An Unnoticed Crime

A week ago, Taliban militants took over a town in southern Afghanistan. Around 200 fighters rushed the Musa Qala and neutralized local police authorities. The group held hostages during the first days of the town’s capture.

After a NATO airstrike on Sunday, in which the local leader was killed, there is confidence that the Afghan government will regain control of the town. Beside help from the International Security Assistance Force, national militia will be aided by the resistance of the people.

The Taliban’s strength was predicated on local support. That doesn’t appear present anymore. After the militants breached the town’s forces, over 200 residents fled Musu Qala.

While the Taliban’s influence is still strong, it appears less significant. They have drifted far from the Muslim organization that made strides in stabilizing the Afghan government and reestablishing law and order on behalf of the people in the mid 1990s. While they have never been truly legitimate (for obvious reasons), their violence-centric guerrilla war with NATO has eradicated any shred of social or political significance that they may have held.

It is a puzzle, then, to understand how Taliban fighters can still surmount such successful offensives. The absence of a palpable U.S. presence is a possible answer.

By now, there is not enough money or support to further immerse ourselves into a conflict we thought we had won by the end of 2001. And it’s only aggravating, let alone irrelevant, to argue about the possible outcomes of avoiding our unwarranted involvement in Iraq.

Our mission in Afghanistan, a mission that the nation stood firmly behind, was far from over, but we abandoned the righteous war in place of the current one. Now, we’ve nearly forgotten what would have been our righteous task in the first place.

Our government has committed a crime against us, its own people, by ignoring its duty to bring our assailants to justice. Unfortunately, when crime goes unnoticed, there can be no justice.