Negotiating with Islamist Terrorists

"As I read history, when a nation's problems become this complex and they are not solved, that could result in violence and revolutions and other unwanted things."

"Water is very soft, but if you put it under pressure, it will explode."

Burhanuddin Rabbani,1990 President of the Afghan Islamic Republic, head, Afghan High Peace Council 

"If the army collapses, and the army is divided along ethnic lines, then I think Afghanistan will be facing a time like in Rwanda."

"You have millions of girls and women going to school and university, and it is impossible now to push them back."

Azis Royesh, Afghan education activist

The Taliban bombing in Pul-e-Alam on Friday killed at least 24 people   Reuters

 

Throughout its long history Afghanistan has been invaded and occupied countless times. The country has known conflict and bloodshed on a fairly continual basis. The occupation it now awaits is that of the Pashtun Taliban, resurgent and prepared to mount a full-scale war against the established government. That government is committed to an Afghan version of democracy, the Taliban view that as despicable surrender to Western values, and they are prepared to resume where they left off, governing Afghanistan before the U.S.-led invasion following 9/11, in pursuit of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laren.

Western nations led by the United States, NATO members under the auspices of the United Nations, routed the ruling Taliban that had kept the country in the iron grip of Islamist sharia law where anything resembling the values of the West was strictly proscribed, and women in particular were considered mere appendages of men, with no life of their own, relegated to home, kitchen and nursery. No education, no employment, total poverty of opportunity, total dependence on men.

The women of Afghanistan who prospered mightily with the presence of occupying Western troops stationed in the country to keep pushing back an ever-renascent Taliban, spring after spring, accessing education, joining professions, living as equal a life as possible in a Muslim society, now anticipate with dread the return of the Taliban. 

 

The U.S. and its allies have long wanted to depart Afghanistan, pulling out all troops, For years the international community and humanitarian NGOs helped modernize the country's civil infrastructure. Just as the foreign military committed to training the country's national police and military in best modern military practices with the intention of teaching them to fend for themselves and commit solidly to protect the embattled nation.

U.S. Black Hawk military helicopters fly over the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 19. (Rahmat Gul/The Associated Press)

After the long weary years of preparing Afghanistan to look after its interests as a civil society and its military to respond to violent provocations, communication between the Taliban and the U.S. to arrange a ceasefire and agreement leading to shared governance of the country -- not to reward or to trust the Taliban but in acknowledgement of the fact that they remain strong and as lethal to accommodation as ever and in a last-gap effort to create some hope before leaving, entrust the future of the country to an accommodation between the government of Afghan President Ashraf Gani and the Taliban for a rapprochement. 

As a signal of what lies in wait, all the while these negotiations were being carried on -- between the U.S. and Taliban representatives, since the Taliban leaders refused to acknowledge the authority of the Afghan government, considering it a puppet of the U.S., violent attacks by the Taliban against foreign troops, against the country's government and the civilian population were ongoing. Scores of innocent people died in Taliban suicide attacks all over the country.

Now that foreign troops will depart entirely by September, the people of Afghanistan gird themselves psychologically for the horrendous scenario they know will  result, when the Taliban embark on a mission to destroy infrastructure tainted by Western design and purpose, target and murder those whom they consider to have been too warmly involved with the foreign presence, and settle scores with other ethnic groups before once again settling in as government and a dark mantle of Islamist tyranny settles in.

Afghan National Army soldiers search men at a road checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

 

According to some knowledgeable estimates there will be an initial upheaval and bloodletting. Some Afghan intellectuals foresee the possibility of the country's partition, separating the majority Afghans from the Pashtuns dominated by the Taliban. Pakistan's dark presence over Afghanistan has, in effect, led to the formation of the mujahadeen, the terrorizing Taliban that were originally trained by the Pakistan Secret Intelligence Service in Pakistan's interests in retaining Afghanistan as a vassal state.

Throughout the 'peace' talks and the preparatons under way to see the foreign presence in Afghanistan depart, leaving the country and its government fully exposed to whatever the Taliban has in store, the slaughter and bloodshed that never stopped, occurring even in the protected capital Kabul, has more than adequately informed Afghans what the near future holds for them. Of the 39 million population, 40 percent are Pashtun who consider the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Almak, Turkmen and Hazaras inferior and unequal.

The month of Ramadan just concluded, 24 hours following the Eid holiday, the government of Afghanistan recorded 110 attacks in 23 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Nothing has changed about the Taliban and their mission, nothing has changed for the Taliban; whatever methods they made use of a decade ago remain the methods used today. As head of the Afghan High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated by an emissary of the Taliban whom he assumed had arrived to discuss a solution to the conflict but when the emissary detonated a bomb he wore in his turban in September 2011, that hope faded.

It has been kept in that condition ever since ... hope steadily fading ... and now with the departure of foreign troops and the assurances to the Afghan government that yes, most certainly, you'll reach an agreement, working things out between yourselves, share government and all will be well, assumes the proportions of a massive lie of face-saving. When nothing will now save the people of Afghanistan from a violent upheaval and ultimate tyranny in the living hell of full-blown terror ahead.

The withdrawal will be completed by 11 September   BBC