What are we doing in Afghanistan?

Thinking about the Taliban

Whoever they are or whatever they represent, I know little about . Of course, I hear or read about the entity more-or-less every day; yet the way the term is used, on one of the BBC’s news pages today, for instance, assumes that I know about ‘the Taliban’ or at least know sufficient about them (or it) to make sense of the rest of the article.

Let me set out what I do recall. At one time, the Taliban (whoever they were or are) were the good guys. They were the white hats whilst the Russian invaders were the black hats. If I recall correctly, the white hats won the war (with assistance, I seem to remember) from external sources, captured Kabul, and formed a government.

From then on, things went awry. The Taliban government governed in a way which turned them into black hats. NATO military forces expelled the Taliban government from Kabul. A different government is now in place there as the result of an election.

I can see the holes in the story, but that the story as I recall it. Not for the first time, foreign affairs, even when they include the deployment of British forces, take up less of the memory than domestic affairs.

I ought to know more about these Taliban forces; I ought to know more about the purposes of the war which is being fought between those forces and the British and other NATO ones. There are well-nigh daily accounts of engagements between the two forces.

I want to know something about the known or assumed purposes of these Taliban forces. I also want to know the composition of these forces. Suppose that the bulk of the Taliban forces are Afghans (that is, people who were born or lived in Afghanistan) then the NATO forces are taking one side in an intra-national dispute. If the Taliban forces draw their soldiers from tribes which inhabit the territories close to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, then the dispute may be an international one.

War, as ever, is diplomacy which is conducted by other means. Wars are fought because one side seeks a settlement which, it is believed, will not be available by non-warlike means. So what are the NAT)O (British) political purposes, the achievement of which is to be accomplished by war.

It seems to me to be too easy, much too easy, to answer with the one word ‘Terrorism’. There may indeed be connexions between the Taliban forces (whoever they are) and the purposes of international organisations who seek to achieve these purposes by large-scale criminal destruction. However, if there are connexions, they must be exposed. Assertion alone is not enough.

A peace may be a Carthagenian one or it may be a negotiated one. Which settlement is NATO (and the UK) seeking?