Prognosis Afghanistan

"I think people are genuinely worried. Because of course we got used to a status quo the last ten years. International troops have managed overall to prevent any real skirmish for power."
"I think there will be a lot of uncertainty, there will certainly be a lot of skirmishes but I don't think Afghanistan will explode into an all out civil war. I'm not saying it won't happen. But it will be slow."
Ziggy Garewal, Afghan director, French charity group, ACTED

According to a 2012 NATO report, the Taliban appear confident that they will have no problems reclaiming power once foreign troops have left Afghanistan behind. Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service the previous year had warned that the country could very well slip into anarchy, the Taliban in control of provinces in the south. And in 2013 U.S. intelligence agencies reported gains realized by coalition forces are certain to erode in coming years.

So that's the future for Afghanistan, despite over a dozen years of foreign intervention, massive treasury expended, lives lost and hopes set high that with the encouragement and guidance of the West the country might finally land on its feet, be capable of surmounting its traditional poverty, tribalism, religious fundamentalism and strive toward democratic reform and the gradual liberation of women from a prevailing feudal culture.

A few days ago, in a village an hour's drive from Kabul, a young woman was stoned to death at the insistence of the town council and her own family, accused of adultery. Even if a small force of international troops remain behind in the country to help it counter the ongoing insurgency, and even with the billions of international humanitarian aid being pumped into the economy and in support of the national police and the military there is no rosy scenario seen ahead.

When the Western choice of a Northern Alliance chief, Hamid Karzai to head a transitional government was agreed upon, President Karzai welcomed into his parliament war criminals and warlords. Those same war criminals and warlords who did their best to perpetuate the country's legendary corruption, will be prepared to carve up the country as soon as mentoring NATO leaves, it appears. They have succeeded over the years in draining off aid funds for themselves, and now prepare to drain the country into their individual possession. Another return to tradition.

Some are planning to recruit and rearm, the usual concerns of strongmen in the country, carving out their own little principalities, where they will resist the Taliban and encourage local farmers to continue opium-poppy cultivation to further burnish their coffers. Tribal and ethnic differences will further fracture any potential for nation-building with the withdrawal of foreign forces, weary of being minders, drained of resolve and purpose in a country mired in poverty, corruption and backwardness.

Wealthy Afghans whose holdings have increased incrementally over the last decade thanks to opportunities opened to them through the humanitarian aid business under which they thrived, have their bank accounts outside the country, and they are preparing to follow the money, to exit Afghanistan and leave it to the future that will bring it back to the past.

AP Photo/Rahmat Gul file    Afghan farmers collect raw opium as they work in a poppy field in Khogyani district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on May 10, 2013. Afghanistan's opium production surged in 2013 to record levels, despite 12 years of international efforts to wean the country off the narcotics trade, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.N.'s drug control agency.

 

A former warlord, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, is a candidate, among many others running for president in the April election. This is a man who invited Osama bin Laden to move to Afghanistan. The American government commission investigating the 9/11 attacks named him the "mentor" of Khalid Sheik Mohammed who planned the strikes on New York and Washington. That's the past, he says, he now values democracy and women's rights.

Afghan presidential candidate and former warlord Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf speaks during a campaign rally in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014. (Rahmat Gul/Associated Press)

One Member of Parliament, Ramazan Bashardost, claims that the warlords have the money to enable them to win the support at the ballot box, and if money won't do it, they also have the weapons to coerce the support they're looking for. These are the war criminals that Hamid Karzai preferred to bring into government rather than try them in a court of law to seek justice for the harm they created within the country.

The governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, laments the departure of NASA. The continued presence of a small continent of international troops hinges on the 'Bilateral Security Agreement', which has seen assent from the national assembly of Afghan elders, but which President Karzai has refused to sign, claiming he prefers to leave it to his successors to commit to. He refuses on principle, because of U.S. drone strikes against terrorists that inadvertently also hit civilians.

When Pashtun Taliban of the same tribe but obviously differing values as Hamid Karzai kill thousands of Afghans, and maim innocent civilians with the use of IEDs it can be overlooked because they are his 'brothers'. The inadvertent deaths of civilians by proximity to attack, on the part of foreigners is another matter entirely, they are not brothers, they are merely those offering security and treasury.

In the impending departure, Governor Tooryalai Wesa insists the West is embarking on a grave error, repeating the same mistake the Russians committed when they pulled out of Afghanistan decades earlier when the Russians felt they could impose communism on a tribal society, and their aspirations were doomed to failure. With the West, it was the hope that the country would embrace democracy.