Why the Taliban won’t succeed in Afghanistan now

History does NOT repeat itself. If ever it looks like it’s stuck in a rut and moving in circles, do take a closer look. Each circle may be wider than the previous one or it might have tilted along a different axis. The trajectory of events in Afghanistan cannot defy this basic rule of history.

The Taliban rose to power in mid-1990s and were ousted when the US and its allies launched military operations in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, starting what is termed as 'War on Terror'. The Taliban, however, have managed to loom large as a specter for the past 12 years and now threaten to make a comeback or so some want us to believe. Will they be able to do that? I think not. Here are my five reasons why:

1: There is no anarchy in Afghanistan now

When the Taliban rose to power in the mid-1990s, Afghanistan was in utter chaos. The decade-long crippling war was succeeded by internecine fights among the greedy, ruthless and brutal mujahedeen warlords – it seemed endless. The country had lost even a semblance of a state, rule of law had completely departed and social order rested on simple tribal ‘principles’ like might is right. The weakest and the poorest suffered the most.

The Taliban were seen as a glimmer of hope, a saner force in that rubble of a country, ravaged by savage warriors. Their ranks mostly comprised of teachers and students of madrassahs. They were revered as ‘the selfless seekers of divine knowledge’. The Taliban capitalised on this deep local tradition to become a political force. As they demonstrated their willingness and ability to restore order and peace, people flocked around them in droves. When they advanced from Kandahar on their campaign to defeat warlords and mujahedeen, provinces fell like nine pins. To ‘conquer’ a province, it would take them just as long as it did to drive a four-wheeler from its one corner to the other; and that too mostly without firing a single shot. People greeted them as saviors.

The Afghanistan of 2013 is neither as chaotic nor as desperate. It has a working constitutional government and has held two major elections. It has a regular army, government ministries and public offices. It has companies, businesses and shopping malls. The government is weak, the elections have been controversial, the officials are corrupt and the businesses evade taxes – there is no doubt about all this. But rest assured, this is still not 1995. Afghanistan is not a devastated and abandoned territory that it was when the Taliban had triumphed.

There definitely are shortcomings but there is no gap anymore that the Taliban could fill. In fact, if the Taliban have to find a place, they will have to reshape themselves to fit the available spaces. In other words, the problems to which the Taliban were a solution, have altered drastically and since they have been out of power and, I would say out of touch with the changing ground realities as well, they have retained their old shape, add to this their characteristic of inflexibility and they become unfit to any available space in Afghanistan’s present socio-political discourse.

The situation bears resemblance with the mythological group of people who go into deep sleep at an isolated location. When they wake up after years and come out of their cave, they find a surprisingly different world around them. The Taliban shall be ready for surprises and their abettors for rude shocks.

2: The world is not going to abandon Afghanistan

Soviet troops completed withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989. They left behind the government of President Najibullah that most pundits had predicted would fall in weeks, if not days. It stayed on though and in fact successfully defended itself against the mujahedeen onslaught, the most notable event being the battle of Jalalabad. The Najibullah government survived on the continued support of Soviet Union which offered it both the military supplies and the money.

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down and the grand socialist state, the super power, the Soviet Union disintegrated in December 1991. Russia, the successor of the Soviets in Moscow, continued to support Kabul for some time but then had to stop even the fuel supply. Najibullah’s government collapsed in April 1992.

By that time, the US had already abandoned its active campaign in the region and got busy celebrating the Soviets’ fall. Unbelievable events were happening at a pace that no one had ever predicted. The world’s focus moved to the former Soviet states, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the other erstwhile socialist states. Afghanistan became a small fry with negligible value in the new global politics.

The poor country thus ended up being used by the world powers to upstage the last round of the Cold War. They pumped in billions of dollars in the institutions that only specialised in killing people and in justifying their acts on one pretext or the other. And then, they all left; abandoning the country, leaving its poor masses at the mercy of those outfits and institutions. The Mujahedeen and then the Taliban operated in this black hole of world attention.

The realities of 2013 are, however, completely different. Each and every power on earth now has a stake in Afghanistan. The world repents abandoning the country in the 1990s. Terrorism has shifted security paradigms and redefined response strategies across the globe. The world wants a stable Afghanistan and is willing to make efforts for that.

The US drawdown from Afghanistan is neither a retreat nor a pull out. The US does not want to abandon Afghanistan as this will risk making it a breeding ground and a sanctuary for terrorists again. It is supported in this cause by a number of other important powers, including our ‘all weather friend’, China. If Afghanistan drifts back into anarchy, it will have consequences for China and Central Asian states and through them for Russia. All of these countries have Muslim populations and a number of active militant separatist outfits. Anarchy in Afghanistan will provide them a fillip and that’s exactly what they dread.