Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra 19 August 2018
The geostrategic location of Afghanistan has tempted many dominant powers to intervene but in vain as no Empire or state has been able to occupy Afghanistan. The British and Czarist Empires and later the Soviet Union and the United States have failed to achieve their desired objectives in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was invaded twice by the British imperial power in the nineteenth century, and it is because of impassable terrain, religious unity, the balance of power between the Russian and British Empires and aversion of the Afghans towards foreign occupation that the British Empire failed to extend its sway into Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was considered geopolitically crucial for the Czarist Russia and later for the Soviet Union because it was considered the soft underbelly of the country historically. The British Empire and then the United States too got involved in Afghanistan and manipulated Afghan politics not only to limit Soviet penetration further south and but to spread their influence as well. All the powers tried to maintain at least a rough balance of power in Afghanistan. If one of the forces attempted to gain the preponderance of power in Afghanistan, the other power along with Afghanistan thwarted its hegemonic designs. For instance, the ruler Amanullah lent support not only to the pan-Islamic groups in Soviet Central Asia aimed at weakening Russian abilities, but he remained silent to British activities in stirring up pan-Islamism. The Afghans provided direct support and discreet aid to the Basmachi, a pan-Islamic movement, to resist the Soviet control in the Central Asian region.
Similarly, to contain the ambitions of the British Empire, Amanullah did not object to passage of men and arms from the Soviet Union through Afghanistan on their way to stir up trouble in North West Frontier Province of British India. To maintain its independence, Afghanistan pursued a policy of neutrality rather than joining any power-blocs or endorsing any externally imposed ideology. For instance, notwithstanding pressures on the ruler Habibullah to join Central Powers in their war with Britain and Russia, the ruler maintained neutrality throughout the fight as he was well aware of the geographic distance between Afghanistan and the Central Powers and the immediacy of his British and Russian borders.
Afghans were obsessed with independence and prioritized it over any material gains. For instance, Afghan ruler Amanullah declared war against the British allegedly being assured of Soviet financial backing although there was no available record of any Soviet military commitment to Afghanistan in 1919. During that time the British were providing an annual subsidy of more than one million rupees for the Afghan economy. By opening hostilities, Amanullah cut himself off from this support.
Afghanistan not only maintained strict neutrality during the two World Wars, but it also joined the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) during the Cold War. The policy of Neutrality and Mutual Non-aggression signed on June 24, 1931, with the Soviet Union was further extended in December 1955.
Afghan desire for neutrality and independence and balance of power between the US and the Soviet Union were blatantly breached following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 which led to spawning and strengthening of radical Islamic and fundamentalist groups sabotaging international peace. However, Afghanistan again proved to be a graveyard for the Soviet Union not only bleeding its resources both men and material, but the insurgency also weakened it sufficiently leading to its collapse following withdrawal. The America-led Afghan war in 2001 is yet another instance of breaching of Afghan neutrality which has not only claimed American resources to mammoth proportions, Washington is unable to exit without putting itself and others at the mercy of the non-state radical Islamic actors such as the Afghan Taliban and the ISIS. It seems that the US has neither the necessary hard power resources to force a solution to the Afghan problem nor does it have the required soft-power resources to reach a political settlement.
Breaching of the Afghan desire for neutrality and independence and overlooking the factor of balance of power that has had prevailed in Afghanistan resulted in a complex and volatile situation witnessing not only scramble for influence among the state actors, it engendered a power vacuum where non-state actors primarily the Afghan Taliban and ISIS staked claims over their share of power. Afghanistan is gradually turning into a graveyard of civilians with rising violence not only between the Taliban and the Afghan government supported by the US and NATO forces; people are also falling victims to the jostle for influence between Afghan Taliban and ISIS. The year 2018 witnessed the escalation of violence and killing of many innocent civilians with a surge in the instances of terrorist attacks.
On April 30, 2018, successive terror attacks in Kabul took the lives of more than 40 civilians including children and among which 10 were journalists. The offensive was dubbed as a war crime and organized violence against the Afghan media. The attack also highlighted the vulnerabilities of Afghan security mechanisms because it was launched in the capital city of Kabul. These strikes followed closely on the heels of a spate of severe attacks a week before in which more than 60 civilians were killed while they lined up to register to vote for the upcoming elections. The terror attacks were an attempt to sabotage the electoral process and derail the Afghan efforts at consolidating its fragile democracy. ISIS claimed all these attacks. On May 6, more than 17 civilians were killed, and more than 30 people were injured in Khost following a terror attack on a voter registration centre in eastern Afghanistan. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. On the same day, 7 Indian engineers engaged in the reconstruction activities were abducted. In the same month, a terrorist attack at Spinghar cricket stadium during a match in which more than eight people were killed and 45 wounded pointed to the fact that no area in Afghanistan is safe from the capital to the places of entertainment. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attacks as the innocent civilians were not even allowed to live let alone live peacefully in the month of Ramadan.
On July 1, 2018, terrorist offensives were undertaken in the form of a suicide bombing in the Afghan city of Jalalabad which killed 19 people including 17 persons from Sikh and Hindu communities. ISIS claimed this attack. Cases of suicide attacks in Jalalabad were not new. Similar modus-operandi was adopted in a few other terror attacks earlier taking a significant toll on civilians.
In one of the most disheartening and despicable attacks on human life, the ISIS claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed around 48 young people on August 15, 2018, among which 34 were students belonging to the Shiite minority sect and preparing for university entrance exams and the offensives wounded around 60 civilians.
It is noticeable that while the primary targets for the Taliban are the Afghan government institutions and officials aimed at the objective of building pressure on the US and the Afghan government, intentions of ISIS seem to be more dangerous and transnational with targets on civilians who did not conform to their religious beliefs.
ISIS targeted most of its offensives towards civilians of Shiite sect and Hazara ethnic community as it considered these minority groups as heretics. Religious communities like Hindus and Sikhs are not immune from ISIS terror strikes as the attack on July 1, 2018, indicated. While the Taliban stake its claim to be a legal and political actor in Afghanistan and therefore, they are not likely to claim responsibility for all the attacks which result in large-scale killings of Afghan civilians, ISIS has pan-Islamic objectives and openly claims its responsibility for the bombings taking a massive toll on civilians who they believe were heretics. Nevertheless, the Taliban have been responsible for more civilian killings as a UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report released on July 15, 2018, attributed 42 percent of civilian casualties to the Afghan Taliban and 18 percent to ISIS in the first half of 2018. The gap in the number of civilian casualties, for instance, the Taliban claimed responsibility for 26 attacks with civilian targets resulting in 453 civilian casualties and ISIS claimed responsibility for 15 attacks with 595 civilian casualties drives home the point that the group claims not all the civilian casualties perpetrated by the Taliban.
Many are killed as collateral damage caused by the armed clashes between the Afghan government and the Taliban, between the Taliban and the NATO and American forces and the Taliban attacks on government institutions and diplomatic presence of foreign countries. The report further stated that the civilians killed during the first six months of 2018 were the highest over the last decade since the agency began documentation. The second half of the year has already started to witness many appalling terror strikes taking lives of many civilians and would probably turn the year into one of the most violent years in Afghanistan.