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Bringing peace to Afghanistan

The West gained an important strategic objective in the late Eighties when it helped the Afghan Mujahedin to oust the Soviet occupation forces which had gained a foothold in Afghanistan in 1979. That is, it wanted to erase Soviet influence in West and South West Asia, so as to have unhindered access to the oil-rich Gulf region.

This Cold War objective seemed to have been the sole concern of the West at that time because very soon Afghanistan was left to its own devices. It is history now that a wasting civil war soon enveloped the ragged mountainous country, leaving it at the mercy of irreconcilably hostile ethnic groups and war lords. The war-ravaged country remained virtually forgotten by the rest of the world until terror struck the US as never before on September 11th this year.

This, of course, provoked the West into conducting the current military operation in Afghanistan and to also militarily strengthen the opposition Northern forces which were battling the ruling Taliban regime. At the time of writing, the news is that the Taliban has been driven out of several of its strongholds, including Kabul. Hopes are soaring that Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11th terror attacks, could now be captured.

It is with a strong sense of irony that we pen this commentary because it is the one-time Western-aided Afghan Mujahedin which finally metamorphosed into the Taliban regime which went on to rule Afghanistan with an iron fist and a fundamentalist diktat.

This, however, didn't cause worldwide concern because Afghanistan's domestic conflicts were considered "internal matters".

Now that an immediate aim of the military operation in Afghanistan has been achieved with the neutralization of the Taliban regime, it would be interesting to see how the world community would go about the task of giving the Afghan people their primary needs - peace and bread.

It is gladdening to note that the UN Security Council is taking unprecedented interest in the normalization process in Afghanistan. It has already called for a broad - based conference on the future of Afghanistan, which will hopefully bring together all political and military actors in the Afghan imbroglio, over which it would preside.

The UN which won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for its prominent interventionist efforts at peace-making in conflicts around the world, should win the praise of the global community for this early interest in Afghanistan.

It is our belief that it is the UN and the UN alone which could bring a stable peace to Afghanistan. May its peace efforts bear fruit.

Our minds are taken back to the war-battered Kampuchea of the Eighties, which is today back on the path of normalization on account of the peace efforts orchestrated in that country by the international community under the rubric of the UN. It is our hope that an exercise of this nature will be replicated in hapless Afghanistan.

• Editorial of  The Observer - 16.11.2001
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