Peace in Afghanistan Is in The Peace Process and Stability in Afghanistan Is in The Politics of Give and Take

  

Peace in Afghanistan Is in The Peace Process and Stability in Afghanistan Is in The Politics of Giving and Take

Mujeeb Khan 

 

City of  Kandahar

  On the morning of August 31, the people in America was feeling light, the burden of Hindu Kush was lifted from their shoulders. The black smoke washed away from the sky. The crystal-clear blue sky shone with the bright rays of the sun. In Afghanistan, on the morning of August 31, when people came out of their homes, they did not see military trucks, military vehicles, camouflage uniforms, beautiful morning, quiet streets. There was no black smoke in the air, the roads were not red. There were no explosions from either side. For 20 years, or even forty years, the Afghan people have become accustomed to living in these conditions. They did not understand that Afghanistan was in the same world, or they have entered a new world. However, they were happy to see that Afghanistan had been liberated and that the Taliban had liberated the United States from war. It was Afghanistan that liberated the United States from the fear of communism.

  George W. Bush’s national security team and so-called the New Conservatives were intoxicated on war long before 9/11. The war in Afghanistan was such that in the United States, such people are often punished, and twenty years later it is said that he was innocent. The prosecutor hid some facts from the court. The United States had a similar case about Afghanistan. Every US administration has told the world that the 9/11 attacks on the United States came from Afghanistan, this is not true, the planes that attacked the United States did not come from Afghanistan. These were American planes that flew from American airports. Then the impression is given that the United States was attacked from Afghanistan? The root cause of the war in Afghanistan was wrong. President George W. Bush’s national security team was the most incompetent people. They ignored the facts about Afghanistan and pushed the United States into the forever Afghan war. These Afghans were Mujahideen in the 1980s and then in the 1990s, they become Taliban. They defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This training was given to them by the CIA on how to fight superpowers in the modern world. History has also shown that all the powers that came to Afghanistan were defeated, all these facts were in front of President George W. Bush, and above all, those who were trained by the CIA should not have fought. That was the Bush administration’s deadliest mistake.

  President George H. Bush called Panama’s President Manuel Noriega a threat to US national security. General Noriega become a threat to US national security after the end of the Cold War. But in the Cold War, General Noriega was an asset to US national security. When in 1970s George H. Bush was director of the CIA, General Noriega played a key role in the right-wing and left-wing battles with the CIA in Latin America. General Noriega helped the United States to crush freedom and democracy movements throughout Latin America. Money laundering was carried out by General Noriega, and it was used to finance right-wing battles, they were given weapons. That is, General Manuel Noriega did all the dirty laundry for the United States for almost two decades. After the end of the Cold War, the battles of the right and the left also ended. The left was coming to power everywhere. Political changes were taking place in Latin America, seeing these political changes, General Noriega also began to change. President George H. Bush did with General Noriega what the Mafia does with its Renegade.

  General Manuel Noriega Knew many of the CIA’s secrets about Latin America, so he was a threat to America’s national security. But the CIA trained religious fanatics Afghan and Arab jihadists in Afghanistan to wage a jihad against the Soviet Union. President George H. Bush turned his back on them. There were about 40,000 jihadists. But President Bush considered General Noriega a greater threat than 40,000 Afghan jihadists.

  The Kremlin’s concern about peace in Afghanistan when Soviet troops were leaving Afghanistan 32 years ago, and now 32 years later today peace in Afghanistan is still a big question for everyone on the withdrawal of US troops. These excerpts are from the Soviet interpreter Pavel Palazchenko’s Memoir “My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze”.

  “As we were flying from China to Pakistan, the last units of the Soviet army were leaving Afghanistan. Although I had never been to Kabul with Shevardnadze, I knew what it had cost him to make that happen. The question that was then being debated everywhere, by experts and non-experts alike, was whether the government of Najibullah would survive the withdrawal.

  The international press was full of predictions of the impending final assault of the mujaheddin in Kabul, the fall of the regime, and a subsequent bloodbath. This was also the conventional wisdom in the Soviet foreign ministry, particularly in departments not directly concerned with Afghanistan. The experts on the Afghanistan desk were more prudent. Some went openly against the current and predicted that Najibullah’s regime would survive, but they were a minority.

  Shevardnadze did not make any predictions in my presence, but I felt he did not share the most pessimistic assessment. I once talked to him about the phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which is difficult to translate into Russian and had to be explained. That was something that could happen in Afghanistan, I said. He answered to the effect that the strength of the Najibullah regime should not be underestimated.

  This, I thought, was the message he was taking to Islamabad, but the Pakistanis were not receptive to it. From the outset of Shevardnadze’s talks in the foreign ministry, they were for granted the early defeat of Najibullah. They said they were looking forward to a rapid improvement in relations with the Soviet Union now that the Afghan problem was almost behind us. Once the current regime was gone, they suggested, a political solution would be easy to achieve, and they were ready to cooperate. Shevardnadze’s attempt to persuade Foreign Minister Yakub Khan that Najibullah was an indigenous and viable force that at least had to be reckoned with in a political solution was ignored. He just couldn’t get through.

  A meeting was scheduled with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Shevardnadze believed it was his last chance to explore possible political approaches seriously. He had some messages from Kabul to pass on to her. Part of the meeting he expected to be one-on-one, as is usual during such visits, but when we came to the parliament building, where the prime minister had her office, the events proceeded according to a different scenario.

  We were kept waiting for about ten minutes in one of the many halls of the building. As we waited, through an open door I saw Bhutto talking with someone. I could not hear what she was saying, but she seemed concerned. She was dressed in a red native outfit, her head covered with a shawl, and Shevardnadze, who did not recognize her, later said she might be taken for a young secretary. Finally, we were invited to join Bhutto and led into her office.

  But Bhutto’s private talk with Shevardnadze turned out to be a short. A few minutes later the door of the office opened, armchairs were brought in, and we were joined by Yakub Khan and two or three other officials. Bhutto smiled apologetically. She seemed to be encircled by people who, though not only hostile, owed her no allegiance. The discussion did not add anything to what we had gone through before, and the overall feeling was eerie and frustrating.

 We made one final attempt to get through to Bhutto. At Shevardnadze’s request, I talked with her personal assistant for foreign affairs, a man I remembered from my years at the United Nations, but he too seemed isolated and not quite free in what he was saying. The next day, when Yakub Khan came to the airport to say goodbye to Shevardnadze, he indicated he was aware of what I had privately conveyed to Bhutto. He and the military were clearly in charge, and they wanted to win big in Afghanistan.

  During his first meeting with US Secretary of States James Baker, Gorbachev remarked that the Afghan equation was extremely confusing, “So maybe we should let them stew in their own juices,” he added almost in passing. Baker’s reaction was noncommittal, but he often quoted those words later. They become a kind of code for what I called a policy of diminished interest.

  Was it the right policy, and was its policy at all? Both Gorbachev and Bush often said to each other that a victory for Islamic fundamentals in Afghanistan was not in the interest of either the United States or the Soviet Union. I believed that was reason enough to try to develop something like a common policy aimed at preventing that outcome and achieving stability in Afghanistan. With some effort, a coalition that would be acceptable to almost everyone- and “almost” would be enough in that case- could perhaps be put together in Afghanistan. But apparently, the Soviet Union and the United States were not equally interested in such an outcome.