From the words of wisdom and intellect, natural calamities have been accused as being the greatest enemy of man. We nod our heads in reaffirmation but in reality, the soul trembles over the thought. Six major natural disasters – famine, floods, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and heat wave – have caused major disasters in human history. If only the statistics of big wars and massacres are collected, 586.4 million people in these two types of events.
Let’s be fair discuss the pandemic, the greatest quasi-natural killer in history. Pandemics have killed 247.5 million people in ten major attacks. Now the total number of these seven major natural killers is 353.3 million, which is still 23.61 million less than the war accomplishment of man. How can one ignore the fact that preventing natural disasters is beyond human reach despite all scientific progress, yet billions of dollars are spent annually on finding ways to prevent them, while man alone is responsible but still finds excuses to start it.
War starts very easily, often preluded by arrogance, ego and economic interests. After researching the history, all the lessons by war experts on ending conflict are left behind before a new war is started. A war can be started on any desired date, but the generals are swallowed by the darkness in finding the date of its end. The Mongols, the greatest mass murderers of humanity, are strangers in today’s world. In world politics, their existence is not visible for a long time. They meet only in the graveyard of history.
The Japanese, who carried out one of the greatest massacres in history, today hate war the most. The Chinese, who suffered two major massacres in history, have stuck to the policy of avoiding war. After the United States and Great Britain, show me a country that has based its foreign policy on war. Even Europe, which was used by the United States for sixty years, said that it had understood that the era of gaining benefits through peaceful relations, not war, had arrived. As soon they understood this, Europeans left America and Britain alone in Afghanistan and went home.
But has Europe been able to stick to this policy? After ten years of peace time, European once again became entrapped in the Ukraine war. Europe is facing a recession. It largest industrialized country, Germany, is experiencing deindustrialization. They were shown the dream that the end result of the Ukraine war would be that that Russia was split into five pieces and they will return with the greatest natural treasures.
Just take a look at the US endured in the first twenty years of the 21st century as the Western alliance faced a shameful humiliation in Ukraine. When 3,000 people died in America on 9/11, the United States rushed to Afghanistan with the help of 44 countries. The arrogance was such that it even asked us, “Are you with us or against us?”
We supported them and the United States was stuck in the Afghan swamp and asked us not to support them anymore. What could have further lowered the pride was that a few months after the invasion, the Bonn Conference decided that Afghanistan’s neighboring countries would not interfere in the war. And in just a few years, they requested us to help them negotiate with their rival. The intervention that prevented us demanded the restoration of the same intervention for ten years.
Despite spending over one trillion dollars, the situation was that US officials had to use helicopters to go from Kabul Airport to their embassy. The reason for this was not that the cost of the helicopter was only fifty rupees per hour, but that they considered the roads of Kabul city unsafe for them. What is even more embarrassing is that in 2018, UN staff and international NGOs sought prior permission from militant commander to move into Kabul city, for which a formal communication system was established.
These were the circumstances in which America was asking Pakistan for help in negotiations. When that assistance was provided, the whole world saw the spectacle that one of the most important policies of the United States stating, “We do not negotiate with terrorists’. The same US was now negotiating with them in Doha after declaring as terrorists. It was a sign of helplessness that Ashraf Ghani’s rule over Afghanistan would be maintained by a peaceful withdrawal as a result of the negotiations.
But what happened? Kabul became a second Saigon for them. The question remains whether the US or its allies have learned any lesson despite seeing the tragic end of their 20 years of failure in Afghanistan. If lessons were learned, would they have faced a greater humiliation in Ukraine just two years after his shameful escape from Afghanistan? What is worth noting is that even after the humiliation of Ukraine, they will once again hold a global conference on how to save humanity from natural disasters. However, humanity has not been harmed as much by natural disasters as by this Western alliance.
