fate, destiny, god, whatever you wanna call it

I saw a bbc documentary about this guy called Abdul Haque. He was Afgani and had been one of the best commados against the Russian Army and had become sick and tired of his own people killing each other after the Russians left. To cut a long story short, he actually wanted peace in Afganistan. Eventaully he was in a position in which he had been a large number of Al-queda generals willing to defect to him, which would have possibly prevented the situation the world finds itself in now, he waited for the 'go' from the americans, but never got it. He was later tracked down and assassinated. Perhaps only because the Amerians wanted to use their newly developed technologies in Afganistan.
Anyway, the point here is that Abdual Haque could have been used. But he wasn't. You could say that destiny, fate, god or whatever had put him in that place at that time so that we didn't have to end up in the situation we are now faced with globally.
We didn't see the possible soluation. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't one present.
Can we not learn a great deal about such examples?