📰 387 ‘Moplah martyrs’ to be removed from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle
Variamkunnath Haji and Ali Musaliar among them
•Malabar Rebellion leaders Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji, Ali Musaliar and 387 other “Moplah martyrs” will be removed from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle.
•A three-member panel, which reviewed the entries in the fifth volume of the dictionary, brought out by the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR), is understood to have recommended the deletion as it felt that the 1921 rebellion was never part of the independence struggle but a fundamentalist movement focused on religious conversion. None of the slogans raised by the rioters were in favour of nationalism and anti-British in content, it noted.
•Incidentally, RSS leader Ram Madhav, at a meeting to commemorate the victims of the rebellion, had stated that the movement was one of the first manifestations of the Taliban mindset in India. However, Speaker M.B. Rajesh described Haji as a warrior who refused to tender an apology to the British and chose martyrdom over deportation to Mecca.
•A film announced with actor Prithviraj donning the role of Haji last year had created an uproar with Sangh Parivar outfits coming out against it. They had termed it as an attempt to whitewash a rioter.
•The panel is understood to have noted that the rebellion was an attempt to establish a Caliphate. Had it succeeded, a Caliphate would have been established in the region too and India would have ended up losing that part from its territory, sources indicated.
•It concluded that Haji was a rioter who had established a Sharia court and beheaded a large number of Hindus. The rioters did not even spare the secular Muslims. Those who died at the hands of the rioters were non-believers. A large number of “Moplah martyrs,” who were under-trial prisoners, died due to diseases such as cholera and natural causes hence cannot be treated as martyrs. Only a handful of them were executed by the government after court trial, it noted.
•Om Jee Upadhyay, Director (Research and Administration), ICHR, said the list of freedom fighters would be modified as recommended by the panel and the dictionary would be out by October end.
Long-distance Wi-Fi brings facility to tribal hamlets in Nilambur
•The Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS), a Union government initiative for skill development in rural areas, has brought high-speed internet to some of the remotest tribal hamlets deep inside the Nilambur jungle.
•For the first time, the Palakkayam, Vettilakkolli and Ambumala tribal hamlets got high-speed internet, thanks to long-distance Wi-Fi technology. Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) executive director Anwar Sadath, who visited the hamlets on Saturday, was jubilant about the 100-mbps internet.
•The JSS’s technical partner C4S provided support for the long-distance Wi-Fi on 5GHz frequency. With the help of five towers, 100-mbps internet is made available at Palakkayam, Ambumala, and Vettilakkolli hamlets in Chaliyar grama panchayat.
No transmission loss
•“In this technology, there is no loss of transmission. We have set up the servers in such a way as to help a minimum of 250 users use the Net concurrently. And this can be easily boosted,” said C4S director V.J. Thomas.
•He said that using long-distance Wi-Fi technology, high-speed internet could be provided even up to 100 km without any transmission loss.
•While the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) provided ₹5 lakh, the JSS chipped in ₹2.02 lakh. “The biggest advantage of this technology is its low cost,” said V. Ummer Koya, JSS director.
Strict monitoring
•The JSS will monitor the use of the internet through its own technology. “We have to have strict monitoring, especially since the area has Maoist threat. The use of internet will be restricted strictly to the hamlets’ residents,” said Mr. Ummer Koya.
•The base station has been set up at Indira Gandhi Memorial Residential Government School, Nilambur. From there, the internet provided by BSNL and Railnet will be transmitted to the tribal hamlets inside the jungle using long-distance Wi-Fi. Battery backup has also been arranged by utilising solar energy.
With authorities
•P.V. Abdul Wahab, MP and chairman of the JSS, visited the hamlets along with District Collector K. Gopalakrishnan last week. Mr. Wahab said the technology could be utilised effectively for online interaction with the authorities, including the Collector. The three hamlets were covered in the first phase, and the facility would be extended to more tribal colonies in other parts of the forest, Mr. Wahab added.
📰 Arunachal women’s panel defends draft Inheritance Bill
Care has been taken to protect customary practices, Arunachal Pradesh State Commission for Women chairperson said while seeking suggestions for improvement
•The Arunachal Pradesh State Commission for Women (APSCW) has defended a “contentious” Bill it has drafted for providing equal inheritance rights to women in the State.
