So, Pakistan has launched air strikes inside Afghanistan, allegedly targeting militant hideouts. The result? At least 46 dead, including women and children.
Naturally, this has elicited the requisite hand-wringing from London, with vague threats of retaliation and a stern warning that the Helmand peace process is under threat. One cannot help but marvel at the sheer theatricality of it all. The British Empire, which once used the Khyber Pass as a mere punctuation mark in its grand narrative of conquest, now finds itself reduced to issuing impotent press releases.
It is a spectacle worthy of Gibbon: the decline and fall of a once-mighty power, played out in the grim foothills of the Hindu Kush. The Victorians would have wept into their brandy. The air strikes themselves are a brutal reminder that the ‘war on terror’ has devolved into a series of shadowy exchanges between nuclear-armed neighbours, with the local population serving as collateral.
And what of the UK’s response? A few stern words, a promise of diplomatic action, and the quiet hope that no one notices that Britain no longer has the military capacity to enforce its will beyond its own shores. The peace process, of course, is a fiction.
Helmand has never been at peace; it has merely endured different forms of violence. The real tragedy is not that Pakistan acted unilaterally, but that the international community has become so inured to such savagery that it elicits only a weary sigh. One recalls Orwell’s observation: ‘We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
’ Today, those rough men are Pakistan’s air force, and the violence is visited on Afghan villagers. And Britain? It stands by, tutting, a fading shadow of its former self.
The lesson is clear: when empires retreat, chaos fills the void. And chaos, my dear reader, has no respect for red lines or peace deals.
