The Squandered Goodwill, the Blame Game, And what has to be done


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Other contributions by Jan Qarabaghi: Mr. President: Correct Course Before It's Too Late Warlord Democracy Jan Qarabaghi: Secretary Rice’s Trip to Afghanistan in the midst of “Exceptionally Good” Afghan Security From Undercounting in Florida to Over-counting in Kabul Watch of the Battle of the Puppets Tale of Two Plans: the Marshall Plan and the 'Peanut' Plan Not In the Name of My God, Not in the Name of My Freedom G8 Summit: It Takes Two to Tango The Threat of B52 and the Palliative Effect of Kleptomania "Grand Assembly" or Grand Deceit	The Squandered Goodwill, the Blame Game, And what has to be done By: Jan Qarabaghi Rising Insurgency, Theatre of Blame, and Feelings of Betrayal After a short winter/spring lull, Afghanistan is once again roiling and shivering in insecurity, uncertainty and bloodshed. The southern and eastern provinces of the country, the so-called Pashtun-belt, are scenes of violent unrests and attacks by the insurgents, who, based on obvious political reasons, are conveniently lumped together by the U.S. military and Afghan officials as remnants of the defunct Taliban regime. In reality, it is obvious that more groups are involved in the insurgency than the Taliban alone. Among those taking part in the insurgency one may include a large number of war-hardened members of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, who has been dubbed by the U.S. Enemy No 2, some die-hard followers of Mawlawi Khalis, who left Afghanistan after U.S. forces appeared in towns and villages of his native Nangarhar province in the east, the Jihadists of the neighboring and other regional countries, such as Pakistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and Uzbekistan, who still find Afghanistan an opportune training ground, and perhaps not a small number of well-connected, disgruntled elements of the so-called northern alliance, who accuse the U.S. of selling them out to Karzai and his cohorts. The strategic advantage of the last group (elements of the northern alliance) in the business of insurgency lies in the fact that it has collaborators and informers inside Karzai administration, as well as sympathizers and supporters attached to the U.S. military forces stationed at Bagram airbase and Kabul. To detract from their own colossal failure and incompetence, the embattled Afghan officials and their de- facto superintendent, The Viceroy, who has left or is leaving the country at the time of this writing (while continuing to act as President Bush’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan), are blaming the insurgency on Pakistan.[1] Islamabad, in its turn, vehemently denies any responsibility for the insurgency and complains about the “high price” that the regime of President Musharaf has already paid for its support of the Karzai administration, and for its collaboration in the “war on terror.” On the other hand, Russia and Uzbekistan have joined the foray and blame Afghanistan for serving as a training ground for members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Meanwhile, insurgency, bloodshed, and insecurity in Afghanistan goes on unabated and the “government” of Hamid Karazi continues to languish within the walls of the capital, which still remains in ruins, overcrowded with some three million hunger-stricken bodies and streets and alleys flooded with raw waste and human excrement. The billions of dollars of reconstruction aid, promised in the lavish terminology of the “Marshall Plan,” have magically disappeared in the bureaucratic maze of the donor states or in the porous and greedy pockets of NGOs and their governmental patrons and allies in Afghanistan and abroad. People all over Afghanistan, particularly in the Pashtun belt, feel betrayed, alienated, forgotten, and left alone. Is the History repeating itself? The insurgent attacks are countered by on-and-off U.S.-led retaliatory military activities. These operations, mostly involving high and low altitude bombardments, inevitably create fear among the civilian populations, disrupt people’s daily social and economic life, cause numerous innocent casualties, and are almost always accompanied by violent house-searches, beatings, and arrests of villagers suspected of working or sympathizing with the insurgency. The result of all this is that people in the areas infested by insurgency a) have become disillusioned by the continuous presence and operation of the so-called coalition forces in their areas, and b) have lost faith in the capability of the coalition forces to defend them against a probable insurgent victory, no matter how distant and impossible such a victory might seem at the moment. (Experiences of the past three decades have taught Afghans that distant possibilities do not remain distant for ever; they can become reality very quickly and unexpectedly.) Of course, efforts to destroy and interdict poppy cultivation and trade – activities that provide livelihood for millions of poverty-stricken, deeply indebted farmers-- add fuel to the disenchantment that welcomes and supports the insurgency. Thus, local populations in the south and in the east are beginning to feel compelled to build bridges and sympathies with the insurgents. This provides the insurgents with the invaluable opportunity to mingle with civilians during the day, and take up guns against foreign and ANA troops in the evening. (Russians who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s might be able to teach their American counterparts a few useful lessons in this respect.) It is obvious that, following the classic pattern of foreign intervention under the pretext of liberation, the original mission of the U.S. forces which was supposed to be ridding Afghanistan of militants and al Qaeda terrorist network, has quickly degenerated into a mission to fight disenchantment among the population and prop up a regime that has increasingly lost rapport and credibility among its people. A mission that was supposed to be proactive, offensive, and liberating against terrorism of Bin Laden and his cohorts has