•The panel has also advised critics to go through the draft Arunachal Pradesh Marriage and Inheritance of Property Bill, 2021, carefully before commenting and give suggestions if there is any room for improvement.
•Various community-based and students’ organisations as well as political parties in the State have slammed the draft Bill as “anti-tribal”, “anti-Arunachal”, violative of customary laws and an invitation to outsiders to take over tribal land through marriage.
•Members of the APSCW and the Arunachal State Commission for Protection of Child Rights had been working on the draft Bill.
•“It has taken years to draft it and was finalised after several awareness camps, discussions with community-based organisations and students unions. A lot of research has also gone into it,” APSCW chairperson Radhilu Chai Techi told journalists in State capital Itanagar on Saturday.
•She said the opposition to the draft Bill was based on a clause that was redrafted long ago. A couple of new clauses deal with the rights of an Arunachal Pradesh Scheduled Tribe (APST) woman married to a non-APST man, she added.
•According to one of the clauses, such APST women shall enjoy the rights to any immovable property inherited from the head of the family in her lifetime. “Under the other clause, the heirs and husband of such a woman would have all the rights to dispose of moveable property owned and acquired by her to any indigenous tribal of the State,” Ms. Techi said.
•The APSCW chairperson referred to a Supreme Court order saying every indigenous citizen of the State is born a Scheduled Tribe and no one can cancel a woman’s ST status even if married to a man from another community.
•“The demand of a few people to cancel the ST status of APST women married to non-APST men is futile, if looked into constitutionally. We can’t overlook the constitutional rights of women by birth,” she said, seeking suggestions for framing a better law to safeguard the rights of women in Arunachal Pradesh.
•“The commission is not against any customary practices. The draft was made incorporating inputs from the Special Marriage Act. Moreover, the draft clearly specifies land owned by parents and not ancestral lands,” Ms. Techi said.
•The commission was also working on polygamy because it was interlinked with the rights of the women, she said.
📰 News analysis | Fourth evacuation from Kabul since 1992, but in different international climate
‘The difference is how the international players are dealing with the Taliban now’
•The evacuation of the Embassy, including Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon, from Kabul is the fourth time India has needed to pull out all its diplomats from Afghanistan, but what has changed considerably is how world players have dealt with the Taliban, say diplomats who recall the strong stand taken by the United Nations and various governments in the 1990s.
•In 1993, India decided to close the mission in Kabul after a rocket attack on the Chancery building killed an Indian security guard. Significantly, the Indian security official was killed when rockets were fired on Kabul by Hizb-e-Islami forces commanded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now one of the coordinating council members negotiating with the new Taliban regime.
•The mission staff, led by Ambassador Arif Qamarain, who had only been appointed two months before that, were driven in three buses to the Uzbek border town of Termez and flown out from Tashkent, after a joint decision by the heads of the Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Pakistani and Indonesian missions in Kabul that the situation was too volatile to stay.
•His predecessor Ambassador Vijay Nambiar had been flown out of Mazar-e-Sharif with the help of Gen. Rashid Dostum in 1992, with the IAF operating two AN-32 aircraft that also flew out the Ambassadors of ASEAN countries and others. At the time, Kabul Air Traffic Control had been destroyed by the Taliban, wielding U.S.-supplied anti-aircraft stinger missiles, and the IAF planes had loaded anti-missile flares just in case, but fortunately did not need to deploy them. The cooperation with Gen. Dostum had been secured during a special diplomatic mission by former Vice-President Hamid Ansari, who was then India’s Ambassador to Iran, and had previously served as Ambassador to Afghanistan, who carried humanitarian and medical relief to Mazar-e-Sharif.
•“While it is necessary to judge each situation anew, and decide India’s reactions to it, we may also remember the principle that a neighbour’s neighbour can often be a friend. Many Afghans feel the same way,” Mr. Ansari told The Hindu, when asked about the mission.
•In 1996, after opening the Embassy for about a year, India decided to close it again, when the Taliban entered Kabul and brutally murdered former President Najibullah and his brother, and then, more significantly, Northern Alliance forces led by Ahmed Shah Massoud retreated to the Panjshir valley.
