BY NORM DIXON
The United States is tacitly backing many of Afghanistan's brutal and reactionary warlords as they divide up the country among themselves. Many of the same warlords committed unspeakable atrocities during the devastating 1992-96 intra-mujaheddin civil war.
Washington is willing to tolerate the reassertion of warlord control in Afghanistan provided they pledge allegiance to, and cooperate with, the US-installed puppet interim administration in Kabul headed by Hamid Karzai and provide cannon-fodder to help the US military defeat the remnants of the Taliban-al Qaeda network and any other anti-US opposition forces that may arise.
Afghanistan's warlords have long exploited and entrenched the country's deep ethnic, religious and tribal divisions. Each armed faction claims to defend the interests of a particular ethnic, religious or tribal group.
These warlords usually wealthy landowners who maintain power through a complex system of patronage and armed might seek to expand each particular ethnic group's economic and political position at the expense of others (which also increases a warlord's personal wealth and power).
When the warlords go to war, they stoke their followers' ethnic, religious or tribal chauvinism. Mass atrocities and ethnic-cleansing against rival groups that share the same lands, or towns, are not uncommon. Wiley warlords regularly make short-term alliances with other gang leaders to deal with immediate enemies, only to turn on their erstwhile allies with ferocious brutality.
Traditionally, Afghanistan's ruling class has been dominated by the southern Pashtun tribal leaders. Pashtuns account for around 40% of the Afghan population and predominate in the country's south and east.
The Northern Alliance (NA), which was Washington's main military ally in toppling the Taliban regime, is mainly composed of factions dominated by Afghanistan's other ethnic and religious minorities the largest groups being ethnic Uzbeks, ethnic Tajiks and Shiite Hazaras and are concentrated in the north, centre and west. These minorities have long resented the domination of Afghan politics by the Pashtun political elite.
An important aspect of the 1992-96 intra-mujaheddin civil war that followed the fall of the secular, left-wing Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government was the struggle by the northern ethnic and religious militias to prevent the return of the Pashtun-dominated factions.
Since the 1978 uprising in Kabul that brought the PDPA into power, Washington had worked with Pakistan to impose a pro-Islamabad, pro-Western government on Afghanistan. The Pashtun mujaheddin factions, especially the Taliban after 1994, were armed and funded by Pakistan with Washington's approval. In 1996, the Taliban seized Kabul from the factions that now make up the NA.
Washington's plans
When the US launched its war to overthrow the Taliban following the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the US retained the goal of an Afghanistan ruled by a regime with a heavy representation of pro-Pakistan Pashtun leaders. Washington and Islamabad hoped that the Taliban would split, dump the top leadership around Mullah Mohammed Omar and join the anti-Taliban cause.However, as the war progressed, the split the US was banking on never eventuated. It also became clear that powerful elements in the Pakistan military and intelligence services remained sympathetic to the Taliban and thus a regime heavily influenced by them would not necessarily serve US interests.
Without a credible or trustworthy alternative to the Pashtun political or military force, the US decided to radically change tack and moved to coopt the NA warlords.
Post-Taliban Afghanistan is divided into three major fiefs the west is dominated by the forces of Ismail Khan, a Farsi-speaking Tajik warlord with strong ties to Iran; the north by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek leader of the Junbish-i-Milli party; and central Afghanistan, including the strategic capital Kabul, by the mainly ethnic Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami commanders from the Panjshir Valley, just north of Kabul, who formed the core of the NA army that dislodged the Taliban.
The interim administration that was stitched together in Bonn late last year reflects this state of affairs. It is an uneasy coalition of Afghanistan's most powerful warlords.
The strongest faction is the Panjshir Valley commanders followers of the late NA top commander Ahmad Shah Masood. They control the key ministries of defence, internal security and foreign affairs. This faction is Washington's closest ally.
Dostum is deputy defence minister to the Panjshir faction's Mohammad Fahim, who succeeded the assassinated Masood as head of the powerful Northern Alliance army.
On top of this fragile coalition of warlords sits Karzai, who owes his position almost entirely to US and Western backing. Without an army, a party machine in Kabul or strong regional support, this minor southern Pashtun tribal leader and royalist has little political leverage on his own.
The interim administration is tasked with convening a 1500-member Inevitably, the loya jirga and the resulting transitional government
will reflect the power of the warlords. Each warlord using his wealth
and military power has strong control over the selection of the delegates
from his region to the loya jirga.
