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“FORWARD” Not Appealing Enough

It all started in September 2001, when Cowboy Bush waged war on Afghan people under the operation code named “Operation Infinite Justice” which was later changed to “Operation Enduring Freedom” to oust a radical and fundamentalist regime of Taliban, which provided sanctuaries and as well training camps to global terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and many more. Democracy, nation building, human rights, women rights, freedom of speech and many other utopian incentives were promised to the Afghan society. A grand atmosphere of hope was created. Afghan people looked up on Americans and its allies as brothers and great friends because they were looking at Cowboy Bush through the same lenses as they used to look at President R. Reagan through. The west in general and the Americans in particular were put in charge of the driver’s seat and Afghans who were looking forward to this joyous ride were made to sit in the passenger seats. But soon, there came the blunders again

A filthy, corrupt and symbolically democratic government with beasts from the jungle was put in charge of the war struck poor Afghan population. Both Bush and his cronies did not bother to go through some history pages at all even if they did then they totally misread it. The basic calculation was messed up. Its result, Bush soon was transformed from a brother to an adversary in the mindset of rural Afghans. It became a difficult task for Afghans to draw a distinction between Leonid Brezhnev and George W. Bush. American troops were more looked up on as a source of terror rather than anti-terror in rural villages. Far from betterment, the day-to-day affairs of Afghan livelihood went on deteriorating again and as a result giving birth to numerous challenges to the presence of the western allies in the country and as well as to the functioning of its Afghan counterparts

It was in 2009 when the American people started chanting songs of CHANGE, somehow it gave hope a rebirth in the Afghan public thinking that CHANGE will be brought to Afghanistan too, though this time in a positive manner. Afghan people perceived president Obama as more of a dove than a hawk. It was widely believed that President Obama and his associates will not skim through the history pages like his predecessor did and therefore will be skeptical when it comes to drawing conclusions. Corruption will have no place in the local Afghan institutions, merit will be given priority, and the beasts will be ousted from the Afghan administration which will lead to hoarding the sinking Afghan ship safely. But, yet again, emphasis was laid up on a military solution up to an extent where a military General (Karl Eikenberry) was put responsible to the civilian ambassadorial duty in Kabul and more American troops were called from off shores to fight terrorism in Afghan villages. For almost ten long tiresome years, Americans and its allies fought in rural Afghan villages trying to hunt down Al-Qaeda. After a loss of thousands of innocent Afghans including children and women due to this so-called war on terror, in the end the dust rose from a house in Abbotabbad

On November 6th 2012, majority of the Americans voted for a slogan “FORWARD”. Across the oceans, many Afghans will be asking the question considering the obliterating socio-economic and political situation of Afghanistan and they year of 2014, that will President Obama stick to his old policies and go FORWARD with it or this time he has something new in his store for Afghanistan. If he is going to continue with his already existing policies then it will imply that Afghans will once again be deprived of seeing the dawn break. If he has some thing different for the Afghans then what is it? May Afghans be optimistic about it? Will it allow them to experience peace after all? Because in the end it has been a really long while since they have experienced peace. They have an absolute right to experience peace that they have been craving for since the last three plus decades