It was back in 2001, I was an eighth grader at that time when I was watching CNN and all of a sudden they started live broadcast of a building that seemed to be on fire. While the reporter came to realise what was the reason behind the fire, another plane entered the frame and crashed into the other tower of the World Trade Center. World seems to have come a full circle in less than twenty years.
“Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”
-George W. Bush (Excerpt from the address to the Joint session of the Congress)
Soon after America attacked Afghanistan, a country that was under the Taliban rule since it took control in 1994. Mullah Omar. Osama Bin Laden. If you followed the news back then, they were in it almost everyday, everywhere in the world. If you are from the current generation, then you have heard of ISIS, which lasted for fraction of what Taliban controlled Afghanistan for. We have seen the execution of hostages on videos released online by ISIS. Taliban relied on Qatar funded Al Jazeera to release the audio tapes of Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden declaring war on America, twitter didn’t exist back then. The motive of ISIS, Taliban or Al Qaeda was the same, instil fear.
I am wondering now, whether I should be writing this in past tense when I speak about Taliban? As of this moment, Taliban is back at the helm of Afghanistan. The public executions have begun. The images of women showing their faces are being whitewashed. Women are back in burqa. Their will be no music played. No form of art will come from the nation that every superpower has toyed with. USA gave its people hope and then walked away when they were needed the most. The girls are left to be sex slaves for Taliban. What good are those F-35’s and F-22’s if you can’t defeat the enemy that you started the war against twenty years back. Instead of finishing the war in Afghanistan, your then President thought of it as a good opportunity to take revenge on behalf of his father and opened another front in Iraq. If all you wanted to do was talk about peace with them, then why attack the nation in the first place.
Who created Taliban? Who is responsible for creation of ISIS? I wish the American governments could answer that question on a public forum. America raised a snake to fight the Soviets. The same snake attacked America in 1993, when they bombed world trade centre. They demolished it eight years later on a day and date of their choosing. The terrorists behind the attacks were Pakistanis. America makes Pakistan an ally in its fight against terror. As an ally of America comes the advantage of American state-of-the-art weapons and billions of dollars in the form of aid. Same ally of USA, uses that money to keep Taliban alive and fund its own terrorist activities against other nations, especially India. As long as the Taliban was alive, and the likes of Bush and Obamas were going to stay at the helm, money was going to keep coming to Pakistan.
America entered the Korean war, the war till date has never ended officially. To top it all North Korea now has nuclear weapons. America entered Vietnam, and the world got to know about guerrilla warfare. If you think that it was some great American strategy, just get it out of your head straightaway. America entered Afghanistan. Forget it. America attacked Iraq, executed Saddam Hussein, but they just didn’t stop there. They went against the advice of their own intelligence and ended up killing the generals in the Saddam’s army as well, who were in a much better position to provide a stable regime. This eventually brought the ISIS nightmare to life. What have you won since your independence? Except for leaving the world in state of mess only for you to able to sell your weapons. What have you achieved? But as goes the saying, “What goes around, comes back around.”