THE PREDICAMENT OF THE "AfPak" REGION
Afghanistan is now in a state of wild and primitive tribal governance. And the functionality of Pakistan's state system and infrastructure are breaking down. Both have suffered prolonged periods of American sponsored elitist misrule -- spanwned after that sole superpower won the Cold War and started rampaging about the world on a power trip with no precedent.
The structures of the misnamed "AfPak" region finalised under British influence is bound to change now -- in a way that has not been seen in the past 200 years, when the Sikhs took over from the decaying Durrani successors of Nader Shah Afshar in lower Khorasan.
Pakistan was a British geopolitical creation, detached from their "Raj" when its nature had to be changed in 1947 -- and later passed onto the Americans in 1950. Pakistan was conceived in the aftermath of World War 2 and as the Cold War began, to act as a bulkhead in defending Anglo-American global interests in the Middle Eastern and South Asian regions.Later after America won the Cold War against the USSR in 1992, Pakistan continued to serve as an enabler of American oil pipeline mischief in Eurasia. At the same time America had allowed its Pakistani proteges to conduct their own proxy Jihadi imperialism in the neighbourhood, as long as it served the overall cause of both. This soon resulted in the mess which culminated in 9/11. However matters did not get solved quickly and a stalemate in this sordid situation would continue till August of last year, when America panicked and suddenly fled Kabul at midnight. With that, the long Anglo-American interest in this once strategic pivotal region effectively ended: Russia is now confronting the West directly in the European theater, not here.
Pakistan has now outlived its original utility, with the decline of Anglo-American power around the globe due the progressive challenges to Anglo-American primacy by Russia and China -- which they began doing in 2013. Pakistan is also a corrupt liability for its former masters.
Afghanistan was the primitive rump of the Durrani political machine established by the Abdali section of Afghans over Khorasan after fate removed their master, the Persian Emperor Nader Shah Afshar in 1747. The British saw its utility as an outer "buffer" zone in the defence of their Indian regional interests against the Russian "bear", and shaped its dependent rentier character accordingly. This need became even more acute after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the establishment of the USSR. In 1978 the spirit of communism reform reached the proverbially impoverished and backward Afghan tribal society, sparking a vast, intense and disgraceful war which still continues...and in which the prime rival actors on the global stage were involved when Anglo-American interests thwarted Soviet influence by destroying reform efforts in Afghanistan and laid it waste with Pakistani help. That chapter too now seems to have cooled into an uncertain and depleted stalemate last year after the Americans deserted and fled Kabul...
What lies ahead now, and who among the influential "players" intends to do what about thia area and its issues -- is an immediate and interesting matter. It sure won't be like any past situation.