Taliban and the anti-terror stakes

THE TALIBAN `GOVERNMENT' has put itself on a collision course with the United States by openly acknowledging that Osama bin Laden, the suspected evil genius behind the latest terrorist strikes against America, is actually present in Afghanistan itself. This confirms Washington's assertions about Osama bin Laden's established access to Afghanistan as a sanctuary, despite America's own dim view of the Taliban's low credibility quotient. More significantly, the larger international community is seized of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar's intransigence in refusing to let Osama bin Laden be brought to justice in a due process of law. Of equal salience is the Taliban's bluster that the chief suspect is under its firm ``control''. Indeed, the notorious Kabul regime's cavalier attitude regarding this issue has raised the global community's anti-terror stakes. This can only signify a heightened confrontation between the Afghan powers-that-be and the civilised world. Yet, it must be emphatically underlined that a clear distinction exists between the obscurantist Taliban and the ordinary people of Afghanistan. What should end is the long and dark nightmare that the Afghan people have helplessly endured under the Taliban's unpardonably regressive rule since 1996. So, the gathering political and humanitarian crisis inside Afghanistan is of utmost concern to the entire international community and not just the United States as the prime mourner in the latest terrorist saga.

Mullah Omar's regime has never been recognised by the United Nations. This aspect has much to do with a congruence of the political preferences of the vast majority of the U.N. members. Yet, the fact remains that the Taliban's unrelenting campaigns against the basic canons of humanism and modernity within Afghanistan have transgressed the known practices of historically repressive `governance'. Any strategy to replace the Taliban will, therefore, be welcome insofar as it furthers the genuine interests of the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan. Pakistan, whose strategic `connections' to the genesis of the Taliban are being made use of by the U.S., has now clearly indicated that the Kabul regime has become a law unto itself (as the saying goes). Pakistan's ongoing efforts to influence Mullah Omar's thinking have virtually come to naught. On a different but related plane, the U.S. at the moment seems to be ready with several alternative plans to try and dislodge the Taliban even while seeking to track down its ``guest'', Osama bin Laden. A note of prudence will be in order, though. While it is true that the U.N. does not at all recognise the Taliban, it will be statesmanly of the U.S. to try and build a consensus within the U.N. system while intervening in Afghanistan to confront Mullah Omar over Osama bin Laden.

A simple matter of far-reaching logic is that the U.N. deserves to be privy to the U.S.' thinking in some substantive way or the other. It bears mention that the U.N. holds the ultimate moral responsibility to redress any humanitarian tragedy that might be triggered by a conflict between the Taliban and the international community. By defying a pervasive opinion in the present volatile context, Mullah Omar insists on comprehensive and not just circumstantial evidence against Osama bin Laden. While this argument is not without some resonance within the worldwide Islamic fraternity, there is little or no opposition to the idea that Afghanistan can do without the Talibanised system of `governance'. Some of the options now being considered by the U.S., with or without an official acknowledgment, relate to a possible role for the former Afghan monarch, `King' Zahir Shah, as the initiator of a new government of national unity and reconciliation in Kabul. The anti-Taliban `Northern Alliance' has evinced interest in braving the Taliban with external help or even independently. These and other options need to be harmonised so that the Taliban can be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

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