Is this the end of a war that nobody understands?

Ten years ago the United States invaded Afghanistan to deny safe haven to al-Qaeda militants by their hosts, the Afghan Taleban. Prior to the invasion, the Taleban were given the option to hand over Osama bin Laden and his cohorts or face the consequences. They didn’t – and the rest is history. It was difficult for the might of the American military to push the Taleban and their al-Qaeda friends out of Kabul and other cities and into the rugged mountains and caves along the Pakistan-Afghan border where they would eventually regroup.
The Northern Alliance, which controlled about ten per cent of the country during the reign of the Taleban, returned to power in Kabul, and Hamid Karzai became the head of state under an arrangement put together by foreign powers.
Nervousness was soon in the air because it was the same Northern Alliance figures that turned Kabul into rubble as they aimed their guns at one another after they had worked together to push out Soviet troops during the previous war. But a deal was worked out, people were paid off and the warlords who were part of the Northern Alliance were allowed to retain much of their power in one form or another.
If the history of Afghanistan tells us anything, it is that it’s always risky to expect a regime put in place by foreign powers to find acceptance and bring about stability, even if there was some degree of initial welcome in the current situation because the Taleban had been ousted.
Ten years after the US invasion, Afghanistan can boast better healthcare for its people, more schools for its children, and the fact that many cultural activities that had been banned during the time of the Taleban have been revived. Afghan women have been given more breathing space as well.
But Afghanistan’s economy still largely depends on foreign aid. A newly discovered reserve of minerals worth about US$3 trillion could be the source of possible stability and may allow the country to stand on its own two feet. But tapping into these natural resources will not be easy as, aside from a massive amount of investment, it will require a lot of time and a great deal of security – the two main elements that the current regime doesn’t seem to have.
America and the multinational forces are now saying that ten years is enough and it’s time to pull out. Afghanistan will have to clean its own house. The original ambition to carry out the daunting task of nation-state building or to impose democracy on a tribal society has been discarded, while the original reason as to why the US and its allies went to war in the country has become less understandable.
The optimism of the early days is no longer there, and now the world will have to keep its fingers crossed, hoping that the Afghans can work things out amongst themselves once the foreign troops pull out, and not permit al-Qaeda to return to their soil.
Like the Russians before them and the British a century earlier, the US-led multinational forces and the western governments have found themselves caught up in somebody else’s civil war – one that they have little understanding of. Eventually it became clear that the West was lured into a fight by Islamic extremists who would use the conflict in Afghanistan as a rallying point for Muslims all over the world to create anti-US sentiment. Unable to make serious headway against the Muslim regimes they wanted to overthrow, the extremists turned their guns on the US – the main supporters of many of those regimes. It worked for a while, as many people in the Muslim world, and increasing numbers in the non-Muslim world, saw the Afghan war as an unfair fight. The war in Iraq didn’t help this wider scenario either. There again, many people simply saw Muslims being bullied.
But the focus of attention is no longer one of America versus the Muslim world. The old narrative has been replaced by the “Arab Spring”, in which liberty and democracy, not Islam, has become the banner for the Muslim rallying cry. But it doesn’t mean the extremists have given up their goal of taking over the Muslim countries in which they are situated.
In Afghanistan, the situation is one of stalemate. The likely outcome is some sort of power arrangement. Just as importantly, foreign powers and neighbouring countries must permit the Afghans to work things out on their own terms and in their own way.