Actually, the story of Afghanistan, just like the story of Vietnam, is not about the withdrawal or collapse of a foreign power-supported regime. It has always been about not depending on others to fight for you. If you are not interested in taking care of yourself, who else will? Britain? Uncle Sam? Beijing? It is important for us to learn that hard truth and other right lessons from Afghanistan.
I have never been to Afghanistan. But I have gone to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. When I went to Islamabad in the 1980s to interview President Zial ul-Haq, I requested for a trip to camps housing Afghan refugees. That was granted. The Pakistan embassy in Singapore also scheduled a mountain ride through the historic Khyber Pass.
A Pakistan Foreign Service Officer picked me up in a land rover at my hotel in Islamabad and told me to get ready for a spectacular ride. He was not exaggerating. The Pass is the road through which conquering armies had marched – through Afghanistan and all other mountainous regions linking the north-eastern stretches of the Middle East to Pakistan and India. They included the Imperial armies of Alexander the Great and Great Britain. Hamid Khan, the FSO officer, would point out to me the colourful crests and signs edged on the sides of the mountains. Grecian empire emblems, British regiment colours and other souvenirs left behind by other marauding troops and invaders. We made a couple of stops. At each stop, I was advised to stick close and not wander off, as my safety could not otherwise be guaranteed in these tribal areas.
I quickly learnt that in outlying regions of Pakistan (and for that matter, anywhere in the massive landmass of countries that had names ending with ’stan), tribal and not federal authority prevailed. That was never more clearly emphasised when our landrover arrived at the last town before the Afghanistan border. We stopped at Landi Kotal for a bite. Hardly anyone there moved around without an AK-47 or Kalashnikov assault rifle slung on the shoulder.
After the stop, a few more kilometres later, we were at the border. We could see the crossing. Afghanistan at that time was under a Communist regime installed by Moscow. Ironically, US administrations used to say Afghanistan was the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. And the Americans were happy to have the Soviets bogged down there and have the latter’s citizens suffer the tragedy of having to receive batches and batches of body bags before calling it quits and making a hasty retreat.
I suppose the Americans would not have gone to Afghanistan if not for the Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Because Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden was sheltered by the Taleban, the US went after the Taleban. The subsequent occupation of Afghanistan had to come to an end after bin Laden was killed in a US operation. The war on terrorism, broadly speaking, also became less of a priority after another terrorist group, ISIS, was defeated, followed later by the demise of ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Not only did the US lose interest in Afghanistan, the Afghan administration propped up to prevent a return of the Taleban had been less than committed. According to US President Joseph Biden: “It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not.” It looked like US$2trillion, 6,000 American lives and countless more Afghan ones had been expanded for nothing, according to the Economist magazine.
Post-bin Laden, Afghanistan became less relevant to US interests, despite the fact that this country of ungovernable Pashtun tribes has more than US$1 trillion worth of natural resources. The writing was long on the wall. The return of the Taleban should not have come as a surprise. Neither should the capitulation of the Afghan government – to anyone, including the Americans who just wanted to wash their hands off the whole costly project.
What has Afghanistan taught anyone? Nothing can replace total self-reliance backed by a radar-sharp sense of what’s happening around you.
The Vietnamese fought off two big Western powers – France and the US. They had their differences with the other big power, China. When Soviets were backing them, they had regional ambitions of their own. There was much talk of a unified Indo-China federation comprising Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos at the time. That ambition vanished quickly with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Instead of retreating into irrelevance and embarking on fruitless adventures, Vietnam faced the new realities and went on a path of improving the lives of its people. It had never truly relied on others to take care of its interests.
I believe Singapore learnt that lesson very early on. Nobody would take care of your interests better than your ownself. The sudden withdrawal of British troops in 1971 – leaving the big hole of a 20 per cent deficit in the GNP plus the loss of 25,000 jobs – forced us to grow up rather fast.
It also left us with two important realities. In the end, no one else would come to your defence. Building a capable force to take care of yourself was one thing. Believing in the cause is quite another.
Afghanistan offers everyone a sobering thought, since our defence force is essentially based on total defence. Are our citizens fully committed to the cause of the country since some do not see themselves as masters of their own house – in meaningful jobs, choice homes and general pride in themselves? No pride, no belief in a place dominated by foreigners means we may become nothing more than a nation of Ashraf Ghanis.
Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a local magazine publishing company.