•“We achieved the evacuation of the mission, which was quite small, along with the few other Indians present there quite painlessly, on an Ariana [commercial] flight,” recalls Vivek Katju, who was the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs at the time. “The difference between then and now, 25 years later, was that this time, the U.S., Russia, China and other countries have not shunned the Taliban, and in fact appeared to legitimise them by signing a deal with them, inviting Taliban delegations to their capitals, and holding talks with them in Doha,” he added.
•New Delhi too has not yet directly named the Taliban in its statements, or criticised its actions, possibly due to the ongoing evacuation of Indian nationals, and discussions with the U.S., Russia and China on the possible de-designation of various Taliban representatives at the U.N. Security Council, where India heads the Taliban sanctions committee.
•Speaking at an event on Friday, Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla said that there was a “silver lining” in the Taliban’s statements seeking international legitimacy, in contrast to its previous regime in Afghanistan. The MEA had also sent a two-man delegation to Doha on August 12, for a meeting that included other countries, and the Taliban's representatives.
•Speaking in Parliament in 1996, however, then External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, who became Prime Minister the next year, had said India would have no truck with the group.
•“The pursuit of obscurantist doctrine by the Taliban leadership and the consequent denial of human rights, especially the rights of women, have been extensively condemned. The implications of these events have been assessed, especially the risk of an adverse impact on India's security,” said Gujral, adding that the government had only recognised the Rabbani government.
•Subsequently the Indian government maintained the Afghanistan Embassy at its own cost, until the Taliban was defeated in 2001, and Hamid Karzai took over as President.
•During the 1996-2001 period, India had actively supported the Northern Alliance. India’s Ambassador in Dushanbe Bharathraj Muthukumar coordinated funds, supplies for them, contacting Massoud through Amarullah Saleh, (President Ashraf Ghani’s Vice-President until a week ago), and is now a leader of the anti-Taliban resistance force regrouping in the Panjshir valley.
•It is clear that many of the leading figures that have dominated the Afghan landscape still remain in significant positions today. What has changed, however, is the immediate reaction of global players to the Taliban’s Kabul takeover nearly three decades on, even as India’s position remains to be spelt out in the weeks and months ahead.
📰 Breaking the logjam, handing over the baton
With the Supreme Court Collegium showing the way in judicial appointments, the executive needs to match its pace
•For the first time ever, the Supreme Court Collegium led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) recommended/selected as many as nine persons at one go to be appointed to the apex court. With the appointment later of the nine judges by the President of India, barring one vacancy which arose after the Collegium met, all the nine vacancies in the Supreme Court will be filled up. The highest court in the country having its near full strength will ease the pressure on it considerably.
Much-awaited move
•Every CJI during his tenure has taken up the filling up of vacancies as a matter of highest priority, but many could not succeed. CJI T.S. Thakur, in fact, broke down, in 2016, at a function attended by the Prime Minister in a rare expression of extreme anguish because of his inability or helplessness in filling the vacancies which was seriously affecting the functioning of the supreme judicial forum of the country. It is indeed a happy augury that the present CJI, Justice N.V. Ramana, could, along with his colleagues in the Collegium, select the judges within a short period of his assumption of office.
•It is almost a truism that the selection of judges for appointment to the higher courts, particularly the top court is a complex exercise. After the Collegium came into existence, much to the consternation of political class, the selection of suitable judges has become most arduous in as much as the members of the Collegium have to take extra care to ensure that the process of selection remains transparent and the suitability of the persons selected attracts the highest level of approbation.
Difficult task
•This is by no means an easy task. The members of the Collegium are all the senior most judges who have in their own way helped shape the ethos of the highest judiciary. With their keen intellect, long years of experience at the Bench and an admirable ability to discern merit in individuals, it is a tough task to build a consensus around one person or a few persons. The CJI being the head of the Collegium, has an unenviable task in building that consensus. Therefore, it can be said without any fear of contradiction that the job of selecting as many as nine judges for appointment to the Supreme Court was done admirably well. Going by news reports, it appears that the selection process was concluded in the first ever formal meeting of the Collegium. It is a remarkable feat in itself.
