Mirwais Balkhi
With the fall of the Afghan government and the rise of the Taliban throughout the country in August 2021, the Taliban and its supporters created the narrative that the conflict in Afghanistan was finally over after nearly half a century. But this was a false claim; it was merely an excuse for individuals and countries to disengage themselves from Afghanistan. Understandably, the international community is exhausted after its long engagement in Afghanistan’s conflicts, but the conflict is not over. Instead, it has only transformed into a new form, and this time, the extent of the damage to Afghanistan, the region, and the world is bloody, deep, and irreparable.
The fifty-year-old conflict in Afghanistan has undergone four stages. That is, the nature of the conflict has evolved every decade. The first stage (1973-1991) revolved around the ideological war. This had two parts: one was over ideological, academic, and scientific discourse, with rallies in the major cities, while the other involved the armed struggle against Socialist rule and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The second stage, between 1991 and 2001, revolved around two main features: the ultra-rightists (the Hizb Islami and the Taliban) and the moderate rightists (the Islamic State of Afghanistan), and the war among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups to seize and balance power. In the third stage, which took place between 2001 and 2021, the war was for the fair and just distribution of power over monopolizing power. The U.S. and NATO intervention in Afghanistan created an environment of struggle through political means (in Kabul) and fighting (against the Taliban). And finally, in the fourth stage, from 2021 onward, the political means to struggle for the just and fair distribution of power brought Afghanistan into a state of total war.
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