Vengeance of the Afghan.

On Sunday August 15th, 2021. The Talibans entered the capital of Afghanistan Kabul. This was like a joke to me; so many questions ran through my mind some of which were “Did United States of America just lose another war?”,”What would the future of the Afghans look like?” and many other questions. Before we go down into our issue lets get a little background into Afghanistan . In 1953 Mohammed Zahir Shah the king of Afghanistan wanted to implement liberal reforms. He decided to devolve power, this move was popular with the citizens and most liked the modernization agenda of the king. Afghanistan didn’t have the resources to pull this project off so they needed external allies. They reached out to the United States of America for economical support and the Soviet Union for military support. The soldiers trained by the Soviet Union were indoctrinated to Stalin’s type of communism, an ideology that didn’t sit well with America and her capitalist ideals. Influx of soldiers with communist ideology made the ideology filter through the ranks. This laid the groundwork for a coup d’etat by General Daud Khan, who was upset the King didn’t implement a one-party state. The coup led to the rise of communism in Afghanistan and various factions that had a different definition of communism. This conflict also gave birth to fundamentalist groups like the “Mujahadeens”. The Amin led Afghan government was a bad representation of the communist ideals the Soviets preached; this led to the Invasion of the country by the Soviets in 1979. This led to an insurgency American financially supported (we would discuss this form of geopolitics in another article). In 1989 the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan, a win for the Americans politically.
Back to the issue of What happened in Afghanistan on 15th August. I remembered a line from the movie “Rambo” which said “God save us from the teeth of a tiger, the bite of a cobra and the vengeance of the Afghan”, this was always entertainment until 2001. In Afghanistan the Talibans had risen to power, a group that was very popular for financing its activities using opium sale a key ingredient in heroin production (a topic we would discuss in an article for another day). There was a power tussle within the group although, reports suggested they were allies to Al-Qaeda a terror organization led by Osama Bin Laden. After the September 11 attack in 2001, America wanted its ounce of flesh from the terror group so she launched the military operation “Operation Enduring Freedom” under the Bush administration. Fast forward to 2020 the Trump administration signed the peace agreement with the Talibans and commiting to the total withdrawal of US troops in the country after 20 years. The question remains “Was the occupation of the country by the United States of America worth it or is this just another Vietnam?” This is not an expose to discredit the US army after all the US – Taiwan presently taking place in the South China Sea (yet an article for another day) is a sign that the army is still strong.