Afghan President Hamid Karzai has offered talks with the Taliban in a desperate move to bring peace and stability in the country. The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating each day and the future of the country and its people is looking very somber. After the fall of the Taliban back in 2001, the U.S. and other western countries didn’t expected that in a couple of years the Taliban will pose a serious threat to their interests in the country. They [the U.S. and other western countries] are to be blamed for the current mess because they didn’t take serious and sincere steps to bring genuine peace, stability and security in the country.
Billions of dollars were poured in the country under the name of reconstruction and development but a large chunk of that money landed in the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials. The donor countries didn’t bother to implement a fair and transparent system in which the aid money had to be spent for the benefit of Afghan people and rebuilding the war-torn country.
The foreign countries and their chosen regime in Kabul promised to rebuild Afghanistan the way they helped Germany and Japan after the World War II, but the Afghan people living in the cities and countryside waited patiently in vain. They don’t have any hope that the present rulers and their masters will take serious and sincere steps to bring a fundamental change in the country.
One of the most important reason which helped the Taliban to take ground in Afghanistan is the continuous support from Pakistan. The U.S. and NATO let Pakistan to play a double game in Afghanistan and didn’t take steps to stop Pakistan arming and giving refuge to the Taliban.
In the last couple of months we’ve seen an abrupt increase in the attacks by the Taliban and they are even controlling a couple of districts in the southern part of the country. Not a single day has passed without a foreign solider killed in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. The public opinion in most of the European countries – contributing forces to Afghanistan – is turning against the extension of their troops in the country. The Netherlands is one of the examples where the government is facing pressure from the public opinion and the leftwing parties to extend the stay of Dutch troops in Uruzgan beyond August 2008.
The Afghan government and their masters are sensing the seriousness of the situation and they are offering a palm leaf to the Taliban in order to bring peace and stability in the country. I don’t think that such talks will be a success and at the end of the day, the foreign countries will abandon Afghanistan as they did after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in early 1990s. In such a scenario the present regime in Kabul doesn’t enjoy enough popular support to fight and resist onslaught of a strong and determined Taliban forces and the country will once again end up in bloodshed and misery.