•As the Secretary General of Lok Sabha, I had the privilege of assisting the Presiding Officers and I witnessed close quarters the struggles the Speaker had to endure in evolving consensus even on absolutely non-partisan proposals. Justice Ramana deserves full credit for taking along his colleagues in the true spirit of being the first among equals. The latest resolution of the Collegium gave effect to the multiple judicial pronouncements of the top court on the subject, particularly in recommending three women, a feat which may not be possible to be repeated in the foreseeable future.
•Article 142 (1) contains the concept of ‘complete justice’ in any cause or matter which the Supreme Court is enjoined to deliver upon. The citizens of the country look up to the Supreme Court for complete justice. So, while selecting a judge to adorn the Bench, the fundamental consideration should be his/her ability to do complete justice. The Supreme Court has gone into this fundamental normative matrix in which the whole exercise of selection of judges is performed. In the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association and Another vs Union of India (1993), the Court spelt out the parameters within which to accomplish the task of selecting candidates for appointment to the higher judiciary. The most crucial consideration is the merit of the candidates. But consideration of merit should be done “… without giving room for any criticism that the selection was whimsical, fanciful or arbitrary or tainted with any prejudice or bias” (paragraph 330). The merit is the ability of the judge to deliver complete justice.
India’s compelling realities
•India is a country of bewildering diversity. In this cacophonous democracy, language, region, religion, community, caste, are all realities which the state cannot ignore while identifying people to man its various organs. The nine judges who decided the above case were quite aware of these compelling realities. So, they said, “In the context of the plurastic [pluralistic] society of India where there are several distinct and differing interests of the people with multiplicity of religions, race, caste and community and with the plurality of culture … it is inevitable that all people should be given equal opportunity in all walks of life and brought into the mainstream so that there may be participation of all sections of people in every sphere including judiciary”. The overriding concern of the Supreme judiciary is to ensure equal opportunities to all classes of people … be they backward classes or scheduled castes or scheduled tribes or minorities or women, … so that the judicial administration is also participated in by the outstanding and meritorious candidates belonging to all sections of the society [and] not by any selective or insular group” (paragraph 315).
Need for transparency
•India is perhaps the only country where the judges select judges to the higher judiciary. It is, therefore, necessary to make the norms of selection transparent. The Supreme Court has emphasised the need for maintaining transparency and an openness with regard to the norms of selection. In 2019, a five judge Bench of the Supreme Court, of which the present CJI was also a member, laid emphasis on this point. The Bench observed: “There can be no denial that there is a vital element of public interest in knowing about the norms which are taken into consideration in selecting candidates for higher judicial office and making judicial appointments”.
•Thus, the essence of the norms to be followed in judicial appointments is a judicious blend of merit, seniority, interests of the marginalised and deprived sections of society, women, religions, regions and communities. A closer look would reveal that these norms are followed in their essentiality in selecting the nine for the Bench. The selection of three women judges, with one of them having a chance to head the top court, a judge belonging to the Scheduled Caste and one from a backward community and the nine selected persons belonging to nine different States (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat), all point towards an enlightened and unbiased approach of the members of the Collegium. It is also a matter of public knowledge that many of those selected have zealously upheld citizens’ freedoms and public interest. The contributions of a few of them in waking up governments from their slumber in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is well documented. A high level of social consciousness possessed by a Judge enhances the quality of justice. The present CJI can be credited with recognising this crucial factor in the selection of judges.
Unwarranted
•A needless controversy is sought to be raised by a section of the media about this round of selection citing the non-existing ‘Rule of Seniority’. It is this insistence, on one single criterion, which led to the piling up of vacancies in the Supreme Court for nearly two years. The logjam of 22 months has been finally broken by the Collegium led by the CJI through a pragmatic approach. It is also significant to note that those who are complaining of omission have not alleged that the selected nine cannot do complete justice as the Constitution mandates.
•There is no doubt that there are meritorious people outside this group too. But in a population of 1.3 billion, to select just nine suitable persons to man the highest judiciary is not without difficulty. Considering the merit of the selected persons, one can undoubtedly say that the Collegium has done a good job. With seven names (district judges) cleared by the Collegium for the Telangana High Court in one go, we can safely trust Team Ramana to speedily fill up all judicial vacancies. The Collegium has started doing its job. Now, it is time for the Government to match the pace and take the process of appointments to its logical conclusion at the earliest.
