Ali Raza Momand
The Soviets came and went leaving Afghanistan in shatters. The Americans are doing almost the same with little positive changes so much so that today’s Afghanistan is relatively advanced in some of the institutions than one of the 90s. Russian intervention in Afghan affairs was part of the cold war power politics in a bipolar world and the American’s that of the new cold war power politics with China replacing in some spheres the Soviets as the other major player in a relatively multi-polarity. The cold war (1945-1990) was centred on expanding sphere of influence (political-cum-economic) by both the USA and the ex-USSR in promoting their respective ideologies of free-market capitalism and communism. The new cold war is for the most part economic-cumpolitical warfare between emerging China and the USA being based on attaining global influence through the instruments of establishing and undoing economic zones, statism, propaganda and survival. The people’s Republic of China presents itself as a model of rapid economic growth with less military engagement regionally and globally through expanding its statism through the economic corridor which aptly is taken to interconnect three major continents of immense importance to the global economy and politics. The US takes China in a zero-sum game and perceives all these projects as antithetical to her global sway. For China to move forward with its global designs, need a safer the world as her trajectory as of now is mostly economic in nature for which peace is a central object.Contrary to it, the American way of attaining global influence had and has been one of more political than economic in nature encompassing regime change, conflicts and wars wherein she could come to the rescue of her associates against her installed others as well as selling her weapons to the warring segments thereby making money and influence by the same token. As was the case in the cold war, Afghanistan gets flashpoint importance in the new cold war at the same time due to its geopolitics and porous interior. China tries to keep Afghanistan part of her flagship projects because of its proximity to the energy-rich Central Asian countries and oil-rich Arab world via Iran and thus is in need of a peaceful state of affairs there within. Opposite to it, the US again needs an anarchic kind of Afghan polity wherein to hijack one or some of the war brigades and use them as her proxies against China mostly to disturb the Chinese Built and Road Initiative and thereby meeting her Asia specific interests in particular and the global in general. Other global actors involved in Afghan affairs include among others the Russian Federation, Pakistan, Iran, and India. Each tries to push its lobby into the afghan power chess. Moscow, Tehran and Islamabad Conferences where the Taliban were a party to them exhibit keen interests of the hosts in Afghan affairs.They’re again missing the the central point is that any governing setup that doesn’t have popular support at its back is not viable. Therelapse of terror sounds nowhere good for the infant institutional development in Afghanistan and relatively less serious efforts by the Afghan government to impede acceleration in the waves of terror obviously leads one to doubt the efficacy of Afghanistan as state and society as well as over sky-high claims by the US-led international coalition against terrorism. In case Afghanistan falls prey to terror again, none of the intruders will go unaffected. This time, the Taliban have more fragments than before and multiple interests to lobby
