We risk another 9/11 by ignoring Afghanistan

Twenty-five years after 9/11, and five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, armed resistance against their rule is growing. The new militias are finding support in a population weary of Taliban rule. The latest group to join the fight, the Afghanistan United Front (AUF), have had their campaign blessed in a fatwa by a large group of Afghan Islamic clerics and scholars, who question the religious legitimacy of the Taliban. ‘It is our duty,’ they write, ‘to destroy the lying and deceptive narrative of the Taliban to save our religion and our people from this extremist and heretical group.’

Western countries risk making the same mistake again if they continue to ignore the flashing red warning lights coming from the country

Since the AUF began their military campaign in August they have carried out more than one attack a day, significantly increasing the momentum of military action across the country, with their most audacious attacks on targets in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar and Helmand in the south. They aim to destabilise the Taliban, showing that nowhere is safe. They are led by a former Afghan army general Sami Sadat, as is another group, the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), led by Yasin Zia, which has held parts of a district in the north-eastern province Badakhshan against determined Taliban attacks for some weeks now. Both Sadat and Zia have networks of former soldiers to draw on, ready recruits for a fightback as they have been hunted down by the Taliban for five years. The third main group, the National Resistance Front, has been in the field longest, and is led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the legendary guerrilla commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was killed by terrorists two days before 9/11.

Other militias with local support are also now fighting, making Afghanistan a complex battleground of small campaigns. All of these groups share the common objective of defeating the Taliban and building a country governed with the consent of its people, with equality for women and minorities, and no space for terrorists. Noble aims, and it could be that one of these militias becomes so dominant that other commanders join them. But there is also the possibility that the country could descend into a series of fights by rival militias as it has in the past – as new generation generals are joined in the field by old warlords, eager to take their share of the spoils.

What could help to contribute to a different way forward is some agreement among non-Taliban Afghan leaders, both inside and outside the country. But initiatives to deliver this have had no backing from western countries, obsessed instead with turning back Afghan refugees, ignoring the hell-hole they left behind. The Taliban leadership have no interest in governance, and while millions starve, amid what the World Food Programme call ‘the largest surge in malnutrition ever recorded,’ the mullahs in Kandahar instead spend their time thinking up new ways to prevent women from living normal lives. Not content with blocking access to education and work, they have blocked the training of new midwives. Afghanistan is once again the most dangerous place in the world to have a baby, as it was during the last Taliban administration in the 1990s. Where are the massive marches in the west against the continued oppression of Afghan women?

But the world has turned its back on Afghanistan, and Afghan political parties and civil society groups have had to create their own spaces to try to build consensus, amid constant problems of securing funding and visas for travel. The longest-running, the Vienna Process, has not met since February last year. Annual meetings in Cambridge, (the latest was last weekend) have made some progress in at least rehearsing differences in a safe space, synthesising different ‘roadmaps’ to get agreement on a common way forward. But without international sponsorship to create political space for the opposition, it is hard to see how these initiatives can build the wide legitimacy needed to present a united opposition to the Taliban.

Meanwhile, twenty-five years after 9/11, Afghanistan is once again not only a prison for women, but a haven for international terrorists, where madrasas turn out a generation of suicide bombers. Al Qaeda’s global headquarters is in Kandahar, and eye-witnesses have described seeing former Nato bases close to Kabul now full of foreign fighters.

I started reporting from Afghanistan in the 1990s, when it was known as ‘the forgotten war.’ It took 9/11 to show the folly of that path. Western countries risk making the same mistake again if they continue to ignore the flashing red warning lights coming from the country. It is time for a different policy: make space for the opposition, including armed resistance.