transmuted into a mission of containing the spread of insurgency and defending strategic territories and arteries needed for the logistical survival of the invading forces and their Afghan collaborators. (Here, one is reminded of the similar debacle that faced Russian military forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.) Moreover, the specter of continuing foreign presence in the country, the untimely cacophony of “strategic partnership” with the U.S., and the ill-conceived idea of permanent bases on the Afghan soil, suggested by Karzai and his defense minister on self-preserving grounds, have not only worried a few neighboring sleeping dogs, but it has also put the truthfulness of the original mission into question. A majority of the Afghans, as well as their neighbors, have begun to suspect that an “Enduring Occupation” of Afghanistan might have been the actual motive behind what was dubbed as “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In such an uncertain politico-military climate, filled with secrecy, distrust, and disinformation, it is no wonder that people inside Afghanistan compare today’s situation in their land with the situation that existed when the Soviet forces were struggling to save the discredited Russian-installed regime of Babrak Karmal or Najeeb the Cow. The latest word from inside Afghanistan is that the crown jewel of the U.S. reconstruction effort, i.e., the Kabul-Kandahar road, is in such an unsafe state that those who want to travel from Kandahar to Kabul must first travel from Kandahar to Quetta, Pakistan, take the plane from Quetta to Peshawar, in NWFP, and then take the bus from Peshawar, cross the Khyber Pass, and arrive to Kabul via Jelalabad. This is about a two-day journey. Welcome back to the future: Two days were exactly the amount of time that Kandaharis needed for a trip from their province to Kabul before the Kabul-Kandahar highway was built in the 1960s. This was also the amount of time that travelers needed when they traveled from Kandahar to Kabul during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the above-mentioned highway was shut because of insurgency! Plight of the North and Neglect of the Central Highlands In the north, the situation is different from that in the south and east. Except for the occasional outbreak of armed clashes between rival militia forces, the northern provinces of the country seem to be calm on the surface. However, if you look deeper, you will discover that the north is calm not because peace has returned, justice has been provided, and life has improved for the people there; rather, the north is calm because it has been left alone to the free reign of notorious warlords, who were, and perhaps still are, in the payroll of the Pentagon. The fact that U.S. forces are tied up in the south and east is a God-sent opportunity for the northern warlords: It helps them freely misrule and abuse the territories under their control, trample human rights, and suppress dissent without attracting any attention. The war in the south and east also encourages and strengthens centrifugal forces and sentiments in the north by allowing the northern warlords to consolidate their power bases into quasi self-governing mini states. Central highlands, home to about 2 million hard-working Hazaras, are also quiet, but, apparently, not because they are tranquil and oppression-free, rather because they have been left alone to their own primitive survival devices, characterized by hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Local Hazara warlords rule their fiefdoms the way they did during the Soviet occupation, i.e., far from any influence and expectation from the capital of the country they consider their ancient home. The Hazaras do not complain about the hardships or the misrule they face, because they know from the bitter experience of the past that they cannot expect relief from anyone, other than those who are responsible for the misrule. As a consequence of this sorry state of affairs in their country, different generations of Afghans, inside and outside of the land, have given up hope of a better future, and have surrendered to the idea that worse may still be lying ahead. It has become common in political discourse among Afghans to tell each other “God may save us from the worst,” or that “every day is worse than the yester day.” The loss of hope is accompanied by the loss of goodwill. The goodwill that the majority of Afghans once felt toward the United States has evaporated and has been overtaken by cynicism, dismay, suspicion, and distrust. The enemies of America on the ground and in the neighboring lands have taken advantage of every occasion to badmouth and defame America and American intentions in Afghanistan. These circles have been amply aided in their goal of defaming America by grave mistakes committed by officials in Kabul and Washington. The biggest mistake in this respect has been the failure of the Afghan and American officials to deliver on the promises they made to the Afghan people in the aftermath of the Taliban collapse: Freedom, human rights, justice, and reconstruction. After four years of American engagement, and spending of over $60 billion in military, intelligence, administrative, and reconstruction pursuits, what the people of Afghanistan see in their homes and neighborhoods is diabolically different from what they were promised in December 2001: The country still remains in the grip of the warlords; poverty, hunger, and disease continue to threaten the lives of millions of Afghan children, men, and women; security of life and property still remains a dream for 99 percent of the Afghan population; human rights are still trampled upon in every single valley and village of the country; and last but not least, there is no sign of an accountable, transparent, democratically run state and security apparatus that could deliver on the promise of good governance and impartial enforcement of law. Blame as a Way of Dodging Responsibility Therefore, there is no surprise that Afghanistan is once again going backward and slipping toward abyss. What is a surprise, though, is that no one