Tweet
A damp squib
Frontier Post :: Editorial :: A damp squib
Posted on November 16, 2011
As Kabul mounts its much-touted Loya Jirga today, the venture apparently has run aground even before takeoff for the widespread opposition it has drawn from various Afghan segments, reducing into a damp squib from the word go what the American occupiers had originally visualised as a catapulting springboard for their objective of establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan after 2014 coalition forces’ withdrawal.Significantly, the opposition is not confined to the resistance camp. It spreads over entities and personalities, including legislators, who are directly or indirectly very much the prevalent Kabul dispensation’s part. The opponents include, apart from Pakhtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. Predictably, Taliban have opposed it, denouncing the venture as the jirga of slaves and its participants as traitors. So has resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who has pronounced the jirga illegitimate. But even people like Abdullah Abdullah, who contested the last presidential election, has opposed it and announced not to attend it. On the weekend, a grouping of ethnic political formations led by Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, Hazara leader Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq and Tajik leader Ahmad Zia Masood, younger brother of slain Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Masood, congregated in Kabul and announced the jirga’s boycott. Indeed, a religio-political leader Engineer Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai has declared the jirga as un-Islamic and participation in it as sin.
Several parliamentarians have given vent to their opposition right inside the house. So much of dissent has in effect dented the venture’s credibility right from the outset. And even the American occupiers, who had initially pulled their weight behind it, have backtracked, visualising it, not incorrectly, as a stillborn child. There indeed were reports that they wanted the jirga to be called off, fearing instead of giving a green signal to their permanent military presence in Afghanistan, it might rule otherwise. And reports were afloat that it might not even take up the issue and instead other matters might be brought up before it for deliberation. Anyway, the next few days would tell which way the camel finally sits. Nonetheless, the American occupiers would do well to take a pause and ponder over what dire predicament their obsession for military bases would potentially land Afghanistan in. In the first place, given the massive national dissent their overvaulting ambition has drawn, their venture is sure to further fracture the already-deeply divided Afghan polity. And this is an unpardonable sin against the very imperative need of grand national reconciliation that the war-torn Afghanistan deserves indispensably.
The fissures this mad pursuit is bound to spawn will not be inter-ethnic. They will cut across every ethnic entity and every segment of Afghan polity. The American occupiers must bear one thing in mind unequivocally. If despite expending a lot of blood and treasure in Iraq they couldn’t secure military bases from an Iraqi government not unfriendly, how could they any reasonably hope to get this facility in a country where they have not been so generous and where foreign invaders, conquerors and occupiers have traditionally never been tolerated?
In fact, the very roots of the ongoing unrelenting insurgency in Afghanistan lie deeply in this inexorable intolerance of foreign occupation. More worryingly, their foray for military bases has all the viciousness to plunge the beleaguered country into the deep hole of big power rivalries to keep it in turmoil and turbulence for times to come. It is sheer foolishness of the American occupiers to think if other players, particularly in the region, will take to its venture kindly. They certainly will not. The Russians have already publicly opposed the move. Several Central Asian states have given articulation to similar a position. The Chinese too will feel no easy over the presence of American military bases in their so close vicinity. Indeed, several moots of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where Russia and China share the central table with several Central Asian states as members, have lately emphatically called for keeping the region free from foreign powers and their non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal matters. Iran too would react sharply to any military bases of America, presently its bete noire, in its next-door neighbour Afghanistan. And Pakistan quite legitimately will feel greatly disturbed, particularly after Afghanistan’s strategic treaty with India, which the American have now stated on record had their full encouragement, backing and blessing. With India training and arming the Afghan military, predominantly composed of compulsively anti-Pakistan Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek communities, and with American military bases breathing down its neck from neigbouring Afghanistan, Pakistan will justifiably be great at unease, with its security concerns perpetually at a boiling point. The venture may not even be sustainable for the Americans themselves. If despite a large presence of about 140,000 troops, equipped with deadly military hardware and backed up by strong air support, couldn’t succeed in quelling insurgency, how would they sustain a chain of widely-dispersed Fort Alamos among swarming hostile people? Sanely, they better leave the Afghans alone to reconcile and make their land peaceful. That probably may help them realise their newfound love-baby, the New Silk Route, as well.
