Hira Bahadur Thapa

When a peace deal was struck between the Taliban, the resurgent Islamist group in Afghanistan and the US administration in February 2020, the international community heaved a great sigh of relief.

The deal was supposed to bring the withdrawal of US forces stationed in Afghanistan and the Taliban in return would enter into negotiations with the government for establishing peace in the country through a power-sharing agreement.

As per the above arrangement, the Biden administration has started pulling out its forces from Afghanistan beginning from May last and hopes to complete the process by the end of this month.

Despite ongoing peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Doha, there is little optimism as negotiations have not been progressing well.

Power sharing

Ominously, the Islamist group is buying time to strengthen its position by not being serious about talks and simultaneously carrying out attacks in various parts of the country. Analysts contend that by accelerating the attacks, the Taliban are pressuring the government of Ashraf Ghani to concede to their demands concerning power sharing.

Reports suggest that the Taliban are capturing areas heretofore under the government control and their attacks are getting more ferocious fueling the fear that Afghanistan may revert back to pre-2002 situation when they became notorious especially in banning schools for the females besides committing other atrocities.

Coinciding with US forces drawdown from the country, the Taliban attacks have accelerated and in view of Afghan government’s inability to repel them. The American air support is provided but how far it will be enough for neutralising the attacking Islamists remains uncertain.

More territories are falling into the Taliban control and anxieties are growing that the country will usher in lingering violence. Such concerns are glaringly echoed in the recent briefing of the special session of the UN Security Council by Deborah Lyons, the special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan. She has warned categorically that without action, the country could descend into a situation of catastrophe.

The UN special representative added at the August 6 session of the UN Security Council that Afghanistan had become to resemble the battlefields of Syria and Sarajevo, with the Taliban making a strategic decision to attack urban areas, causing hundreds of deaths among civilians in just the last few weeks. She continued that the fighting comes on the top of a punishing drought that has left 18.5 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

UN observers have feared that the past few weeks of increasing violence fueled by victorious Taliban as region after region in Afghanistan start falling into their capture with Afghan forces becoming incapable of halting the Islamist group’s advance have been specially calamitous even by the standards of 20-year long war which began with US’s invasion of the country following September 11, 2001 attacks.

No doubt that the violence has escalated since April when the US president announced the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan and emboldened Taliban have controlled major cities in west and south and are surrounding Kandahar, the second largest city.

The greatest irony of Afghanistan has been that the same Islamist group, the Taliban, which once was the blue boy of the US in repelling the invading Soviet forces in the 1990s, turned into an arch-rival of its former benefactor, after US invasion toppling Taliban government. Then the Taliban was believed to have collaborated with the Al Qaeda, the notorious terrorist group blamed for launching attacks on the US soil in 2001.

Afghanistan’s neighbours are competing with each other in exerting their influence as highlighted by Indian and Pakistani relations with the Islamist group and the reigning government in the country. While India is amenable to Ghani government, Pakistan views the Taliban as a valued partner to counterbalance the Indian influence.

Recent geopolitical transformation in the region too plays a role in shaping the current civil war in Afghanistan. US leverage vis-à-vis Pakistan is even less effective now that a rising China has increased aid and investment in Pakistan in the face of US hostility towards Beijing. Definitively, for China, the economic corridor with Pakistan is one of the biggest pieces of its massive infrastructure investment drive known as Belt and Road Initiative.

It is a fact that agreement between Taliban and the US paved the way for pullout of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, it sadly has not created conditions conducive to peace in the country. More violence abets humanitarian crisis.

Humanitarian appeal

Now is the time when the UN should expend additional resources in making effective responses to the crisis in Afghanistan, where two of its envoys are not sufficiently empowered to make a difference. The UN’s humanitarian appeal to support the basic needs of Afghans remains woefully under-resourced. Furthermore, the UN Security Council has looked on blankly as Doha peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government is stalemated.

In fact, regional powers, guided more by their own parochial interests, are not in a credible position to help push the peace negotiations. Therefore, the UN should step in to fill the vacuum. The UN Secretary-General should convene the Security Council and get a clear mandate to empower the UN; both in the country and at the negotiating table.

Often the UN faces criticism for failing to prevent conflicts turning into catastrophe. Afghanistan offers the UN an opportunity to prove its worth in maintaining international peace and security before it is too late.

(Thapa was Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008-09. Thapahira17@gmail.com)