Daily Times

The Biden White House is hosting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his team for talks on the security situation in his country. No one or their cat is sure there is anything more to say.

Admittedly, Washington is giving it one last shot. In a latest round of hanging tough — that recognises not its own irony — it has cautioned the Taliban that the world will not recognise a government imposed by force. Even while an American intelligence report warns that the Kabul government could collapse within 6-12 months of the US exit.

Thus the picture of Afghanistan is one of imminent civil war; with dangerous spillovers predicted here in Pakistan and beyond. Yet glaringly conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the architects of this illegal war.

Back in 2001, the US along with the British poodle, waged a retributive attack on Afghanistan; as payback for 9/11. But it is important to note that this was done without any UN cover. For while the Security Council did pass two resolutions — 1368 and 1373 — it did so retrospectively. And never once did it authorise the use of force.

Nevertheless, the US and UK went ahead and waged war on a sovereign nation for the misdeeds of Al Qaeda, a non-state actor that had no real base in the country. Even the then director of the FBI director, Robert Mueller, acknowledged this much in 2002 when he confirmed that was no ‘paper trail’ linking the 9/11 hijackers to the terrorist attacks; let alone to Afghanistan. Thereby unravelling the immense American and British hubris that saw the deliberate distortion of Article 51 of the UN Charter that provides for self-defence. In short, the 9/11 attacks, which have been rightly condemned, did not constitute an ongoing war between two sovereign states.

It remains unfathomable, then, that Bush and Blair have never stood in the dock for these crimes against international law. This only adds credence to the claims that Afghanistan represented the test ground for NATO operations outside its traditional European theatre of war. And now, after two decades of devastation and destruction, the country is still burning. The Taliban appear to be making daily gains in their bid to take take control of the entire country; despite the $2.26 trillion American war effort. The group reportedly claim control of more than 80 of the country’s 421 districts. This is up from January 2020, when the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that 59 districts had fallen to the Taliban. Earlier this week, the group captured the main border crossing with Tajikistan.

In the long-term, the people of Afghanistan will never know true peace until justice is done. And that means bringing the architects of an illegal war to book. That this will never happen makes a mockery of the international system that allows the faux concern for human rights and democracy to cloak unyielding regime change ambitions. *