The Karzai faction's representation will be inflated by the fact that
it will appoint 399 delegates to fill the seats set aside for civil society
leaders, including representatives of women, university faculties, religious
scholars, trade groups and other professionals. Continued US support for
Karzai will ensure that the key warlords will give way to Karzai as long
as they are strongly represented in the transitional cabinet.
The April 22 Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official
as saying the US wants Karzai to emerge from the loya jirga as the key
figure and that the meeting should be seen as essentially a referendum
on Karzai's rule and Afghanistan's new political direction.
Tomas Ruttij, a senior UN adviser to the loya jirga, was more honest
about the process when he told the May 11 Washington Post: About
70-80% of the country is in the control of the commanders, most of the
country has not been disarmed, and there is a lot of interference going
on. If we get 20-30% of good representatives, that will be something, but
there will be no great leap to democracy.
In April, in Wardak province west of Kabul, General Muzaffaruddin took
control of an armed group funded by the defence minister Fahim. The victor
denounced his defeated opponent, Nangiali, as a Taliban supporter (Washington
believes Nangiali to be sympathiser of Pashtun Islamist fanatic Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar).
Nangiali, however, claims to be a royalist and sympathiser of Karzai.
A spokesperson for Karzai described Nangiali as a good man and an ally.
General Fahim wants to shut my tribe out of the loya jirga and send a
message to the king to watch out, said Nangiali. Voting for delegates
from Wardak was disrupted by the fighting, loya jirga officials confirmed.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on
April 29 pitted the Dostum's forces against those of Atta Mohammad, an
ally of Fahim, who had managed to seize control of the city. At least 20
people were killed before a truce was agreed to on May 2.
The presence of the 4800-strong, British-dominated International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul backed by several thousand US troops
in Kabul and further south has ensured that the differences between the
interim administration's factions at least in the capital do not escalate
to armed conflict.
It has also provided the essential shield behind which the politically
weak Karzai can strengthen his position in relation to his Afghan allies.
Karzai is acutely aware of his dependence on the West's military might
and impatient to see his authority extended beyond Kabul. He has pushed
unsuccessfully for the ISAF to expand its operations to Afghanistan's other
major cities. He has declared that his aim is a warlord-free Afghanistan.
However, the US has baulked at this idea because Dostum, Khan and lesser
warlords would rightly see such a move as an attempt to reduce their control
over their fiefdoms. Such an operation would require a big boost in the
number of Western troops in Afghanistan and would risk alienating Washington's
only USELESS WORD?: effective armed allies in the country.
Instead, the US has proposed a more collaborative approach with the
warlords that will also over time provide Karzai with his own armed
force.
The US and Britain have begun training 2400 Afghans for a new 18,000-strong
national army, scheduled to be in place by September 2003. The soldiers,
drawn from 29 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, would act as a presidential
guard, the central symbol of a new Afghanistan and its security structure,
according to Major-General John McColl, the British head of the ISAF.
The US is also strengthening its links with Afghanistan's key warlords.
United States Army Special Operations soldiers based [in Herat] say
they have formed a close relationship with Ismail Khan, the powerful governor
in western Afghanistan, reported the April 3 Washington Post. 'He's
a down-to-earth guy', one American soldier said. US officers meet with
Khan once or twice a week, the Post reported.
Khan, who was the governor of Herat before the Taliban, returned to
the city in November from Iran and again declared himself the regional
ruler. He commands an army of at least 50,000 fighters equipped with tanks
and rockets.
Khan's regime collects lucrative customs duties from cross-border
trade with Iran and reportedly has cash reserves greater than the central
treasury.
While often portrayed as having a liberal and enlightened interpretation
of Islam, the reactionary religious scholar that Khan appointed to head
the Herat university has refused to allow coeducation. He has threatened
to close the female section of the university because of a lack of women
teachers.
Khan has also reopened the Taliban-era office to promote virtue and
prevent vice the police force that banned the playing of music and that
enforced the wearing of the burqa by women. It has banned female
singers and even jailed shopkeepers who failed to remove alluring posters
advertising recordings by women singers. The head of the office claimed
its reopening was necessary because, in the wake of the departure of the
Taliban, society had become too libertarian.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has reported that since January,
50,000 Afghan refugees have entered Pakistan. At least half are northern
Pashtuns fleeing organised looting, rapes and killings.
