In Afghanistan, no one has an answer

Confused and full of hope, which are actually two terms that don't quite fit together. But in Afghanistan, this is the feeling of many people after 17 years of Western occupation. Are not insecure, because your government's suggestions to the peace process, because U.S. diplomats meeting with Taliban in Doha or is it because the Islamists speak like this Tuesday in Moscow with Afghan opposition about the future of the country. "We have hope, because we are all sick of war," says a man in Kabul, the name would not be mentioned in the newspaper. "But we're also confused because we do not know how such a peace might look like."

What about the achievements of the past 17 years? Women must continue to sit in Parliament and girls go to school? Should human rights activists fighting for freedom of expression, and a corrupt justice condemn? What happens if there is a peace between the Taliban and the Kabul government, the Islamists, but just wait until the West has withdrawn his soldiers, plunging the country then in the next civil war?

In Afghanistan, no one has an answer to these questions. The only certainty: The Taliban are courted. Long as branded terrorists, they are considered now as a negotiator at eye level. Because the conflict is in a stalemate, the USA want to end the longest war in its history – and the Afghans are longing for nothing more than peace. In phases in which in your country is not fighting raged, and remembers only the older Generation.

place of longing for Hippies

Mohammad Rafiq Helali is 70 years old and a landowner in the Western Afghan province of Farah, which borders Iran. He reported of an Era "without foreign interference", from a time in his home province, "in which there was not a single weapon, except in the case of the security forces". This was in the late Sixties and early seventies, king Zahir Shah ruled in a liberal country. Security, music, women in mini-skirts, that was everyday life in Kabul, the place of longing for the Hippies of the West. As a matter of course, life in the public space. Today, fear has replaced the joy of living of many Afghans, fear of the parents to their children, when they go to school, because you can't be sure whether the boy and girl fall a stroke victim. "The king had the situation in control, everything was safe," says Helali. Although the Afghan economy has been already developed at the time, but you have moved forward: "We were on the way to a modern country, everything has been assembled step by step for the Better."

However, in the year 1973, the Cousin of the king, overthrew monarch, and proclaimed the Republic. It is the power followed by the Communist takeover, and in order to support this, the invasion of the Red army in 1979. The United States gave the self-appointed God-warriors in the fight against the Soviets money, and missiles. In 1989, the Russian soldiers withdrew, humiliated. Afghanistan was so fragmented that it abdriftete in the civil war, feuding Warlords, large parts of Kabul crashed. The Taliban were fighting the beginning of the Nineties to Power, the people breathed a sigh of relief: finally, peace and quiet, after years of terror. But the Taliban established a Regime of darkness, women were banished from public life. They ruled until after the attacks of September 11. September, the United States and its allies. Has not beaten the West to the Islamists. Now they are to be re-integrated. The only question is: How should this work?

dispute paralyzed

At the Bonn Petersberg was shortly after the fall of the Taliban, started in the year 2001, the balance between the different ethnic groups in Afghanistan – the Taliban were left before going outside. "Now you have gained the upper hand, and the current political fragmentation, and ethnic polarization is detrimental to the political process, which strives to balance", says the Kabul political analyst Haroun Me. He assumes that the Taliban will continue their line, to negotiate with the government in Kabul, and not integrated into the existing System.

In this System, the USA, have intervened repeatedly after the elections, with diplomatic pressure and ensure that the President, who comes from the ethnic majority, representatives of other ethnic groups to be placed on the page. This government of national unity, led by the head of state, Ashraf Ghani, has swung in recent years and reforms, but was handicapped mainly by internal political strife.

An Afghan Journalist based in Kabul, has this story mitrecherchiert. Out of fear of reprisals by the Taliban he does not want to be named as a Co-author. (editor-in-Tamedia)

Created: 05.02.2019, 20:38 PM