The Great Afghan Drama

The swift and relatively non-violent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban has come as a shocking surprise to the international community. The agonizingly painful plight of the Afghan common man has stirred up a lot of emotions in the international community. However, when one rises above the unfolding drama in Afghanistan and takes a logical view of various pertinent factors of the past few months, this drama in Afghanistan tells a totally different story.

Consider the following facts –

1) The main cause for the rapid fall of Afghanistan is being attributed to massive intelligence failure. For the past 20 years, Afghanistan has been permeated by all the top international intelligence and they had the complete support of the NDS. So, are we to assume that all these highly trained and experienced agents had no idea about the mental psychology of the various players in Afghanistan or of the activities of the Taliban in that country??

2) Over the past few months, the Pakistani government and its Military Establishment have taken an overtly Pro-China and Anti-US stance despite the fact that all their assets, businesses and families are based in the west.

3) It’s widely accepted that the Pakistani army tacitly supported the Taliban and a lot of Pakistani soldiers, disguised as Taliban fighters, were an integral part of the Taliban force against the Afghan government. This was well known to the US and yet it chose to keep quiet about it. So, can one construe that Taliban resources were indirectly being funded by the US??

4) As a show of support to the Afghan government, the US bombed a few Taliban gatherings and suddenly there were unconfirmed reports of hundreds of Taliban fighters being killed by such attacks. This obviously was an attempt by the US to portray a strong anti-Taliban stance mostly to China and/or Russia and also to win domestic public approval. All questions regarding where these fighter jets took off from were totally ignored although based on geographic proximity and convenience, it was obvious that these jets took off from some base in Pakistan.

5) A lot of anti-Taliban warlords docilely surrendered to the Taliban. In the past, these warlords, with the backing of the US, actively fought against the Taliban on various fronts. So why did they choose to give up in such a tame manner?? Obviously because the US clearly indicated that it won’t be supporting them and if they surrendered to the Taliban then their prosperous survival under the Taliban regime was guaranteed.

6) There was a massive international movement to “Sanction Pakistan” for its support to the Taliban. The main object of this exercise was to give the impression that Pakistan was totally anti-west and Pro-China. Of course, the US may impose some cosmetic sanctions on Pakistan in order to enhance this impression and also in order to satiate its domestic populace.

7) Over the years the US spent billions of dollars in training the Afghan armed forces and also in providing it with state of the art weaponry. The Afghan armed forces are supposed to be in excess of 300,000 but has this figure ever been verified?? Similarly, has there been any verification of the weaponry given to the Afghan armed forces or even the quality of training given to them?? Remember, there has been no accountability for these billions of dollars spent for such purposes. So, it won’t be unreasonable to assume that most of these funds went to private pockets and most probably to the Pro-US warlords in order to ensure that they maintained peaceful relations with the Afghan government.

8) The stealthy evacuation of the Bagram by the US forces, weeks before the Taliban takeover, is clearly indicative of the fact that the US knew what was going to happen.

9) Over the past few months, the western naval presence in the South China Sea has been slowly augmented by the entry of numerous warships from the US, its western allies and even India, mostly on the pretext of conducting naval exercises.

10) Post the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the entire world including various Democrat leaning elements of the US media have been vilifying the Biden led US government and also other western governments.

11) Despite the Taliban’s assurances of peace, all western governments are making exaggerated efforts to evacuate their citizens and embassy staff from Afghanistan.

When one considers the above factors logically, it seems that an insidious plan is being enacted by western governments to enfeeble China and perhaps Russia too. Firstly, an impression is being created of an anti-west AF-PAK combo wherein Pakistan openly sides with China and the Taliban offers all kinds of peaceful assurances to China in order to induce large Chinese investments in the country. My guess is that the west is waiting for the Chinese camel, which has got a couple of feet inside the tent, to completely enter the tent before they set the entire tent on fire. In return, the west and the Pakistani Military Establishment will have no problems if the Taliban and its fanatical allies start working on radicalizing the entire AF-PAK region. This will result in instability on the Chinese Xinjiang borders which will eventually seep through the rest of China in one form or the other.

The west’s main objective seems like neutralizing BRI and replacing it with the G7’s B3W which, although currently doesn’t have any contours and the amount committed is also debatable but nevertheless, for its effective implementation it’s necessary to weaken Chinese influence in the international community. China’s current economic woes along with its struggle to contain the spread of Covid is definitely stretching its resources. Additional pressure on all its borders will certainly put it in a dreadful quagmire that will force it to cut down on its hegemonic ambitions and the west will be able to enforce its own western dominated world order where China, like India, will be a minor power that will cater to all western interests.