For all the fulsome praise in the Pentagon of the role of US troops, now at the threshold of disengagement from Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani&’s official visit to America comes at a critical juncture in terms of diplomacy and domestic turmoil. It shall not be easy for him to dispel the impression that Kabul has conveyed a grisly image to the world — the public beating and killing of a 27-year-old woman religious scholar named Farkhunda, who was accused of destroying the Koran.
The Taliban, on occasion, is no different from ISIS though the two may have ideological differences. There was calculated malevolence in the reprisal. Farkhunda was beaten, thrown from a roof, run over by a car and burnt. This is a faint echo of the ISIS immolation of a Jordanian pilot in his cage last month.
The fundamentalist hand in the killing was palpable enough. Farkhunda&’s burial on Sunday was conducted amidst a deeply resonant public outcry, with the huge congregation demanding arrest of the killers. Save Paris and Copenhagen, no such public outcry has greeted ISIS killings in Iraq, Syria, and more recently in Tunisia and Yemen. Nor for that matter in Pakistan where hundreds of children, in search of learning, have been killed by the Taliban.
The manner of a woman&’s passing in Kabul is bound to cast a shadow over President Ghani&’s talks with Barack Obama and in course of his scheduled address to Congress. Mr Ghani is seemingly anxious to illustrate that in foreign policy, his praxis will be markedly different from that of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai who, at one stage, had been belligerent towards the USA. His rhetorical flourish is once again a variant of what John F Kennedy had once said famously — “We do not now ask what the United States can do for us. We want to say what Afghanistan will do for itself and for the world. And that means we are going to put our house in order.’’ That house it seems is in quite a mess if the fury of the Taliban is any indication.
And the fury will doubtless intensify as US forces pack their bags after more than a decade of war in President Ghani&’s country… effectively leaving Afghanistan to its own devices. Hence the White House indication that the time-frame for withdrawal might be slowed down. The horror in Kabul chimes hideously with the grandstanding for President Ghani in Washington.