is willing to take responsibility for what has gone wrong so badly. To dodge responsibility, everyone is blaming everybody else for the problems that the country faces. The Kabul administration blames the lack of progress in reconstruction on the NGOs and accuses them of embezzlement and profligacy; the NGOs complain about the incompetence and inability of the administration to function transparently and honestly; the U.S. embassy in Kabul blames Hamid Karzai for not being decisive in the fight against drug trade, Karzai blames the international community for not delivering on the promised aid to develop alternative livelihoods; the cabinet ministers blame the warlords for abuse of power, nepotism and misrule; the warlords blame the ministers for incompetence, corruption, and dependency on foreigners; Russia and Uzbekistan (and the rest of CIS) blame Afghanistan for troubles in the killing fields of Adijan (as well as for the corrupting Central Asian drug trade), Kabul blames Russia and Uzbekistan for badmouthing Afghanistan; and last but not least, the Viceroy and his minions in the Afghan administration blame Pakistan for harboring the Taliban, and Pakistan blames the Afghan administration and officials for being too weak and incompetent to take care of the problems in the country they are supposed to rule. In this game of blame, there is no way to know who is right and who is wrong, unless one is part of the game himself. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: By blaming each other, the participants of the Afghan puzzle cannot solve the problems that they face. As things stand in today’s world, particularly as far as Afghanistan is concerned, no one is interested in determining exactly who is to blame for the things that have gone (and are going) wrong in the country. If this were an issue, few of those who presently hold power in Afghanistan would be where they are today (in a better and fairer world, where accountability rules and responsibility counts, most of these people would be convicted for high treason by a court of law and immediately put into prison). Since accountability and responsibility do no matter, what remains to be important for the people in power is to realize that they all face a single, common problem: How to prevent Afghanistan from slipping back into the chaos of the 1980s and 1990s. Based on their own self-preservation instincts and interests, they should recognize that a relapse of Afghanistan into the next chaos is in no one’s interest: Neither in the interest of those who have left their cozy Western homes to take up lucrative jobs in Kabul; nor in the interest of the warlords, who are despised by the people and could easily lose their power and extravagant life once chaos returns; nor in the interest of Americans, who felt the pain of their Afghan negligence and miscalculation in the events of 9/11, nor in the interest of the Pakistanis, who, as astute diplomat-businessmen, have made (and will continue to make) billions of dollars by dumping the Taliban and surrendering the al Qaeda; and ultimately nor in the interest of other neighboring countries of Afghanistan, who could be threatened by another unpredictable, quasi-Taliban violent force that might one day arise out of the ashes of a chaotic, unruly Afghanistan. The Last Vestige of Hope Thus, the last hope left for Afghanistan is that those concerned come out of their hallucination and grasp the gravity of what is happening in and around Afghanistan. If America, the satrapy of Kabul, and the dominating warlords of the provinces continue to ignore the problems that they have created for themselves and for the country, there can be no doubt that the insurgency will further gain in strength and eventually metaphors into a popular uprising that will end in a widespread chaos and disorder. In such a case, the neighboring countries, facing the threat of a power vacuum in Afghanistan, will be forced to intensify their interference in the country. This will bring Afghanistan back to where it was in the chaotic years of 1990s. Therefore, for the good of the region, and for the sake of peace in the world, let’s hope that the players of the Afghan game, including the power-holders in Kabul and provinces, and the U.S. and its allies in Europe and elsewhere, begin to think rationally, and realize that Afghanistan is not a zero sum game where one party’s gains is offset by losses of the other parties. The Afghan game, like most other political and business games of today’s shrinking world, is a plus-sum game, where cooperation and constructive behavior can yield gains for all participants in the game. Blaming each other for the things gone wrong has only one outcome for all: It spoils the game and creates more complication. Stability and tranquility in Afghanistan will tremendously contribute to peace, stability, and economic progress in the region and in the wider world. After realizing this fact, the first step the participants of the Afghan game must take is to stop finger pointing and start taking a stock of the things that have gone wrong. The second step is to take corrective steps to prevent things getting further out of control. It is the moral, political, and humanitarian obligation of the United States to initiate and take the first step in this direction. © Qarabaghi 2005. ------------------- [1] Jawed Ludin, spokesman for Mr Karzai, said on June 21, 2005: "Neither Afghanistan nor that international coalition against terrorism will achieve success if we don't get the level of co-operation from Pakistan [on the Taliban] that we have had in the past with regards to al-Qaeda." He said "some senior members of the Taliban, including some who are involved in killings and are considered terrorists" are in Pakistan.The week before Mr. Ludin made these comments, Mr. Khalizlzad, while referring to an interview on a Pakistani TV channel with one of Taliban corps commanders, Mullah Akhtar Osmani, had said "If a[Pakistani] TV station can get in touch with [a Taliban commander], how can the intelligence service of a country which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces not find them?"

