Pakistan's Afghan Legacy

"Most of them are here to get their passports to flee the country. People see Afghanistan now with a vague future."
Sayed Omar Saboor, head, Kabul passport office

"We all have run out of patience. We are seeking to create a good life in other countries for the betterment of us and our children."
Nabi Askary, 41, former NGO worker

"There are risks all along the route from Afghanistan to the Turkish coast. Migrants can be beaten up and sometimes even killed, their money stolen."
Often it can be the smugglers themselves that are in league with the aggressors."
Richard Danziger, chief of mission, International Organization for Migration, Afghanistan

Dozens of rafts used by by refugees and migrants, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, to cross from the Turkish coastal district of Bodrum to the Greek island of Kos, sit empty by the seashore.

Joanna Kakissis for NPR

Make no mistake, they are fleeing Islam. Which is to say the Islam that is practised by the Taliban. As incited by Pakistan. Anxious to retain Afghanistan in its orbit, not that of India, the neighbour that Pakistan abhors, resents and challenges to the geography of the tinderbox issue of Kashmir, Pakistan has continued to invest in its support of the Afghan Taliban. It is nothing short of just that the example of the Afghan Taliban inspired the creation of Pakistan's very own Taliban.

The monster that Pakistan's secret intelligence and its military fostered, bred a monster of its own. The instability that Pakistan created for Afghanistan is complicating the administration of its own conflicted country. The United States, led to consider Pakistan an ally in the 'war against terror' through its relationship with former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, spent $700 billion since 2001 in Afghanistan, battling the Taliban.

For its efforts and those of other NATO members who after more than a decade of presence, loss of personnel and treasury, pulled out but for training missions, it is difficult to discern what has been accomplished. The gains in empowering Afghanistan's women, in building health clinics and schools for the children of Afghanistan fought a rear-guard battle with the Taliban destroying what the West built. The efforts by NATO countries to help train the Afghan police and military came hard up against the Afghan culture of corruption.

With the withdrawal of NATO members the war economy that had boomed in their presence, declined. And as the country was drained of the presence of foreign troops whom most Afghans detested to begin with after their initial freedom from the oppressive tyranny of the Taliban, money-making opportunities for Afghan war lords, police and military also declined. Afghans now represent roughly 13 percent of migrants travelling to Europe via the Mediterranean.

Migrants arrive on an overcrowded dinghy to the coast of the southeastern Greek island of Kos from Turkey, on Saturday.     Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

The exodus of Afghans from their war-torn country is second to the Syrian exodus from theirs. And if Islam is not the responsible agent for these conflicts, it is Islam aligned with the culture of these benighted, backward countries historically incapable of administering themselves as civilized enclaves. Local incomes had tripled during the time that NATO countries installed their military missions and their NGOs to attempt to haul Afghanistan out of the dark ages.

The gross domestic product expanded fivefold. But the good times are now over. Foreign investment has fallen, trade has become depressed and projects that promised mines would begin extracting the valuable resources that nature invested in Afghanistan have come to nothing. Meanwhile, the Taliban have increased their activities and their bombing missions, gaining steadily. Their alignment with al-Qaeda and Islamic State have made them more deadly and determined.

Intensified attacks by the Taliban on Kabul have re-created the insecurity and upheaval that the invasion of Afghanistan sought to remedy. The head of the Taliban has stated that peace is attainable, but only when the United States withdraws all of its troops, and the Afghan government takes steps to once and forever sever security ties with the United States. And then the predictable will occur: the Taliban will resume power.

According to the Afghan Ministry of Refugees & Repatriation, roughly six million Afghan refugees and asylum seekers now live in 44 countries, mostly Pakistan and Iran.