The day that the Soviets officially crossed the (Afghan) border, I wrote to President Carter, 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War'". Zbigniew Brzezinski who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser said this in 1998. Little did he or anybody else in America's political establishment then realize that within three years their country will be face to face with a second Vietnam. In October 2001, a US-led coalition invaded this land with rugged mountains. Within two months, the Taliban vanished from Kabul — vanished but not vanquished. The proof lies in the fact that officials from US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China are due to meet in Pakistan next Monday for a meeting aimed at laying the groundwork for talks with the insurgents. This is not the first time the US or Afghan government will be talking to the Taliban. In fact, the Monday meeting will be an attempt to revive a peace process that came to an abrupt end in July 2015 when the news came out that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died two years earlier. The fact is that 14 years after the US invasion, security still eludes Afghanistan. The country lacks a strong and stable central authority. Despite a decade and half of costly Western intervention, insurgents can act at will with lethal efficiency. Yet, Afghanistan doesn't have a full-time minister of defense. Lack of development and economic opportunities are leading to an exodus of people from the country. Though NATO-backed Afghan security operations claim to be killing scores of militants on a daily basis, they have only succeeded in the "displacement of the insurgency, not its eradication", according to a Western official.Security situation is so tenuous that the top US commander Gen. John Campbell says he wants to keep as many US troops there as possible through 2016 to boost beleaguered Afghan soldiers and may seek additional American forces to assist them. Maintaining the current force of 9,800 US troops to train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism raids is vital. The scheduled reduction of US troops to 5,500 by Jan. 1, 2017, should be put off as long as possible. "My intent would be to keep as much as I could for as long as I could." Friday's suicide attack on a French restaurant in Kabul that killed a 12-year-old boy and wounded more than a dozen people shows how right he is in his assessment. Earlier this week, one civilian was killed and 33 were wounded in an attack claimed by the Taliban in an area close to Kabul airport. Last fortnight, six US soldiers were killed as they patrolled near Bagram air base outside Kabul and, last month, suicide attackers struck a Spanish Embassy guesthouse in the capital. Despite disputes over leadership after Mullah Omar's death, the Taliban made big advances last year, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan forces fighting largely on their own since 2014. Apart from briefly capturing the northern city of Kunduz in September, the insurgent movement threatened to take the volatile southern province of Helmand after overrunning several district centers. The Taliban now control more territory than in any year since they were toppled from power in 2001, with the UN estimating that nearly half of all districts across Afghanistan are at risk of falling. Meanwhile, the main faction of the Taliban has rejected peace talks as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. This may be a bargaining chip. But in a final political settlement, as envisaged by Taliban, there will be no role for those who assisted American or international forces. US is not likely to accept such a settlement and leave those who stood by them to the tender mercies of the Taliban. This means the agony of Afghans, which began with the Soviet invasion in 1979, is likely to continue for some more years.
