AFGHANISTAN has been described as the graveyard of empires. Empire or no empire, the US is the latest outsider to try its luck in the rugged mountains and treacherous valleys of this Central Asian country. The result has been neither encouraging nor reassuring. "Of the 98 US- or UN-designated terrorist organizations around the globe, 20 of them are in the Af-Pak region," Gen. John W. Nicholson, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said recently. We should remember that the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks. The war's declared aims were dismantling Al-Qaeda which engineered the attacks on America and removing the Taleban, that supposedly provided a safe haven for Al-Qaeda's operations, from power. Some 15 years after the Taleban's ouster, Afghanis know neither peace nor security. The only thing they know is that insurgents can stage attacks anywhere, any time as they proved Tuesday to devastating effect. The attacks in the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar killed more than 50 people including Kandahar deputy governor and five diplomats from UAE. The latter were on a visit to open an orphanage in the southern city. Also on Tuesday, seven people were killed in a Taliban attack on a security unit in the southern province of Helmand. The violence highlights the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, which has seen a steady increase in attacks, with record numbers of civilian casualties. More than 2,500 people were reported killed in the first nine months of 2016. Most of the civilian deaths have been attributed to battles in rural areas and to suicide and other bomb attacks. As for the security forces, a resurgent Taleban, officials say, have been killing 30 to 50 members of the former each day in recent members. From Jan. 1 through Aug. 19 of last year, 5,523 Afghan service members were killed and an additional 9,665 members wounded. Even though American forces and their allies could topple Taleban from power easily, the Afghan government is finding it difficult to restore peace and stability in the country or bring the whole country under its sway. It controls only an estimated 60 percent of the country's area — that too with the backing of US military. The rest is up for grabs and this has created a new version of old Great Game in which the United Kingdom and Russia competed with each other for control of Central Asia and India. The only difference is that now regional powers are trying for influence in Afghanistan and courting Taleban, some of them forgetting past enmity with the group. President Barack Obama was all for George Bush's Afghan adventure which he described as "a good war" in contrast to the "dump war" in Iraq. But, like Bush, he too failed to produce any good results for the blood and treasure spent by the Americans. Neither Bush nor Obama seem to have learned any lessons from America's humiliating defeat in Vietnam and Soviet debacle in Afghanistan. So Donald Trump will be inheriting an Afghanistan with an entirely changed strategic landscape. During their bid for presidency, Trump and his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton all but ignored Afghanistan, though it is America's longest war. The Republican candidate did, however, use to express skepticism of his country's overseas military adventures. Now that he is in charge, his approach may change if for no other reason than that he does not want to be known as the president who "lost" Afghanistan. Given some of his Cabinet appointments, Trump may ultimately embrace a degree of continuity with Obama's approach in Afghanistan and maintain current US troop levels. The president-elect has cited the need to protect neighboring Pakistan's nuclear weapons as a justification for America's continued presence in Afghanistan. So the stalemate will continue. Despite change of guard in White House, gunfire will continue to reverberate across Afghanistan.