In the worst reported atrocity, dozens of troops from the Hazara Hizbi-i-Wahdat
militia presently allied to Dostum's forces invaded the village of
Bargah in Balkh province, 75 kilometres from Mazar-i-Sharif. The villagers
were accused of being Taliban and al Qaeda and 37 Pashtuns among them were
killed.
Khan, Dostum and lesser warlords are whipping up ethnic hatred among
their followers in order to portray the pogroms against the northern Pashtuns
as being acts of revenge for the outrages committed by the southern Pashtun-dominated
Taliban against the northern ethnic groups.
While it is true that under the Taliban's rule, northern Pashtuns were
treated favourably while the region's other ethnic groups especially
the Shiite Hazaras were severely persecuted, the current wave of ethnic
persecution has more to do with Khan, Dostum and other warlords consolidating
their influence in the loya jirga and reducing the Pashtuns' overall representation.
The Bush administration has turned a blind eye to these human rights
abuses in the north.
In Kabul, on April 4, the NA-dominated internal security forces detained
more than 300 people, accusing them of plotting to overthrow Karzai. They
were said to be supporters of the mainly Pashtun Hizb-i-Islami organisation,
led by Hekmatyar. More than 100 remain in prison, even though no evidence
of wrong-doing has been produced.
According to the April 9 New York Times, a senior member of
the Karzai government said the arrests had been coordinated with a foreign
intelligence agency, which provided information on the alleged conspirators.
This was almost certainly the CIA.
However, it soon emerged that those arrested were supporters of a wing
of Hizb-i-Islami led by Wahidullah Sabawoon, a former mujaheddin finance
minister, which had split from Hekmatyar long ago and now supports the
Karzai regime. As the Times noted, So far, the evidence offered
publicly against Mr Hekmatyar has been virtually non-existent.
According to Sabawoon, quoted in the April 12 Christian Science Monitor,
the arrests were ordered by anti-Pashtun elements in the government. The
aim is to exclude our people from any future influence. If they arrest
us they know we can't be active political players and that we will be out
of their way.
A confidential UN document leaked to the British Observer, published
on April 14, accused the Panjshiri faction of the interim administration
of smearing Pashtun political rivals as terrorists and supporters of
the Taliban, al Qaeda or Hekmatyar in particular those rounded up on
April 4 in order to neutralise them ahead of the loya jirga.
Hekmatyar's capital crime? We had information that he was planning
attacks on American and coalition forces, on the interim government and
on Karzai himself, a Pentagon official told the New York Times,
repeating Washington's standard, unprovable justification for the murder
of Afghans and the destruction of villages.
(Of course, there is no shortage of real crimes that the US could have
held Hekmatyar guilty of, including raining US-supplied rockets on Kabul
in 1992, killing thousands of civilians but these crimes were committed
while he was Washington's most favoured mujaheddin warlord. From 1978 to
1992, Hekmatyar was the recipient of billions of dollars worth of covert
US, Saudi and Pakistani aid.)
Hekmatyar has no links with the Taliban or al Qaeda and no longer has
a significant armed force. His supporters have not engaged in any known
acts of terrorism since 1996 and his organisation is badly split, and considered
a spent force.
Nevertheless, the US seems determined to prevent by hook or by crook
the rise of any serious Pashtun political force that may challenge Karzai
and King Zahir's claims to be the representatives of the Pashtun people.
Washington's attempted murder of Hekmatyar has also dramatically demonstrated
that it will not hesitate to use its powerful high-tech weapons and crack
special forces soldiers against any Afghan leader who strays from its imperial
diktats.
For the US, its relationship with the local gangsters is mainly defined
by their military capabilities. US special forces have forged a close relationships
with Gul Agha in Kandahar in the south and Hazarat Ali in Jalalabad in
the east. With US backing, both have created armies of more than 12,000
fighters. Both are hostile to Karzai's claim to Pashtun paramountcy.
The April 16 Christian Science Monitor reported that Malim Jan,
a former senior Taliban intelligence official accused of torturing and
killing Hazaras in the south-eastern province of Ghazni and the central
province of Bamiyan, is now helping the US to seal the Afghan-Pakistan
border. It was Jan who ordered the firing of the first cannon shell to
destroy the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues.
