The Americans called their operation to oust the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda guests “Operation Enduring Freedom”. Thirteen years on, Afghans may feel the name might better have been “Operation Enduring Violence”. The seeds of the tragedy that NATO is to abandon at the end of this month, (10,000 US troops will now stay in combat roles) were laid the day the last Talib scuttled out of Kabul and headed for the hills in 2001. In the wake of victory, an international conference was held in Bonn at which the economic and political future of Afghanistan was mapped out. A raft of infrastructure and social projects was identified. Donors from all over the world committed to fund, staff and support these works. The Kingdom was to the fore in promising and later fully delivering generous subventions for the rebuilding of the country, shattered by some 30 years of warfare. The tragedy of the Bonn conference in December 2001 was that not everyone who should have attended did so. The crucial delegation that was missing was from the Taliban. No invitation was ever considered, let alone issued. Had they been invited the Taliban might well have refused. Mullah Omar, their elusive leader, could very well have been in no mood to talk to anyone. But other Taliban leaders might have been more interested in going to Bonn. It was the failure to try to reach out to the Taliban that guaranteed their return as guerrilla fighters, along with their assiduous undermining of the greater part of the aid-funded projects that seemed so assured when first spoken of in Bonn. The ignorant George W Bush White House crowed that they had bombed the Taliban right back into the Stone Age from which they had come. The Americans took the widespread absence of fighting in Afghanistan as evidence that the Taliban were destroyed as a military force. Bush seemed to dismiss out of hand the possibility that they were instead merely regrouping. This crass analysis informed Bush's decision to settle America's unfinished business with Saddam Hussein. The immense military, administrative and diplomatic drain that the Iraq invasion imposed on Washington, turned Afghanistan into an unimportant and neglected side show. Thus America and its NATO allies not only lost the military edge in Afghanistan, they squandered the political initiative as well. The Hamid Karzai presidency was notable for its corruption and incompetence. A Washington more closely engaged could have headed off the plunder of state assets, not to mention foreign aid. Now the country has a new president in Ashraf Ghani, and the retreating NATO leaders are trying to pretend a bright new future. The London conference yesterday hosted by President Ghani and British Prime Minister David Cameron was supposed to put a positive spin on what has been achieved in the last 13 years. After June's second-round Afghan presidential election, there was a three-month delay while Abdullah Abdullah refused to accept that Ghani had beaten him. The US-brokered compromise is that Abdullah gets the role of “Chief Executive”. More than two months on from that power-sharing deal, agreement has yet to be reached on cabinet members. Just as in Bonn, even though they are now clearly more than ever part of Afghanistan's future, the Taliban were not invited to yesterday's London gathering. A serious error of judgement.
