What’s Next for this War-torn Land?

No other country has suffered so much from the internal rivalry, external interference, foreign machinations, primitive political and religious obscurantism, physical destruction of its assets and resources as Afghanistan has over the last few decades. Apratim Mukarji, a veteran journalist of considerable repute for reporting on conflict zones in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan chronicles these sufferings of the country and its people in the book under review. His focus is on the two terms of the Taliban rule. ‘From the rise to power in 1996 as self-proclaimed saviors and puritanical scholars with a mission to eliminate factionalism, corruption and ideological deficiencies to their ouster in 2001, the Taliban’s stranglehold on Afghanistan is an unfortunate saga of people’s sufferings amidst a brutal power struggle’, to quote the author. The emergence of the Taliban is also a function of the periodic changes that proved to be drastic, such as the overthrow of the Sardar Mohammad Daoud government, fall of the Communist governments, the end of the Soviet occupation, the reign of the Burhanuddin Rabbani-Ahmad Shah Massoud regime, followed by the first Taliban takeover—all proved to be intermittent fault lines hindering the governments’ efforts to bring stability and peace in the country. Ethnic rivalry, war-lordism, corruption, and Pakistan’s search for strategic depth that attempted to have a strong grip on Afghanistan, are other factors that contributed to the dysfunctionality of all governments in the country.