All parties, except maybe the most fanatic Islamists, are beginning to agree on one thing: there can be no winner in Afghanistan. A possible outcome is splitting the nation into two opposing sections.

All parties, except maybe the most fanatic Islamists, are beginning to agree on one thing: there can be no winner in Afghanistan.

NATO (led by the USA) has announced that it will soon terminate military operations. It will be hard for the USA to claim victory because the Taliban are actually stronger than they were a few years ago, and then spread to (and de facto control) even large regions of Pakistan. The USA can claim victory against Al Qaeda, since it has killed many of its leaders (starting with Osama bin Laden) and greatly reduced its ranks (although Al Qaeda has simply migrated to more hospitable regions, like Somalia, Yemen and Mali). Instead, the USA has not been able to capture the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, the very man that, in a sense, was responsible for the whole war: had he simply delivered Osama bin Laden to the USA, chances are that George W Bush would have forgotten that distant country with such a hard name to pronounce for a Texan baseball fan.

The reason why the USA did not catch Mullah Omar is the same reason why it could not catch Osama for such a long time: they fall when they are not useful anymore. Saddam Hussein was hated by everybody, and was found relatively quickly. Osama, on the other hand, was viewed by many (most?) Muslims as fighting for a good cause. In and around Afghanistan people knew the truth about Al Qaeda’s methods and goals, but in Pakistan he was considered a hero and much more respected than the local politicians. And he was revered by ordinary people in the Middle East, North Africa and as far as the Philippines.

Then the Arab Spring came, and Osama’s brand of militant Islam became obsolete: dictators were deposed not by suicide bombings but by Twitter and Facebook. Osama became a distant relative of freedom fighters, and, all in all, an embarrassing one. Instead his friend Mullah Omar is still very much popular in his region. Like Osama, Omar has built charisma by remaining alive despite the hunt of the USA. And his Taliban have managed to restart the civil war. The world at large thinks that the Taliban are kicking out the USA from Afghanistan, and Mullah Omar reaps the benefits. Therefore no wonder that he is still safe and sound somewhere in Pakistan.

That leads to the source of Afghanistan’s civil war: Pakistan, a country torn by four competing power centers (See The implosion of Pakistan). It is easy for the USA to blame Pakistan for not fully cooperating in the fight against the Taliban, but Pakistan can easily respond that, #1) Pakistan has lost many more people than the USA in this war, and, #2) The USA will eventually leave the region, whereas Pakistan will still need to coexist with the Taliban (its own and the Afghans) and with Al Qaeda and the many other Islamists on its soil long after the USA will have forgotten where Afghanistan is. Pakistan does not necessarily love the Taliban, but it certainly doesn’t trust the USA.

In fact, nobody does: outside the West and its marching millions the USA is much more famous for abandoning countries than for invading them. Everybody has learned from history that the USA eventually leaves (Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union) and the countries of the region have to clean up the mess. Afghans don’t trust the USA either. They are reluctant to fully endorse the anti-Taliban campaign knowing that some day the Taliban might regain power.

None of the neighbors trusts the USA. They all calculate that the USA will leave and wonder what will happen next. They cannot leave their region like the USA will do. It is telling that Iran, the arch-enemy of the USA in the Middle East, has rarely attacked the USA for occupying Afghanistan, and rarely done anything to hurt USA soldiers in Afghanistan: Iran was the most determined enemy of the Taliban, and it is one country that really does not want them near its border ever again. Nor does Russia. Nor does China.

However, the risk that the Taliban conquer the whole of Afghanistan is quite low. They are despised by vast segments of the population. They have mortal enemies among the non-Pashtun minorities. They have only their enthusiasm to fuel their insurgency, as no major power is arming them (unlike, say, Assad of Syria who is armed by both Iran and Russia). The most likely outcome will be to split Afghanistan into what used to be the Northern Alliance (bordering on the former Soviet states and Iran) and a Taliban-controlled southeastern region bordering on Pakistan.

De facto this will create a buffer Islamic state between the pro-Western Afghanistan and (mostly pro-Western) Pakistan, a state straddling two countries, southeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. The women there will get their nose chopped off or will be stoned in public whenever in the name of Allah, but the rest of the world will quickly forget the whole big mess…

until, of course, the next religious fanatic blows up a few airplanes or, worse, explodes a dirty nuclear device downtown New York.