EDITORIAL : THE DAILY OUTLOOK, AFGANISTAN

 

 

Post-Withdrawal Intrusions

The troop drawdown will begin shortly. President Barack Obama an nounced that he was pulling home 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The announcement came after months of consultation and reflection over the status quo in Afghanistan and the possible consequences. Pressured by public opinion at home, US president made the decision to give a kickstart to the process of withdrawal, marking the beginning of the end of the US's longest war abroad.

The question on that for Afghanistan is, however, the ability to takeover the mission and manage the troublesome situation in the increasingly violent country.A total of 10,000 troops will leave the war zone by the end of this year - fulfilling Obama's promise - and more than 20,000 additional forces will leave by the summer of 2012. Afghan president Hamid Karzai hailed the announcement and said Afghan security forces will be ready to take over the job from foreign troops. He said Obama had made the right decision. "Today we welcome the decision of U.S. president over the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, this decision benefits the United States and Afghanistan," the president said.

The process begins at a time when Afghanistan undergoes its most violent moments since the US attacked Taliban shortly after the 9/11 catastrophic incident. The country has had great opportunities to rebuild Afghanistan. However, no single party is contented with the fragile achievements.

Though making promising announcements and declarations at certain junctures in the war against terrorism, the coalition forces - making bulk of the international troops stationed here -, the NATO and the ISAF forces are concerned over the post-withdrawal situation in Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who is leading the US war effort in Afghanistan, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were clear in stating their public support for the decision Obama announced and said they would do their best to carry it out. But at the same time they warned that the pace of the drawdown, which calls for a third of US forces in Afghanistan to leave by the end of next summer, would create additional risks to the decade-old campaign. "The president's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept," Mullen, the top US military officer, told a House of Representatives committee hearing.

A question that hasremained insufficiently scrutinized is the regional contentious approach towards Afghanistan following the withdrawal. Having made strategic decisions on the post-withdrawal Afghanistan and the regional changes then, the regional and neighboring countries are making stronger efforts to bolster their position to gain the bigger piece of cake. Iran, the main regional critic of the US forces presence in Afghanistan, has frequently struggled to make Afghanistan see the reality from their viewpoint. Frequently calling upon the international forces to leave Afghanistan and advising the Afghan nation to accelerate their pullout, our Western neighbor tries hard to promote its strategic function in the regional - Particularly, the Afghan specific-issues.

Considerate enough to choose the timing, the Islamic Republic has launched an anti-terrorism summit in Tehran. To partake in the summit, the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan arrived in Tehran on Friday. Previously, there have been bilateral and multilateral meetings between Afghanistan, Iran and certain regional actors. But there have been no improvements in security situation and the anti-terrorism in Tehran will also not bring any changes. Instead, it shows the rising regional conflicts over the post-American era in Afghanistan. The contentions will rise over the pieces of cake and Afghanistan would surely suffer from it. Alarmed by the withdrawal process and taking over the job, the Afghan government needs strategic plans to take in hand the situation once every one is gone and new battlers enter the scene. Petraeus is right over risks of the drawdown but the worse will appear when drawdown proves immature and is followed by intrusions.

Alignment against the Specter of Evil Forces

It was nearly 10 years ago that the terrorists carried out their vicious attacks on the United States of America, which were orchestrated and plotted in Afghanistan, which was then ruled by the brutal regime of Taliban. The world felt a new security threat but Afghanistan found a new opportunity to begin to get rid of the evil forces that had made it the safe haven for themselves, and shake off the medieval signs.
Many world nations came to Afghanistan with their forces and money to help Afghan people stabilize, reconstruct and develop their country.

In the early years of the first decade of 21th century, Al-Qaeda and Taliban, as the evils of modern world, appeared to have been touted in Afghanistan for good. It was trumpeted as a success story. But it was in 2006 that they begin to resurface and remerge, requiring the international community to refocus on Afghanistan and to go from light foot print to heavy foot print to prevent the comeback of Taliban militants, whose ideology remains diametrically hostile to modern values such as human rights, women's rights and civil freedoms inter alia.

After repeated warnings by the military commanders on the ground that the world would face a resurgent Al-Qaeda and its extremist and destructive allies in Afghanistan, the U.S. president Barack Obama announced an additional 30,000 American troops to be deployed into Afghanistan. On Thursday morning according to Afghan time, president Obama announced withdrawal of US troops by next summer, stating, "We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength." Although he categorically said, "We will have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we have made, while we drawdown our forces and transition responsibility for security to the Afghan government".

It is to be mentioned that it will be difficult to keep the gains peacefully and permanently if the Taliban militants are not dealt another vital blow to compel them to "break from Al-Qaeda, denounce violence, and abide by the Afghan Constitution", the conditions that should determine the reconciliation process if it is to be effective and successful. The leaders of anti-Taliban political groups and parties have already begun to think how to prevent from the emergence of the specter of a brutal and destructive force, a hard-line Taliban hostile to the values that form today's humanity. It is hoped that the president listens to the voices that call for a dignified peace based on justice. It is also hoped that international community shows patience until this overarching goal is achieved for the sake of Afghans who have suffered and continue to suffer from violence by Taliban tremendously.