📰 Focusing on diseases sidelined by COVID-19
Strengthening the primary healthcare system will help tackle the burden of non-communicable diseases
•Nearly 71% of all deaths worldwide occur due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancer. Cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, heart attacks and coronary artery disease are the top cause of global deaths. One out of every four deaths occurs due to cardiovascular diseases, especially among younger patients. In the Indian subcontinent, there is early onset and rapid progression of such diseases, and a high mortality rate. Premature loss of life due to NCDs in the age group of 30-69 years is also very high among Indians. Half the deaths due to cardiovascular diseases occur in the age group of 40-69 years. To address this growing burden of NCDs, the National Health Mission launched the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke, in 2010, focusing on strengthening infrastructure, promoting good health, human resource development, early diagnosis, management and referral.
Disruption of NCD services
•The rapid spread of COVID-19 has severely tested primary healthcare systems, which perform myriad functions, across the world. Maternal healthcare services, immunisation, health surveillance, and the screening and management of NCDs have all been severely disrupted. A World Health Organization (WHO) survey conducted in May 2020 among 155 countries found that low-income countries were the most affected by this disruption. More than half (53%) of the countries surveyed had partially or completely disrupted services for hypertension treatment, 49% for treatment for diabetes and diabetes-related complications, 42% for cancer treatment and 31% for cardiovascular emergencies. The outcomes in COVID-19 patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease risk factors or with established cardiovascular disease can be worse than others, perhaps due to low cardiorespiratory reserve, worsening of the underlying cardiovascular disease due to systemic effects of the illness, or precipitating novel cardiac complications. Data from the National Health Mission’s Health Management Information System in India show that emergency services for cerebrovascular diseases dropped by about 14%. Among NCDs, persons with diabetes are at an exceptionally higher risk of severe clinical outcomes of COVID-19. A recent study reported that nearly one in every two Indians living with diabetes is unaware of their condition. They are at higher risk of dying if they contract COVID-19 because of uncontrolled glucose levels in their blood. Findings from an observational study in Delhi show that 47.1% of hospitalised COVID-19 patients had diabetes.
•In most countries, staff working in the area of NCDs were reassigned to support patients with COVID-19, and public screening programmes were postponed. Shortage of medicines, diagnostics and technologies were the main reasons for discontinuing services in one-fifth of the surveyed countries. Cancellations of planned treatments, decreased availability of public transport, and lack of staff were the most common reasons for the disruption of NCD services. NCD services also got more disrupted as countries moved to the stage of community transmission from the stage of sporadic COVID-19 cases.
•Lockdowns and reduced physical interactions led to loneliness, especially in the geriatric population. This resulted in mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. Lockdowns increase exposure to NCD risk factors as people became more likely to increase their consumption of alcohol and tobacco and adopt an unhealthy diet.
Solutions
•Although most countries reported that they had included NCD services in their national COVID-19 preparedness and response plans, only 42% of low-income countries did so. Worryingly, tobacco cessation activities and rehabilitation have not been included in response plans. India’s response plan to address the growing burden of NCDs must include tobacco cessation activities as tobacco consumption has been indisputably linked to hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
•Alternative strategies have been established in most countries to support those at the highest risk so that they continue receiving treatment for NCDs. Among the countries reporting service disruptions, half are using telemedicine. A positive impact of the pandemic has been that two-thirds of the countries are now collecting data on the number of COVID-19 patients who also have a NCD.
•There is an urgent need for national and State health policymakers to draw up a road map which gives equal weight to patients living with NCDs. Utilising the existing network of NGOs while respecting local factors will go a long way in tackling the growing burden of NCDs. Campaigns on maintaining a healthy lifestyle need innovation; the monotony of broadcasting the same message over and over again must be broken.
•Uncontrolled epidemics have the potential to snowball into a major pandemic. A paradigm shift in governance, which means effective and participatory leadership with strong vision and communication, is the need of the hour to tackle the silent epidemic transition to NCDs.
