Presently the US-policy in Afghanistan is full of contradiction which is evident from the fact that the USA is giving money, intelligence, air support etc to Afghan government (with huge number of about 3 hundred thousand fighters with Afghan government as per Prez Biden) to fight the Taliban but on the contrary President Ghani told to Afghan Parliament on August 2 that – “[It was time the Taliban and the Afghan government ACCEPTED each other and moved towards a peaceful solution. Moreover the Afghan government had a security plan to bring the situation under control within six months and the US supported the plan]” as reported also at https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghan-president-blames-abrupt-us-withdrawal-for-deteriorating-security-2500529 But Ghani is grossly underestimating Islam & China and is bound to lose this war if does not do course correction as given below:-
(1)- First of all Ghani should adopt the strategy of the Taliban. The Taliban are trying to finish the Afghan government for bringing Islamic State (Emirate) in Afghanistan but Ghani is talking about ACCEPTING Taliban. This is a fatal mistake of strategy on the part of Ghani government which Ghani has to rectify without any further delay. Moreover this woolly & fluffy approach of Ghani will lead to a situation where most of these government security forces may join Taliban especially when China is perceived to be backing Taliban.
(2)- An impression has spread all over the world especially in Muslim world that militant Jihadis of Taliban have defeated USA and its allies of NATO and others in Afghanistan hence “Qafir hai to us ko shamshir ka sahara, Momin hai to be teg hi ladta hai sipahi” (resources matter to only infidels whereas believers win even without resources). This is bound to motivate the international militant Jihadis to support Taliban not only for establishing Islamic (Emirate) rule in Afghanistan but also in countries of contiguous Central, South and East Asia (CSEA) which are having Muslim majority hence can easily be brought under one Islamic rule / authority.
(3)- Taliban has to do only two things for this:-
(i)- Adopt ‘authoritarian Chinese democracy’ where ‘Chinese Communist Party’ will be replaced by ‘Islamic clergy’. This will remove the defects which the Caliphate model of Baghdadi in ISIS had. Moreover this body of ‘Islamic clergy’ may have Islamic scholars from all over Muslim world which will remove the monopoly of Afghans in CSEA
(ii)- Adopt human-rights friendly policies towards religious minorities of CSEA and women etc. As far as brotherhood based justice, Islam already has it in addition to Islam being the most modern religion which worships the abstract which is in consonance with modern science & technology (it is the most difficult part because most of the contemporary Muslims & their religious leaders merely read Quran without practicing its basic principles hence hundreds of millions of Muslims are weeping and bleeding profusely from Myanmar to NAME region. Therefore people of Afghanistan should think twice before falling pray to the Jihadi charms of Taliban )
(4)- Contrary to popular perception Islamic CSEA has four plus points:-
(i)- Nuclear Pakistan will be a low hanging fruit for Taliban in realizing CSEA because Pakistan is following contradictory policies (people generally don’t realize that the contradictions and lack of integrity about ideology always brings defeat & failure). The Pakistan government and practically every one in Pakistan say that from the soil of Afghanistan, India with the approval / instigation of the USA and with the knowledge of Afghan government is creating trouble in Pakistan through Balochistan etc also with the intention of sabotaging the BRI / CPEC & other project of China. If Pakistan believes it is true (and international community including the UN is not doing anything about it under the pressure of the USA) then it should have not only openly supported the Taliban (which it created allegedly to counter this subversive acts of India) but should have also waged a war against the Afghanistan government. But on the contrary it tries to be goody-goody with Afghan government too.
(ii)- In order to protect its BRI / CPEC and other projects in CSEA region China will support Taliban in every way provided Taliban does not create problem in its Xinjiang province about human rights of Uighur Muslims which Taliban has already promised so to China (during July 28 meeting of Taliban leaders with Chinese foreign Minister) which can be termed as marriage of convenience between China & Taliban.
(iii)- Due to immense emotional appeal of Ghazwa-e-Hind the global militant Jihadis will support Taliban to convert Hindu Majority India (with about 200 million Muslims) into or carve out a Muslim majority India. Most of the ethnicities which invaded and ruled India for about 1,000 years are from the countries which border Afghanistan hence these ethnicities (from Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan) in Afghanistan consider themselves to be entitled to rule India (from where they were ultimately removed from power by Britishers).
(iv)- Though Jainism is the first rather only religion which is based on the State because its founder Prophet (Tirthankar) was Rishabh Dev (Adinath) who was King but now it has lost its basics. Presently Islam is the only religion (except Communism which has religious character when taken in its original flavor) which is focused on mustering the State in furthering its interest.
(5)- In such a scenario there is only one possibility for Afghan government to win against Taliban which is to have immaculate loyalty to ‘liberal Western democracy’ similar to loyalty which Taliban is showing towards militant Jihad. In a nutshell Afghan government should deal with Americanism and not so much with Americans. For this the Afghan government should even tell the leadership of the USA (its Administration and Congress) to be true towards ‘liberal Western democracy’ by getting the UN reformed regarding 4 hierarchies of democratic-secularism along with UN mechanism to enforce secular democracy in member States of the UN (including and especially in CSEA & larger Muslim world) as given below:-
(i)- In the UN there should be four categories of its members (A)- Countries constitutionally secular democracy like the USA, European countries, India etc (B)- Countries having only democracy but not secularism like Pakistan, Israel etc ( C)- Countries having only secularism but not democracy like China etc and (D)- Countries neither having secularism nor democracy like Iran, Saudi Arabia etc.
(ii)- There should be a stick & carrot mechanism at the UN (through voting rights to members, military intervention of UNPKF etc) in order to encourage secular democracy in the member countries of the UN.
(6)- It goes without saying that first Afghan government should adopt secular democracy and request the USA to move the UN to provide adequate manpower for the UNPKF and for ‘UN Election Commission’ for carrying out elections under its supervision in Afghanistan after getting the electoral list prepared (including of Afghan refugees who are presently in other countries).
It is hoped that Prez Ghani will realize the seriousness of the situation and will start taking the martial responsibilities (as supreme commander of armed forces of Afghanistan) in order to not only win war against Taliban in Afghanistan but also to strengthen secular democracy in rest of Muslim world (by realizing that without such global approach it will be difficult for the people of Afghanistan to ward-off the danger being posed by militant Jihadis of Taliban).
(Writer is author of ‘Betrayal of Americanism’ and presently staying in Shakopee, MN, USA)