The very obscurity of motives in the hijacking drama being played out at Stanstead airport only serves to underline the depth of Afghanistan's crisis and the destabilising effects it is having on surrounding states. There is no confirmation of reports that the hijackers are looking for the release of Ismail Khan, a legendary warlord who has fallen out with the Taliban regime which has ruled the country since 1996. There are even suggestions that those who seized the plane on a domestic flight from Kabul last Sunday are looking for asylum in London.
If true it indicates the suffering of Afghanis caught in the middle of their country's misfortunes. These began over 20 years ago with the Soviet invasion, after which Afghanistan became a cockpit of the Cold War in its concluding stages. An alliance of convenience between the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani government saw some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic states joining Afghanistan's fight against Soviet troops. Their training camps became international training centres for such radicalism, with profound effects over the last ten years in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
Once the great powers withdrew from Afghanistan a vicious civil war was waged from 1992 to 1996, when the Taliban (literally student) forces took Kabul and claimed control of the whole country. They proceeded to impose an exceedingly sectarian form of Islamic fundamentalist rule, quite out of character with the country's tolerant traditions and based on war-weary and exhausted Pushtan ethnic groups in the south, east and west. The other minority groups have gradually been pushed into mountain fastnesses in the north since 1996, as the Taliban regime recruited a further round of militants, largely from Pakistan.
Their regime has come to depend centrally on opium production, with an output three times that of the rest of the world put together. The regime collects tax on opium and regulates smuggling through neighbouring states. These states are now being destabilised by the resulting spillover of ideology and regional tension. Pakistan is centrally affected, as is Kashmir - it was no coincidence these hijackers drew inspiration from the recent hijacking drama there. Saudi Arabia also backs the Talibans, despite the upset that causes to its relations with the US. Washington blames Afghanistan for harbouring the man accused of orchestrating Islamic terrorism internationally, Usama bin Ladin. But Iran, Russia, China and the ex-Soviet central Asian republics oppose the Taliban regime, fearing its subversive and destabilising effects. It is another Great Game, this time played out far from sustained world attention although arguably just as dangerous in its potential development.
Unfortunately such attention is focussed only through such extreme crisis-management episodes as this hijacking drama. May it be resolved peacefully and with a determination to concentrate thereafter on its underlying causes.