A Viable--and Perhaps the Only--Path to Lasting Peace in Afghanistan

Foreign powers continue to treat Afghanistan as a battlefield for their regional ambitions.by Vijay PrashadAs each day goes by, the Taliban's forces edge closer to controlling all of Afghanistan.

In the first week of August, the Taliban swept through the northern provinces of the country--Jawzjan, Kunduz, and Sar-e Pul--which form an arc alongside the borders of the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The violence has been severe; the pain inflicted upon civilians by the intensity of the fighting has been terrible.

Having withdrawn its ground forces, the United States sent in its B-52s to bomb targets in the city of Sheberghan (capital of the province of Jawzjan); reports suggest that at least 200 people were killed in the bombings. It shows the weakness of the government in Kabul that its Ministry of Defense's spokesperson Fawad Aman cheered on the bombing.

br br It's unlikely that the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani will outlast the Taliban's lightning strikes. The U.

S. bombing will slow the advance, but it will not be able to reverse the tide.

That is why regional powers in Asia have deepened contacts with the Taliban's leadership, whose governance of the entire country seems inevitable.'Moderate' Taliban"The Taliban is not an entity by itself," Heela Najibullah said when I spoke to her during the second week of August.

"It is made up of groups of extremists and militants who use the rhetoric of jihad to achieve power." Najibullah, author of the important book Reconciliation and Social Healing in Afghanistan (2017), is...