THE AMERICAN MISADVENTURE IN AFGHANISTAN, THE NATION OF WARLORDS

There is a Panchatantra story about a ‘mooshika’ (mouse) lady. It is about a sage converting a mouse into a lady (called Mooshika) and then trying to marry her off to the strongest man in the world and then going to sun and from sun to cloud to wind to mountain, requesting each to marry his daughter. Finally, the mountain tells him that the rat is more powerful than him. Thereafter, the sage marries her off to the rat after converting the lady back to a mouse. 

 Mooshika lady has now become an adage, used whenever anything gets converted back into its original form. 

 Isn’t this happening in Afghanistan? Taliban, a movement that began in 1994 in Quetta of Pakistan of Pashto madrasa students which becomes a militia to join Afghan civil war with the help of ISI, then confiscate power from the warlords to become the nation’s rulers. After being in control for five years, they were overthrown by the US led invaders as a reaction to the 9/11 episode, and thereafter trying to to bring democracy in the country. That was in 2001. Two decades later, the US, still not able to finish off the Taliban insurgency, gets tired of its responsibility of resurrecting democracy in a clannish warlord country and started vacating the troupes. Taliban is back with a vengeance, except for Kabul, it had taken control of almost the rest of Afghanistan. The fall of Kabul in imminent, it looks like. 

So, the mooshika lady becomes a mooshika again. 

 What could happen to Afghanistan is anybody’s guess. The killing fields will come back as Taliban will behave brutally to the enemies within. Pakistan’s control will goes up, China will come in there and the threat to India from that end will double up. Now, look at the United State of America. Wherever the big brother had gone militarily to overthrow governments, it had eventually failed. Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya and now Afghanistan; all turned into big time misadventures. (It is another story that war is a big business for the American weapon industry) From Afghanistan, with a two timing ally such as Pakistan, America must have learnt a huge lesson. The US had been fighthing a nation without understanding its culture. To top it further, It is now challenged by the emerging world power, China which has the support of Russia & Pakistan. US must have realised that getting out of Afghanistan is the best thing to do. 

 Meanwhile, back to square one, the nation Afghanistan is going to bleed badly.