AFGHANISTAN: RETURN OF THE TALIBAN

Chaos theory: “When a butterfly flaps its wings …”

AFGHANISTAN: RETURN OF THE TALIBAN

Collapse of 20 year US led Western intervention in Afghanistan

The Biden administration carried through on its promised pull out from the “forever war” and the Afghan government, army and state collapsed with even more alacrity that the expedited US withdrawal. The Taliban is in total control at a speed that shocked even the movement itself.

Taliban government – has the Taliban learnt nothing and forgotten nothing?

With no more than wishful thinking there is speculation that Taliban 2021 has evolved from Taliban 2001, that in government it will be more tolerant of women’s rights, education for girls, human rights, and social diversity at home. Also it is postulated that the Taliban will be a more responsible player in international relations and not offering safe haven or encouragement to terrorist groups. First comments from Taliban leaders have affirmed Taliban’s strict Sunni religious commitment to fundamentalist Islamic practice and the sharia law. There is no evidence of ability or willingness to run a modern state.

Al Qaida and alike

Total commitment to fundamentalist Sunni Islam implies a denial of alternative values and propagation of those of the Taliban at home in Afghanistan and abroad through terror groups, including Al Qaida, devoted to proselytisation and destruction of those who oppose or just don’t follow. Even ISIS, previously at loggerheads with Al Qaida may join in working against common enemy infidels. Controlling a state, the Taliban is once again in a position to shelter and promote. Even if the Taliban regime has reformed as it claims, and does not sponsor terrorist activities as in its previous iteration, its lightning victory and humiliating defeat of the world’s greatest power serves as a beacon to other similar fundamentalist movements for them to imitate and emulate.

Africa: Spread of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups

Spectacular one-offs of 9/11 in 2001 in the USA, bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and USS Cole in 2000 demonstrate the planning and funding available for terror attacks. Of the 21 countries in West Africa, only 2 – Senegal and Ghana have governments that are stable and not corrupt. A fatigued, frustrated and fading France has committed 5,000 troops to assist West African states (the Sahel) in their losing war against Al Qaida and associated terrorists who are challenging the Sahel states with arms largely obtained from post-Gaddafi Libya and funds from middle East backers. Nigeria is the largest state in Africa with a population in excess of 200 million and is equally unstable and subject to raids and disruptions by Al Qaida and look alikes. The Sahel band of dislocation extends across neighbouring Sudan and into Ethiopia (Africa’s second most populous state at 112 million) and then on to long-troubled Somalia, home to the Al-Shabaab jihadist terrorists and Indian Ocean pirates.

Asia: Spread of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups

Indonesia with a population in excess of 270 million is the largest Muslim nation in the world. Fundamentalism with links to terrorist groups has made significant inroads there, as has been the case with Malaysia, the Philippines and Bangladesh.

Europe and elsewhere

Disaffected, asocialised and atomised individuals in Western societies have demonstrated a willingness and ability to operate destructively for terrorist groups, including Al Qaida and ISIS.

The Stans – central Asia

Immediate neighbours of Afghanistan are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, next to them are Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. All are former members of the Soviet Union, still part of Russia’s “near-abroad” (backyard), all chafing under corrupt and kleptomaniac autocrats and whose populations are far more practising Sunni Muslims than their leaders. These countries and their societies are clearly attractive for a regime such as the Taliban which preaches religiosity and stamping out corruption, very tempting targets for the Taliban and its terrorist proxies.?

Iran

Iran also borders on Afghanistan but is a Shia Muslim theocracy - that part of Islam violently opposed to majority Sunni Islam. Approximately 10% of Afghanistan’s 40 million people are Shias. They have been persecuted in the past by the Taliban and may well be in the future. Shias may see the only avenue to survive will be emigration, at first instance to Iran. Iran with its own economic woes and suffering under US sanctions may look to encourage refugees to keep moving.

Turkey

Next door is Turkey, a country increasingly enthusiastic to play the cultural, religious and political leader to other Turkic states – the Stans, and to play off Europe with the threat to open floodgates of refugees to Europe.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Yemen

All these states present fertile ground for jihadists, as does Gaza and the rest of Palestine.

Pakistan

Pakistan has been not so discreetly cheering for and supporting the Taliban insurgence, with maybe an eye to being the only power with the expertise to run the government and armed forces for what it sees as a bunch of medieval mullahs. Pakistan also has the weight of being a nuclear power to throw around. The Taliban, again through its proxies, could push strife in Kashmir so as to impact Pakistan’s nemesis, India. In this though Pakistan may be riding the tiger because the Taliban, and other jihadists may well have interest in promoting unrest in Pakistan itself on the north-west border bordering Afghanistan.

India

While Pakistan covertly backed and now openly backs the Taliban, India sought to support anti-Taliban forces as a way of containing Pakistani trouble making in Kashmir and otherwise. With the encirclement of Pakistan no longer available, the temptation on India, the other nuclear power on the sub-continent, may be to pre-empt Pakistani hostile actions.

China

China made a point of entertaining Taliban representatives in Beijing well before the take over in Afghanistan. These contacts smack of a deal made of mutual non-intervention- “We will leave the mullahs alone and fund infrastructure if the Taliban does not stir up or support Uighurs in the religious and cultural clash with Beijing”. China can always work through its dependent friend, Pakistan to achieve its aims. China can also play the other hand of being the stabilising force in Asia and the Indo-Pacific against terrorist expansion, replacing the retreating US.

Russia

Russia has had a lot of its own problems with fundamentalist Muslims, such as Chenya where harsh Russian military action stymied those activities. Russia also has concern about its near-abroad – the Stans. Nevertheless Russia is hanging in there, keeping open its embassy in Kabul in the hope of playing a role and that the Taliban will have forgotten or at least forgiven the bloody Soviet invasion that gave birth to the Taliban.

USA

Domestic support for US presence in Afghanistan has long since gone. Republican politicians are happily hypocritical in criticising Biden for following on the withdrawal path set by Trump. To an outside observer the retreat and defeat of 20 years’ intervention should impact on the 2022 mid-term Congress elections removing any majority control by Biden, and of course threatening any Democratic candidate for the 2024 presidential elections. However, there seems to be, for the time being, a relief of the end of the “forever war”, and a relaxed attitude to USA’s surrender of imperium. The impact of US imperial overreach and humiliating end of a 20 year intervention is stronger with allies who Biden neglected to consult, and all those who now see the American decline and untrustworthiness as a symbiotic downward spiral.

Australia

The Australian government can claim that it had the “foresight” to close its embassy in Kabul in May. Unfortunately it did not exercise that “foresight” to move out all those Afghans who had worked with Australian forces and leaders of Afghan civil society who will now be at the mercy of the Taliban. Numbers proposed for refugees and the refusal to grant residence to those unauthorised boat arrivals already here demonstrate the abandonment of those desperates and any Australian claim of morality.

Refugees

Populations have been and will be displaced in and out of Afghanistan itself. Receiving countries may not be welcoming countries so millions could be pushed on to Europe and elsewhere. Also upheavals in West Africa caused by terrorist groups and inept governments will continue to encourage migration to Europe. The effect of the Taliban victory may encourage xenophobic and populist reactions in Europe.

Questions, questions, questions, …

Is this the end of Pax Americana and its consequent hegemony?

Should we prepare for a Pax Sinica in the Indo-Pacific region?

Will Europe see that its geopolitical needs are distinct from those of the US and pursue them with less antagonism to Russia and China?

Will Taliban Afghanistan harbour, encourage or just inspire jihadist terrorism that will destabilise states and societies around the world?

Will Australia realise that Gallipoli was a signal loss that was the result of Australia’s abdicating responsibility for its actions and entrusting decisions to cynical powers prepared to pursue their interests without concern to the interests of and costs to Australia?

Can we hear the butterfly flap its wings?