Divine right

 Subject: Divine right.

The scenarios now emerging from the debacle that became the American mission in Afghanistan are quite grave given that Islamic extremism is a thread which runs through it all. The question of Joe Biden’s miscalculation regarding the pull out, his inability to communicate with any of his ally’s, even though they had the spilt blood of their own soldiers on their hands and had spent billions in the effort to keep the Taliban at bay, still the Americans felt fit to go it alone. Their hubris will be remembered, their nation less trustworthy, their aid will be questioned and the entente cordial irreparably damaged.

Successive Presidents have been accused of self delusion. Obama in defining the opposition as having the same principles and therefore doing nothing when action was needed as in Syria. Trump in his bully boy simplicity in believing financial power was sufficient not realising that religious belief is a much greater driving force than political belief. . And Joe Biden, the arch manipulator, the political survivor who dealt in political time scales and the provisional result of the ballot box.

Currently we are focussed on the people left behind who fear the reprisal of the Taliban but soon we will fear the activism of the Islamic Jahid as they mobilise to strike in the major cities around the world. There’s no greater stimulus than winning and to win back the caliphate from the west instils great belief in their invincibility. The Taliban are a home grown phenomena their horizon is within the mountains of Afghanistan itself but Al-Qadeda, ISIS and the offshoot ISIS-K are already in the country consolidating their forces and in many ways are as much a threat to the Taliban as to us in in the west.

An even greater threat is the inclusion of these extremist Jahid into the volatile ferment that is Pakistan. Pakistan, a considerable nuclear power with 160 nuclear ☢️ warheads and the rockets to target their payload. A politically troubled country with a secular government controlled by a religious ulama operating from the madrasa, it teeters on the brink of becoming a caliphate itself. Imagine the suicide bomber astride a nuclear weapon, imagine the delicate balance of power which held the cold war in stalemate broken by an insane assumption of divine right.