The disenchanted brothers

The London conference held recently amid the momentous media blare ended with
an optimistic scheme. While wishing peace and justice to emerge in this tortured
trail, one cannot help thinking of the fanfare at the end of the Bonn Conference on
the subject in 2002. Then the US had a mindset of ‘mission accomplished’ as the
Taliban towed to the hills leaving Kabul to the ‘winners’.
Flushed with success the US, Russia and the northern warlords went onto commit
atrocities against the Pashtuns. Perhaps, for impressing the public opinion in the US,
they never referred to the awful asymmetry of power between the contestants. Now
reports have confirmed that the US hurled more Bunker Busters, Daisy Cutters,
Hellfire missiles than the yearly budget of the Taliban. Moreover, the latter had no
air force which would remain a blinker for the Afghans. Actually such cruelty, to a
great extent, accounts for the return of the Taliban now being courted.
The failure of the Bonn agenda is now history. As the US and NATO could not
materialise their much trumpeted reconstruction programme due to corruption, local
as well as foreign, and a terrible disconnect between the two parties, it became a
déjà vu, ala Afghanistan. The Afghan adventure served as a trump-card in the hands
of Bush-Cheney to take in the naïve Americans, who had also been shocked by the
9/11 tragedy. In this setting Karzai, an acolyte, became a hostage in the Presidential
Palace who survived under the security provided by the US. His countrymen started
calling him ‘the Mayor of Kabul’ out of contempt for the prevailing state of affairs.
True to the Afghan tradition, the Taliban did not melt away and eventually started to
attack the ‘occupation forces’ in order to harass them. Initially, the average Afghan
did not take them seriously. However, as insecurity, corruption, and unemployment
swelled in the south, and east particularly, joined hands to oust the ‘foreign forces’.
This was, generally, helped by three elements. First, the failure of the status quo to
bring in their much-vaunted reforms which would result in prosperity, security and
justice.
Second, either due to arrogance or ignorance/fear, the ISAF practiced liberal use of