Afghanistan, curse of collaborators In British politics, Tony Blair is a highly controversial former prime minister and a polarising figure. 

Fungi Kwaramba-Political Editor

In 2001, just before the West invaded Afghanistan in its amoral crusade to reorder the world and rid it of extremists, former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair famously declared, “Let us reorder the world around us”, however, the vicissitudes of time have proved him wrong.

When the United States, which is leaving the Asian country in a heap of ruins, and its Western allies stepped into Afghanistan, hunting the Taliban. It was an invasion that was doomed to fail, because it was never about the Afghans, but about the parochial interests of the invaders.

When the Taliban, the loathed rulers of the desert land melted into mountains at the time of the invasion, a new phrase popped up and became famous in that country; “You have watches, we have time”.

Time is always for the natives never for the invaders and in a huff the Americans left, reminding all and sundry that foreigners never push local interests, but seek domination in the geo-global politics with claims of waging a war against terror serving as smokescreens.

It goes without saying that in their 20 years in Afghanistan, the Americans, and the West at large made a lot of allies as they among other things sought to change the governance order, imposed their style of administration, and consequently forced many (notably the Taliban) from the land of their fathers into exile.

They trained the military and equipped it; splashing no less than  US$1 trillion.

Nonetheless, even such huge investments could not prop up a puppet regime whose puppeteer was ensconced safely in the US.

From the start it was an act of American adventurism that was doomed to fail, with a history replete with similar failures.

Apart from deeply dividing a nation, the US made enemies for the puppet government it now abandons without any form of contrition. The former masters (puppets) have now been left at the mercy of the Taliban, who certainly must have scores to settle as they reclaim their birthright.

Thus it never ends well for collaborators as time, no matter their location, whether in Africa or Asia, time will always expose them for what they are, toadying and fawning pawns of foreign powers.

In Afghanistan, US troops were accused of choosing dogs over human beings after thousands were left stranded at an airport in Kabul, while dogs boarded first class, in a classical case that depicts betrayal.

When push comes to shove, as the case of Afghanistan has shown, the Americans would rather cuddle their dogs than come to the aid of their former collaborators, itself a pregnant lesson to Western-funded opposition parties that blindly follow the path of foreigners against their own people.

It is sad to watch videos of people plunging to their deaths after they desperately clung to departing American planes. However, the master seemingly doesn’t care a hoot, as incumbent US President Joe Biden put it, “There was never a good time to withdraw US forces” even as their former allies cried hoarse for help as they feared the wrath of the Taliban. The American President though couldn’t stand the death of American troops any further.

Mr Biden assumed that he was doing Americans a favour by pulling out from Afghanistan. We cannot judge him, because America is a sovereign country that can make its independent decisions. 

Our only problem, though, is the mess and stink he leaves behind, and of course the lesson to collaborators.

While America beat a hasty retreat after losing the war in Afghanistan, its ally, Germany chose booze, with the German military shipping 22 500 litres of beer, wine, and champagne back home from Afghanistan in June while collaborators were left to fry.

Of course, they did not mind the fate of those who toiled by their sides over the years. For now, those people are fleeing in all directions from the wrath of the Taliban; made even more menacing by the fact that they were at one point ostracised from their land of birth by the Americans and their collaborators.

This is perhaps a lesson to the opposition in Zimbabwe, never to collaborate or sell souls for some dirty pieces of silver.

For the uninitiated Zimbabwe’s opposition was never home-grown. While it claims roots in trade unionism, it was birthed by white former commercial farmers who, angered by the land reform programme, wanted to effect regime change in the country.

You see, just like in Afghanistan, in Zimbabwe the Americans had collaborators in the form of the MDC. There is no sense of schadenfreude here, only parallels between what happened in Afghanistan and what almost happened in Zimbabwe, again at the turn of the century.

Facts will suffice.

In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2013, former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki revealed how warmongering Tony Blair brazenly sought to invade Zimbabwe at the turn of the millennium to effect regime change using its southern neighbour as a military base.

“There is a retired chief of the British armed forces, and (he) said that he had to withstand pressure from the then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who was saying to the chief of the British armed forces, ‘You must work out a military plan so that we can physically remove former president Robert Mugabe,” Mbeki was quoted saying.

The invasion never happened, but the intentions were glaring, with the Western world stopping short of war by the imposition of crippling economic sanctions, which have bled Zimbabwe billions of dollars over the past two decades.

Some scholars regard economic sanctions as a form of war since they accomplish the same objectives as war, such as deprivation, deaths, and destabilisation.

According to a report by the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research, as many as 40 000 people may have died in Venezuela as a result of US sanctions that made it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine and medical equipment.

So, technically Zimbabwe is under siege from the US and its allies, who have tried unsuccessfully to install a puppet regime in the form of the MDC.

While the Taliban had the time, in Zimbabwe we have both watches and time, and are masters of our destiny, with no room for Western quislings, who hopefully have learnt that collaborating with foreign nations does not pay.

Because the West speaks in forked tongues, it talks of love without loving, of protection without protecting and tolerance without tolerating.

Fears abound that the abandoned Afghans will fall prey to revenge killings, repression, and retaliation. Thus, as America; the self-appointed prefect of world politics, marches out, a humanitarian crisis unfolds.

Although NATO trained and armed a 300 000-strong security force, it melted under the blaze of the Taliban might, which though certainly not right, has a right to call the shots in their motherland.

Such is the power of fighting for a cause, where birthright determines the means. Such also is the lesson that those bent to puppetry in the so-called developing world, questing to enforce regime change at Big Brother’s behest, should learn, and learn it well.

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