Militant Islamists pretty much know what Westerners want and they're not ready to discuss it -- not now and not in the foreseeable future as recent developments in Afghanistan demonstrate, muses Gamal Nkrumah Whoever sets foot firmly forward in love Will go beyond both Islam and unbelief -- Farid Al-Din Attar, Mediaeval Persian Sufi poet It is virtually inconceivable to fathom how American politicians have become victims of their own pandering to the American voters' terror of terrorism, however misguided this may be in the current exceptional circumstances of the Arab Spring. In the cliché of Western media presentations of Muslims, incidents, mercilessly dismissed as "small", can illuminate a bigger and uglier picture. Afghanistan is a heterogeneous nation with an overpowering national culture in spite of a conspicuous dearth of a unifying national language, a plethora of ethnic and tribal groups and sectarian minorities. Afghan women are still subject to one of the strictest dress codes in the Islamic world. Even so, a majority of Afghans desire to distance themselves from what they perceive as a decadent West. In the south of Afghanistan there is a province called Kandahar, whose capital city is Kandahar -- Afghanistan's spiritual heart and second largest city has become the bedrock of resistance to the American occupation forces. Kandahar is home to that Pashtun people, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group with more than half of the country's population. It is the province that recalcitrant American troops in Afghanistan have chosen to commit the most abhorrent abominations in the country. Meanwhile, don't blame militant Muslims for finding an overpowering, relentless formula, namely vengeance. 2012 got off to an atrocious start. First, in January a video graphically revealing American marines urinating in the corpses of Afghans, leading outraged Afghans and Muslims around the world to protest angrily at the affront to Muslim sensibilities. Then in February, American personnel -- the world still does not know exactly who they were even though some officers were arrested -- at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, "inadvertently", the Pentagon postulates burned copies of the Quran. And, on 11 March an American army sergeant went from house to house systematically and ruthlessly murdered in cold blood 16 civilians including nine children. Currently the attacker is in the custody of American forces, and not the Afghan authorities, and his name has not released. Imagine Western reaction should Taliban engages in the same kind of trickery and treachery. Washington has long prided itself in moral rectitude. It is time for American politicians to level with their voters and with the Afghans and other people they have forcibly occupied their territories. The burning of the Holy Quran has recently been at the core of a political storm centred on allegations that Washington plays by its own rules. Apologies by highly positioned officials of the administration of United States President Barack Obama cannot conceal the suspicion among many Afghans -- and Muslims across the world -- that the apologetic officials must be jubilant over the atrocious attacks by US military forces occupying Afghanistan. Whether or not the apologies are a reflection of a dispassionate expression of genuineness and veracity is beside the point. The Obama administration officials are merely dismissed as peddlers of inaccurate information and biased opinion. Yet an ancient saga plays on. One can understand why Afghans despise the American hypocrisy and double standards. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks on the innocent Afghan victims as "inhuman and intentional act" -- a viewpoint he shares with most of his compatriots. He also demanded justice, and rightly so. And again his people agree. Is it high time for Afghans to wean themselves off the American military aegis. Karzai was and is widely regarded as America's stooge. There was once a clear mutual advantage for the two sides, Karzai and the Americans, in running Afghanistan. And, perhaps even now this is so. Afghanistan is not slipping into civil war. It is already there. A further complication is that officials in Washington purport to believe the preposterous claim that there is no crisis in Afghanistan and worse, that the warring parties, Taliban and the Western troops, are on equal moral footing. The rules, however, have not kept pace with the times. US drones are bombing Afghan villages in remote rural areas intensifying the hatred of the Afghans for their American occupiers and heighten the general climate of seething tension and popular unrest. To add insult to injury, US President Obama promptly remarked after the wanton killing this week of innocent Afghan civilians by a most likely deranged US military psychopath that the incident was "heart-breaking and tragic". His lamentation sounded hollow and perfidious to most Afghans. Pouring oil over troubled waters Obama then went on to say that regardless of the heinous crime, the US will not "rush from the exits" from Afghanistan. Lest that sounds like two ways of saying the same thing, the key word to describe Obama's seemingly contradictory statements "unreasonable" and that is an understatement. US Defense Secretary Leon Paneta tried in vain to be more "reasonable". He said that the suspect could face the death penalty if found guilty. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark profusely praised the "remarkable restraint" of the Americans in face of the anti-NATO protests engulfing Afghanistan. To some extent this is merely the American chapter of a wider story: Western intervention in Afghanistan from the days of Alexander the Great of Macedonia to British, Russian, Soviet and now American military intervention in Afghanistan has not changed fundamentally. The Afghans have always fiercely resisted the invaders and always rid their country of aggressors. Give the Afghans credit for sheer nerve. They are fighting against the most powerful nation on earth with a formidable arsenal of the most deadly and sophisticated weaponry known to mankind. And the roots of mistrust between the West and Afghans go much deeper. Much attention has focussed on the role of the West in ousting the Taliban from power and replacing it with the compliant Karzai. The unfortunate truth for the Americans and their Western allies is that Karzai is far from popular and the Taliban are still a menacing force to be reckoned with. This is profoundly unhealthy. US violence only delays the process of radical political and social reform and true democratisation in Afghanistan. The rugged terrain of the country and the abject poverty of the bulk of its population makes the country virtually impregnable against foreign inroads no matter how powerful. The West would like to see moderate Arab nations, especially the oil-rich Gulf Arab states mediate on its behalf or act as an intermediary between them and the Taliban. But how could they do so when no month passes without the American troops stationed in Afghanistan committing some hideous