And by the way, since in some measure this is a "tribal war", Karzai about 10 years ago was asked why it wasn't exploited - send people after the Panjpai tribes. Basically he said..."It's easy to start (tribe against tribe), almost impossible to stop." It would go on for a hundred years....the revenge and retribution attacks. It still might. And Pakistan which caused has a reckoning coming.
Let's look at the origin ...I'll make it simple:
-- 1972 the King Zahir Shah is overthrown by a professed "leftist" (modernist) Da'ud Khan from the same tribe and family (Mohammadzai Barakzai). Da'ud tries to modernize Afghanistan while playing the Cold War balancing game between Russia and USA (Pakistan)...(while at the same time claiming "Pakhtunistan" - down to the Indus and through Baluchistan to the Indus Ocean).
-- April 1978 Da'ud is overthrown by leftist army officers of the "Parcham" faction (Tadjiks) led by Hafizullh Amin. Da'ud was killed (I was living in Karachi - American School kids were up there for an athletic tournament. I was actually physically up in deepest Baluchistan where I wasn't supposed to be when the news hit - it was 29 April...same date the American Embassy in Saigon began to evacuate 3 years earlier).
-- Dec 1979: The Parchams start to worry about Russian involvement in all of this and start to talk to us (remember the context - Vietnam had fallen; hostages in Iran). So in December 1979 Russians invade and install the "Khalq" faction (Pashtun leftists-modernists) of Babrak Kamal (a Communist), later replaced by Dr. Mohammad Najibullah. The war began; it was brutal (to this day the Taliban call the Afghan government "Khalq'is".
-- 1981 - Reagan elected....payback time for Vietnam for the USSR.
-- 1986 US sends in Stingers...that was it.
-- 1989 Russians withdraw across Freedom Bridge
-- April 1992 Najibullah regime falls, he's executed.
-- 1993 Clinton and US Congress says, "thank you very much, good bye." No aid is given to reconstruct a devastated country. There were 7 major anti-Russian factions. The country descends into civil war. One of the factions was fundamentalist Hekmatyar, a former communist opportunist who puts 500,000 rockets into Kabul (supported by Pakistan) destroying the city.
-- 1994 - Pakistan, worried about the situation and as always thinking about nuclear war with India, under Benazir Bhutto, decided to create the "Taliban" supported by ISI to bring order. Taliban took Qandahar and by 1998 Kabul and that was it. Mullah Omar was illiterate but believed he was the "Mahdi." But the hard-world Pakistan reasoning behind the whole thing was bizarre and classic sub-continent:
. . . . .- When the inevitable war with India breaks out over Kashmir (the tail that wags the world dog), India can cut Pakistan in two by taking a bridgehead over the Indus.
. . . . .- Pakistan therefore would need "maneuver room" or "defense in depth" and needed to secure a safe base area in Afghanistan. So they created the Taliban to control it - or at least the area south of the Hindu Kush. (One can imaging lines of Pakistan tanks snaking up the Boland and Khyber passes...to "maneuver" in the Dast i-Margo with the fastest moving dunes in the world, all under air attack..the whole thing reminds one of Nazi libenstrum "living space" ideas).
-- 1997 UBL relocates from Khartoum to Kabul, as a "guest" of Mullah Omar (see the Pashtun concept of sanctuary/hospitality).
-- 1997 The Tadjiks faction digs in north of Kabul under Ahmad Shah Masood...trench warfare develops between the Taliban and the anti-Taliban elements..often Tadjik and Turkoman vs Pashtun, with Arab and Islamic extremist elements involved with the Taliban.
-- 2001 UBL attacks America. Masood is assassinated the same day. America gives an ultimatum to Omar - he turns it down and is overthrown in the most remote area of Asia in two months by our using Dostam and the Tadjik elements along with anti-Taliban (Zirak) Pastun tribal elements (Karzai) and the Baluch in SW Afghanistan. Major elements of the Taliban escape to Peshawar, Miram Shah, Quetta, (we refused to take out the long lines of vehicles) where supported by Pakistan they start the riposte. Iran supports them from the other side.
So that's pretty much it. Pakistan could have built a bridge to a moderate Muslim country, Afghanistan after the Taliban were ousted , but because of their fanatical commitment to "maneuver room" and hatred of India, they played a black game with us, killed hundreds of our soldiers, thousands of Afghans and cemented the hatred of Afghans for them. And no one wants the Taliban back (I used to ask Afghans what was the worst "sin of the day," - everyday under Omar there was a new one - pants too long, beard too short).
Last edited by Argo44; 03/31/20 09:11 PM.
