In recent days, Afghanistan has ushered in an important Eid al-Adha. On this major Islamic holiday, there was a brief calm in the fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
But skirmishes still occur from time to time. Three days ago, the Taliban denied that the attack was the work of a rocket attack near the Afghan presidential palace, while the Associated Press noted that the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility.
On July 20, 2021, local time, the presidential palace in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was suspected of being attacked, and rockets fell near the presidential palace. /IC photo
"Kabul has been hit by rockets before, and I met once in my neighborhood last November, but I don't know who started it." Amra said in an interview with the Beijing News. 18 years ago, Amra left Afghanistan where he grew up and came to China. After the United States entered Afghanistan, his hometown no longer made him feel safe. But he returns to Kabul once or twice a year to meet his family, who are still there.
In the nearly 20 years that the US military has been stationed in Afghanistan, the country has been more torn apart, and the US "Afghanistan Transformation Plan" has failed. After the departure of the US troops, the Taliban made a comeback and the situation in Afghanistan suddenly became tense.
But with the departure of third-party external powers, Afghanistan has been given the opportunity to independently find a way to rebuild the country. The successful negotiation of a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government is key to healing the country's divisions and restoring peace.
"I don't know what the future holds for Afghanistan"
In Kabul, Amra experienced firsthand the war in Afghanistan launched by the United States in 2001. He was working in a shoe factory in his early 20s when he suddenly heard a loud bombardment that was a U.S. military target for airstrikes against the Taliban. The bombing lasted nearly 20 days, the Taliban fled quickly, and then Afghan militias and U.S. troops began to enter Kabul.
Amra is at war between the Taliban and the Afghan government, and Amra is confused about Afghanistan's future.
"Actually, I don't support either. The Afghan government is too corrupt to spend money on doing things for the people. When the Taliban were in power, life was a little safer and less worried. But when the Taliban ruled, the economy did not develop much, and their policies were stricter for girls, and girls could not stand it. Amra said.
On July 12, 2021, local time, In Kandahar, Afghanistan, the Afghan government forces and the Taliban continued to fight fiercely, and people fled their homes. /IC photo
On the current battlefield, the Taliban are constantly seizing new regional control, advancing from Afghanistan's periphery to the central part of the capital, and controlling several key border crossings and crossings between Afghanistan and its neighboring neighbors Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. After the announcement of the full withdrawal of the US military, many analysts in the United States predicted that as the Taliban continue to grow, the Afghan government may collapse in the next 6 months to 2 years.
However, the current situation on the battlefield is unclear, the number of areas controlled by the Taliban is not accurately known, and the parties have different accounts of territorial control.
The Taliban had previously claimed control of 85 percent of Afghanistan's territory. The Afghan government denies this, saying it is just a propaganda tactic of the Taliban. The latest data from the U.S. news site Long War Journal shows that the Taliban control more than half of the areas, and Al Jazeera reported that the Taliban have now surrounded 17 of the 34 provincial capitals, but have not yet controlled any of them.
For the comparison of military strength between the two sides, Qian Feng, director of the research department of the National Institute of National Strategic Studies of Tsinghua University, said in an interview with the Beijing News reporter that the Taliban is not as unstoppable as the report renders, and the Afghan government army is not vulnerable. "Many reports say the Taliban have seized new areas, but few reports mention that Afghan government forces have retaken some areas from the Taliban."
On July 14, 2021, local time, in Spinboldeck, the Afghan border, Afghan security forces stood guard at the checkpoint. /IC photo
Qian Feng believes that whether the Taliban will capture the capital Kabul and win a nationwide military victory as it did more than 20 years ago, because the current international situation has changed. "In the mid-1990s, and even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Afghanistan in general was a bit of a forgotten corner of the international community. But now, international pressure is real. International opposition to the war within Afghanistan is generally opposed and the conflict is resolved through peaceful negotiations between the two sides. ”
However, the analysis of the US "Diplomacy" magazine believes that the Taliban's combat force is stronger and can gain an advantage on the battlefield. An important factor in this is the deep-seated sense of resistance to foreign enemies in Afghan culture that inspires Taliban soldiers. The Afghan government forces, on the other hand, are unable to inspire the same spirit of resistance in their hearts because of their alliance with the U.S. military. This asymmetry of belief also explains why, on many battlefields in Afghanistan, government forces, despite their numerical superiority and at least equal numbers of ammunition and supplies, gave up their defenses without much fighting.