Frontier Post :: Editorial :: A damp squib
Posted on November 16, 2011
As Kabul mounts its much-touted Loya Jirga today, the venture apparently has run aground even before takeoff for the widespread opposition it has drawn from various Afghan segments, reducing into a damp squib from the word go what the American occupiers had originally visualised as a catapulting springboard for their objective of establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan after 2014 coalition forces’ withdrawal.Significantly, the opposition is not confined to the resistance camp. It spreads over entities and personalities, including legislators, who are directly or indirectly very much the prevalent Kabul dispensation’s part. The opponents include, apart from Pakhtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. Predictably, Taliban have opposed it, denouncing the venture as the jirga of slaves and its participants as traitors. So has resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who has pronounced the jirga illegitimate. But even people like Abdullah Abdullah, who contested the last presidential election, has opposed it and announced not to attend it. On the weekend, a grouping of ethnic political formations led by Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, Hazara leader Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq and Tajik leader Ahmad Zia Masood, younger brother of slain Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Masood, congregated in Kabul and announced the jirga’s boycott. Indeed, a religio-political leader Engineer Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai has declared the jirga as un-Islamic and participation in it as sin.
Several parliamentarians have given vent to their opposition right inside the house. So much of dissent has in effect dented the venture’s credibility right from the outset. And even the American occupiers, who had initially pulled their weight behind it, have backtracked, visualising it, not incorrectly, as a stillborn child. There indeed were reports that they wanted the jirga to be called off, fearing instead of giving a green signal to their permanent military presence in Afghanistan, it might rule otherwise. And reports were afloat that it might not even take up the issue and instead other matters might be brought up before it for deliberation. Anyway, the next few days would tell which way the camel finally sits. Nonetheless, the American occupiers would do well to take a pause and ponder over what dire predicament their obsession for military bases would potentially land Afghanistan in. In the first place, given the massive national dissent their overvaulting ambition has drawn, their venture is sure to further fracture the already-deeply divided Afghan polity. And this is an unpardonable sin against the very imperative need of grand national reconciliation that the war-torn Afghanistan deserves indispensably.
The fissures this mad pursuit is bound to spawn will not be inter-ethnic. They will cut across every ethnic entity and every segment of Afghan polity. The American occupiers must bear one thing in mind unequivocally. If despite expending a lot of blood and treasure in Iraq they couldn’t secure military bases from an Iraqi government not unfriendly, how could they any reasonably hope to get this facility in a country where they have not been so generous and where foreign invaders, conquerors and occupiers have traditionally never been tolerated?
In fact, the very roots of the ongoing unrelenting insurgency in Afghanistan lie deeply in this inexorable intolerance of foreign occupation. More worryingly, their foray for military bases has all the viciousness to plunge the beleaguered country into the deep hole of big power rivalries to keep it in turmoil and turbulence for times to come. It is sheer foolishness of the American occupiers to think if other players, particularly in the region, will take to its venture kindly. They certainly will not. The Russians have already publicly opposed the move. Several Central Asian states have given articulation to similar a position. The Chinese too will feel no easy over the presence of American military bases in their so close vicinity. Indeed, several moots of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where Russia and China share the central table with several Central Asian states as members, have lately emphatically called for keeping the region free from foreign powers and their non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal matters. Iran too would react sharply to any military bases of America, presently its bete noire, in its next-door neighbour Afghanistan. And Pakistan quite legitimately will feel greatly disturbed, particularly after Afghanistan’s strategic treaty with India, which the American have now stated on record had their full encouragement, backing and blessing. With India training and arming the Afghan military, predominantly composed of compulsively anti-Pakistan Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek communities, and with American military bases breathing down its neck from neigbouring Afghanistan, Pakistan will justifiably be great at unease, with its security concerns perpetually at a boiling point. The venture may not even be sustainable for the Americans themselves. If despite a large presence of about 140,000 troops, equipped with deadly military hardware and backed up by strong air support, couldn’t succeed in quelling insurgency, how would they sustain a chain of widely-dispersed Fort Alamos among swarming hostile people? Sanely, they better leave the Afghans alone to reconcile and make their land peaceful. That probably may help them realise their newfound love-baby, the New Silk Route, as well.