act of violence or some horrendous crime? It is not enough for the emirs and sultans of oil-rich Gulf countries to pull out their cheque books. They must also make the case for buttressing democratic institutions in Afghanistan. However, how can they seriously do so if democracy is compromised in their own countries? The exit of the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan will undoubtedly be a momentous and symbolic moment for militant Islamists the world over. This is why Obama stressed that a rushed exit was out of the question. To its advocates Iran offers a way out of the Afghan dilemma, and especially in working in conjunction with Russia and China. But if the Iranians want to reposition themselves on the international political map, then the West will find a way to accommodate it. With the political demise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq at the hands of the Americans, Iran has become too large and influential a power to be an ordinary neo-colonial Middle Eastern nation. Yet, Iran is not large enough to pretend to be the regional superpower. There are contending powers -- India, for instance and Turkey. On the few occasions when Iran took the lead on Afghan affairs, it was met with derision. That is a touch hyperbolic, but true. Deep down the Iranians do not want to lead the Middle East because it does not want to pay the price for leadership which is to play down its Shia Islamist ideological orientation and even sacrifice its religious pretensions altogether. The majority Sunni Arab nations and Sunni Turkey simply will not permit Iran to play a leading role in Afghanistan or anywhere else with the notable exception of Shia southern and oil-rich Iraq and the Shia enclaves in some of the smaller Arab countries. In AfghanistanIranian hegemony is not going to work. This inherent reluctance of Iran to lead in the Middle East coupled with the traditional obstinacy of Afghan resistance to foreign interference is unlikely to encounter insuperable obstacles because the deal may well fail to fall foul of militant Islamist competition from predominantly Sunni nations. India, too, is a key regional player and rising economic power. It would be the ultimate irony if secular India ends up as the decisive factor in Afghanistan's re-integration into the international community and the wider region incorporating South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, or Western Asia as the Indians prefer to call it. NATO, or allied invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was supposed to be a temporary measure, now it is being made more or less permanent. But whether Obama likes it or not exit is on the horizon. Yes, it might not be rushed, but it is inevitable. The landscape of Afghanistan is not uniformly bleak. It is a country with tremendous strategic importance. It lies at the crossroads between Central and South Asia with strong cultural ties to the Arabian Peninsula. This is why it has been so important for the West to present a clearly defined policy towards Afghanistan. The social influence of political Islam was far more palpable in Pakistan and in the countries of the Arab Spring and the democratic process in Afghanistan in a hypothetical post-American departure scenario will have to take these regional changes into account. The Islamists are attempting to consummate a deal that would increase their power still further. Afghanistan whether under the control of Taliban or of some other power cannot remain aloof from what is happening beyond its borders, can it? Spineless leaders or political figureheads such as Karzai have no place in a post-American occupied Afghanistan. Iraq and Afghanistan cannot even be compared. The political influence of Iran in predominantly Shia Iraq is tremendous, tempered only by the emerging Sunni Muslim coalition of Turkey and the Oil-rich Arab states. This unique geographical and cultural composition has raised broader questions for the political future of Afghanistan. On each side of Afghanistan stand two admonishing predicaments. Pakistan in the southeast and Iran in the northwest. Afghan resistance to American occupation is broad-based. Militant Islamists have stirred and exploited and manipulated Machiavellian-style the Muslim masses' nostalgia for their glorious past. However, the narrative of resurgence and restoration of a golden age of pristine Islam was combined with contempt for the West and Westernisation. The incidents in Afghanistan over the past three months have laid bare the extent to which Western politicians are cowed by political Islam and even fight shy from investigating alleged criminality of their own culprits. Tightening the screws on Taliban does not represent the West's best chance of a tolerable outcome to the Afghan predicament. Afghanistan and in spite of weeks of anti-American riots is not likely to see a speedy departure of the Americans in the near future. Afghan President Karzai is most likely going to hang on a little longer until the political future of his country is decided by foreign powers in tandem with Taliban. Out on the streets, the Afghans will protest the indignities suffered by their people. And, in Pakistan and other Muslim countries demonstrations in support of the long-suffering Afghan people may continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Aggression, hatred of the other, mistrust of Western ways and xenophobia have risen to levels not seen since the days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All of a sudden, though, Afghanistan is abuzz with anti-NATO propaganda. It is difficult to define or classify political Islam. The language of dirty politics has invariably been universal. As far as the Americans are concerned, the obstacles to fundamental change in their Afghanistan policy are so forbidding that leaders such as US President Barack Obama will always be tempted to muddle through. "We work alongside thousands of Afghans every single day to ensure a better future for the Afghan people. And nothing has happened over the past week that is going to deter us from that goal," said Pentagon spokesman George Little. "We are making progress. We have put the enemy on its heels in many parts of the country," Little pontificated. This might sound like the ravings of a terrified recreant, and in more than one ways it is. And, Afghanistan's neighbours and some of Washington's allies believe that Afghanistan's political future will hinge largely on Washington taking a very different turn to the one in which US foreign policy and the Pentagon is pursuing in Afghanistan. This is no huge turnaround. Certainly it flies in the face of the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. Political Islam acquired a reputation for being utterly unaccommodating. And, Afghanistan is no exception whether it is governed by Taliban or by some other Islamists. Afghanistan's largely unreconstructed Taliban is not famed for immodest modernity. Facing a storm of protest in the Muslim world, Washington must change tactics. Nobody knows the answers, especially the Americans -- except for the Afghans themselves.
