EDITORIAL: That the Islamic State (IS) reminded everybody through a suicide attack on the Kabul airport on Thursday that it hadn’t gone anywhere just yet is a profoundly grim reality to say the least. It is, however, a fact that the Americans got a whiff of it (suicide attack) in advance, just in time to warn all US citizens to get out of the area but not soon enough for all of them to be able to save their lives. How this information was obtained or whether or not it was relayed to the Taliban will take a little time to come out, but for the moment this attack has clearly raised the stakes in Afghanistan and dealt the already clumsy US departure and diminishing US prestige yet another savage blow.
Far away in Washington, President Joe Biden can shed tears and wave fists all he likes, even promise that they would neither forget nor forgive, but the fact is that there is nothing the Americans can do about this situation any longer. His energies would, in fact, be put to much better use fending off a revitalised Republican charge that is sure to leverage this attack to hound his administration for quite a while to come. In Afghanistan, meantime, the response is about as practical as can be expected at such a time. The Taliban and remnants of the old Northern Alliance, holed up far north in the Panjsher Valley, have decided not to fight each other for the time being, which is a very welcome development.
And the evacuations are going to continue. For now they’ll first fly out everybody to neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, and then clear people out after settling issues like visas, etc. This will once again put the spotlight on the security machinery of these countries, including Pakistan. Once this phase is complete, which is expected to take a month or so, popular attention will go back to Afghanistan, and especially how the Taliban deal with renewed threat of IS. Perhaps if the next phase is handled properly and maturely, the US and the Taliban could find a way to work together because their interests are now aligned when it comes to IS; and both also have a stake in ensuring lasting peace in Afghanistan for their own separate reasons. The Americans know very well that the Taliban were the only force in Afghanistan that was militarily fighting off IS even when they were fully committed to the fight against the US-led occupation force. And President Biden himself admitted at the press conference the other day that he had seen no proof yet of any sort of collaboration between the Taliban and IS.
The stage seems set, then, for a dramatic and historic reversal of US strategy in war-torn Afghanistan. After spending two decades and about two trillion dollars in trying to defeat the Taliban and win the war, they must now do whatever they can to help the same old enemy win its fight against another, and in the eyes of the Americans at least, pretty similar foe. The first and only order of business must be preventing any more attacks from IS, for which they would have to stop creating situations that can be exploited so easily.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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