Thursday 8 December 2011

Story Of A War Gone Wrong

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had to cut short a visit to Europe and return to Kabul yesterday after a devastating suicide bombing against a Shia shrine in the city killed 60 people. The attack came on the day of Ashura, the holiest day on the Shia calendar, which shows the deadly intent of the perpetrators to ignite sectarian hatreds. The attack acquires more significance in view of its background: Karzai was in Bonn for a conference on the 'future' of Afghanistan. The meeting was boycotted by a country without whose support peace in Afghanistan will remain a mirage - Pakistan. Karzai said the attack on the Shia shrine originated in Pakistan, putting further pressure on already strained relations between the two.
Pakistan is still seething with anger after a NATO air strike hit an army checkpoint in the north-west killing 25 soldiers. Since then Pakistan has blocked NATO supplies heading through its country to Afghanistan. Efforts to repair the strained relations between Pakistan and NATO, especially the US, have failed. When Islamabad’s relations with Washington are damaged, it has a cascading, detrimental effect on its relations with Kabul too and even beyond.
Amid all these dangerous developments, the NATO and US are sticking to their plans of withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan by 2015. It is a telling reflection on the state of the war. Peace and stability for Afghans, despite all the lofty talk, are no priority for the countries which started this war. Their only goal now is to flee, even if that leaves Afghanistan where it was when the war started or even deeper in chaos. Those who know Afghanistan, including Western diplomats who have worked in the country, are fully aware of the dangers of American policies and are speaking against it. Former British ambassador to Afghanistan Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who served in the country from 2007 to 2009, said the troop withdrawal plan was ‘worse than questionable, it’s disgraceful’ if it was not accompanied by a determined peace process. Until now, the decade-long Afghan war has largely been free of sectarian violence.But the latest attack shows that at least some militant groups may have changed tactics, targetting ethnic minorities such as the Hazara who are largely Shia and support the Afghan government and its Western partners. Afghanistan’s Shia community of mostly Hazaras make up about 20 percent of the nation’s 30 million population.

This is a war that started badly and got worse. Although they will apply the usual short-term memory approach to history, it will haunt America for ever.

2 comments:

  1. Why all of a sudden now?
    Is this a pretense for another "surge"?
    Karzai is making a profound statement by blaming Pakistan.
    He should first look into his mirror.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Obama is out of surges. GOP is another story though - I have little doubt that any candidate would further prolong U.S. operations in the region.

    ReplyDelete