Opinion: Under the Fog of the Afghanistan-Pakistan War Lies America’s Dark, Troubling History

By Staff Writers Hamnah Akhtar, Jessica Cao, & Veer Mahajan

Villagers along the Afghan-Pakistani border lay asleep as military aircraft rumbled overhead, causing explosions that violently lit up the morning sky. Frightened and uncertain, civilians gathered their families and belongings: for them, the war had begun. 

On February 27, Pakistan formally declared open war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government after weeks of escalating cross-border attacks and airstrikes. Tensions between the two South Asian countries have remained high over the last few months, with Pakistan accusing the Afghan Taliban government of harboring and providing safe havens for the terrorist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claiming the group used Afghan territory to train fighters and launch deadly attacks. But recently, a fresh wave of attacks and civilian casualties escalated the conflict into open war. 

Much of the context of the conflict, one that has forced displacements of thousands on both sides, connects to the US’s past actions in the region, including close ties to what is today the Taliban. The US’s current embroilment in Iran, part of a pattern of foreign involvement, distracts attention from the right-wing, Islamist terrorist outfit’s heavy influence over Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Afghan roots exist in America, with 60,000 Afghan-Americans in Fremont alone, but so do American roots in Afghanistan — indeed, it was the US that was largely involved in the Taliban’s formation. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-89, the American CIA covertly supported the Mujahideen, anticommunist guerilla fighters, thereby laying the groundwork for decades of instability. 

Over time, these US-backed factions merged into the Taliban; with a growing base, including Pashtuns, — another major Afghan ethnic group — the Taliban seized Kabul in 1994 and established tight control by 1996, dominating nearly 90% of the country by 2001, when the US attempted to oust it. The TTP’s membership in this network is a direct result of American and Pakistani decisions in the Cold War, with repercussions continuing to shape Afghanistan, neighboring Pakistan, and the US, to which thousands of refugees have fled crisis-ridden Afghanistan. 

Although the Taliban were ousted in December 2001, they gradually regrouped, and after years of conflict, they retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 as US forces withdrew after a 20 something year occupation/war. The Taliban have since reimposed strict rule, prompting widespread fear, economic collapse, and displacement. These conditions have driven waves of Afghan migration over the past two decades, many of whom have settled in cities like Fremont, which is home to the largest Afghan community in the US.

The current phase of the current Pakistan-Afghanistan war began with Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan military bases, which Pakistan said were aimed at militant hideouts linked to TTP. These strikes followed a February 16 suicide bombing that killed eleven Pakistani security personnel and one child. Although the fighting is unfolding thousands of miles away, its impact reaches far beyond. As the missile targets shift from military facilities and terrorist strongholds to civilian areas, Fremont’s sizable South Asian community, too, experiences the conflict. Fremont resident Mohammad Akhtar feels empathy for “the Afghan people, especially because they have been suffering from wars for a very long time. Even being a Pakistani … I feel bad about all the difficulties that Afghan people are going through, not only just because of this war, but also all the previous ones.”

The consequences of the war are deeply personal and pressing for the almost 7 million US residents of South Asian origin. Civilians continue to largely bear the cost — residents of the Pakistan-American border remain haunted by constant airstrikes and attacks. Allowing this war to fade quietly into the background of global news ignores the human suffering unfolding and the historical responsibility of the US in causing the conflict. 

With the Taliban, an American creation, at the crux of the war, the US must not sit idly by under the guise of non-interventionism. Rather, the US must take an active role in facilitating peace through negotiations and peace talks while offering humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of civilians impacted.

For a country that once produced weapons in the region and later withdrew after two decades of war, the indifference the US currently chooses to display regarding the terrorism, war, and civilian suffering is no neutral position. The US must not only acknowledge the situation and its responsibility in causing it, but also take action. It must use its diplomatic might and foreign influence, just as it did when its CIA intervention set the stage for the Taliban’s rule, but now to bring peace and normalcy to Afghanistan rather than the bloodshed of terrorism and conflict.

As the fighting intensifies and normal people bear the brunt of the carnage, the impact extends beyond the border region. Fremont is home to hundreds of thousands of South Asian immigrants and the nation’s largest Afghan-American community; they are directly impacted through familial relations and connections to the bleeding land. Standing by and allowing this war to fade into the background is no longer an option; the US must raise awareness, provide aid, and make amends, because if this conflict keeps unfolding in silence, the cost will not be measured in lives lost today, but in the consequences of choices the United States helped shape and now hesitates to confront.