By Isaac Kalembe Biromumaiso Akiiki
Kandahar has fallen. Now the Talibans are within striking distance of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
With a few days, the Afghan government has lost city - I meant to say town - after city to the advancing Taliban fighters.
This followed US President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation
The rapid advance of the Talibans and the speed at which the rule of the central government is falling like a house if cards shouldn't come as a surprise at all.
The Talibans, who were rightfully elected rulers of Afghanistan, had been forcefully and wrongly deposed by the Us-led coalition.
The Western powers had wrongly believed that the Talibans had supported Osama bin Laden to lunch the September 11, 2001 attack on USA
As it turned out, bin Laden had been trained and supported by the CIA to humiliate and defeat the then Soviet Union occupation force of Afghanistan.
When this feat was achieved, bin Laden turned against his mentors and funders to avenge the injustices meted on the Arab world by the Western imperialists with their forefront ally, Israel.
Note that bin Laden was not an Afghan national but a Saudi Arabian one. His pitching of camp in Afghanistan was a US-planned strategy.
Following the September 11 attack, America went into Afganistan guns blazing, vowing to bomb the Talibans to the pulp.
Bomb and overthrow the Talibans the Americans did, and they even installed a puppet government which they have been propping for 20 years.
Meanwhile, the Taliban retreated into the Bokor Mountains, caves, tunnels and valleys where they had defeated any enemy that dared attack them since the time of Genghis Khan (the latest being the mighty Red Army in 1979).
As they wrongly say that history repeats itself(rather, it should be history does not repeat itself, but that it's a human folly that people refuse to learn the lessons if history), it's encore for the Talibans!
In 1989, it was Russia that was humiliated, now it's another super power hurriedly returning home like a dog with its tail coiled between its legs.
As we are wont to say people get the leaders they deserve. Who are we to judge what's good for Afganistan?
Following the defeat of Germany, Japan and Italy in 1945, the American army went into Vietnam (whose Vietcong guerrillas had just humiliated their colonial master, France) in 1958, singing, "We have done it! We shall do it again!"
But what happened when Saigon, the capital of Vietnam fell to the advancing Communists, Americans tearfully evacuated the country, leaving many if their local allies at the mercy of the Vietcongs as the last American helicopter flew off the American Embassy.
This time round, President Joe Biden has eaten his humble pie (he isn't the one who took American forces into that country!) and abandoned the intractable Afghanistan project.
We could echo British Prime Minister Chamberlain's helpless when Adolph Hitler's Nazi war machine reoccupied the Rhinelands in 1936, "After all, they're going back to their backyard garden!"
I guess that is exactly what the Talibans are doing. We may hasten to add, "they're going back to their legimate government".
Last evening, I watched an interview of one of the Taliban leaders on Aljazera about the ongoing Doha Peace talks.
The negotiator, who's name has skipped my mind, conceded that once in power, they would not repeat the regrettable mistakes they committed in yesteryears, such as forbidding girls from attaining formal education or barring women from public life.
As I conclude my missive, allow me to muse, Who I'm I to judge the actions of men?
Comments