•Screening for NCDs at the grassroots level and the delivery of locally relevant and contextual messages for health promotion and primordial prevention of NCDs can be significantly improved by incentivising the already overburdened ASHA workers. Access to essential NCD medicines and basic health technologies in all primary healthcare facilities is essential to ensure that those in need receive treatment and counselling. A multidisciplinary approach is imperative. Strategies must include mitigation efforts to address administration challenges, a strong health workforce, infrastructure, supplies, maintaining the standard of care, and continued access and care for the vulnerable populations. Also, the importance of physical activity and mental health due to restrictions on movement should be brought to the forefront. The use of alternative modalities such as online platforms for disseminating information on exercise and mental health management must be made available to the marginalised. Telemedicine can reduce travel expenses, thus lowering patients’ expenditure burden.
•Multiple risk factors which are interrelated, such as raised blood pressure, glucose, lipids, and obesity, are preventable. Primary healthcare systems must ensure that persons at risk of NCDs receive appropriate screening, counselling and treatment. In India, those with NCDs find that productive years of life are lost and there is high-out-of-pocket expenditure on treatment. Urgent action is needed using the ‘all of society approach’ to achieve the WHO goal of a 25% relative reduction in overall mortality from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, or chronic respiratory diseases by 2025. This can be achieved by strengthening the primary health system to prevent, diagnose and provide care for NCDs in the future, especially during health emergencies such as a pandemic.
📰 In Afghan collapse, the fall of international relations
That global mediation has had a positive role in asking for a more pragmatic attitude from the Taliban is wishful thinking
•The heartbreaking images of Afghans clinging on to a United States Air Force plane in Kabul, on August 16, in a desperate bid to flee Afghanistan is a reminder of the fall of Saigon, Vietnam, and the horrifying scenes of American diplomats evacuated by helicopter, leaving behind supporters to languish in re-education camps. We have the urge to ask this question: Who is responsible for the return of the Taliban and a new rise of barbarism in the name of Allah in Afghanistan?
One-sided accord
•In his defiant speech justifying his Afghanistan policy, U.S. President Joe Biden conveniently omitted acknowledgement of his responsibility for the disastrous endgame. He squarely laid the blame on the Afghan government and army for all the problems. One cannot shift the blame away from the Biden administration for the current chaos in Afghanistan. But one has to recognise the fact that once the predecessor administration of President Donald Trump and U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad signed the disastrous one-sided agreement with the Taliban, the fate of Afghanistan was sealed. It was just a matter of time. Whether keeping 2,500 personnel or 5,000 personnel or just one American soldier would have made a difference is subject to conjecture.
Lessons missed
•This does not mean that the decision to withdraw American soldiers was wrong per se; rather, there was obviously inadequate planning in preparing the operation. As usual, many innocent people were left behind. There was certainly a moral failure in getting out as many of those Afghans who supported the U.S. intervention and military presence in Afghanistan as possible. One historical lesson that was not learned was the predictable collapse of the Afghan government. The surrender to the Taliban slowly gained pace in the months following the Doha deal in 2020, but it began to snowball as soon as Mr. Biden announced in April that U.S. forces would withdraw from Afghanistan.
•But there is a second part to the debacle in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, when we think of the Taliban, we have in mind a shabby army of 70,000 fervently Islamist foot soldiers confronting and defeating a modern Afghan army of 3,00,000 men. However, the world was surprised by the speed of the Taliban army in reconquering Afghanistan, from Kunduz on August 7-8 through Mazar-i-Sharif and every other provincial capital last week to Kabul on Sunday. Certainly, one of the reasons for the defeat of the Afghan army has been the poor training and corruption of the Afghan officers.
•We can also add that the strategy of pushing the Taliban into the mountains and hinterlands, while securing towns and cities by the Afghan army did not work as expected. It took the Taliban only a few weeks to sweep away the Afghan army, which had been financed and trained by the United States for 20 years.
•It is impossible to predict how the current situation will evolve. But we can have a better understanding of the Taliban’s violence if we go back to their history. The Taliban was a Pashtun movement which appeared in the early 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989.
