There is an Afghan proverb that goes: ‘The power of the people is equal to God’s power.’ It’s a way of saying: ‘Ignore people power at your peril.’ It was due to this power that seven years ago the Afghans, supported by only a few thousand American-led foreign troops, toppled the Taliban in just two months.
Today we have many more foreign and Afghan troops on the ground. There are nearly 70,000 international soldiers from around 40 countries, here to fight Taliban-led insurgency and to bring security. Almost all of Afghanistan’s provinces have some sort of foreign military presence. But what could have been the key solution to our problems is now a foundation for failure – a failure that the West is rapidly moving towards.
