The Kabul chaos and South Asia

JB Tuhure, who died last week at the age of 78, was a Maoist, but he became famous for singing awareness songs to drum up support for the Marxist-Leninists. Tuhure's revolutionary melodies had an undeniable undertone of despair. Tuhure's music was both rebellious and consoling at the same time. Complex emotions are unlikely to have entered the minds of the Taliban fighters, who are mostly uneducated.

Except that the Taliban were complicit in these horrible deeds, there appears to be little relationship between the destruction of the soaring Buddha sculptures in Bamiyan Valley and the physical and psychic devastation wrought by the 9/11 attacks. Along with the airport rush, babies being pushed over razor wires by their desperate moms, and a young dentist, there were a slew of additional incidents.

The fall of the US-backed government in Afghanistan may not be the equivalent of the fall of Saigon for President Biden, but the repercussions in South Asia are likely to be just as disastrous. Even when a large tree falls, the earth shakes metaphorically. The movement of a whole mountain of military presence from the crossroads of West, Central, and South Asia is bound to shake the entire region.

The Saigon moment theory' detractors are eager to point out obvious differences. All such analogies were mocked by President Biden himself. North Vietnam was a well-organized state with a well-trained guerilla army. The Vietcong was backed by both the Soviets and the Chinese. The Taliban, on the other hand, are a motley crew of religious fanatics who instill dread in the hearts of their victims.