Finally, the talks
By Iftekhar A Khan

After twelve years of death and destruction, billions in war expense, about 3,500 body bags and counting, the US has decided to talk to the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. With the Taliban’s headquarters set up – complete with a flag of their future government in Afghanistan – preparations are afoot to negotiate the terms of peace in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, friends of Syria, under the tutelage of US Secretary of State John Kerry, have met in Doha and decided to provide overt military support to rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

Doha has the distinction of hosting two talks at a time. One between the US and the Taliban to discuss the future of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of coalition forces in 2014, and the second the meeting of the ‘friends of Syria’ on how to bring down Assad whose forces are fighting tenaciously against the Free Syrian Army operating from Turkey.

It goes without saying that the US is a common denominator in both the talks held for precisely the opposite reasons – one to put down the conflagration in Afghanistan, the other to inflame one in Syria.

However, what were the objectives the US-led coalition had set out to achieve in Afghanistan twelve years ago? Have they been achieved? If not, would talking to the Taliban not be tantamount to conceding defeat in Afghanistan? Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, as the two wars were called, have been the most expensive ventures in history. Together the two will likely cost $6 trillion in the end, burdening every American household with $75,000, according to a report by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

But why is the US talking to the same segment of population – the Taliban – it had set out to overthrow twelve years ago? Wouldn’t the 50,000 seriously wounded US war veterans question their government for letting their sacrifices lay waste by talking to the Taliban? Wasn’t emancipation of women one of the objectives of the war in Afghanistan? Has that objective been achieved? Are the Afghani women out of the blue cloak?

It’s tragic indeed that because of mounting poverty some women have had to take up vocations unheard of in Afghan society before Operation Enduring Freedom was launched. Some emancipation of women, that.

While the Taliban reps in Doha were cosying up to their American counterparts, President Hamid Karzai renounced the talks. Any action by Karzai or anyone else to impede talks will not hold, as the US and its coalition partners are sick of Afghanistan, historically called the graveyard of empires.

With the war on terror winding down, Karzai’s days in authority are over. Instead of protesting the US-Taliban talks, he should think of hanging his green robe and melting away.

Will the last American commander follow the last commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Gen Boris Gromov, who had walked across the Friendship Bridge to the border city of Termez in Uzbekistan, after nine years and 50 days of warring with the Afghan freedom fighters. Such fighters were then called the mujahideen – and now the Taliban? When the invaders pull out, history will repeat itself yet again in Afghanistan.

What legacy will the imperial powers leave behind in Afghanistan other than their derelict military equipment strewn over the rugged land? They will leave behind Afghan people with tattered lives; they will leave behind thousands of young, old, men and women with amputated limbs and bitter memories of the superpower that prided itself in human rights and freedom to women. Will the American public question its government over what the Afghan war was all about?

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. Email:pinecity@gmail.com