A disaster foretold

Whoever has ruled Afghanistan, the country has remained a problem for Pakistan. Islamabad’s responses, however, have aggravated the situation. Any change in Afghan policy must begin with a clearer understanding of how the crisis developed.

Afghanistan’s internal divisions and its position at the crossroads of competing geopolitical interests have repeatedly invited outside intervention. Soviet expansionism, America’s attraction to war, Pakistan’s security priorities and the global Islamic revival all shaped the country. Pakistan and Afghanistan became conduits for extremist and jihadist currents during America’s wars, from which the Taliban emerged.

The article presents the United States’ Afghan intervention as a long failure. Washington entered without a clear strategy, assuming that military and technological superiority would reshape conditions on the ground. That assumption collapsed. Successive administrations continued the conflict while offering changing justifications, and the United States ultimately left after becoming exhausted by failure.

Afghans, the article argues, suffered under both the Taliban and the corrupt political establishment that preceded it. Afghanistan’s fault lines include ethnic tension, the rural-urban divide, sectarian conflict, ideological clashes and competition between Kabul’s Pakhtun-dominated elite and regional power brokers. The wars also created a war economy that empowered corrupt stakeholders in instability.

The article places much of the responsibility on Afghanistan’s ruling elite, while also criticizing Pakistan’s approach. It argues that Kabul should have worked with Islamabad to address the Taliban problem. It further says that Afghanistan’s historical promotion of the Pakhtunistan issue and refusal to accept the Durand Line helped sustain the roots of conflict between the two countries.