Regarding the current tensions in Afghanistan, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Atmar in Dushanbe on July 14 that the top priority is to avoid civil war and restart intra-Afghan negotiations, Xinhua reported. China supports the principle of "Afghan ownership and Afghan leadership" and the use of dialogue and consultation to make Afghanistan an independent, independent and neutral country.
The "failed to transform" Afghan government
The Taliban's current large-scale territorial struggle not only exposes the lack of military and security forces of the Afghan government, but also shows the failure of the US "plan to transform Afghanistan".
After the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it not only ousted the Taliban regime, but also supported an Afghan government under the Western political framework in an attempt to "transform Afghanistan." But the overconfident United States has also further torn the country apart by forcefully excluding Taliban forces from Afghanistan's national reconstruction process.
"The George W. Bush administration proposed the so-called 'Greater Middle East Plan' at the time in an attempt to transform the Middle East, but it has now become a joke. Coupled with the importance of Afghanistan's geographical location at the intersection of the four sides, the United States is eager to gain a foothold here and obtain a strategic base in Eurasia. Qian Feng said in an interview with the Beijing News reporter.
However, the US-led political reconstruction has seen a serious phenomenon of "water and soil dissatisfaction" in Afghanistan, and problems such as electoral chaos, insufficient governance capacity, and corruption have reduced the authority and dominance of the Afghan government.
In the two most recent general elections in Afghanistan, there has been confusion in which candidates do not accept the results.
In 2014, both Candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, claimed electoral victory. The 2019 election was even more chaotic, with Abdullah accusing him of fraud, refusing to accept Ghani's victory, and even a "peculiar" confrontation in which the two held their respective presidential inauguration ceremonies. Eventually, under constant lobbying from U.S. representatives, Ghani was re-elected president and Abdullah chaired the High Level Committee for National Reconciliation.
The Afghan Government also has a serious problem of internal corruption. A 2012 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted that corruption, insecurity and unemployment in Afghanistan were among the main challenges it faced.
"If the government gets 1,000 yuan, the maximum that can actually be used on the people is only 100 yuan, and the rest goes into their own pockets." Amra, who has lived in Afghanistan for nearly 30 years, said.
Moreover, the Afghan Government has never been able to achieve full control over the country. "The decree cannot come out of Kabul" is a phrase that many media have described the Afghan government, and in many rural areas and small cities, the Afghan government's control is seriously insufficient. The Taliban's fighting forces have also been challenging the Afghan government's rule.
An analysis of U.S. failures in Afghanistan by U.S. Diplomacy magazine pointed out that it was a major mistake for the George W. Bush administration to completely exclude the Taliban from the solution of national reconstruction in Afghanistan.
After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, it tried to negotiate peace, was willing to lay down its arms, and acknowledged that karzai, then elected chairman of the interim government elected by Afghan militias, was the country's legitimate leader, but the U.S. government rejected that request at the time. Between 2002 and 2004, the Taliban also continued to seek peace talks, but both were rejected by the United States, and the Taliban did not secure a seat at the Afghan reconstruction conference table.
Unaware of the complexity of the internal power race in Afghanistan, the Bush administration confidently declared "mission accomplished" after defeating the Taliban. But because of their exclusion from state-building, the Taliban were pushed back to the battlefield and dragged the U.S. military back to the quagmire of war for more than a decade.
The comeback of the Taliban
As the Taliban's territorial offensive continues to expand, many fear that the Taliban regime of 20 years ago, which ruled strictly by the Shariah, is back, but the current Taliban seem to have changed on the surface.
The Taliban grew in the mid-1990s as a form of islamic school students from southern Kandahar, Afghanistan. In 1996, the Taliban swept across the country during the Afghan civil war to establish a fundamentalist "Islamic Emirate" that began its five-year rule.
Under its rule, women's social life was severely restricted. Women are denied access to education and work outside the home, and need to cover themselves from head to toe in clothing. Women cannot go out alone without a male family member.
In terms of religious beliefs, the Taliban regime at the time was not tolerant of dissent. In 2001, the Taliban regime blew up two Bamiyan Buddhas carved into afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, provoking outrage among the local population and the international community.
In addition, drug production and trade in Afghanistan have become more unregulated. A October 2003 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted that Afghanistan supplied three quarters of the world's drug and that the land in its territory for opium poppy cultivation had increased by 8 per cent over the past 10 years. After the defeat of the Taliban regime, its mountainous forces continued to rely heavily on the drug trade for their funding.
