Why should we care?
On the morning of September 27th, 1996, residents of Kabul awoke to a regime change. The night before, the rumbling of old Russian tanks in our streets and the smell of smoke and diesel in the air marked the government’s retreat to the north as the Taliban took control. As a teenager, what I saw that morning was anticlimactic after all the roaring of the night before. Pickup trucks packed with Taliban fighters dominated the streets. Afghanistan officially started its roll backward through the centuries. I doubt many people in the West cared about Afghanistan or had heard of the Taliban at that time. Life seemed good there, the economy booming.
But the Taliban were gaining momentum by the day. Starting the morning its members captured Kabul, they implemented Sharia law to its full force, not practiced with that
The Taliban’s legacy lives on in ISIS
severity for centuries anywhere in the world. The state was directing every action of society from growing beards to prayers to the colors of clothes, even to music. Disobedience was punished by two weeks in prison. Later on, the very small Sikh and Hindu minorities were ordered to wear yellow tags to be identified in public places, just as ISIS marks the homes of Christians in Iraq. These were just a few of the ruthless mandates that preoccupied society under the Taliban.
While the rest of the world propelled into the digital era, Afghanistan remained in the dark, amassing only a few minutes of film documenting the Taliban’s cruelty.
Afghans endured the Taliban for over five years of direct rule and 13 years of constant oppression. Even today, despite the blood and treasure the war in Afghanistan has consumed, the Taliban still remain a major threat to Afghanistan.
Today, almost 18 years since the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) resembles the barbaric regime of Taliban to an astonishing extent. Whether it is ISIS’ declaration of the caliphate, its implementing strict Sharia law, or its massacres of minorities, its performance remains much the same as the Taliban’s.
When I see pictures of the atrocities in Iraq, how can I ask the Iraqis to fix it themselves? The situation is out of their control. I don’t have a prescription to cure the troubles in the Middle East either. I’m certain that many Americans would say, “Why should I care? We are just wrapping up our longest and costliest wars, and we ought not to police the world! The Middle East is a lost cause; they will never get along with each other and it’s not America’s role to fix their problems. Why should we spend taxpayers’ dollars on the other side of the world while we have enormous needs at home?”
The dirty words “nation building” would certainly pop up. It’s true that American idealism and statecraft have not always been successful, given the lack of understanding of the culture, history, and tribal intricacies of the Middle East. But let’s not forget the successful American intervention in that region in the past. The eviction of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Jordan, and Syria and Lebanon are all examples of sustainable and enduring diplomatic and military success for the U.S.
In light of recent failures, it is natural to remain hopeless and thus build a virtual wall of safety quarantining those problems to the Middle East. But if there is anything we learned from abandoning Afghanistan to the barbaric Taliban in 1996, it is that it costs the United States less, in terms of life and treasure, to dismantle a group at its larval stage before it turns into a full-grown monster like Taliban.
TV pundits can blame President Bush and his administration for the chaos in Iraq. I’m not here to defend President Bush, but I’m certain that if we draw a straight line between the current situation and the invasion of 2003, we have simply chosen an easy answer for a much more complicated phenomenon. There is a time to sit and debate what ought to have taken place in Iraq, but let’s do it before Iraqi men, women, and children become numb to what’s happening around them. No country could possibly afford to restart from scratch twice in a decade.
Whether the United States likes it or not, Iraq’s Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities are screaming for help. “With power comes responsibility” is not a phrase bound to America or the English language. Iraqi minorities know it, and they want help from those who could deliver it.
The Taliban never seemed to pose an existential threat to the West, just as ISIS appears to be bound to Iraq and Syria. What the Taliban delivered, when the world turned a blind eye to its atrocious human rights violations, was a far greater risk to the world as a whole than just Afghanistan’s geographical boundaries. When the Taliban destroyed two sixth-Century Buddha statues in March of 2001, the world watched silently; a few letters of condemnation were exchanged between UNESCO members. ISIS burned down an 1,800-year-old church in Mosul; we watched and updated our Facebook pages with a picture. The problem is, it’s not going to end there. It didn’t stop for the Taliban and it won’t stop for ISIS if we keep silent and pretend things are fine.
We should care because ISIS has been acting with total impunity and disregard for basic human rights. We should care because ISIS, with its expressed international ambition, could become a very real threat to many countries in the region. We should care because it is easier to contain it now than it will be later. We should care before there is another wave of brain-drain in Iraq and the tapestry of whatever diversity remains in the Middle East disappears forever.
Astand against ISIS should not be the sole responsibility of the United States. ISIS is a threat to Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and even Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It’s a threat to Egypt and Russia. It’s a threat to Europe and America. It’s a threat to humanity. It’s a threat to the historical heritage of the ancient Middle East. It’s a threat to the Muslim majority as much as it is a threat to Christians and other minorities. It is a shared responsibility of all the world to act against it now.
This is one of those rare moments in history that gives the United States an opportunity to intervene and bring these countries together despite their differences. Perhaps this would mark the “coming of age” for Mideast leaders. It is in times like these that the world should seek a regional solution to a regional threat, including military power to eliminate rather than simply contain ISIS. For this to happen, the world is in need of visionary leadership.
Who could provide such leadership? Turkey? Turkey feels threatened by the Kurds and the Kurdistan region established in part of Iraq, and thus is unlikely to act out of impartial will. The United States should use its influence to convince Turkey to show leadership and maturity in the region. Perhaps with that breakthrough, the U.S. could gain its lost influence in the region.
The Middle East, the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of all three Abrahamic faiths, must not be left for ISIS to raze. The Middle East is only beautiful and the world is only safe when the tapestry of Druze, Yazidis, Jews, Christians, and Muslims live and work side by side. The Middle East could remain the home for all of them—if we care enough.