- Loss of province would be fatal for government forces’ morale
The large-scale, multi-directional, Taliban attack on Ghazni early on Friday morning which achieved complete surprise should effectively clear the remaining ‘blitzkrieg’ cobwebs clouding the American military’s perspective in the 17-year conflict, and accelerate the drive towards the more realistic goal of negotiating meaningful peace talks in all seriousness. There are still conflicting versions about the actual ground situation in Ghazni, for, in war ‘truth is so precious that it has to be guarded by a bodyguard of lies’. If Ghazni, Afghanistan’s second largest city, located strategically on Kabul –Kandahar Highway, were indeed to fall to the Taliban, it would send already plummeting Afghan forces’ morale into an irreversible tailspin, threaten neighbouring Pakhtia and Zabul, and even impact the October 20 elections. The brief insurgent seizure of Farah province in May, Kunduz in 2015 and 2016, and now Ghazni, much closer to ‘home’, are flashes that should light up the bleak Afghan reality to American policy makers, if indeed nothing else.
The root causes of the overall Afghan stalemate and increasingly audacious Taliban forays lie in the lack of clarity surrounding US military’s objectives and methods, and the ever-weakening resistance put up by the 350,000 strength Afghan security forces. The former just cannot make up their mind between a military solution and a negotiated settlement, while the ‘attrition’ rate of the latter, a term masking heavy casualties, low motivation and morale, surrender and desertions, and low re-enlistment, makes waging war unsustainable in a prolonged grim struggle. The Americans should learn from history and the Tet Offensive of January 30, 1968, in which the supposedly ‘beaten’ North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched massive attacks in South Vietnam, which revealed the bitter truth about the unwinnable Vietnam War, resulting in American public withdrawing its support, loss of credibility of the Johnson administration, and start of long-drawn negotiations that ultimately ended the US’s second longest war. Recent peace talks in Qatar between senior US officials and Afghan Taliban and during Taliban delegation visit to Uzbekistan last week are the right way, as indeed another short truce during the coming Eid ul Azha. Blaming Pakistan without any evidence will surely boomerang.
