LAHORE: Afghan expert Sangar Paykhar said three words described the US involvement in Afghanistan: ignorance, arrogance and greed.
Speaking at a panel discussion, "Holding Space for Afghanistan," organised by the Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest Conversations online, Paykhar noted that the US did not understand the dynamics on the ground where there were a number of forces jostling for power and control. Agreeing with him, Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute, Adam Weinstein, said the US had a lot of assumptions about Afghanistan without any evidence. "The US never indented to keep its promises and Afghan interests were never a real option," explained Weinstein, who has also served in Afghanistan as a US Marine.
On the sudden collapse of the Ghani government, Weinstein admitted that no one in the US had thought that it would come down so quickly. "However, to term it a failure of the Afghan army is also wrong. They lost 10,000 troops every year and their sacrifice must be remembered. The US certainly needs to do some soul-searching and not look for easy answers like blaming Pakistan for the Taliban capture of power," he underscored.
Adding complexity to the debate, academic at the American University of Afghanistan, Haroun Rahimi said, "The fall of the Ghani administration is not the fall of the Afghan Republic. The Republic was given in the hands of those who could not run it, but that does not delegitimise it." Asked about the longstanding "co-governance" model between the Afghan government and the Taliban for years by Azeema Cheema, Rahimi explained that the Afghan government was top-down with little ground level presence or support. "The government was also very urban-centric: as long as urban areas were under government control they were content," he remarked. Agreeing with Rahimi, Paykhar noted that even in his village near Kabul the government and the Taliban coexisted for years. "There were families where one side worked of the government and other cousins for the Taliban," he remarked.
Asked by Azeema Cheema about the pain felt by diaspora Afghans with some feeling "responsibility" for what is happening in their country, Paykhar replied that Afghan society was still pre-modern.
"They have modern gadgets but their mindset hasn’t changed. Societies do not change merely through ideas but also their acceptance," he emphasized. Agreeing, Rahimi added that change always comes through the ideas propagated by the elite. "However, the problem in Afghanistan was that the elite was unable to articulate the ideas in a way which made them acceptable to the people. In fact, most elite treated the people as a nuisance—they were simply objects for them," he underscored. Weinstein also added that the US wanted to impose human rights and Western values though the use of force which was only going to last as long as the occupation.
Focusing on the future, Rahimi noted that the core question now was: "How to organise Afghan society to create a place where its people want to live in? The Taliban have conquered the country, but governing it is another ballgame." He explained, "The way in which you lead an insurgency is not the manner in which you govern, so it remains to be seen how the Taliban proceed. There will certainly be a reckoning of the Afghan state and society now," he said. Explaining how the Taliban have changed their hardline stance about taking pictures, Paykhar emphasized that the situation was still fluid in the Taliban. "What is coming out of the Talban in Kandahar is not the same in Kabul or Herat," he said.
Discussing the Pakistan angle, Weinstein noted that Pakistan’s messaging is very weak in Washington. "Prime Minister Imran Khan says one thing to one reporter and another to someone else. This makes Pakistan’s position very weak," he noted. Asked by Cheema about the Indian lobby, Weinstein stated that the Indian lobby had little influence in Washington. "Most Americans really do not care about South Asia. Also, even when India does get a bad press it is usually self-inflicted, as in the case of human rights abuses in Kashmir, rather than any Pakistan messaging," noted Weinstein.
Commenting on the Afghanistan-Pakistan scenario Paykhar stressed that both countries had long and deep human ties. "However, Pakistan needs to reflect on their messaging and stop seeing Afghanistan through an Indian lens. Talk to different groups in Afghanistan without the binary of “friends” or “enemies” and things will get better," stressed Paykhar.