ISAS Insights

Mullah Omar’s face was much unlike that of Helen of Troy. Yet it too was one that caused the launch of a thousand ships – airships to be more precise. Like the besieged city in Homer’s ‘Illiad’, Afghanistan of the present was swarmed by invaders, not by the Greeks, but as some see them, by their modern counterparts – the Americans and their allies. As in the Trojan War, 10 years down the line the War Council met, as it must have also in Mycenae of ancient Greece. This time the venue was Chicago in the United States, home of the modern-day mighty Agamemnon, President Barack Obama. In Chicago, as it had happened in the epic tale, the invaders finally decided to call it a day. They agreed to depart after a decade of unwinnable and unrewarding warring. This time, too, a Trojan horse would be required to be left behind. But a problem had arisen. On that mythical occasion the jubilant but unwary Trojans had dragged the huge wooden horse inside their city walls, not heeding the warnings of that perceptive priest of Poseidon, Laocoon, who had beseeched them, in vain, not to: ‘I fear the Greeks’, he had bemoaned, ‘even though they come bearing gifts’! The Trojan counterparts of today, the Afghans, drawing, not perhaps from the lessons of the ancient Classics but from many practical experiences, had become suspicious of the potential contemporary horse.