Afghanistan’s agony, all but forgotten

While the big powers’ primary focus currently seems to be the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vladivostok, Afghanistan and its silent suffering seems to be all but forgotten by those sections of the international community who are usually seen as carrying any weight in international politics. So inconsequential seems to be the agony of Afghanistan that the scores of mainly civilian lives which are regularly snuffed-out in that tumultuous theatre of war are not considered ‘headline material’ any more by those sections of world media which are seen to matter.

But if the self-interest of states is the fuel that keeps the international economic and political systems going, it should not come as a surprise if the Asia-Pacific polities and those sections of the world which stand to gain by its prosperity are today all eyes on the region and its Summit. It is now almost a clichetic observation that the Asia-Pacific region is the virtual ‘economic powerhouse’ of the world.

This is one of the reasons why US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently on a wide-ranging and tightly-scheduled tour of the Asia-Pacific region. Like most other leaders of the world’s most powerful economies, she too would figure prominently at the Summit. In fact, Chinese and Japanese leaders will be there too in an indication that this meet is of great importance to the world’s principal economic powers. Essentially, the leaders’ task, we understand, will be to ensure that the Asia-Pacific is spared a crisis of the kind which is enervating the Euro-Zone.

Powerful economies

Be that as it may, the concern of developing countries should be to find out how such Western preoccupations would affect them, if at all there would be any substantive consequences from such engagements among the world’s powerful. While the most powerful economies would be championing free trade and unhindered access to oceans and trade routes, the principal worry of the Afghan civilian and many others in his position around the world, is whether he would live to see another day.

In a famous counter-thrust to a swipe which Republican Presidential contender Mitt Romney had at him, US President Barrack Obama is reported to have cited ‘Afghanistan’ as one of his successes, which his opponent seems to be conveniently overlooking. As in the case of Iraq, one could expect the US to seemingly move out of Afghanistan once it satisfies itself that minimum security functions could be carried out by the local security establishments concerned. However, social peace is yet to fully establish itself in Iraq and the same could be said of Afghanistan in 2014, when a marked scaling down of the US military presence in Afghanistan is expected.

Even as this commentary is being written, it is reported that a teen suicide bomber has detonated himself just outside the NATO headquarters in Kabul, killing scores of other civilians too in the process. Such needless bloodletting, should we say, is the order of things in Afghanistan.

Afghan people

President Obama and his administration would need to think long and deep on the tragedy the Western powers have brought about in Afghanistan, and to a degree in Iraq, before making speeding-up the US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan their only concern. The Western powers getting out of the war-battered country would be a promising prospect, but it is not realized that it is a tormented and traumatized Afghan soul that they are leaving behind in Afghanistan.

How could things be put right in this tangled soul, which has suffered since 1979, although Afghanistan was at the heart of the international power calculations of the major powers from very much earlier? This too is a prime issue that needs addressing because as long as the Afghan people are tormented by a sense of grievance, social stability of any kind cannot be expected.

But it is difficult to see the major powers leaving Afghanistan alone for any length of time. Afghanistan is of immense strategic importance to them and getting a foothold in the country has proved vital to monitor developments in the Gulf region. That is, Afghanistan has been central to particularly Western plans to have control over its oil supplies. Who, then, could guarantee enduring stability in Afghanistan?