Afghanistan and the US Elections

The first US Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was watched by an estimated 80 million Americans on Monday night.  I’m not sure how many people outside the US watched the debate but it was reported that the Taliban watched the debate from a “secret location in Afghanistan.”  The Taliban’s spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that,

 “We were very interested in watching, but we had hoped that Afghanistan would feature more prominently in the discussion. There was nothing of interest to us in the debate as both of them said little about Afghanistan and their future plans for the country.”

Anyone at all connected with Afghanistan should have an interest in the outcome of the US presidential elections, including the Taliban.

Unfortunately as the Taliban rightly observed Afghanistan never came up in Monday night’s debate just as it hasn’t come up in any of the primary debates. It’s curious how the longest running war in US history should not be a priority issue in the election.  Neither candidate offers any opinion or policy proposals related to Afghanistan on their websites.  How to explain this?

There was an interesting article in the New York Times recently that may offer a partial explanation.  It was entitled, “15 Year’s Into Afghan War, Americans Would Rather Not Talk About It.”  Indeed.  We are all tired, disillusioned, and battered.  I know that I am after ten years of intense professional and personal involvement.  “The result is an awkward national silence whenever Afghanistan’s chaos inevitably imposes itself on our attention, like a family pretending not to hear the troubled relative pound the Thanksgiving table.”  (That would be me.)

“The country is barely standing, the Taliban is resurgent and refugee outflows are high. The United States has assumed an unspoken role as indefinite occupier, with just enough troops to stave off Afghanistan’s implosion but not enough to make that implosion any less inevitable. The question of whether the United States should play this role has not really come up in the presidential primaries or the general campaign, partly because so few Americans want to even acknowledge it is happening.”

But it is happening, in spite of more than 2300 US soldiers killed, another 20,000 wounded, and over $115 billion in civilian foreign aid and reconstruction assistance.

On Wednesday September 28th Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group formerly allied with the Taliban and aligned of Al Qaida signed a peace agreement with the Afghan government.  Mr. Hekmatyar has been fighting with everyone in Afghanistan for nearly 40 years, i.e. the Afghan Government, the Communist party, the Soviets, the Americans, and other insurgent groups.  In the signing ceremony he commented that,

“We hope the day has come that foreign countries will not influence our country’s affairs and that peace comes.  We started negotiations with the government after almost 90 percent of foreign troops left the country.  The remaining troops will also leave the country soon.”

For once in his life, he may be right. But you wouldn’t know it from the US elections.