Parmanand Pandey, Advocate, Supreme Court (Secretary General IPC)
In recent known history, two instances of the abject surrender of two big armies come to mind. The first one was the surrender of nearly one lakh Pakistani army personnel in Dhaka of (now) Bangladesh in December 1971 before the mighty army of India. The second instance is of the Afghan Army, which partly surrendered to the Taliban and partly flew away to a nebouring country Uzbekistan to save its life. This second shameless instance that happened on 15th August, 2021 in Kabul is unprecedented. Here is a professionally trained (Afghan) army that had three lakh fighting men on its rolls, which was facing only a 75, 000 strong ragtag primitive group of Taliban, and we find that this trained modern army left the field without even putting a show of fight.
It is unheard of in history when the leadership of a government has fled to some other country and the army has absconded from the fighting scene. This clearly shows the Afghan government, and the army consisted not only of cowards but of the supporters and sympathizers of the Taliban. Else, how can it be otherwise? The Afghan govt was knowing from the day one that Taliban were trying their best to oust the govt and wrest control of the country and also that its nebouring country Pakistan and its army were helping the Taliban in this mission – helping by supplying to Taliban terrorist recruits, modern arms and ammunition, providing medical facilities to their injured fighters, and hosting its HQ in Queta (a Pakistani city). Despite knowing this, the Afghan govt was recruiting a ghost amy – soldiers only on papers – taking their pay cheques from USA and embezzling that money. This fact is the proof that this govt and its army were not willing to fight Taliban. This Afghan govt committed a treachery against its people.
These bigoted Talibani terrorists will very soon convert Afghanistan into another Syria. It is ironic that when Russians had occupied Afghanistan in the late seventies, it was the USA that supplied modern arms and ammunitions to Talibans through Pakistan. The then President of Pakistan, General Zia ul Haque, used and fooled Americans to the hilt and got most of the arms diverted to its own country. He had then made the infamous statement of making a thousand cuts on the body of India to bleed and fester. In a way, America was responsible through Pakistan for creating the problems in Indian occupied Kashmir.
After the Russians left Afghanistan, in 2001 the Americans had occupied Afghanistan. Then again, the Taliban started getting arms and ammunition from China and Russia through Pakistan. Though America knew that it was only Pakistan that helped Taliban with arms and ammunition and recruits but it was never willing to contain this improper activity of Pakistan. Why? Because it never wanted India to become an emerging strong power in the world. For that it was necessary that Pakistan should remain strong enough to put India under constant pressure. Of course, it fitted American strategy that it should bolster India against China and should bolster Pakistan against India. Because of the American ambition to lord over the world, today Afghan people – and particularly its women – have been put to mortal danger.
Is it not the American hypocricy of the first order that in the name of human rights and democracy it remained in control of Afghanistan for 20 long years but would not take any action against Pakistan, which was extending support to Taliban for all these years and posed a threat to human rights and democracy in Afghanistan?
However, the ultimate loser has been India, which invested a whopping amount of Rupees 23 thousand crores in the last twenty years for developing the infrastructures like the building of Parliament, universities, factories, and roads, etc. in Afghanistan. As of now, it appears that the entire goodwill investments have gone down the drains. This region has been one of the most developed and cultured places of the world but from the time it came under the influence of the primitive Islamic forces, it has become an abhorring example of barbarianism.
Shockingly, the so-called civilized and democratic world has even today become the mute spectator of the savagery of the Taliban. In a way, in the episode of the taking over of Afghanistan by Taliban, it is not as much the failure of the Afghan people as the failure of the world powers. It is time for the entire world to unite against these brutes to completely annihilate them. It is all the more sad to find that even in India, there are many takers of the Taliban forces.
Americans cannot be trusted in this fight against the Taliban. Therefore, China, Russia, France, Great Britain, and Israel must be brought on board to crush the Taliban. India will have to take a lead role in galvanizing the world forces for the extermination of the Taliban. A group or a force that targets women, children, and innocent people and perpetrate crimes against them can never be brave. Talibans are a bunch of cowards, and their brutalities are the reflections of their cowardice. They will definitely now grow more opium and earn money by bootlegging and export terrorism worldwide.