The Squandered Goodwill, the Blame Game,

And what has to be done

Rising Insurgency, Theatre of Blame, and Feelings of Betrayal

After a short winter/spring lull, Afghanistan is once again roiling and shivering in insecurity, uncertainty and bloodshed. The southern and eastern provinces of the country, the so-called Pashtun-belt, are scenes of violent unrests and attacks by the insurgents, who, based on obvious political reasons, are conveniently lumped together by the U.S. military and Afghan officials as remnants of the defunct Taliban regime.

In reality, it is obvious that more groups are involved in the insurgency than the Taliban alone. Among those taking part in the insurgency one may include a large number of war-hardened members of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, who has been dubbed by the U.S. Enemy No 2, some die-hard followers of Mawlawi Khalis, who left Afghanistan after U.S. forces appeared in towns and villages of his native Nangarhar province in the east, the Jihadists of the neighboring and other regional countries, such as Pakistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and Uzbekistan, who still find Afghanistan an opportune training ground, and perhaps not a small number of well-connected, disgruntled elements of the so-called northern alliance, who accuse the U.S. of selling them out to Karzai and his cohorts. The strategic advantage of the last group (elements of the northern alliance) in the business of insurgency lies in the fact that it has collaborators and informers inside Karzai administration, as well as sympathizers and supporters attached to the U.S. military forces stationed at Bagram airbase and Kabul.