Posing a danger
•Once in power in Afghanistan, the Taliban imposed their own violent and authoritarian version of Sharia Law, exemplified by ‘punishments such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers, amputations for those found guilty of theft and imposing the all-covering burka for women. Television, music and cinema were also banned by the Taliban and girls aged 10 and over were forbidden to go to school’. All these previous actions show that the Taliban will rule Afghanistan once again with extreme violence and barbarity. However, some analysts continue to believe that because of the negotiations in Doha, there is room for compromise with the Taliban and that international mediation has played a positive role in asking for a more pragmatic attitude from the Taliban. This is just wishful thinking that ignores the fact that the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan will be a great danger for all Afghans and the neighbouring countries. Let us not forget that once again, terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State will take advantage of the new rise of the Taliban to create their own power bases in Afghanistan.
Challenge for diplomacy
•Last but not least, on a human level, the fate of the Afghan people under the new Taliban government is most important. One thing is certain. The sufferings of the Afghans will not end under Taliban rule. From the point of view of international affairs, it will certainly take a Herculean effort to maintain decent working relations with the Taliban. However, India, Iran, Russia, and China are hoping for stability and an end to bloodshed in Afghanistan. But the return of the Taliban will not necessarily be welcomed by all these countries despite the fact that they would rejoice at America’s setback. There will also be a fear of Islamic jihadism all over West Asia, including in Turkey and in Saudi Arabia. So, all and for all, the Afghan debacle is not the story of a defeat of democracy in one country but a sign of a fiasco in international politics in general.
📰 Going from conflict to conflict
There are more threats to Afghanistan than just the Taliban
•On August 16, while explaining why he was so firm on withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden acknowledged the U.S.’s myriad missteps of the last 20 years. The history of American missteps is, however, longer, and goes further back than the provocation caused by the 9/11 attacks. Steve Coll’s book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, is a detailed documentation of the endless list of misadventures of the U.S. and other western countries. By all accounts, Afghanistan is the worst victim of the fiercest superpower rivalry of the post-World War II era.
A more humane foreign policy
•Afghanistan’s current predicament is only a small part of a much bigger story pertaining to American foreign policy. Seen in conjunction with what has happened to Iraq, Libya and Syria, the moral flaw in American foreign policy and the U.S.’s contribution to destroying nations becomes apparent. If national interest is the only game in town, it is high time American policymakers begin to re-imagine it in a way that is less destructive and more humane.
•It was believed that President Biden would undo the agenda of his predecessor, Donald Trump. But he seems more determined to pursue Mr. Trump’s agenda, and with greater ineptitude. Some argue that the decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan was President Biden’s original agenda, which he aired unsuccessfully as Vice President in 2009. The 2020 Doha Agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban merely eased the process and brought forth a rare consensus between a Republican President, Mr. Trump, and his Democratic successor, Mr. Biden. The current mess in Afghanistan, and in Syria, Libya and Iraq, once more reaffirms that in the domain of foreign policy, there is very little ideological difference between the Republicans and Democrats who alternately govern the U.S.
•Though several western nations were involved in this U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, no country was interested in stepping in after the U.S.’s exit. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed this in the British Parliament when he said that the NATO’s “core mission” had succeeded. What is becoming clear is that the western nations lacked a vision for and commitment to Afghanistan.
Monopoly of state power
•While militant religious groups exist or operate in several countries, the Taliban enjoy the unique advantage of having acquired monopoly of state power. On the issues of rights, whether human rights or gender rights, each nation state has its skeletons in the closet. Consider, for instance, the U.S. itself and its track record on human rights with regard to African Americans or indigenous people. But the basic difference between nations like the U.S. and Afghanistan is that there is a political environment in the U.S. which allows these issues to be raised. For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement could not have been possible if a militant group was enjoying the monopoly of state power in the U.S. Clearly, not enough was done in the last 20 years to create institutions for such a conducive environment in Afghanistan. The Taliban were allowed to expand and now they are ready to govern.
•Aside from the extremist nature of the Taliban, what poses an equally dangerous threat to Afghanistan is that it remains the site of a power struggle among big and regional powers. At this juncture, a new equation seems to be emerging in the security game in the region. There is a China-Pakistan axis vis-à-vis an India-U.S. one. Russia, Iran and a few others have their own spin to the game. A new but more pernicious Cold War variety rivalry that doomed Afghanistan has reappeared. No one knows how these players will cast their die. But one thing is certain: there are more threats to Afghanistan than just the Taliban.
