A flock without a shepherd

Mahmood Khan, the leader of the principal Pashtun political party, declared in an interview with the Portuguese Daily “Diario de Noticias” that Afghanistan is in its current state because of external interference in the country.

An old saying in Central Asia goes: “A flock that does not have a shepherd belongs to the wolves”, one which can be applied to the Afghanistan of the last two decades. The Pashtun, representing 40 to 45% of the population, ruled the country for three centuries before they lost power to other ethnic groups, causing an imbalance temporarily plugged by the Taleban, not representative of a traditional government.

He said that the country’s greatest problem was interference from abroad. “Many countries, including the USA, supported the Jihad and then left the country on its own, full of weapons”, declared Mahmood Khan.

He added, “Unfortunately, because of all this interference, Afghanistan became a paradise for all sorts of criminal organisations, Mafiosi, drug traffickers and terrorists. Some tens of years ago, Afghanistan was intact, with its institutions, its education system, roads and army. The world allowed the Taleban to enter, those who came from nothing. They went to Kabul and the first thing they did was to murder President Najibullah in cold blood. This was the first act of terrorism, which the outside world saw and did nothing. So we can today say that the UNO, the USA and other great powers are in debt to Afghanistani people”.

This is a direct allusion to the fact that the USA actively created the Mujaheddin to fight against the Soviet Union and the Taleban to fight the Mujaheddin, who had spun out of control. After this was the master plan, to build a pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to pipe Central Asia’s huge reserves of natural gas and oil to tankers waiting in the Arabian Sea.

Mahmood Khan is not the first Afghani politician to complain that the Communist government was wrongly overthrown and with the interruption of its programme, which was addressing the country’s problems, Afghanistan was hijacked by terrorists actively aided and abetted by those powers which today launch a war against international terrorism – exactly that which they helped to create.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru