By: Malik Arslan Awan
The U.S. withdrawal of its soldiers in Afghanistan, has been met with a rather trifling scenario for the Afghan government and this begs the question as to whether the Afghan government – or another worldwide power – can prevent a resurgent Taliban from utilizing brutality to hold onto power in Afghanistan? With the Afghan-Taliban peace process slowly edging towards nothing but a pandemonium, things look quite meek for the Ghani government.
Afghans will face a plethora of different crisis with President Biden’s exodus of American powers from the country. Past the pandemic, drought and a desperate economy, they face a resurgent Taliban development that presently controls a greater amount of the country’s domain than whenever since 2001. Afghan security faculty are battling to hold an area, and the political elites have up to this point been not able to bind together against the normal danger of the Taliban. Numerous Afghans are looking for options in contrast to both the Taliban and President Ashraf Ghani. In the interim, hostile to Taliban, state armies are activating, and reports of Taliban killings and misuse are overflowing. Various Afghans dread they have no expectation except for to escape the country.
Be that as it may, the world has generally shut its ways to Afghans. Others are resolved in a battle to deny the Taliban a chance to reimpose their control. Tension is unmistakable, especially for Afghans who live in the urban communities, where many uprooted Afghans have looked for shelter. Activists, educated people, specialists and scholars are in a psychological bedlam fueled by the thought about their future in a nation where the Taliban is trying to restore their “Islamic Emirate.” Marginalized ethnic networks, like the Hazaras will be targeted more often. Hazaras have long faced discrimination and persecution in Afghanistan, and as renewed fear tightens its grips the community will be increasingly victimized and beleaguered in the country. Hazaras constitute the country’s third-largest ethnic group and largest religious minority community due to their Shia Muslim faith in this Sunni majority country. Their different beliefs and Asiatic features have made them easy targets. The Taliban was their persecutor during their rule. Now the local Islamic State franchise, known as ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K), also murders in conjunction with the Taliban. Now even the situation of Afghan young ladies and ladies is presently in dire straits. Their admittance to schools, to work, to the voting station, to their seats in parliament and the newsroom, even the chance of leaving their homes without a male chaperone, is now barely hanging on to a very thin strand. At long last, in the midst of this uneasiness and vulnerability, a significant feeling of disloyalty among the Taliban. For what reason did the Americans take up arms in this country for twenty years? The Taliban, obviously, have their answer: They see this as a chance for transpiring a way towards triumph and a re-visitation of force in the country. Moreover, over 19,000 Afghans applied for and received Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for their work assisting U.S. military forces over the last 20 years. But the federal government has been slow to process these claims. Afghan interpreters who assisted U.S. forces are among those waiting for a ticket to America. They and their families are waiting under the threat of Taliban violence.
The United States had the best influence with Afghan government because of its funding of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Decrease of this financing would bring about a quick breakdown of the ANDSF and a quick extension of Taliban power. Washington likewise helps store the regular citizen organization in Afghanistan on which any future government will depend. Nonetheless, this influence has not empowered the U.S. to coordinate an interim solidarity government despite the spring 2021 endeavors by the Biden organization to find a middle ground for the Kabul-Taliban arrangements. The Taliban isn’t keen on early elections — the greatest President Ashraf Ghani has been willing to consider. All things considered, it tries to sidestep and deliver immaterial the Afghan
government and arrange another division of force with Afghan powerbrokers. Nor has the Afghan government shown genuine interest in haggling with the Taliban in the course of recent months. Any arrangement the Taliban would have been willing to acknowledge would have required significant concessions from Kabul. All things considered, the Afghan government endeavored to ensnare the U.S. in battling in Afghanistan until a game plan that saved its force and the current political allotment could be reached — i.e., until the Taliban was crushed, anyway numerous years required. Nor has U.S. influence during the previous twenty years converted into molding administration in Afghanistan toward greater inclusivity and accountability and less corruption and predatory governance.
For a peace process to lead to sustainable peace, inclusivity must be taken seriously. Despite the United States withdrawing troops, it still has leverage it can exert to help ensure the hard-won gains it helped achieve are not lost. Applying that smartly in alignment with input from the greater Afghan society, including women, will help to preserve democratic rights in the peace process. If the United States, NATO allies and Pakistan make it clear that future support to the Afghan state, which is essential for Afghanistan’s prosperity, is contingent on maintaining minimum standards of human, civil and political rights, it will significantly increase pressure on the Taliban to provide assurances that they do not seek a return to the disastrous policies of the 1990s.
The writer is an entrepreneur, social activist and motivational speaker based in Lahore. He is also working with national peace and justice council government of Pakistan as a vice president Punjab he can be reached at [email protected]