To detract from their own colossal failure and incompetence, the embattled Afghan officials and their de- facto superintendent, The Viceroy, who has left or is leaving the country at the time of this writing (while continuing to act as President Bush’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan), are blaming the insurgency on Pakistan.[1] Islamabad, in its turn, vehemently denies any responsibility for the insurgency and complains about the “high price” that the regime of President Musharaf has already paid for its support of the Karzai administration, and for its collaboration in the “war on terror.” On the other hand, Russia and Uzbekistan have joined the foray and blame Afghanistan for serving as a training ground for members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

Meanwhile, insurgency, bloodshed, and insecurity in Afghanistan goes on unabated and the “government” of Hamid Karazi continues to languish within the walls of the capital, which still remains in ruins, overcrowded with some three million hunger-stricken bodies and streets and alleys flooded with raw waste and human excrement. The billions of dollars of reconstruction aid, promised in the lavish terminology of the “Marshall Plan,” have magically disappeared in the bureaucratic maze of the donor states or in the porous and greedy pockets of NGOs and their governmental patrons and allies in Afghanistan and abroad. People all over Afghanistan, particularly in the Pashtun belt, feel betrayed, alienated, forgotten, and left alone.

Is the History repeating itself?

The insurgent attacks are countered by on-and-off U.S.-led retaliatory military activities. These operations, mostly involving high and low altitude bombardments, inevitably create fear among the civilian populations, disrupt people’s daily social and economic life, cause numerous innocent casualties, and are almost always accompanied by violent house-searches, beatings, and arrests of villagers suspected of working or sympathizing with the insurgency. The result of all this is that people in the areas infested by insurgency a) have become disillusioned by the continuous presence and operation of the so-called coalition forces in their areas, and b) have lost faith in the capability of the coalition forces to defend them against a probable insurgent victory, no matter how distant and impossible such a victory might seem at the moment. (Experiences of the past three decades have taught Afghans that distant possibilities do not remain distant for ever; they can become reality very quickly and unexpectedly.) Of course, efforts to destroy and interdict poppy cultivation and trade – activities that provide livelihood for millions of poverty-stricken, deeply indebted farmers-- add fuel to the disenchantment that welcomes and supports the insurgency.

Thus, local populations in the south and in the east are beginning to feel compelled to build bridges and sympathies with the insurgents. This provides the insurgents with the invaluable opportunity to mingle with civilians during the day, and take up guns against foreign and ANA troops in the evening. (Russians who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s might be able to teach their American counterparts a few useful lessons in this respect.)

It is obvious that, following the classic pattern of foreign intervention under the pretext of liberation, the original mission of the U.S. forces which was supposed to be ridding Afghanistan of militants and al Qaeda terrorist network, has quickly degenerated into a mission to fight disenchantment among the population and prop up a regime that has increasingly lost rapport and credibility among its people. A mission that was supposed to be proactive, offensive, and liberating against terrorism of Bin Laden and his cohorts has transmuted into a mission of containing the spread of insurgency and defending strategic territories and arteries needed for the logistical survival of the invading forces and their Afghan collaborators. (Here, one is reminded of the similar debacle that faced Russian military forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.) Moreover, the specter of continuing foreign presence in the country, the untimely cacophony of “strategic partnership” with the U.S., and the ill-conceived idea of permanent bases on the Afghan soil, suggested by Karzai and his defense minister on self-preserving grounds, have not only worried a few neighboring sleeping dogs, but it has also put the truthfulness of the original mission into question. A majority of the Afghans, as well as their neighbors, have begun to suspect that an “Enduring Occupation” of Afghanistan might have been the actual motive behind what was dubbed as “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