However, in the current scorching situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban, while showing the international community its willingness to negotiate peacefully, has also revealed that it will make changes to the previous methods of strictly adhering to Sharia law.
On July 8, the Taliban delegation expressed its willingness to respect women's rights under the norms of the Islamic faith and its commitment to eradicate the drug epidemic once and for all in the wake of the chaotic fighting in Afghanistan.
Separately, during the peace talks in Doha in April 2019, Taliban spokesman Muzahid said women would be present for the first time in the Taliban delegation, Al Jazeera reported. He also said the Taliban had changed to encourage women to receive education and to encourage the granting of other rights to women within the framework of observance of the Islamic Shariah.
Regarding these commitments made by the Taliban, Qian Feng told the Beijing News, "This may be a stopgap measure for the Taliban to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and the understanding of the international community." ”
Qian Feng believes that there are indeed signs that the Taliban are moving from the radical policies of that year to a slightly moderate and pragmatic direction. However, it is not yet possible to fully determine that the Taliban have indeed changed, and it remains to be seen how they will practice in the future. It is possible that the Taliban are now aware that their policies of 20 years ago were unpopular and need to adapt to social change to make adjustments. But it is also possible that verbal changes will be made in order to gain more Afghan support and win the understanding of the international community in the negotiations.
How long is afghanistan until lasting peace is achieved?
After the full withdrawal of U.S. troops, Amra said, "It's a good thing, they're not doing afghanistan any good by staying here." ”
After the U.S. military entered Afghanistan in 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime, it remained in Afghanistan to encircle its remnants. But no matter how much the United States invests military power and money, it cannot completely suppress the Taliban forces. Under the pressure of huge war costs and domestic opposition, the previous two presidents of the United States tried to get the United States to withdraw its troops completely, but both failed. Until April 14 this year, the Biden administration finally finalized the time for a full withdrawal. On 2 July, the full withdrawal was nearly complete. The war in Afghanistan, which many Americans considered "doomed to fail," finally came to an end.
Data map: On May 5, 2014, local time, US soldiers stationed in Afghanistan were on duty outside the camp. /IC photo
With the departure of the United States, a third force, the decision to achieve lasting peace and stability is returned to the Afghans themselves. The challenge now is whether a negotiated peace agreement can be reached between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
On July 18, the Taliban held a new round of peace talks with the Afghan government in Doha. The two sides agreed to continue high-level peace talks and speed up the negotiation process, but the peace talks did not make substantive progress such as the signing of a ceasefire agreement. Afghanistan has seen an important Eid al-Adha in recent days, and the Taliban, while not explicitly indicating a ceasefire during this period, said it would remain "on the defensive."
At present, it is generally believed that the Taliban have a greater advantage on the battlefield, but the Taliban have shown a posture of willingness to resolve the conflict through peace talks. Qian Feng believes that under the pressure of the international community's ordinary opposition to the outbreak of a fierce civil war within Afghanistan, the Taliban will show this posture of willingness to negotiate peace, so as to alleviate international pressure, and at the same time use its advantages on the battlefield to raise the "asking price" of negotiations, so as to promote peace and promote talks.
As for whether peace talks can be achieved, the US think tank "Foreign Relations Association" has analyzed that there are two possibilities for the failure of peace talks, one is that the two sides cannot reach an agreement on political power-sharing programs, constitutional formulation, religious rights arrangements, women's rights and prisoner-of-war exchanges, etc. The agreement reached between the United States and the Taliban in February 2020 did not solve these problems well, resulting in the subsequent peace agreement becoming a dead letter. Another possibility is that after a peace deal, some anti-Taliban factions within the Afghan government will not accept the peace talks.
Qian Feng held that the current process of peaceful dialogue has not yet come to an end, and there is still hope for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. "For the peaceful future of Afghanistan, we must first rely on the Afghan people themselves. The leaders of the two afghan sides should take the development of the country and improve the people's livelihood as the premise, abandon the past grievances, and both sides have made concessions. In addition, the realization of the peace talks will also require the efforts of the international community, and the parties need to urge them to resolve the conflict peacefully and avoid the Afghan people falling into war again. ”
Beijing News trainee reporter Xiang Chenyu
Edited by Zhang Lei, Proofreader Wu Xingfa