“Abandoning the Afghan people now would be a historic blunder, one that has already been made with disastrous results”
Sopuluchukwu Dimelu
In August 2021, The US and its allies withdrew from Afghanistan their forces, marking the end of the 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan. Almost immediately after US withdrawal, Taliban troops took over the Government of the country on August 15, 2021, marking the start of the Afghan government’s and Taliban’s peace talks. The swiftness with which Afghanistan fell to the Taliban came as a shock to the world. After decades of US training and money, the Afghan government was expected to be able to ensure and maintain order in the country, this was not the case. As a result of the Taliban’s surprise takeover, Afghanistan is currently experiencing major, multi-faceted, and interrelated humanitarian, economic, and political issues. The country stands on the verge of a massive disaster. The Taliban put a stop to the progress of women’s rights. Two of the most significant achievements of the post-2001 reconstruction efforts were media freedom and freedom of expression. Along the line, many girls’ secondary schools were closed, and women were largely barred from working in fields other than education and health care. These rules impede on freedom of expression and particularly affect women negatively.
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Taking a trip back in time to the year 2000, The hijacking and downing of four US planes on September 11, 2001, drew quick attention to Afghanistan, the United States On October 7, 2001 attacked Afghanistan in response to Al Qaeda’s terrorist strikes on September 11. The US intervention’s main goal was to find Osama bin Laden and castigate the Taliban for providing a refuge for al-Qaeda leaders. The international attention switched to Afghanistan’s nation-building and rehabilitation projects after the Taliban and al-Qaeda were deposed. However, because the US authorities were focused on the approaching conflict in Iraq, development programmes in Afghanistan were underfunded from the outset. In the middle of 2001 and 2009, US Legislature appropriated slightly over $38 billion in benevolent and reform aid to Afghanistan. The money was split in half and used to train and equip Afghan security personnel. The US has traditionally been the largest foreign force in Afghanistan, with the highest number of casualties. By April 2010, over 1,000 US troops had been assassinated in Afghanistan. The invasion was mainly successful, despite the fact that al-Qaida and Taliban forces stayed evasive and succeeded to reunite within a short period after the Western-supported Hamid Karzai regime assumed dominion in Kabul. By 2005, the Taliban had recaptured much of the territory they had lost and had begun to fight the American and NATO existence in Afghanistan. However, most Afghans benefited from the intervention by the US that led to the crumbling of the Taliban rule. It was the dawn of a new epoch, with people being optimistic about the long term interest of their country.
Some instances heightened the relations between the US and the Afghanistan leaders in early 2012 and created widespread resentment. A video of an American soldier peeing on a dead Afghanistan went viral In mid-January, this forced apologies from us officials. In response to allegations that US soldiers had destroyed Qurans at an army base, Afghans rioted, which were ultimately confirmed weeks later. Then, on March 11, a US soldier is accused of breaking into a number of homes in Panjwai and shooting and killing 17 Afghans, many of whom were women and children. NATO’s struggles to educate and train the Afghan military and police were hindered later that year by an intensification in assaults in which Afghanistan militaries turned their guns on NATO staff. As a result of the attacks, NATO troops were forced to implement more strict screening processes and postpone the drill of specific units.
On December 28, 2014, the US and NATO officially completed its war operation in Afghanistan, but a reduced presence of about 13,000 troops was retained to support and train Afghan troops until a drawdown was finalized in 2020. A full withdrawal of US soldiers, which began in 2020 and proceeded into 2021, was supposed to mark the end of the US presence in Afghanistan, but the Taliban’s resurgence throughout the pullout left the nation in a similar state to when US forces first arrived 20 years before.
At the same time that President Biden is bringing American soldiers out of Afghanistan, Afghans are dealing with a plethora of challenges. They must contend with a resurgent Taliban movement, which now controls or contests a larger portion of the country’s terrain than it has from 2001, as well as the widespread, drought, and an ugly economy. Afghan safety forces are declining in the maintenance of the territory, and the nation’s administrative elites have not had a meeting in response to the threats of the Taliban. Afghans are looking for substitutions to the Taliban and President Ashraf Ghani through various means. For now, anti-Taliban militias are developing, and memories of Taliban assassinations and torture abound. Several Afghans acknowledge that they have no other option except to flee the country.
However, the world has basically close the door on Afghans. Others are adamant about not permitting the Taliban to re-set up their control. Anxiety is plain amongst Afghans, specifically people who stay in cities, where many displaced Afghans have found safety. In a country where the Taliban purpose to reestablish their “Islamic Emirate,” activists, academics, artists, and authors are concerned about their future. The Hazaras, for example, are a marginalized ethnic institution that fears genocide. Perhaps maximum importantly, the repute of Afghan girls and women is presently in flux. They get right of entry to schools, work, the polls, their seats in parliament and the newsroom, or even the capacity to depart their houses with out a male chaperone is in jeopardy.