In such an uncertain politico-military climate, filled with secrecy, distrust, and disinformation, it is no wonder that people inside Afghanistan compare today’s situation in their land with the situation that existed when the Soviet forces were struggling to save the discredited Russian-installed regime of Babrak Karmal or Najeeb the Cow. The latest word from inside Afghanistan is that the crown jewel of the U.S. reconstruction effort, i.e., the Kabul-Kandahar road, is in such an unsafe state that those who want to travel from Kandahar to Kabul must first travel from Kandahar to Quetta, Pakistan, take the plane from Quetta to Peshawar, in NWFP, and then take the bus from Peshawar, cross the Khyber Pass, and arrive to Kabul via Jelalabad. This is about a two-day journey. Welcome back to the future: Two days were exactly the amount of time that Kandaharis needed for a trip from their province to Kabul before the Kabul-Kandahar highway was built in the 1960s. This was also the amount of time that travelers needed when they traveled from Kandahar to Kabul during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the above-mentioned highway was shut because of insurgency!

Plight of the North and Neglect of the Central Highlands

In the north, the situation is different from that in the south and east. Except for the occasional outbreak of armed clashes between rival militia forces, the northern provinces of the country seem to be calm on the surface. However, if you look deeper, you will discover that the north is calm not because peace has returned, justice has been provided, and life has improved for the people there; rather, the north is calm because it has been left alone to the free reign of notorious warlords, who were, and perhaps still are, in the payroll of the Pentagon. The fact that U.S. forces are tied up in the south and east is a God-sent opportunity for the northern warlords: It helps them freely misrule and abuse the territories under their control, trample human rights, and suppress dissent without attracting any attention. The war in the south and east also encourages and strengthens centrifugal forces and sentiments in the north by allowing the northern warlords to consolidate their power bases into quasi self-governing mini states.

Central highlands, home to about 2 million hard-working Hazaras, are also quiet, but, apparently, not because they are tranquil and oppression-free, rather because they have been left alone to their own primitive survival devices, characterized by hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Local Hazara warlords rule their fiefdoms the way they did during the Soviet occupation, i.e., far from any influence and expectation from the capital of the country they consider their ancient home. The Hazaras do not complain about the hardships or the misrule they face, because they know from the bitter experience of the past that they cannot expect relief from anyone, other than those who are responsible for the misrule.

As a consequence of this sorry state of affairs in their country, different generations of Afghans, inside and outside of the land, have given up hope of a better future, and have surrendered to the idea that worse may still be lying ahead. It has become common in political discourse among Afghans to tell each other “God may save us from the worst,” or that “every day is worse than the yester day.”

The loss of hope is accompanied by the loss of goodwill. The goodwill that the majority of Afghans once felt toward the United States has evaporated and has been overtaken by cynicism, dismay, suspicion, and distrust. The enemies of America on the ground and in the neighboring lands have taken advantage of every occasion to badmouth and defame America and American intentions in Afghanistan. These circles have been amply aided in their goal of defaming America by grave mistakes committed by officials in Kabul and Washington. The biggest mistake in this respect has been the failure of the Afghan and American officials to deliver on the promises they made to the Afghan people in the aftermath of the Taliban collapse: Freedom, human rights, justice, and reconstruction.

After four years of American engagement, and spending of over $60 billion in military, intelligence, administrative, and reconstruction pursuits, what the people of Afghanistan see in their homes and neighborhoods is diabolically different from what they were promised in December 2001: The country still remains in the grip of the warlords; poverty, hunger, and disease continue to threaten the lives of millions of Afghan children, men, and women; security of life and property still remains a dream for 99 percent of the Afghan population; human rights are still trampled upon in every single valley and village of the country; and last but not least, there is no sign of an accountable, transparent, democratically run state and security apparatus that could deliver on the promise of good governance and impartial enforcement of law.

Blame as a Way of Dodging Responsibility

Therefore, there is no surprise that Afghanistan is once again going backward and slipping toward abyss. What is a surprise, though, is that no one is willing to take responsibility for what has gone wrong so badly. To dodge responsibility, everyone is blaming everybody else for the problems that the country faces.

