Facile Devji on why we must get engaged to the Taliban.

Feisal Devji writes in Newlines magazine.

 Most accounts of the Taliban’s emergence in the 1990s attribute it to a Saudi-funded and Pakistani-led project. 

This is misleading. The Saudis supported Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's Ittehad-al-Islami but Sayyaf joined the Northern Alliance. Hekmatyar was backed by Pakistan but he fled to Iran. The Taliban proper could be said to be Deobandi and thus ideologically aligned with Pakistan's military. However, it must be admitted that there was a spontaneous element in the appearance and early success of the Taliban. Thanks to Benazir and her 'Uncle' General Babar, Pakistan could be said to have been its earliest and firmest supporter prevailing on Saudi Arabia to recognize it as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Its aim was to create an Islamic state in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, one that would keep Iran at bay for the Saudis-

The Iranians did not have much interest in the region. Nor did the Saudis who had originally got involved only because of the Soviet threat to Baluchistan from whose coast Gulf shipping lanes were vulnerable.

 and India for the Pakistanis. 

Pakistan wanted 'strategic depth' against India. However, there was little prospect of an Indian invasion and Pakistan itself had plenty of terrorist training camps. 

This was necessary because the mujahedeen, who had routed the Soviets with help from the United States, were too riven by internecine quarrels to form a government.

This was because of ethnic and tribal rivalries. Rabbani was Tajik but could not prevail on his former Pakthoon disciples to accept him as President. Later, he briefly allied with Hekmatyar but Hekmatyar's extremism proved fatal to their common cause. Rabbani's government collapsed and Hekmatyar fled to Iran because the Pakistanis had begun to view him as a liability.

 But the Taliban were also heirs to the Marxist state the mujahedeen had defeated.

No. That state had disappeared without trace. 

 Like many anticolonial movements during the Cold War, Islamists, too, had adopted the Soviet model of an ideological, one-party state.

This is mad. The Taliban had no interest or knowledge of any 'ideology'. They established a traditional Emirate. In a country without elections what is the point of having political parties?

The Taliban were belated supporters of this Cold War model, which had already outlived its global historical context.

Sheer nonsense! These guys believed in Hot War- lots of bullets flying and people getting their heads chopped off. 

 Unlike Iran, the only successful version of such an Islamic state, 

Saudi Arabia is more successful and has been so for many many years.

the Taliban’s emirate in Afghanistan was crude, violent and unstable.

Though life got slightly better in the Pakhtun heartland as crazy warlords were suppressed. 

 But in contrast to pre-modern examples of Islamic governance, it remained true to the Soviet model in establishing the collective rule of an ideological party, without sharing it with kings, aristocrats, military commanders or even the higher clergy who had traditionally advised and supported Afghanistan’s previous rulers. 

This is foolish. Mullah Omar was...a Mullah. He was also the Emir. The Taliban was only cohesive because it wished to bring the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbegs etc all under complete Pashtun domination. However, there was a lot of factionalism and in-fighting.

The Taliban of the 1990s represented not the Middle Ages but rather a worn-out modernity from the 20th century.

Devji thinks Stalin forced Soviet men to grow beards and made Soviet women stay at home wearing burqa.

The Taliban was also one of the last Islamist movements to emerge at a time when Islamism’s old-fashioned vision of an ideological state was being challenged or discredited globally.

Islamism believes in a Religious, not an Ideological, state. There have been more recent Islamist movements e.g. Al Shabab, Boko Haram, ISIS etc, etc.

This soon became evident when al Qaeda sought refuge in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the country’s poverty, instability and lack of international recognition.

Osama bin Laden had made many good friends there because of his courage and generosity during the anti-Soviet struggle. 

 Unlike the Taliban, al Qaeda was a post-Cold War movement dedicated, like its Western enemies, to a global project in which the state was a means rather than an end.

This is mad. The Cold War was about 'global projects' to use 'the state' as 'a means' to spread a particular Ideology. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan as part of the 'Brezhnev doctrine' which said, once you go Red you stay Red or we will make you very dead'. The US financed the resistance for an geopolitical reason. Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 during the Cold War. Devji teaches History but doesn't seem to understand that dates matter.

 It would displace Islamism from the radical edge of politics and drive it to the center,

WTF! Osama and Zawahri wanted to turn Islamism into a Centrist political party? Their hero was Angela Merkel? 

 sometimes even toward liberalism,

& Gay rights and separation of Church and State?

 exemplified by the increasing popularity of the so-called Turkish model of electoral power and capitalist economics among parties like the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda after 9/11.

Devji thinks Al Qaeda will hold elections if it gains power. 

Coming to Afghanistan as adventurers, al Qaeda’s fighters turned into parasites who ended up destroying their host.

