Afghanistan’s vexatious surrender to Taliban has always been Africa’s story

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Earlier this week, the world watched the dumbfounding sight at the dizzying speed at which the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, taking cities, towns, and regions and ultimately capturing Kabul, the capital city and seat of government. With extreme swiftness in the space of one week, the Afghan military, trained and equipped by the United States military, laid down their arms. Some took off their uniforms and abandoned their posts.

The country’s President, Ashraf Ghani, absconded in a hurry before the Taliban fighters arrived at the presidential compound, allowing the Taliban to casually stroll into the palace unhindered, wandering around taking selfies and giving tours to journalists.

No sooner did the U.S. military personnel began their departure than the Afghan government feebly disappeared.

Now, this is after 20 years of investment, wasted treasures in both financial and human losses. From 2001 to 2021, the United States plunged $2.2 Trillion prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. According to the Associated Press, the total death count since 2011 is roughly about 172,00 souls, of which 2,448 are American service members’ lives, over 1000 coalition forces, 3,846 U.S. contractors, 66,000 Afghan national military, 47,245 Afghan civilians, 51,191 Taliban and other opposition fighters, and tens of thousands who were injured or permanently maimed since the war campaign began.

The stunning, jaw-dropping capitulation of the Afghan military decked in the U.S. made military gears and conventional weapons such armored tanks and artilleries in the face of advancing gun-totting, pickup truck driving Taliban fighters was shocking and embarrassing not only to the country but to the United States and its coalition forces, who spent blood and treasures protecting and training the country’s military for two solid decades so that they can defend themselves.

Neither the Afghan military resisted the Taliban nor did the government push back, nor did the people protest. Instead, they spinelessly walked away, and many tried to jump on U.S. military moving planes, causing some to fall to their deaths.

The failure of the Afghans to fight for their country is reminiscent of the complacency and the cowering of the African people who, for decades, have endured multiple reigns of beastly strongmen. Whether in military khakis or civilian in a western suit, African babban riga, boubou, or agbada, depending on the region of Africa you are examining.

Africa has endured one of the world’s ruthless, oppressive systems, which has kept the people in perpetual modern-day servitude in their own land perpetrated by their kind. Yet, their response to their avoidable distressed state has been, at most, tepid.

The majority of the countries in the continent have quietly accepted their fate, treating their brutal and punitive system as the standard they deserve.

They, like the Afghans, have laid down their weapons and let the overlords in the political class stomp on them.

The anomalies that eventuate from the brutal exploitation and abuse of the African nations’ resources could easily be remedied if they could activate and sustain their most potent weapon, civil disobedience, in a prolonged righteous cause.

For centuries, civil disobedience has been used to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, from the Boston Tea Party that led to the American Revolution to the Salt March of 1930 that chased the British out of India. Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus, the lunch counter sit-ins, and all-around civil disobedience led to the civil rights laws of the 1960s. But unfortunately, these African countries have accepted the sobering norm as if “it is their lot.” Leading to the rot and debasement of both the people and the system.

Let’s analogize the Afghan situation with that of the African continent. Just like the Afghans depended on the United States and other foreign countries for their security, protection, and props for 20 years, so have the Africans relied on foreign assistance for decades. From foreign aid to food and medicine, military hardware, household goods, automobiles, etc. With little or no manufacturing or mechanized agro-industry, the Africans rely on foreign countries outside the continent for their very existence.

Just like the Afghans clung to the wheels of an air-bound warplane in an attempt to make a run for it and subsequently falling to their deaths after the plane took off, so have the Africans, who are currently fleeing the shores of Africa in droves with many perishing in high seas of the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach Europe.

These have continued and assuredly will remain the faith of the African if he fails to have the willpower to resist the savage system designed to keep them down

Similarly, just like the Afghan government vaporized at the Taliban advancement and the exiting of the U.S. military from the country, so have the economies of many African countries collapsed in the aftermath of foreign aid strangulations. Soon, the frailing and vulnerable ones like Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Angola, etc., will quickly see their delicate political and economic system destabilized when the West and East decide to turn off the spigot of foreign aid and assistance and debt trap loans. Or they’ll naturally collapse once the consequence of overreliance on foreign backings sets in.

These and many more are the likenesses of the Afghan story with the nations of Africa. If Africa fails to stem its overdependence on foreign supports, then the countries in the continent will choke and will eventually fall just like Afghanistan

Howbeit, these enfeebled African nations could still alter course from its impending nosedive and avert an imminent political and economic meltdown if they adopt decisive and sweeping political and economic reforms. There may be little time left to reassess, rebuild, and be self-reliant.

If the governments of Africa do not reverse, then the people should force a recourse.

Failure to act now will assuredly throw the few emerging African nations into political crises and global embarrassment like Afghanistan and plunge the countries into a malignant financial and economic predicament, the likes they’ve never seen before.

LaBode Obanor is a financial expert at Banor Associates in New York area

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