Saturday, March 14, 2015

Afghan peace process: Marred by short-sightedness (South Asia Monitor: March 12, 2015)

"The new peace process conceived by President Ashraf Ghani ultimately aims at reaching a power sharing deal with the Afghan Taliban. This latest peace process is as superficial as the previous ones because it does not demand an ideological course correction from Taliban. The Afghan Taliban remains committed to ultra-radical version of Deobandi Islam and had championed a barbaric medieval theocratic state in Afghanistan during its days in power where public flogging, stoning, beheadings and iconoclasm were perpetrated by the state machinery. Today the Islamic State is repeating just that in Iraq and Syria."

"The importance of such an ideological declaration is evident from the experience of Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood. Though the Muslim Brotherhood had renounced the use of violent means to achieve political ends as early as 1949 and was a key participant in the Tahrir Square agitation against the Hosni Mubarak regime, when it came to power after participating in the 2012 presidential elections it was soon found trying to impose an Islamist Constitution and its members were found to be indulging in attacks on Christians and other minorities. Leading Middle East expert Yasmine El Rashidi described this as an “Islamist Coup”. Soon Egypt’s powerful military had to intervene to save the country from plunging into utter chaos. All this happened because despite giving up violence and participating in the electoral process, the Muslim Brotherhood remained ideologically committed to the cause of establishing a theocratic Islamist State." Read Full Article Here

No comments:

Post a Comment