Al Qaeda killed Massood- the most formidable enemy the Taliban faced.  I think the Taliban expected Pakistan- which had nuclear weapons- would stand up for them. Instead the Pakistanis folded- arresting the Taliban Ambassador and handing him over to the Americans.

The Taliban seem to have imagined they could use the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to claim the international recognition they craved, either by conducting the investigation into al Qaeda’s responsibility or even by surrendering to the U.S.

No. Hamid Gul- former head of the ISI- explained their strategy to the BBC. They expected America to put boots on the ground. Then the Taliban would kill the Americans and take their nice shiny weapons. 

 In the event, they famously “melted away” with the U.S. invasion in the classic gesture of Afghan warfare, which is about 

guerilla warfare- not

negotiation and shifting allegiances more than it is about zero-sum games. Ideology here is not an existential condition so much as the mark of loyalty to a cause that is itself revocable.

A loyalty which isn't loyal isn't loyalty. On the other hand, there is no suggestion that these guys would not rather die than give up their religion. But that is 'Faith', not 'Ideology'. 

.

The Taliban have returned to power in the same way they left it 20 years ago,

Rubbish. They left it when the American air force bombed the shit out of it and then American soldiers turned up with superior fire power. They returned because America lost the will to fight and decided to leave.

 by negotiations and shifting allegiances in the wake of Western war crimes, venality and incompetence.

No. The Afghan Government soldiers surrendered to the Taliban because the Taliban were militarily dominant. They alone were able to guarantee that the soldiers could go home or join them. Negotiations don't matter. Having better armed, better paid, soldiers to whom the Government forces can surrender is what decides who gets to rule.

 So far, the change of regime has been remarkably nonviolent, with the Taliban also switching from a Soviet to an American narrative. 

Nobody can remember what Soviet narratives were. As for 'American narratives'- what are they? Trump trumpeting about how great he is? Biden weeping for his beloved Beau? 

Their statements of amnesty and inclusion may indicate not hypocrisy but the failure of Islamism. 

They want their enemies to turn up so they can take their time killing them.

For the Taliban’s biggest enemy is neither the international community, toward which they are emollient, nor liberal Afghans, but the Islamic State group (ISIS), which has taken up the mantle of global militancy from an al Qaeda in decline.

But killing its members and decimating clans which shelter them will soon solve that problem

ISIS was a product of 

Al Qaeda. It was more anti-Shia and anti-Kurd and thus there was a period when it was attractive to Turkey which had begun asserting itself. Iran too benefitted because the Iraqi and Syrian and Lebanese Shias became more dependent on them.

the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and, like the U.S. and coalition forces, represents the role of global politics in Afghanistan. 

How does ISIS Khorasan 'represent global politics'?

If al Qaeda and ISIS used Afghanistan as a base from which to conduct global operations, the U.S. and its allies did the same by replacing terrorism with counterterrorism. 

Devji thinks the victims of terrorism are on the same moral footing as those who carry it out. However, Biden and Trump withdrew from Afghanistan not because they had given up on anti-terrorism but because they could do it 'over the horizon' by launching missiles and drone strikes and so forth. They wanted to kill bad guys more cheaply. 

In both cases, the real objectives and beneficiaries were elsewhere, primarily in North America and Western Europe.

This is because Governments have to do things which benefit their own tax-payers.

 Afghanistan itself was a sideshow in which money and careers could be made and repatriated. In the meantime, an artificial economy was created there to service birds of passage, from diplomats and aid workers to military officials and outside contractors.

The place was a money pit. Henceforth more will be killed for a much smaller money outlay.

Whether it was al Qaeda and ISIS or the U.S. and its allies, the global focus of each party has made it impossible to stabilize Afghanistan.

Because nothing can 'stabilize' a multi-ethnic country with very weak institutions and little tax revenue.

 They have prevented it from settling into a regional context in which Afghanistan could foster the commercial and political relations that are essential for knitting it to the region by bonds of mutual dependence.

The Americans kept telling the Afghans in the Fifties and Sixties that they had zero interest in that part of the world. Sadly the King- who was a nice guy- presided over a famine so his ambitious cousin toppled him before himself being killed by Communists in the Army.

 If anything, the U.S. was interested in limiting, if not entirely disrupting, Afghanistan’s relations with Iran, Russia and China.

No. The Americans were perfectly happy for China to develop a big copper mine there. Iran only wants to recruit Afghan Shias to fight in Iraq and Syria. They have no interest in the place. Russia has been accused of paying a bounty for American soldiers killed by the Taliban but it too has no real interest in the region. It may be that China will now do a deal with the Taliban so as to connect up with Iran and that Pakistan too will exert pressure so as to benefit from integration into a Chinese led Economic sphere. 

