Imtiaz Gul
Will not forget. We will not forgive. We will hunt you down to make you pay.
Do such vows really matter after President Joe Biden’s July 8 announcement on withdrawal from Afghanistan? His decision unleashed a dynamic that was hard to arrest until the Taliban reached Kabul, leading to another kind of crisis. And then another tragedy struck on August 26, with nearly 100 deaths, including 13 Americans.
And a more critical question arising out of the entire fiasco: will the US narratives carry any credence any more? Particularly after startling revelations by Milton Bearden, a former CIA Station Officer in Afghanistan and many other countries?
In a recent webinar with the Centre for National Interest, Bearden claimed that Osama Bin Laden was thrown out of Sudan and sent to Afghanistan in 1996 on the CIA’s request.
He claims that the then Taliban foreign minister Wakeel Muttawakil even called him to inform that bin Laden was no more under their protection – an indirect invitation to come and get him. We will not resist his arrest, was the message.
Bearden conveyed this to the high-ups of the Bush administration but the mood in Washington was different. War on Afghanistan was already underway and thus Bearden’s message was disregarded.
Bearden told the audience that the US invaded Afghanistan not because of bin Laden but for other reasons, including the preparation for a similar invasion of Iraq.
Quite shocking, though not unexpected, revelations from a former CIA regional chief.
Now what to make of all the narratives that have largely focused on terrorism, counter-terrorism and scapegoating Afghanistan’s problems on the neighbours? What will Joe Biden’s vow to “hunt down perpetrators of August 26 heinous attack” actually entail now?
War mongers of all shades – Afghans, Indians, American lobbyists, Congressmen – would love Biden to return to Afghanistan to follow up on his vow. This is what the social media warriors, particularly those of Afghan descent – are propagating.
They want the American tax-payer to forget what the military establishment did to their $ 2.6 trillion in two decades – totally oblivious to the waste and willful fraud in the use of those funds – as identified by the US Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
