CHARLES Glass in his book, Syria Burning, writes: “To America’s policymaking adolescents, the world is a plaything to abandon when it breaks up.”

The gratuitous haste with which the United States has pulled out of Afghanistan approves — in fact, sanctifies — the aforementioned statement. Although the US had not come there to stick around forever, this cut and run, and that too, without getting a political settlement sealed between the Afghan government and the Taliban, betrays how the American policies are guided by whim and fancy.

What is more, the main plank under the pretext of which it landed its ground forces on the rugged Afghan soil — purging the country of militant outfits — has remained intractable as not only these organisations are intact, but a few more ruthless factions have reared their heads across the land.

Worse, the Taliban are getting near Kabul and, going by the fact that they have already captured vast swathes of territory hands down and that the Afghan government forces have come up short so far, it is apparently just a matter of time before Kabul falls to them.

Leaving a war-torn country to scavenge the ruins for its future at this juncture shows how these hitherto self-styled saviours of Afghan people are immune to the ramifications of doing so. In the recent past, they meted out the same treatment to Iraq, Libya and Syria as well.

All these facts show that the world for the American policymakers is nothing more than a chessboard game to be played according to the rules set out by them, and the other countries are chess pawns to be placed according to their will.

Murrawat Hussain
Chiniot

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2021