Afghanistan: Post-Trump Dilemmas For Peace And Security

1. [ABSTRACT: The perception that Post-Trump Administration in Washington may be inexorably sliding into a state of dysfunctionality, might have prompted the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to hold out an olive branch to his Taliban opponents and make a peace-offer to them. How the Taliban will react is uncertain. They are disunited, but at the same time, gaining ground in battle. The peace-process will require greater calibration than what exists at this time between Kabul and Islamabad. So, as of now peace is not in sight and fighting is likely to continue. However, with the US interests and even capability on the wane, greater responsibility to end the conflict devolves on the regional leadership, if they are to avoid wider conflagrations, which will be to the benefit of none]

- Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Mullah Omar’s face bore no resemblance to that of the mythical beauty, Helen of Troy, in Homer’s epic tale ‘The Illiad’. Yet, both these two faces, thousands of years apart, caused the launch of a thousand ships, maritime vessels in the case of Helen, and airships in the case of Mullah Omar. On both occasions, the launches initiated prolonged wars. The war in Troy finished with the parting gift of a huge wooden horse from the Greeks, dragged into the city within walls by jubilant Trojans who wrongly assumed the Greeks had decamped, when in reality they were, in sufficient numbers, hidden in the horse’s belly. This was in defiance of the warning of the priest, Laocoon, who with remarkable perception, had issued a dire warning; “I fear the Greeks”, he had said with remarkable foresight, “even though they come bearing gifts”. Taking this metaphor further into the current Afghan situation, the Taliban, too have now been offered the gift of the olive branch of peace talks. I refer to President Ashraf Ghani’s proposal of 28th February 2018.But it seems the Taliban, unlike the Trojans of yore, may not be willing to buy. Not because they are aware of the outcome as in the Greek classics, but because of sheer pragmatism. They feel they are on the roll, and offers from the enemy can only be designed impede their progress.