suggesting that the Taliban are positioning themselves to try and take these capitals once foreign forces are fully withdrawn."
"All of the major trends -- politics, security the peace process, the economy,l the humanitarian emergency, and of course COVID -- all of these trends are negative or stagnate."
"The possible slide toward dire scenarios is undeniable."
Deborah Lyons, UN special envoy

"We will use our full diplomatic, economic and assistance tool kit to support the peaceful, stable future the Afghan people want and deserve and will continue to support the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces in securing their country."
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S.Ambassador to the United Nations

"[Afghan Prime Minister Ghani proposed] in good faith [a peace plan for a ceasefire, power sharing and early elections]."
"For almost ten months now we have had no serious engagement from the Taliban for serious peace negotiation and no response to our proposed peace plan and absolutely no counter proposals."
Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar

American soldiers returning home after a nine-month deployment in Afghanistan, at Fort Drum, N.Y., last year.

Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

A remarkably self-serving display of fantasy, delusion, oblivious to reality on the part of the United States, sending its soothing, reassuring words of support and back-up and financing to a disabled, war-weary country being overtaken by the same Islamist fundamental ferocity that created 9/11 and the reason for the U.S.-led unity forces of NATO countries determined to defuse the social/political/theocratic abyss the Taliban had brought to Afghanistan in imposing their version of Sharia law and shielding al-Qaeda and bin Laden from U.S. retribution.

Al-Qaeda's more virulent counterpart, Islamic State is now ensconced in Afghanistan with whatever is left of al-Qaeda, and they and the Taliban feast on whatever is left of the embattled country finding it a well-positioned location from which each can continue to grow status, influence and draw new adherents; violent Islam not declining but waiting, waiting. The Taliban know opportunity when they see it, and they see no reason to wait any longer with the departure of allied and U.S. troops.

Even with the diminished presence of the troops yet to depart amidst negotiations in Qatar between the Taliban and the U.S. representatives there has never been any relief from Taliban attacks either on civilian targets to show that they can murder with impunity, Afghan military and U.S. military targets. A clearer message of the indefatigable intentions of the Taliban to extend its now-considerable territory to a final retaking of the entire country couldn't be on display. Yet casually understated by the U.S.

Who can blame the West for wanting to see the last of that historically embattled country? It is, in the final analysis a surrender to the inevitability of political, violent, bloodthirsty Islam on a roll. Tamp it down in one geographic location and it relocates and regrows, a nightmare vision of hell on steroids. Little wonder that President Ghani and High Council chairman Abdullah plan to travel to Washington to once again explain what the U.S. final September withdrawal will result in.

Afghan security forces stand near an armored vehicle during ongoing fighting with the Taliban in the Busharan area on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand province, on May 5. Sifatullah Zahidi/AFP via Getty Images

Afghan forces cannot match the ferocity and religious fervour of the Taliban. President Biden is prepared to give gracious reassurance of American support for the Afghan people, but it cannot be accomplished from afar, other than in meaningless placatory verbiage while Afghanistan once again falls under the heel of pure Islamic vengeance against those who believed they could emulate Western concerns for human rights and practise democratic ideals.

The fantasy that the Afghan government will succeed in persuading the Taliban to alter its course in a collaborative effort to share governance for the greater good of the Afghan people is sheer delusion. And nor can the U.S. president believe that to be a possibility. A month ago U.S. intelligence analysts released their assessment of the situation: the Taliban "would roll back much" of the progress made in women's rights should the extremists regain national power.

They will and it will happen; there will be no women's rights, an absurd concept the West poisoned Afghan society with. Afghanistan's women know this, the government knows it, and the Biden administration knows it.