To comprehend the intricacies of nascent democratic ‘road-mapping,’ it is necessary to evaluate both the past’s inheritance and the present’s ideational resources. Libya as country can be understudy for the time being. Presently, four major political movements are emerging. Soon, the growth of partyism in Libya will be seen. Libyans won a liberation war with the help of outside forces, and some witnesses have hastened to draw unnecessary similarities to Iraq. Libya has avoided having to cope with foreign troops on its soil; fortunately, the combat did not last long enough for that to occur. NATO’s mandate needs to be redefined, if not terminated, and this time the choice should be taken in the context of a larger discussion that embraces voices outside the National Transitional Council (NTC).
Warfare regularly brings with it a brand-new set of difficulties, and Libya isn’t at any exception. Local authority has to be restored, permitting a native quest for a continuing change alongside four paths: democratic change, transitional socioeconomic reform, transitional resolution, and transitional fairness.
After World War II’s damage, the United Nations upheld a single mission in 1945: to maintain world amity and safety. The UN accomplishes this by attempting to avert war, assisting disputants in reaching a neutral ground, dispatching mediators, and promoting circumstances for peace to persist and thrive. Looking back on some of this body’s efforts to foster peace and democracy, we can congratulate them on a job well done. A few of the interventions are listed below.
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The United Nations has been observed in Afghanistan since1949, and its movements have focused on helping Afghans in laying the idea for long-term peace and development. For decades, the United Nations has performed a crucial function in Afghanistan, from dealing with humanitarian useful resource to financing reconstruction and serving as a peace and safety guarantee.
The UN became an essential factor of the fundamental provider of deliveries over a long time of war, also the Taliban collaborated with the United Nations to make sure charitable access to isolated segments of the nation, together with while the Taliban become on top of things in 1990s. UNAMA has a prolonged records of interacting with the Talibans, each at excessive degrees interactions. Years of unsuccessful UN efforts to create a peace development, in addition to UN human constitutional rights advocacy targeted on barring civilian losses and thereby lessening destruction in the war, had been a part of this assignation. Many of the identical Taliban officers who dealt with liaisons with global businesses and overseas governments in in advance years have now been promoted to pinnacle posts in Kabul, indicating that identical links among the UN and the Taliban have continued.
The UN’s position in Afghanistan has developed extra critical following the Taliban victory in August 2021 and the shuttering of many embassies and international corporations. UNAMA, initially released in 2002 after the U.S. toppled the primary Taliban government, has stayed in place, appearing as a component of touch for engagement with the brand new Taliban authorities. The task moreover has the ability to feature the “eyes and ears” on the ground for out of doors powers and beneficial useful resource donors, monitoring the human rights situation and coordinating the artwork of UN corporations in responding to the country’s monetary and humanitarian crisis.
Promoting human rights, appreciably through reporting at the scenario of girls and women, has constantly been a vital element of UNAMA’s mandate. These jobs, in keeping with UN officers and Security Council diplomats, at the moment are plenty extra vital in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover. The Taliban anticipate the UN to speak about human rights, so while UNAMA poses hard questions, Taliban commanders are unsurprised. The Taliban has expressed their preference for the UN to retain reporting publicly. Despite their suspicion of worldwide observers, the Taliban may also decide on the UN’s and different independent watchdogs’ genuine debts over public grievance from their home foes. They seem to understand that receiving affordable UN rankings on human rights problems ought to cause improved worldwide acceptability in their gadget over time. Since the 1990s, some of conflicts had been ended, both through UN settlement or through third-party celebration movement with UN support. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, Sudan’s north-south warfare, and Nepal are current examples. According to research, UN peacekeeping, warfare prevention, and peacemaking efforts had been attributed to a forty-percentage discount in warfare round the sector for the reason that 1990s. Countless implicit heads had been defused due to UN precautionary tact and different preventative measures.
Rape as a weapon of war is becoming more common. Between 1991 and 2002, 60,000 women were raped in Sierra Leone, 60,000 in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), 250,000 in Rwanda (1994), more than 40,000 in Liberia (1989-2003), and at least 200,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 1998. Sexual assault has been a source of conflict everywhere from Afghanistan to Iraq, Somalia to Syria. The Secretary-Special General’s Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict has assisted countries in developing and enforcing laws that criminalise wartime rape and end impunity for perpetrators; devised programmes to assist victims in rebuilding their lives; provided training for police officers, prosecutors, and judges to better equip them to deal with analogous crimes; and supported the creation of specialised units of female police officers that investigate analogous crimes. The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission assists peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict countries. It brings together international funders, financial institutions, governments, and troop-contributing countries, as well as resource mobilisation and peacebuilding and recovery proposals. The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund provides support to 222 activities in 22 countries in a timely and flexible manner.
In conclusion, the best way to avoid wars in the first place is to reduce the economic costs of hostilities and their aftermath. in the first place. The UN plays a critical role in conflict resolution through diplomacy, good offices, and mediation. Two of the Organization’s weapons for promoting peace are special envoys and field political missions. As we commend the activities of the United Nations for the great work which they have been putting in operation in restoring peace to different countries, this diplomatic arrange should also be use in attending the present situation of the Afghanistan to restore peace within the country.