Events were held in Kabul and other cities celebrating the 'Mujahideen victory' and Soviet departure from Afghanistan. As a nation, which we have to be yet, we should ask ourselves was it really a victory? Those who are not tired of claiming the 'Afghan Jihad' caused the collapse of Soviet Union and take pride for the 'victory' is a generation who were directly involved in the resistance against Soviet Union.

Coming generations would surely not 'celebrate', because there was no victory in reality. Indeed the four-decades long Afghan conflict started before arrival of Soviet troops, but even if the communist empire collapsed, Afghan Jihad did not cause it, nor we should take pride for a victory that followed bloodshed and civil war among the very Mujahideen who could have not defeated Soviet Union, was it not the petro-dollars and stinger missiles?

What the holy warriors of Jihad did among themselves in the years following withdrawal of Soviet Union was worse than the atrocities of Red Army. The coming Afghan generations will not celebrate a victory that led to a civil war killing thousands and caused the rise of a plague on Afghanistan known as the Taliban.

The geniuses of our Education Ministry have decided to keep the coming generations unaware of history. We want to hide the pain we have caused to our society in the last three decades. We have not the guts to tell our children in schools about a 'victory' celebrated highly in official events;because it was not a victory. Afghans were used in cold war among super powers and we are paying the price for a 'Jihad' invented then. We will suffer the religious extremism engineered during the anti-Soviet Jihad era for generations to come.

Today we are facing a very similar situation. There is an atmosphere of uncertainty, just like that during the last months of Soviet forces in Afghanistan. If the US and NATO makes a similar withdrawal like that of the Soviet Union, it's very likely that history repeats itself and we go through another era of internal conflict.

Taliban have said the US will face the same fate as Soviet Union did in Afghanistan. In a statement on the 23rd anniversary of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban demanded the US and its allies to withdraw immediately and unconditionally.

This hits the final nail in the coffin of our hope about a negotiated political reconciliation with the Taliban. It all looks dark clouds ahead.