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Situating Workable Response continues....
Foreign intervention has been one of the recurrent themes in
Afghanistan’s history, the latest being the America-led war in October
2001 within less than a month after the destruction of the World Trade
Centre and Taleban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden leading to the
fall of the Taleban. After the collapse of the Taleban administration, the
international community announced its plan to build a ‘stable
Afghanistan’ and installed an interim administration led by Hamid
Karzai, a relatively less-known Pashtun player in the Afghan political
setting. The process of international ‘state-building’ in Afghanistan took
shape in an accord called the Bonn Agreement, reached between the antiTaleban forces in December, 2001. Chapter four analyses the war on
terror and its implications for Afghanistan. After studying the
speculations associated with the 9/11 attack, the US response, their
understanding of Al-Qaeda and the Taleban and Pakistani reaction to
9/11, the chapter studies the repercussions of the Operation Enduring
Freedom, which led to the fall of the Taleban and the signing of the Bonn
Agreement, a blueprint for political, economic and social reconstruction
designed by the international community. The chapter concludes by
highlighting the major issues facing Afghanistan since 2001
The process initiated by the Bonn Agreement faced challenges of
political, economic and social dimensions. Certain challenges included
the widespread destruction of infrastructure; low social indicators;
prevalence of drugs and arms; delicate, uncertain and factionalised
politics; legacy of a three-year drought and extremely weak administrative
capacity. The poor infrastructure of the country, the continuing drought,
the high number of Internally Displaced Persons and refugees in
neighbouring countries, the gender inequality—all adding to the
enormity of the transitional challenge. The unsettled military and
political environment along with the competing regional and
international interests further threatened to influence the process and
outcome. Issues like societal cleavages, international response to
reconstruction, regional networks, the low development indicators, the
fragile security, absence of government institutions and socio-economic
devastation posed as major quandaries.
To be continued....