US/Taliban peace talks and Nigeria

Terrorists everywhere are probably in a celebratory mood today.  They are believed to be in this mood not because they had just acquired weapons of mass destruction with which they could intimidate any nation that has been waging war against them and as a result force such nations into negotiations.  A few of them may be in the process of acquiring the capability but right now it is not certain any has got a nook.  It is also not because legitimate central governments fighting terrorists here or yonder had granted them unconditional pardon. To our knowledge, no government has done this yet.  But something close to this is in the offing. It is the surrender of the United States of America to the Taliban dubbed as peace talks concluded on Sunday, September 1, in Doha, Qatar.

It would be recalled that after the terrorists attack on the US in September 11, 2001 in which over a thousand innocent people were killed and the landmark Twin Towers of New York trade centre were destroyed by hijacked planes with passengers aboard, the then US government did not fold its arms and resort to only lamentations as some countries were wont to do.  Her military had swung into action to eliminate the Al Qaeda group believed to be the mastermind of the infamous attacks.  Joined by the United Kingdom and other friendly nations, a military operation was launched against the Taliban government of Afghanistan which had allowed Al Qaeda to establish bases and training camps in that country.  It is believed that it was from these bases that the September attacks commonly referred to as 9/11, were planned.

Before the end of December of that same year (2001), the Taliban government had been swept from power and an interim one put in place in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan by the US and her allies.  The training of personnel for a new Afghan army also commenced immediately.  Unfortunately, the leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda especially Osama bin Laden (founder of the latter) were not apprehended during the operation that drove them from power.  They fled to other countries especially neighbouring Pakistan as well as the interior of Afghanistan itself which is a very difficult terrain to access due to its jagged mountains and extreme weather.

From these remote places, the Taliban regrouped and with the support of naïve natives who never questioned their narratives, they began launching unconventional attacks on US-backed government forces and infrastructure.  Such attacks include suicide bombers, kidnapping, planting of bombs in places where maximum deaths or damage to infrastructure would be achieved when detonated as well as daring surprise attacks on military outposts and ambushing of convoys.  The most insidious of these was the insider attacks in which Taliban sympathizers unknowingly recruited into the new Afghan military began to kill their unsuspecting colleagues, usually their bosses, in cold blood.

Within a few years of these guerrilla tactics, they graduated into well-coordinated attacks on communities and sometimes on fortified military bases to the extent they now control an enviable chunk of territory.  They have become so successful that they sometimes boldly announce the operation they were going to launch in a season in advance.  And the US-backed government in Kabul would plead with them to observe a truce especially when an important Islamic festival was to take place within that period.

The Taliban now know that the Americans are tired of the conflict and are looking for excuses to get out quickly after almost 18 years.  They believe the Americans don’t want to openly say they are surrendering and the peace talks in Doha are their face-saving excuse.  This belief which is not far from the truth has emboldened them the more and has led them to making demands that clearly show they are victors.

For instance, the negotiations should have been called off when the Taliban insisted that they were not going to talk with officials of the Afghan government but with only the Americans.  They also insisted that all foreign forces should leave Afghanistan and that they the Taliban should be seen as the true representatives of the Afghan people and not the officials of the puppet government in Kabul.  To prove that they were prepared to bleed their country as long as it would take, they intensified their attacks in several places including a bomb blast during a wedding reception in a hall in Kabul. Over 60 persons amongst them women and children were killed! No sane party in a conflict would do this when peace talks are ongoing.

The Americans even acknowledged defeat by one of the requests they brought to the table.  By asking the Taliban to promise not to allow terrorists to use Afghan soil to plan their acts again is nothing but an acknowledgement of Taliban’s victory.  It is as if the Taliban are not terrorists themselves. Also, it is as if they had won a resounding victory at the polls and were waiting to be sworn in!

The US capitulation to the Taliban is no doubt music to terrorist groups across the globe including here in Nigeria where we have a couple of them.  Those that had contemplated surrendering before will now be discouraged by this development.   They will believe that if they persist in their acts of terrorism, the authorities in their respective countries would likely succumb as the US is about doing.  They will be saying to themselves that if the US, the number one superpower in the world could succumb to the Taliban, what prevents them from forcing countries with far lesser capabilities such as Somalia from doing the same?

Terrorist groups that share some similarities with the Taliban like the Boko Haram of Nigeria are most likely to see the US surrender as a morale booster to continue with the carnage they have been inflicting on the Nigerian society for a decade now.  Both of them are fundamentalists who thirst for for blood of unbelievers and that killing them is a passport to paradise.  Both of them are also in the midst of a populace that largely shares this belief. For instance, some parents in Nigeria’s northeast base of the Boko Haram insurgency are reported to have offered their daughters to the terrorists to use as suicide bombers!

With all this frightening similarities, Nigeria is in a way now closer to Afghanistan than we ever imagined.  Writing about such closeness today can no longer be seen as escapism as it was in the 1980s when that war-prone country was embroiled in a similar conflict with the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and writing about it instead of the SAPping military regime at home was seen as cowardice.

Maduku, a retired Nigerian Army (Infantry) Captain and novelist lives in Effurun-Otor, Delta State.