It is an open question if the Taliban-US agreement and the US-Afghangovernment declaration would lead the country to the road to peace and stability.The former which was signed in Doha on February 29 and the latter issued inKabul on the same day are essentially meant to facilitate the withdrawal of UStroops from Afghanistan. Many imponderables remain but the agreement provides asmall opening to begin the end of the conflict which has gone on for almostfour and a half decades. That opening may rapidly close if the country’scurrent political leaders across the country and including the Taliban areunable to bridge divides and reconcile differences. That will bode ill not onlyfor Afghanistan but the region but will be in keeping with past experience whensuccessive Afghan leaders failed to turn the country away from the path ofconflict.
Historical evolution does not entirely depend on leaders. Natural andman-made changes play a large part in the lives of countries and peoples. Theforces which such transformations unleash, however, only operate through menand women. They influence and often constrict the options before leaders butthe true test of leadership lies in navigating through these changes to leadtheir peoples to safer and positive futures. That can only be so if leaders areable to focus on the feasible even while holding on to their vision. That canalso only be so if leaders rise above narrow personal and sectionalconsiderations to carry all their people together. This is especially so inmulti-ethnic, multi-sectarian countries such as Afghanistan.
Over these long decades how did successive Afghan leaders through theirpersonal predilections and ideological and theological choices cause a oncepeaceful and stable country get mired in violence and disruption?
It began in July 1973 when Daud Khan overthrew his cousin King Zahir Shahand with that coup ended the monarchy to establish a republic. Zahir Shah hadascended the throne in 1933 on the assassination of his father Nadir Shah. Hehad succeeded in giving the country a sense of calm leaving the day to daygovernance in the hands of more assertive members of his family including DaudKhan who served as Prime Minister from 1953 to 1963. The Daud coup tore thefabric of a conservative country. He was driven by personal ambition not by acommitment to republican principles. A ruthless political leader he relied onthe army which had been penetrated by communists.
The 1960s and 1970s witnessed ideological ferment across the world,including in Afghanistan where communist and religious zeal infused differentgroups who sought to actively promote their respective causes. There was nocommon meeting ground between them. In 1978 the communists overthrew and killedDaud Khan but fell out among themselves leading to the Soviet military entryinto the country in December 1979. The country largely revolted in a jihadagainst a foreign presence and against communist ideology and governancepractices which were considered to be anti-Islam. When it became clear that theSoviet leadership had decided to cut its losses and would leave AfghanistanPresident Najibullah who came into office in 1986 attempted to don thenationalist garb and also reconcile with religious leaders but by then it wastoo late.
The Soviets left the country in 1989 and two years later the Soviet Unionitself collapsed. In 1992 Afghan jihadi leaders came into their own but couldnot sink their differences. Consequently, Afghanistan became embroiled in abloody civil war which laid waste to large parts of the country adding to themisery of two decades of dislocation and turbulence. The jihadi leaders wereremarkable men; many of them deeply pious and patriotic but they lacked thewillingness to compromise which would lead to bridging ethnic and sectariandivides. Not one among them had the qualities necessary to carry all the peopletogether capture their imagination with a vision of a progressive and inclusivefuture in a world moving towards the digital age.
The internecine conflict of jihadi leaders paved the way for the Talibanunder the banner of Mullah Omar who was one time a low ranking member of ajihadi tanzeem himself. The Taliban, in the 1990s, simply lacked the thinkingand the capacity to run a modern state. Their vision of a pristine pastcondemned the people living in territories under their control to obscurantism.Interestingly, the US did not find them unacceptable per se. What they objectedto was the Taliban allowing the Al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan. Evenafter 9/11 the US asked the Taliban to hand over Al-Qaeda leadership which theTaliban refused to do. This led to war in which the Taliban were pushed southof the Durand Line.
The establishment of the Islamic Republic under a relatively liberalconstitution held the promise of reconciling differences in the Afghan polityand society. However, President Hamid Karzai who led the country from 2001 to2014 did not prove himself the great leader who could heal the country; heremained the quintessential Pushtoon tribal leader. His successor Ashraf Ghaniwho came to office on the back of a flawed election is modern in his outlookbut has not been able to reconcile the country’s many contradictions. It is notpromising that he has been re-elected in another flawed election.
Great leaders in countries with diversity have to be large hearted tocalm anxieties and relentlessly pursue the vision of inclusive societies.Afghanistan has been waiting for such a leader for decades.