At the first Cabinet meeting on January 2, 2019, Donald Trump criticized the regional countries, particularly Russia, Pakistan and India by directly urging them to become more involved in the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan. “Yet the US has been fighting from 6,000 miles away”, Trump emphasized, and called on the aforesaid countries to take up the fight. Referring to the war between the Taliban and ISIS, he asserted that the US forces should not disrupt the ongoing conflict between the two groups because both groups are our enemies. He declared that Soviet Union’s involvement in the Afghanistan war in the 1980s led it to bankruptcy and breakup of the Soviet Union which consequently became today’s Russia. He also stated that the reason Russia invaded Afghanistan was because “terrorists” were plotting to attack Russia. “They were right to be there and invade Afghanistan”, he added.
The main weakness of Trump is that he usually discloses the confidentially heinous plots and evil aims of the US as opposed to the former US rulers who were skillfully able to conceal their hidden strategies at all. Such attitude of Trump does not only apply to Islamic Ummah for he regularly has revealed the brutal aims and vicious conspiracies of the US against all nations of the world, too.
This time, Trump analogized the logic of the US war with the logic of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, and exposed the true connotation of ‘terrorism’ from the point of view of the US and other infidels which is implied as ‘any type of Muslim fighters and Mujahedeen, or those who are struggling for Islam, are terrorists’. Even if they are of the fighters who had been politically, economically and militarily backed by the US against the Soviet Union, at some points in the history, or of those who have fought as fleeting ground forces for the US against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and have paved the way for the US occupation of Afghanistan. Enough is enough! We, the declined Muslims, must get awakened and consider all infidels (Kuffar) as a united nation against the Islamic Ummah and must never support any of them (Kuffar) against our own brothers as what the Islamic teachings have instructed.
In addition, Trump instructed his military commanders to exploit the scattered state of the Islamic Ummah. Speaking of the Taliban and ISIS, he insisted to let them fight each other because they are both enemies of the US. Meanwhile, such alienated state of the Islamic Ummah has been the cause and result of the prevailing international order led by the US and its national governing thoughts so that the Ummah would not get united under the framework of a political system.
Unlike the US governmental institutions or the so-called ‘Deep State’, Trump criticized Russia, India and Pakistan by calling on them to take more active role in the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan. However, the US government has not been satisfied with the decision to handing-over the entire affairs of Afghanistan to the hands of regional countries and to completely pulling itself out of the regional dilemma because the US has spent trillions of dollars and maneuvered for more than half a century to trace a tangible foothold in Afghanistan for itself which was finally achieved after 2001.
But what provoked Trump to publicly make such statements is due to the lack of progress in Afghanistan’s war and peace. “You talk about our Generals. I have given all the money our Generals wanted, but they did not carry out their jobs well enough in Afghanistan. They are fighting in Afghanistan for over 19 years. General Mattis must be so grateful of me for I granted him a sum of $700 billion which he never had dreamed of, but what did Mattis do for us? What did he do for us in Afghanistan? He did not do very well, and I am not satisfied with what he did in Afghanistan.”
The US has been confusingly stuck at its longest-ever war of the history; if the US plans to pull out of Afghanistan like what the Great Britain and the former Soviet Union did, it would not continue to stand as the superpower in the world anymore, and it would even lead to a staggering division of its States. Therefore, the US has initiated the peace process in order to seemingly, but not truly, conclude the Afghan war in order to preserve its footholds in the country and to effortlessly utilize the mines reservoirs, geopolitical position and narcotics of Afghanistan as well as to ultimately win the US citizens vote in the 2020 election.
To achieve these, the US forces have intensified the war against the Taliban to bring them to the negotiating table, which eventually is in the making, as the Taliban’s political representatives from Qatar Office, the Taliban’s military representatives from Quetta Council along with the participation of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have talked with Zalmay Khalilzad, the US State Department representative for reconciliation in Afghanistan, in Abu Dhabi; though, no tangible results of these dialogues have yet been acknowledged.
The only thing that can be perceived from the ‘US peace and war agenda’ in Afghanistan is that it has obviously reduced to a regional level as the Russia, Iran and China blocs are confronting the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE blocs. Because after a futile two-time talks between the US and the Taliban, the US employed all the means of its pressure against the Taliban as well as even invited the military representatives of the Taliban, which was coordinated by Pakistan, in Abu Dhabi talks, after which, the US indirectly paid $9 billion to Pakistan, $6 billion of which was funded by Saudi Arabia and the remaining $3 billion by the UAE. Such an agreement over Afghanistan’s peace process has created new skepticisms amongst the regional countries, especially Russia, China and Iran. Thus, to remove the skepticisms, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs, traveled to all three countries to ensure that the Pakistan’s agreement with the US on the peace process with the Taliban is not likely to harm the regional countries’ interests in the region.
Because all three countries, China, Russia and Iran still trust the diplomacy of Taliban, but when the issue of funding by Saudi and UAE to Pakistan came on the ground, it appeared to have arisen concerns. The visit of the Taliban representatives to Iran might have been apparently associated with this issue.
In fact, the office of the US presidency taken by Trump is a clear sign of America’s fall into decline. Because the slogan “America First” raised by Trump, during his presidential election campaign, brought him to power. On the other hand, the success of this slogan is a clear indication of the deteriorating situation in the US and its weak position on the international platform.
Hence, after 18 years of war, the current US is not the America as it used to be in the 20th century, that’s to say, it has become way more fragile from inside as well as has declined to a great extent on the international position, so it cannot secure its existence in this land “the Graveyard of Empires”.
Therefore, the Muslims of Afghanistan must not be deluded with the peace process agenda being commenced by the US because the US has never been loyal to any pledges and treaties it has ever made with any group and country throughout the history. For those who are unlikely to accept this, it would be a great idea if they refer to the jihadist leaders of the Northern Alliance, Dostum, Hekmatyar, Iran and North Korea… to learn more from them. Afghan fighters must grab the Islamic agenda in preference to the agendas designed by the US, other infidels and their puppets who have brought nothing but evil for the entire humanity throughout the history; as a result, their struggles would not only usher the Afghans, but would also be the commencement of a change to addressing the entire catastrophes throughout the Islamic lands in the world.
Saifullah Mustanir
Director of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Afghanistan