Interventionist West to blame for Afghan fate

Indeed it is difficult to imagine that the Taleban differentiate much between the various Western assistance organisations, which they may all suspect of being anti-Islamic and spying for the foreign occupation troops. Also the International Committee of the Red Cross carries the word “cross” in its name. And because the unbridgeable hostility of the Taleban is well known, it is irresponsible to send foreign staff to Afghanistan. And much worse, there is no good reason for having all the many “infidel” troops in Muslim Afghanistan. 

By the end of next year they all will have gone home (probably mission not accomplished!). The only lasting achievement will be the many graves they left, filled with more non-combatants than Taleban or al Qaeda fighters. And the worst still may come, probably starting during the evacuation phase of the foreign troops, namely the pending slaughter of most collaborators, i.e., those who believed and served the Western organisations or the foreign troops. And any woman, who thought she could expose her hair, may find herself castigated as a collaborator. The understandable fear of such a fate is already fast rising among the “temporarily liberated” Afghans. Many high ranking Western decision makers seem to be quite unaware of what is coming. They appear to have forgotten the ghastly fates of collaborators in allegedly more civilised Europe after the retreat of the German Wehrmacht from occupied countries in 1944/45 or the happenings in Saigon following the hasty departure of US forces in 1975. 

Therefore, as heretical as it may sound in the first instance, the blame for the ongoing and in particular the coming atrocities will mainly belong to the Western interventionists, who should have known better, and not to the much less educated Taleban, who in a fervent albeit primitive belief in Allah’s command defend their holy lands and their traditional ways of life with all means at their disposal against the Western crusaders as they see it, and had successfully done before against the superior Red Army. 

Peter Kramer 

Bangkok