But this only led to proxy wars fought between regional powers on Afghan soil, most importantly India and Pakistan’s jockeying for influence against one another. 

India gave economic aid- which was appreciated. It remains to be seen whether the new regime will back terrorism in Kashmir. However, if the Indians keep killing bad guys and carrying out cross-border strikes then the militants will look elsewhere.

The U.S. was unable to stop these conflicts, which made peace impossible in Afghanistan.

The truth is the US simply wasn't interested. Obama decided the whole thing was a waste of time. Once Osama was killed, the US should have packed its bags and left.

Afghanistan has been a site of global or great power rivalries since the 19th century, whether between the British and Russian empires, the U.S. and the Soviets, or the West and Islamic militancy

Not really. The British saw that the place was ungovernable. However the Soviets did see some utility in using Afghanistan as a stepping stone to Baluchistan and the warm waters of the Indian ocean. They soon regretted this delusion.

These conflicts have had other kinds of global consequences, including, in our own time, the outward flow of migrants and drugs.

Which would happen anyway.

 The task now is deglobalizing Afghanistan, something the involvement of distant powers like the U.S. and U.K. can only prevent. Their exit affords the prospect of a regional settlement in which no single country can take control of Afghanistan. It requires political maturity to accomplish this, but there is no other option if peace is the objective.

Devji is not mentioning the elephant in the room- viz Pakistan. The fact is Afghanistan has territorial claims against Pakistan. The nightmare scenario for the Punjabi dominated Army is that the Pakistani Taliban will destabilize the country and carry out attacks on Army Schools and Business enterprises. A professional army is vulnerable to insurgents who can live off the land.

 The hope is that China will provide money to the Afghans so as to protect their big investments in Pakistan. The problem is that Xi might decide that his plan to 'rebalance' the Chinese economy away from its littoral has been an expensive failure. Why have a 'belt and road' connecting you to places in irreversible economic decline who can export only drugs and thugs?  

The real choice facing Afghanistan is not between a corrupt republic and a dogmatic emirate but between global and regional approaches to peace.

Starting with Obama, the West has made it clear that Afghanistan is not a 'global' problem. Terrorism is- but the solution is drone strikes or cruise missiles or smart stuff of that sort. 

 The Taliban constitute the regional option, while ISIS and the international community, each in its own way, represent the global one.

This is nonsense. If you kill ISIS members on your territory then even if 'Jihadi Johns' turn up from Europe they will simply die of dysentery before they can get up to any mischief. 

 The Taliban’s two decades out of power have allowed it to forge relations within their neighborhood with former enemies like Iran, while abandoning erstwhile friends like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates outside it. Taking their place in the anti-Islamist camp after the Arab Spring, these Persian Gulf countries have lost influence among the Taliban, which have turned for advice to pro-Islamist states like Qatar and Turkey instead.

The problem here is that Turkey has taken another look at the place and decided it wants no part of that shit-show. In any case, why back Pashtuns against Uzbeks? Turkey would rather be seen as the champion of the Turanian people.  Doha, too, doesn't want to get involved. Both countries have refused to take over Kabul airport. Pakistan remains an interlocutor. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will probably seal their borders and try to forget their horrible neighbor. China may decide to write off its investments in the region so as to concentrate on doing high tech research so as to stay competitive with the West. 

We may not approve of Afghanistan making common cause with Russia, China and Iran, as well as with neighbors like Pakistan.

All these countries have their own reasons for taking delight in America's discomfiture. Pakistan alone has a strong motive for wanting the Taliban regime to succeed. But Pakistan is broke. 

 But such a regional arrangement is the only way to prevent Afghanistan from hosting terrorists or promoting the heroin trade and outflow of refugees. 

It is up to the West to seal its borders and adopt sensible policies to help addicts. Afghan heroin is a threat to Pakistani and Iranians and even Indians in Punjab etc. Refugee flows into Pakistan could be very destabilizing. So, these are bilateral not 'global' problems. Technology has improved a lot. We may see 'smart missile' launched from 'stealth' air craft but then again we may not see any such thing because the Pentagon decides not to release the footage. 

Since the Taliban want international recognition and assistance, engaging them might offer the best chance to modulate Afghanistan’s social, political and economic life, while allowing for its regional integration in a pluralist neighborhood. To call for more interventions and sanctions is to risk another civil war, and so the West’s exit must become its opportunity.

Sadly, engagement won't change anything on the ground. The West has learned that it is incapable of learning anything. As Obama said, its foreign policy consists of doing stupid shit. Its new policy is not to do expensive shit. Cheap shit is okay. What Americans want is a nice fat check from the Treasury not some Kennedy type rhetoric about 'bearing any burden' in the cause of Freedom. I am not saying some Americans won't want to get engaged to a nice hairy Taliban dude. But why buy the cow etc ?