REMARK. Afghanistan: Pakistan’s troubled role

The Taliban are at the gates of Kabul. “It is now fear that prevails”, written in an email Masood Khalili. The great Afghan poet present alongside Commander Massoud when the latter was assassinated in 2001 admits his discouragement.

Undermined by corruption, destabilized by the Mafia economy linked to drugs, the country is collapsing like a house of cards. Abandoned by the central authorities, the troops retreated in disorder. Sometimes without even fighting. Worse, battalions paid for by the Americans seem to never have existed.

The meager gains made in education, health and women’s rights are under threat.

Nothing gives cause for optimism. And especially not the echoes of the abuses committed by the Taliban. Converging information points to war crimes and forced marriages. With the reinforcement of the Pakistani secret services without which nothing would have been possible, the Taliban impose their agenda: strict application of the sharia, closure of girls’ schools and forced marriages against a backdrop of destruction of infrastructure.

In recent months, in the very heart of the capital, the targeted assassinations of journalists, women in office and civil society figures have given a foretaste of the climate of terror called to settle in this country ravaged by war. .

The heavy American responsibility

On the international scene, since the invasion of Soviet troops in 1979, Afghanistan has once again become that “great game” of which the British officer Arthur Conolly spoke in 1840. This expression popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim described the confrontation in the XIX^e century of Russia and England for the control of Central Asia. The Russians, for their part, prefer to talk about “Tournament of shadows”.

This country is today the theater where Chinese American interests clash, but also Indian and Pakistani interests. Added to this is a religious dimension instrumentalized by Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Hazaras, 20% of the Afghan population and predominantly Shia, are one of the many minorities in Afghanistan.

In the collapse of this country, the Americans have a heavy responsibility. For domestic political reasons – we were a few months away from the presidential election – Donald Trump had chosen to negotiate directly with the Taliban a peace agreement bypassing the Afghan authorities.

Resurgence of a terrorist risk

The Taliban have translated these discussions as recognition of their victory. Supreme humiliation, the agreement signed in February 2020 forced the Afghan authorities to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, many of them terrorists. “A tragic mistake”, denounced Amrullah Saleh, the Afghan vice-president, in an interview with West France in the month of January.

Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. Daesh settled there by creating the Islamic State of Khorassan. To the humanitarian tragedy, which sees hundreds of thousands of Afghans pushed onto the roads and tempted by exile, could be added the resurgence of a terrorist risk twenty years after the attack on the towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

More than ever, Afghanistan is “honoring” its reputation as a cemetery of great empires. After the English in the XIX^e century, the Russians in the XX^e, the Americans in turn bite the dust. Relying on Pakistan, China, which covets Afghan raw materials, hopes to get the chestnuts out of the fire. She could in turn burn her fingers there.

– .