The Kabul administration blames the lack of progress in reconstruction on the NGOs and accuses them of embezzlement and profligacy; the NGOs complain about the incompetence and inability of the administration to function transparently and honestly; the U.S. embassy in Kabul blames Hamid Karzai for not being decisive in the fight against drug trade, Karzai blames the international community for not delivering on the promised aid to develop alternative livelihoods; the cabinet ministers blame the warlords for abuse of power, nepotism and misrule; the warlords blame the ministers for incompetence, corruption, and dependency on foreigners; Russia and Uzbekistan (and the rest of CIS) blame Afghanistan for troubles in the killing fields of Adijan (as well as for the corrupting Central Asian drug trade), Kabul blames Russia and Uzbekistan for badmouthing Afghanistan; and last but not least, the Viceroy and his minions in the Afghan administration blame Pakistan for harboring the Taliban, and Pakistan blames the Afghan administration and officials for being too weak and incompetent to take care of the problems in the country they are supposed to rule.

In this game of blame, there is no way to know who is right and who is wrong, unless one is part of the game himself. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: By blaming each other, the participants of the Afghan puzzle cannot solve the problems that they face. As things stand in today’s world, particularly as far as Afghanistan is concerned, no one is interested in determining exactly who is to blame for the things that have gone (and are going) wrong in the country. If this were an issue, few of those who presently hold power in Afghanistan would be where they are today (in a better and fairer world, where accountability rules and responsibility counts, most of these people would be convicted for high treason by a court of law and immediately put into prison).

Since accountability and responsibility do no matter, what remains to be important for the people in power is to realize that they all face a single, common problem: How to prevent Afghanistan from slipping back into the chaos of the 1980s and 1990s. Based on their own self-preservation instincts and interests, they should recognize that a relapse of Afghanistan into the next chaos is in no one’s interest: Neither in the interest of those who have left their cozy Western homes to take up lucrative jobs in Kabul; nor in the interest of the warlords, who are despised by the people and could easily lose their power and extravagant life once chaos returns; nor in the interest of Americans, who felt the pain of their Afghan negligence and miscalculation in the events of 9/11, nor in the interest of the Pakistanis, who, as astute diplomat-businessmen, have made (and will continue to make) billions of dollars by dumping the Taliban and surrendering the al Qaeda; and ultimately nor in the interest of other neighboring countries of Afghanistan, who could be threatened by another unpredictable, quasi-Taliban violent force that might one day arise out of the ashes of a chaotic, unruly Afghanistan.

The Last Vestige of Hope

Thus, the last hope left for Afghanistan is that those concerned come out of their hallucination and grasp the gravity of what is happening in and around Afghanistan. If America, the satrapy of Kabul, and the dominating warlords of the provinces continue to ignore the problems that they have created for themselves and for the country, there can be no doubt that the insurgency will further gain in strength and eventually metaphors into a popular uprising that will end in a widespread chaos and disorder. In such a case, the neighboring countries, facing the threat of a power vacuum in Afghanistan, will be forced to intensify their interference in the country. This will bring Afghanistan back to where it was in the chaotic years of 1990s.

Therefore, for the good of the region, and for the sake of peace in the world, let’s hope that the players of the Afghan game, including the power-holders in Kabul and provinces, and the U.S. and its allies in Europe and elsewhere, begin to think rationally, and realize that Afghanistan is not a zero sum game where one party’s gains is offset by losses of the other parties. The Afghan game, like most other political and business games of today’s shrinking world, is a plus-sum game, where cooperation and constructive behavior can yield gains for all participants in the game. Blaming each other for the things gone wrong has only one outcome for all: It spoils the game and creates more complication.

Stability and tranquility in Afghanistan will tremendously contribute to peace, stability, and economic progress in the region and in the wider world. After realizing this fact, the first step the participants of the Afghan game must take is to stop finger pointing and start taking a stock of the things that have gone wrong. The second step is to take corrective steps to prevent things getting further out of control.

It is the moral, political, and humanitarian obligation of the United States to initiate and take the first step in this direction.