Doesn’t Afghanistan need a restart?

DONORS have agreed to buy off the Taliban with US$140 million: equivalent to one-day US military expenses in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the West could do so in 2002-2004 when the Taliban were a group of defeated, disappointed, hated and fleeing individuals.

However a resurgent, strengthened and resourceful armed opposition which loudly chants victory could be hardly lured now to lay down arms and submit to a government which is mired in corruption, inefficiency and warlordism.

At the eve of the much publicized London Conference the Taliban leadership said in a statement: “If we were fighting for money, power or protection in foreign countries we had better and stronger offers during our reign.”

Over the past eight years the same donors that have pledged $140 million to buy off the Taliban spent over $300 billion on warfare to kill, capture and defeat the Taliban. If spent on true rebuilding, development and poverty-alleviation half of the amount could have turned Afghanistan to a model country in South Asia where hundreds of foreign soldiers and thousands of Afghans would not have had died.

The US and its NATO-allies have lately reached into a realization that every Talib cannot be eliminated but some have to be assured that they have a place in their country and in their government. However, this belated realization is accompanied by too little understanding of the means to win over the Taliban.

If I were a Talib – gladly I am not - I would not have submitted to Karzai’s government for a couple of dollars or a temporary job for the very Karzai government is the problem not an appropriate means to solution.

The promised $140 million fund and the political rhetoric of “reintegration” would soon dissipate in the quagmire of failures and corruption Mr. Karzai has generously maintained since 2002.

Yes, most of Taliban rank-and-files are unemployed, poor and mostly illiterate rural youths who would love to have a job, an income and a life away from fighting. But money and jobs alone would not entice the peasants to defy a very strong – if not winning – Taliban and embrace a government which has lost in all fronts.

Radical and impractical would many call this but truly saving Afghanistan requires rebooting the whole post-Boon system. By this, I mean removing the failing Karzai and his corrupto-criminals from the power and re-launching a genuinely Afghan Loya Jirga to form a new governing body. Don’t allow warlords, criminals and other thugs to mock democracy by re-manipulating the power with money, terror and mischief. The new government’s No. 1 agenda should be “justice” through which all criminals and warlords must be trailed.

With Karzai and his corrupto-criminals there is no road to peace and settlement and spending more on his plans would be just waste of lives, money and time.