Island Voices
U.S. must help Afghanistan after the Taliban falls
By A. Karim Khan, Ph.D.
On Oct. 7, a Sunday, the holy day in Christendom, President Bush started bombing terrorist targets while, at the same time, feeding the starving millions in Afghanistan.
Nothing could be more ironic. But in what Bush calls a "broader war" on terrorism, strange strategies are demanded.
Beginning with Afghanistan, the war on terrorism has finally started in military terms.
In fact, the terrorists started the war in America on Sept. 11 with their unprecedented attack on U.S. soil. Call it courage or cowardice, the callous or calculated criminality of terrorists, they struck first and would not flinch from striking again. While the Afghans are looking apprehensively at the night skies, and stampeding toward Pakistan for safety, Americans are told again and again they must not drop their guard. The fear, in the words of Osama bin Laden, that has gripped America from east to west and north to south must serve the safety of the American people.
The terrorists may strike on American or their allies' interests anywhere. It is truly a "broader war," that the United States cannot win without the most needed arsenal: an inexhaustible patience on part of the American people.
The smart strikes on terrorists' camps and support mechanism are not going to immediately yield dramatic results; they aren't meant to. These air strikes, the first in series, will be matched and guided by humanitarian and political realities on the ground. It is quite clear to the Bush administration that air strikes in Afghanistan may not flush Osama bin Laden and his gang. That objective will be, at the end, achieved through political, economic and diplomatic means.
President Bush must capitalize on the Afghans' appeal for economic and technical help to clean and reconstruct their country. Afghanistan has suffered for more than two decades. It was caught between the super powers' hot war, and then the Afghan warlords and numerous factions that mushroomed immediately after the fall of the Evil Empire.
Now that the military strikes have begun, the U.S. should actively help the international community put the Afghan nation together by convening the Afghan traditional Grand Council that will proportionally represent every ethnic group. Only the Grand Council can elect a government in Kabul and start the most needed work of national reconstruction. The vast majority of Taliban, who are predominantly Pushtun/
Pukhtun and a major ethnic group in Afghanistan, will support a national unity government that will not victimize or marginalize them.
The Taliban's current leadership has to go in the larger interest of national unity and reconstruction. All neighboring countries will have to respect the will of the Afghan nation and the international community backed by the military and monetary might of the United States.
Some fear the U.S. military action along with a collapse of the Taliban would push different Afghan ethnic groups back to factional fighting, destablizing neighboring countries in the process. This does not have to occur. The United States should be not only striking the Taliban regime out of business but also getting ready for the post-Taliban challenges that the international community must face in Afghanistan.
Not all Taliban members are hostile to reason.
Their Pushtun elders are great diplomats. They are jealously sensitive as well as wisely responsive to their tribesmen's political and economic interests.
The world should not be surprised to see the Taliban's moderate majority genuinely metamorphosed into preachers of peace and progress in Afghanistan.
Till then the bombs and bread must continue.
Dr. A. Karim Khan, a Pushtun from Peshawar, Pakistan, is an assistant professor of history, and chair of the International Education Committee at Leeward Community College.
