Shaida Abdali
Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 6, Number 1 – July/August 2010
Opinions welcome.
PLACING the people of Afghanistan at the center of the ongoing debate on the lingering war against extremism and terrorism is the key to the success of international peace building efforts in the country. Yet, this is rarely done. Afghans, as the main victims of the past thirty years of imposed conflicts on their country, seldom figure into the ongoing discussions of the past, present and future of Afghanistan. In other words, the moral obligation of helping Afghans build a strong state, a secure future, increasingly appears to have become secondary to preserving foreign national security interests in Afghanistan.
Indeed, the Afghan people would have built a functioning state and Afghanistan ’s development would have slowly taken off by now had Afghanistan not become a victim of both the Cold War and its aftermath, the culmination of which was the tragedy of September 11, 2001. But Afghanistan decided to side with the West against the Soviets in the last decade of the Cold War. Of all the nations in the West or in the East, and since the end of the Second World War, Afghans made the ultimate sacrifice to help defend and ensure the freedom of then “the Free World” or our NATO nation-partners today.
