A Nation at War: Afghanistan

Rumors of peace talks between the Taliban, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Unites States come from Afghani President Hamid Karzai.

It is the war that we all know about. It is the war that makes Taliban, Afghanistan and suicide bombers everyday words in the American residents’ vocabulary for the past ten years. It is the war that marked my classmates childhood, bringing us out of naivety to what is happening in the world around us and how deadly it can be. Now after the marking of the ten year anniversary of the US’s entrance into Afghanistan (October 2001- 2011) Afghani president Hamid Karzai claims that peace talks between members will occur with the now defunct Taliban government, these talks will also include the United States.

Abdul Rahman’s Mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The US’s war in Afghanistan is the longest running conflict that the US has been involved with since the end of the Vietnam War (technically conflicts, as War was never formally declared), this being the result of Al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

Though the US’s invasion of the country was not because the nation was the mastermind behind the attacks, now deceased Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has claimed responsibility for his group’s actions, though the Taliban was a major supporter of the jihadist group.

Modern history of Afghanistan is one dotted with revolts, invasion and civil war. The history that leads up to the US’s invasion of Afghanistan after September 11th starts with the 1978 coup that pushes and kills claimed General Mohammed Daud out of power. A year later, 1979,  the Soviet Union invaded and installed a communist puppet state with power being given to Babrak Karmal. The Soviet Union which is the predecessor of the Russian Federation that exists today, had supported Daud after he had claimed power from the Afghani monarchy in 1964, with his death their control over the region loosened.

With the Soviet’s presence for the next six years freedom fighters known specifically in the area as Afghan Mujahideen fought to push back the Red Army, unofficially these fighters were supported with money and arms from the United States, the United Kingdom, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China. By 1985 over half of the population of Afghanistan had been forced to leave the country due to the war, they sought refuge in the neighboring the states of Iran and Pakistan.

In 1986 with the push of Congressmen Charlie Wilson, a Texan politician who had visited Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, the US officially supplies the mujahideen with Stinger missiles which were used by the fighters to gun down Soviet helicopters; as well as other supplying other munitions that could not be traced back to the US, such as soviet weapons. The fighters now given stronger artillery to fight more effectively against Soviet troops, with the help of the crumbling socioeconomic and political situation in the Soviet Union was able to have the USSR leave with peace accords. These accords were signed also by the United States as well as Pakistan.

Mujahideen in Asmar,Panjsheer Valley, Afghanistan. Courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The following decade of the nineties brought a six year long civil war with the remaining communist government and Taliban regime, many of the veteran mujahideen fighters working along with the Taliban.

In 1996 the Taliban seized control of Kabul (the capital city of Afghanistan) and introduced Sharia, traditional Islamic social law that has strict codes of conduct. Various laws included harsh punishments which varied from the maiming of one’s limb to execution by stoning, one of the most worldwide publicized law is the forced all body covering of women as well as their confinement to their homes.

Taliban controlled Afghanistan became a training ground for terrorists, mainly those who belonged to the Al-Qaeda terror network. Al-Qaeda from its conception until May 2, 2011 was led by Osama Bin Laden, a veteran mujahideen fighter (though he is not of Afghan nationality, rather being an exiled citizen of Saudi Arabia and disowned member of the Bin Laden family). After Bin Laden planned attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 Afghanistan was told by the United Nations to hand over Bin Laden who had taken refuge in Afghanistan several years earlier.

Three years later the United States touches ground on Oct. 7, 2001, beginning of the US’s “War on Terror” as claimed by President George W. Bush. Between now and then a US supported government of the new Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has had Kazai guiding it since his official Afghani presidential election in 2004, though before in 2001 after a Afghani council met in Germany he was chosen to lead the interim government after the US broke the Taliban’s regime.

Kazai’s claims to peace talks with Taliban leaders, who since 2001 now only have control of twenty to thirty villages in the Eastern region of the country, where they still enforce the Sharia codes. The Taliban, since the announcement of the future removal of US troops from the region in 2014, has been confidently stating that once the foreign troops leave that they will take control of Afghanistan again.

Though as reported by several news agencies (the British Broadcasting Company, the Reuters news company as well as the Washington Post) they are not making plans to talk with Afghani Republic officials or US officials, even though they have opened a political office in Saudi Arabia.

Peace talks are not officially off the table though, top Pakistani diplomat Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has supported the idea of the talks between the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Taliban members.

Talks which could involve prisoner exchange of three US citizens, one being a soldier and an aid worker while US exchanges will be five insurgents who have been held in the infamous US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay.

Even though a conclusion to over a decade of war would be a happy ending to many US and Afghani children’s’ childhoods the likely hood of peace finally settling in the country of Afghanistan is highly unlikely.