Among the Top Priorities for the Incoming Biden Administration Would Be To Effectively Deal With the Taliban's Violent Surge in Afghanistan
By
Hiranmay Karlekar
09 January
2021
Among the
top priorities for the incoming Biden Administration would be to effectively
deal with the Taliban's violent surge in Afghanistan
Among the top priorities for the incoming Biden Administration would be
to effectively deal with the Taliban's violent surge in Afghanistan
------
Perhaps the
second-most important problem — the first being the COVID-19 pandemic — that
President-elect Joe Biden would inherit on assumption of office as President of
the United States would be the situation in Afghanistan. The danger of the
Taliban taking over the country has never been more real than now since their
ouster from power in 2001. The question is: What should and can the Americans
do at this juncture? For answers, one must start by looking at what is now
happening in that country.
The first
thing that strikes one is the sharp escalation of the Taliban’s ruthless drive
to capture power by mounting fierce attacks on the Government’s forces in the
countryside and terror strikes in Kabul ever since the Trump Administration
signed a peace treaty with them on February 29, 2020. Particularly alarming is
their new emphasis on targeted killing of individuals such as journalists,
civil society activists, physicians, champions of democracy and Government
officials.
Besides the
Islamic State, which has claimed to have perpetrated a couple of attacks,
nobody has claimed responsibility for the rest. In a report in The Washington
Post datelined January 2, 2021, Pamela Constable and Sharif Hassan cited a voicemail
response in which the chief Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that the
militant outfit had nothing to do with the killings. Blaming these on the
Afghan Government’s intelligence agency, he said that the country would need
“educated” Afghans when peace finally came.
The Afghan
Government officials have, on the other hand, held the Taliban responsible for
the growing violence and the killing of individuals. The Washington Post report
mentioned above cites them as saying that they had made a number of arrests,
and the Interior Minister, Massoud Andarabi, as telling Afghan lawmakers that,
according to those arrested, the attacks were planned by a cell in Logar
province. The report also quotes First Vice-President Amrullah Saleh, a former
national intelligence chief, as tweeting that unclaimed bombings and targeted
assassinations of civil society activists were “pillars of the Taliban terror
campaign linked to their negotiating strategy”. It quoted him as further saying
that they wanted to break the Afghan people’s political will and demand
impossible concessions.
Anyone
familiar with the Taliban’s ways, and those of their masters — Pakistan’s
notorious Directorate-General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — would know
that the Afghans are right. An analysis of the purpose of the terror strikes
will also support this conclusion. These are clearly aimed at achieving three
objectives — to terrorise people into not resisting their violent take-over
bid, to delegitimise the Afghan State by projecting it as one incapable of
protecting the people, and to warn the incoming Biden Administration not to
change the terms of the February 29 treaty.
As to the
first, there is, by all accounts, a climate of fear and a feeling of siege in
Kabul as well as the countryside, at least one-half of which is under the
Taliban’s control. People are afraid to come out of their homes. Many are
beginning to believe that a take-over by the Taliban is inevitable and, hence,
it is best to hedge their bets.
As for the
attempt to delegitimise the Afghan Government, the latter has not been sitting
on its hands. First Vice-President Amrullah Saleh, whom President Ashraf Ghani
has put in charge of the Afghan capital’s security, has produced a plan, called
the ‘Kabul Security Compact’. While it has produced some results in terms of
reducing crime, continuing terror strikes and targeted killings are
perpetuating a climate of intense insecurity. A report by Thomas Gibbons-Neff
and Fatima Faizi in The New York Times of November 7, 2020, shows how the
terror strikes and the targeted killings by motorbike-borne terrorists or
through the attachment of magnetic bombs to vehicles, have led to growing
popular discontent with the Afghan Government for failing to protect its
citizens — promises notwithstanding.
