China has been investing heavily in Afghanistan and it is a super power also lying quite close to it so any agreement between the Taliban and Washington in the on-going dialogue between Washington and the political stake-holders in Afghanistan in which Beijing is not taken on board would be counter-productive. Washington is double-minded. It wants to withdraw as well as not to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The prospect which has been troubling it is the possibility of unfettered dominance of China in Afghanistan in case it pulls out of this war-stricken country. It is, therefore, in a catch-22 situation.
Afghanistan hasn’t seen good days after the overthrow of King Zahir Shah. Let us admit that it was his political acumen and farsightedness through which he managed to run his country for a very long period despite the fact that different tribes speaking different languages and different religious faiths inhabit that country. Every year in summer the king used to celebrate festivities billed as Jashn-e-Kabul which were thronged by people from all over the country as well as from Pakistan and India. Musical concerts were held in Kabul. Indian movies used to be screened in the cinema houses of the Afghan capital. When the exhibition of Indian films were banned in Pakistan, Pakistanis used to travel to Kabul just for seeing them in Kabul’s cinema houses.
Afghanistan’s law and order suffered a terrible blow when King Zahir Shah was ousted from power by his cousin Sardar Daud who was also removed from power by the communists and killed. The rulers who followed him also could not get a firm foothold in power. The emergence of the Taliban and the nine-eleven episode etc is now history . What future holds for this war-torn country is very much uncertain.
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