By Ibrahim M. Baba
babamibrahim@gmail.com
It baffles me when people say there is nothing comparable between the incidents happening in Kabul and some parts of Afghanistan with our own country – Nigeria. I read a comment from someone who opined that since Afghanistan is a muslim dominated country with less than fifteen ethnic groups, Nigeria can not be predicted to have similar experience in whatsoever form.
We are not talking about ethnic groups or religious domination. We are talking about unpatriotic choruses of hatred and anti-government fracas to invite the western crooks in the name of intervention, and when things fall apart, such crooks will find their way out and leave the people die in the dilemma.
Every country has its own internal problem and by inviting foreign mission to intervene things usually get worse, while the so called missions are the first to withdraw out in shame, leaving people in a continuous war, hunger and starvation.
The events of the past in Afghanistan is enough to teach lessons for us since this is not the first time it happened in the history of the western world intervention in most of the developing countries.
History has a way of repeating itself. Afghanistan is a mountainous landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and Southern Asia. It is a multi-ethnic country comprising of harazan, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Pashtuns, with 39 million people.
The Afghan people are fearless, ferocious, and ruthless fighters, and they have proven this over the years.
In the 18th Century, during the golden age of European imperialism and colonialism, the Afghan people dealt a heavy blow to British imperialism design when they defeated the mighty army of the British empire in October 1842 after six years of heavy fighting that resulted in the disgraceful withdrawal of the British Army from Afghanistan. The battle was between the British empire, and the emirate of Afghanistan, fought from 1839 to 1842.
In the 20th Century, another foreign military intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, this time by the army of the almighty Soviet Union (Russia), pitted against a seeming rag-tag army of the Afghanistan Mujidaheen, ended in a fiasco.
The Mujidaheen, supported by arms and covert operations by the United States of America, fought a nine years guerilla war with the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afganistan from 24 December 1979 to 15 February 1989, culminating in a heavy defeat of the Soviet Army and victory for the Mujidaheen.
Thus, the chaotic scene in Kabul Airport following the dramatic collapse of the Afghan government after a sweeping military victory by the Taliban of desperate Afghans to board planes to escape from the country is reminiscent of what happened on 30 April 1975 in Saigon, Vietnam, after another military intervention by the US ended in an unmitigated disaster.
The USA had decided to withdraw from Vietnam after fighting there for 20 years. The Vietnam conflict was an internal conflict between the communist government of Northern Vietnam (supported by the Soviet Union and China), and the western (USA) backed government of Southern Vietnam.
The USA decided to intervene because it wanted to prevent the spread of communism in Asia. Due to public outcry, the government of the USA decided to withdraw its military from Southern Vietnam in 1973. Unfortunately in 1975, Southern Vietnam decided to surrender after the Northern Vietnamese forces took over Saigon, its capital, on 30 April 1975.
Therefore, the dramatic scenes in Saigon repeated themselves in Kabul this week, with the quiet exiting of the US forces leaving behind the dusts that unless God intervene, the country will equally collapse in the hands of the Talibans.
In Nigeria, some of us always try to invite the USA and other foreign powers to intervene in our internal issues forgetting that America too has its internal problems and that foreign intervention in developing countries by the western countries has never yielded any positive results.
The international community and foreign powers hardly understand and appreciate the complexities and local circumstances, factors and dynamics that are usually responsible for most conflicts in Africa, Asia, and South America and therefore made costly and fatal mistakes that threw up the USA intervention in Afganistan.
The likes of Sunday Igboho, Omowole Sowore and Onyendo Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who enjoys support from the western countries would not understand the implication of throwing stones when in a glass house, until the mighty west loom them into regrets.
What must of our youth failed to understand is that, international politics is treacherous, intriguing, grossing and lacking in moral content. You remember what happened in 1994 when extremists in Rwanda murdered more than 800,000 Tutis and moderate Hutu members in the Rwandan genocide? The international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity.
We should know that the USA and other developed countries such as France, Canada, United Kingdom, etc also have their own internal problems they are battling with. In 2020, a report found that 580, 466 people in the United States were experiencing homelessness and scandalous poverty.
America, even though it is a super world military and industrial power has been faced with alot of security challenges. The country experienced its deadliest gun violence in decades, with the death of 20,000 Americans through gun violence. More recently in 2020, more than 300,000 Americans died from Covid 19 pandemic.
In reality all economies or regime in power in any country of the world suffers the same fate. The only difference is the rate of such fate. For instance, all nations have the problems of unemployment, inflation, insecurity, poverty etc but the rate differs from one country to the other.
In the neighboring Cameroun, incessant Killings, kidnapping and frequent cases of rape have become the order of the day in the southern province of the country. This however has not stopped the government from harnessing it’s security architecture towards tackling the problem.
America, France, England and others suffers from one problem to the other that is why they have elected government to take care of their problems. They are not saints or superior beings. The only difference is that to a greater extent they are more human and responsible than their African counterpart.
We have seen in the history of their struggle, the they developed by exploiting the abundant resources in our continent. Africa is more blessed by God than any other continent in the world. The wealth of Africa is what they used to develop, provide and plan for their aggregate generation yet unborn.
We must all rise to support the gallantry of our troops who have remained steadfast in protecting lives and property of the people. Despite risking their own lives, they never for once withdraw their commitment in fighting to keep the country as one.
I believe if our leaders will cease to be politicians and rulers and be more technocrats and leaders with passion for human development, countries like USA, England, France and the rest will depend greatly on Africans for food and aids.
M.baba is with the Department of Languages,
Nigerian Army University Biu,
Borno State.
