American War on Terror: Islamic Terror Wins
This article tries to take stock of the entire concept of the American 'War on Terror' in the perspective of their unceremonial exit from Afghanistan, in the darkness of August 30/31 night yesterday. Although other details of the causative factors and repercussions are dealt with in the other articles of this issue of the magazine and the editor has no intentions of repeating it, there are some other impacts on the world powers which is being emphasized here.
After Islamic Terrorist’s deadly 9/11 attack on America, the then US President gave a call to the world…We will launch a ‘War on Terror’…in this decisive war, the others are either with us or against us. At that time no one wanted to be seen against the 9/11 victim, the USA hence, there was a general approval of taking on the terrorists. On 20 September 2001, during a televised address to a joint session of Congress, George Bush said, "Our ‘war on terror’ begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated”.
History has seen one of the longest, costliest, deadliest campaign on Afghanistan soil. Islamic terrorists duly helped by a few radical Islamic states have lived to their reputations…of changing tactics. What started with Al-Qaeda, found the associated groups too under the larger umbrella of Taliban along with numerous other Jihadi groups. USA-led allied forces spent >2 trillion dollars, carried >3500 body bags, toiled for 20 long years but at the end of it, Al-Qaeda remains intact and somewhat emboldened. Numerous fringe jihadi groups joined them…essentially most of the 73 sects of Islam, with own groups of the radicals and Jihadists…some 150-odd of them… be it Salafi, Hanafi, Wahhabi… and USA was made to surrender the land it occupied to the same terror group “Taliban”. The then hub centre, the epicenter of world terrorism was Pakistani Madrasas duly coordinated by Pak military and it remains so even today. Instead, Pakistan has emerged as the “Jihad-Guru” of the world, the sole element of the US defeat in Afghanistan. US-led allied forces kept beating around the bush and ignored striking the root of terrorism, Pakistan.
Pakistan has shown to the world how the mightiest’s own means and resources could be used against them. A bankrupt Pakistan used the dollars, weapons and the protectionism of USA to further the cause of Talibani Terrorists and their splinter groups, in the very lands that US-led allied forces occupied. They sheltered those terrorists whether Osama bin Laden, Mulla Omar, the Haqqani network, the Taliban fighters, the Al-Qaeda operatives, some of the ISIS groups and so on. Pakistan supplied them with weapons, resources, intelligence inputs and remote- controlled to launch multiple attacks…on US-led military and interests. US and their allies have all these days condoned the double-speak, double-cross of Pakistan…and the same has been the main cause for their defeat.
About 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians. Through Fiscal Year 2020, the US government has spent or obligated $6.4 trillion dollars on its wars on terror post-9/11 (in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere). This figure includes direct Congressional war appropriations to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowings; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care. It’s is a huge cost and yet, the US-led allied forces were defeated by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists. It is the worst defeat in the history of the world, especially the way the forces were made to retreat in haste, with a defeated conscience. Enormous military hardware including some of the most advanced aircrafts and ground fighting machines abandoned, some self-destroyed and many left in the hands of the enemies.
The adversaries and enemies of USA like Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia…all watched it in glee, in the world-televised retreat. All those nations were also made to carry along with them “the seeds of further unrests” the Muslims of Afghanistan in the name of humanitarian evacuation. They will first get aid & shelter, the citizenship rights, jobs and then start creating problems…unrests, thefts, violence, rapes, riots…all in the name of Islam. It has happened earlier after the Syrian refugee crisis and is likely to happen again. The history will repeat itself. It will be foolish on part of anyone to assume that the world powers will come together to combat the demonic proportions of Islamic Terror raging over globally. India too will be affected and will have to fight it alone amidst sharp criticism by our own highly divisive political opponents.