Triggered by an expected but ill-executed departure of the United States (US) — typified by a 17-year-old football enthusiast, Zaki Anwari, falling to his death from a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III — this moment was long in the making. Undecided between the narrower counterterrorism and broader nation-building objectives, the US failed at both. But more than the failure of the US and the corrupt Afghan elite who fled when their country needed them most, it is the “victory” of the Taliban and its sponsor, Pakistan, which makes this moment significant..
Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe.
Both these aspects ie, the Taliban’s largely unchallenged, almost preordained rise, and the concomitant success of Pakistan’s military establishment, which has long desired influence in Kabul, require unpacking. For these entities, Kabul has not fallen, it has risen. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan’s much-criticised statement that the Taliban are “breaking the chains of slavery”, offers important clues about South Asia’s geopolitical contours.
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Shri Krishna Govind hare Murari.
It marks the (geo)political mainstreaming of fringe Islamists. Unlike the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), that made the cardinal mistake of simultaneously altering territorial boundaries and propagating global jihad, the Taliban focused its efforts on a territorially recognised nation-State and, in rhetoric, steers clear of global jihadists. That the United Kingdom (UK)’s chief of defence staff, Nick Carter, active in behind-the-scenes negotiations between Rawalpindi and pre-Taliban Kabul, thinks that the Taliban are “country boys with honour at the heart” demonstrates how far the Taliban has come, with Pakistan’s support, in reshaping the world’s views about it.
Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe.
The Taliban’s genius lies in their ability to navigate along, and manipulate, differences between ethnic nationalism and Islamist radicalism. Ever since its resurgence, the group kept international opinion divided on where the Taliban figured on this Islamist-versus-nationalist spectrum. Even now, big powers such as China, who are eager to engage with the Taliban, are demanding them to cut ties with “terrorists” ie, the Turkistan Islamic Party, that China views as antithetical to its security. Islamabad too wants the Taliban to cut ties with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The irony is that such demands afford the Taliban leverage vis-à-vis both Islamabad and Beijing — not the other way round.
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For a group that has come to power after humiliating the US, and that knows Beijing is unlikely to use military force in Afghanistan given the risks, the Taliban has little incentive to cut the cord with foreign Islamists to whom it owes battlefield gratitude. This doesn’t mean that the Taliban will suddenly take a global Islamist turn. It will not. But it will extract a heavy price, including aid and diplomatic recognition, for every foreign Islamist it targets on behalf of an external power. In that sense, the Taliban, an internationally connected Islamist group, doesn’t need to send fighters to Kashmir or Xinjiang. It just needs to be and let them be.
Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe Shri Radhe.
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