The third
possible objective, to warn the incoming Biden Administration not to change the
terms of the February 29 treaty, indicates how advantageous the terms are to
the Taliban. These bind the US to reduce its forces in Afghanistan to 8,600 —
with its allies drawing down their forces proportionately — within the first
135 days of the agreement coming into force. A complete withdrawal of the US
forces will be effected within 14 months. It also calls for an exchange of
5,000 Taliban fighters held by the Afghan Government with 1,000 Afghan security
force prisoners with the Taliban by March 10, 2020, when talks between the
Afghan Government and the Taliban were due to start. Also, the US would not
only lift the sanctions it had imposed on the Taliban but work with the United
Nations to lift those that the latter had imposed on it.
The
question here is whether the incoming Biden Administration would stand by and
watch if the Taliban sought to storm into power by terrorising into inaction
all those who are opposed to it, and undermining the Afghan Government’s
credibility and ability to resist through a campaign of unremitting violence
and terror. Or, would it intervene and, if so, in what manner? The question
that follows is: Why should the US intervene? There are two dimensions to any
discussion on the matter — strategic and geo-political in terms of the US’s
interests, and moral in terms of protecting and furthering human freedom that
it always swears by.
The
consequences of not doing anything or enough to stop the Taliban from coming to
power would be disastrous for the US. It turned its attention away from
Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Russian troops in February 1989. It did
nothing even when the Taliban, formed in 1994 by Pakistan’s ISI, turned
Afghanistan into a medieval hell and put all women virtually under house
arrest, besides enabling Osama bin-Laden and the al-Qaida to function freely.
The result was 9/11. It may be a different kind of attack this time, and the
target, instead of being in mainland US like the two World Trade Centre
buildings, may be American interests abroad. There, however, will be an attack
or attacks because the Taliban is committed to imposing its own joyless,
puritanical and anti-women brand of Salafist Islam and Sharia rule worldwide.
The US, with its massive military and economic power, is not just a major
roadblock on its way. The country is the embodiment of a way of life that is
anathema to it. Based on the modernity evolving in the matrix of the Renaissance
and 18th century Enlightenment, its ethos is defined by its enshrinement of
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in its Declaration of Independence
as among the inalienable rights given to all humans by their creator, and its
life is marked by forward movement towards greater gender justice and personal
and sexual freedom.
There is
thus a deep cultural component to the visceral hatred that the Taliban and all
fundamentalist Islamist entities harbour towards the US. President-elect Biden
must bear this in mind and chart America’s strategy toward the Taliban
accordingly. The need to attend to the strategic and military compulsions
arising from such a situation is increased by the moral dimension, deriving
from the Taliban’s attitude to women as mentioned above. How the Taliban
treated them when in power becomes clear from the following account by Lt-Gen
Kamal Moinuddin (Retd) of the Pakistan Army in the Taliban Phenomenon:
Afghanistan 1994-97:
“Girls are
being denied education; women have been prevented from working. If they leave
their house, they have to be covered from head to foot with a veil (Burqa);
besides being veiled, the women have to be accompanied by a male relative when
they venture out on the streets. Shopkeepers have been directed not to sell
goods to unveiled women. Rickshaw drivers are not to pick up women passengers
unless they are fully covered. Women caught violating these rules are
imprisoned, as are the shopkeepers and rickshaw-drivers.”
The
argument that the Taliban have changed does not hold. In an article titled The
false inclusivity of the Taliban’s emirate (www.aljazeera.com), datelined
October 26, 2020, Mehdi J Hakimi writes: “Notwithstanding repeated claims that
they support women’s rights, for instance, the Taliban has continued to attack
girls’ schools. Also, women and young people, while comprising most of the
country’s population, are conspicuously missing from the Taliban’s negotiating
team.”
The
conclusion is simple. The incoming Biden Administration must not shrink from
intervening to prevent the Taliban from storming into power riding a wave of
escalating violence.
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Hiranmay
Karlekar is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal.
Original
Headline: Joe Biden’s burden
Source: The Pioneer
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/current-affairs/among-top-priorities-incoming-biden/d/124034
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