THE Taliban had gained control of virtually all of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals, including Jalalabad, Lashkar Gah, Firuz Koh, Kandahar, and Herat. They also took Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, without seeing any resistance from the Afghan army.
Last Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs were expanding by the hour and that the country was basically spinning out of control. In the interest of Afghanistan and its people, he further encouraged Taliban militants to immediately end their onslaught against government forces and return to the negotiating table in good faith.
They will gain the upper hand and dictate the direction of negotiations with different parties both inside and outside by dominating the entire country with no hard fight from the Afghan army.
According to several sources, the Taliban’s brutality has resurfaced even more forcefully. The safety and protection of women and children is under risk, particularly young girls who are compelled to marry extremists.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden’s administration announced plans to send 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan to assist in the evacuation of US embassy personnel and the UK also confirmed the initiation of a military action to assist in the evacuation of its citizens.
What efforts will the US and its allies in the Afghanistan conflict take to ensure the safety of Afghans who have aided them throughout their stay there?
According to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 80% of those fleeing are women and children. Is the world still hopeful that the Taliban will protect this vulnerable people?
I believe that the true face of the Taliban will emerge very soon, and it will be far more severe than what the world has seen of ISIS’ savagery.
The return of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban’s political office chief, to Kandahar, Afghanistan, the militant group’s spiritual home, suggests that the Taliban has already taken control of the country. As a result, a humanitarian crisis has erupted.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Islamist extremist social media was flooded with celebratory messages, raising fears that a weakened al Qaeda and other terrorist groups could stage a comeback in the aftermath of the chaotic US military withdrawal. Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda will be able to resurrect and carry out strikes elsewhere as a result of this.
The businessinsider.com reports that early Sunday, Afghan government troops handed up Bagram Airbase to the Taliban. Pul-e-Charki jail, which houses roughly 5,000 inmates, is located on the site.
It is Afghanistan’s largest and most notorious prison, with a maximum-security cellblock housing al Qaeda and Taliban members. This is just another indicator that the Taliban would collaborate with other terrorist groups to maintain its wicked ideology, which will eventually spread to other parts of the globe.
Taliban and other international terrorist groups
The Taliban, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, is a primarily Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist group that controlled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when it was overthrown by a US-led assault for offering asylum to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban reorganized over the border in Pakistan and has waged a nearly two-decade insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul. According to the portal, the Taliban is now stronger than it has been since 2001.
According to Afghanistan’s UN Ambassador, Ghulam M. Isaczai, the Taliban are not acting alone. He told the Council that there are more than 10,000 foreign militants in the territory, representing 20 different factions, including Al-Qaeda and the ISIS.
Moreover, there is mounting evidence that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, both of which have pledged allegiance to ISIS, fought alongside the Taliban in the provinces of Faryab, Jowzjan, Takhar and Badakhshan, where they are currently present with their families under Taliban control, he said. He also stated that the Taliban’s ties to these transnational terrorist organisations are stronger today than they have been in prior years.
As a result, the Taliban cannot be considered a legitimate political organization because they collaborate with known terrorist organisations. They are mounting their lethal attack against civilians, including civil servants, women and children, while the peace talks are in progress, in order to discredit the genuine aim of the talks.
According to ft.com, Russia welcomed a delegation in 2018 to help with peace efforts, the first of a series of talks since then, despite the fact that it considers the Taliban to be a banned terrorist organization.
Russia is filling the security vacuum left by the US army departure from Afghanistan, with President Vladimir Putin seeking to reassert power in Central Asia and prevent Islamist radicalism from pouring over the borders.
Rendering to the Carnegie Moscow Center’s portal, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, made it plain that Moscow should not treat Kabul and the Taliban as equal partners. Moscow sees the Afghan government as a puppet of the US, vulnerable to a Taliban strike at any time.
Friendlier countries to the Taliban, such as Qatar, China, Pakistan, and Russia, must have compelled them to return to the negotiating table rather than forcibly taking over Afghanistan to establish their “Islamic Emirate.”
Conclusion
Afghanistan can return as the epicentre of terrorism after Taliban’s take over. For instance, When Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, with help of USA Mujahedeen were able to defeat Soviet Union. When Taliban took over Afghanistan, the latter becomes hotbed for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. With similar circumstances in Iraq, where Abu Bakr al Baghdadi founded ISIS at the Camp Bucca jail in southern Iraq.
According to the Watson Institute International & Public Affairs at Brown University’s Costs of Project, the US has spent US$2.26 tril on the war in Afghanistan since 2001, which covers operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
From 2001 through 2020, the US spent over US$6.4 tril on the war on terror, according to the same source. Since 2001, more than 47,000 civilians have been slain in the war, according to the Brown University Costs of War project. In addition, the battle has claimed the lives of almost 60,000 Afghan soldiers.
Even while the US and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) troops can cite economic, political, and security grounds for their withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is a huge injustice to the Afghan people.
They have had their independence and sense of security abruptly snatched away from them, and they have been driven back to a position similar to that which existed prior to the US invasion in 2001. Is it fair to them? – Aug 19, 2021
R Paneir Selvam is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Business, Economic and Accounting/Institute of Crime and Criminology, HELP University.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