The most serious dispute is between Bacha Khan Zardran, the US-backed
militia leader who controls large areas of eastern Afghanistan, and the
Karzai-appointed governor of Paktia province, Taj Mohammed Wardak. Karzai
sacked Khan as premier after he violently clashed with a tribal rival,
killing more than 60 people.
On April 27, Khan launched rocket salvos on the provincial capital of
Gardez, killing at least 25 people.
Khan has also attempted to wrest the premiership of Khost province from
another Karzai appointee, Hakim Tanaiwal, who has not been able to take
office because Khan's brother, Kamal Khan, has occupied the governor's
compound.
The Khans are among Washington's closest allies in the east, providing
hundreds of fighters for joint operations with US special forces on the
Pakistan border. US forces stationed on the edge of Gardez have refused
to rein in their brutal ally, angering the city's residents.
When one mortar is fired near the compound where the US soldiers are,
there are 20 planes in sky right away, but when 800 rockets fall on the
people of Gardez, nothing, a shopkeeper told Associated Press (AP) on
April 28.
Noor Ahmed, whose brother was killed by one of Bacha Khan's rockets,
angrily told AP: The Americans talk about the Taliban and al Qaeda. What
is al Qaeda to me? This is my home, my children, my land and it is all
in danger because of these fighters who are with the Americans
The Americans
say they have brought peace to Afghanistan. There is no peace.
The US is unapologetic about its allies' brutal rule. They are the
centres of power, a senior defence official told the May 6 New York
Times. What we're finding is that there are worse things than having
warlords in place, and that's having nobody in charge.
It is becoming clear that continuing US and allied military operations
in the south and east including by Australian special forces are not
simply to prevent Taliban-al Qaeda remnants from linking up with disaffected
Pashtun tribal forces, but also to terrorise the southern Pashtun population
and discourage the formation of any united Pashtun political opposition.
On May 10, London Times correspondent Anthony Loyd revealed that
the claims in April by US and Australian military spokespeople to have
killed four al Qaeda terrorists were a lie: A special forces source
involved in the shooting described a small number of armed men, probably
Afghans, stumbling across a six-man team of Australian SAS. Surprised,
the men raised their weapons and were shot in the chest by the SAS.
Loyd concluded that, if you carry a weapon in the wrong part of Afghanistan,
and point it at coalition special forces, you will inevitably die quickly.
These unidentified casualties, he noted, are labelled al Qaeda terrorists
by the coalition's media machine.
On May 12, US special forces killed five people and captured 32 others
in a night raid on a village about 100 kilometres north of Kandahar. Washington
announced that the victims were suspected of being al Qaeda or Taliban,
citing multiple intelligence indicators.
However, reported the May 14 New York Times, almost immediately
some officials raised doubts about the operation, and American officials
acknowledged that initial questioning of those detained brought up no immediate
indications that the captives were Taliban or al Qaeda fighters.
If they prove not to be bad guys, and were just in the wrong place
at the wrong time, we'll release them, a senior US military official told
the NYT.
The May 20 NYT revealed that among the dead was a 13-year-old
boy, gunned down as he was hiding in a wheat field, and a 15-year-old,
killed as he slept. US helicopters strafed the village with bullets and
rockets for four hours before landing, disgorging troops who searched houses,
shot people and detained others.
Villagers reported that most of those killed were farmers and workers
who had come to help with the harvest. The guest house that was raided
belonged to a well-known anti-Taliban cleric. The pro-Karzai governor of
Oruzgan province, Jan Muhammad, confirmed that those who died were ordinary
people. There were no al Qaeda or Taliban there.
Pro-Karzai officials in Khost also revealed that on May 18 at least
10 tribespeople had been killed as they exchanged shots with rival villagers
squabbling over valuable timber trees on a hill. Australian SAS troops
claimed they had been shot at by the villagers and called in US aircraft,
which obliterated the villagers.
From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
Feuds
Feuds are not uncommon between the constituent factions of the interim
administration as each warlord continues to violently jockey to boost the
territory and more recently the number of loya jirga delegates he controls.
Ethnic persecution
According to Human Rights Watch, the Pashtun minorities in the west and
north are being systematically persecuted by Khan's and Dostum's armed
gangs (and the lesser non-Pashtun warlords in the north).
Hekmatyar
The May 9 New York Times revealed that Pentagon and administration
officials had boasted that the CIA had attempted to murder Hekmatyar with
a missile fired from a remote-controlled Predator aircraft. Hekmatyar escaped
but officials stated that several of his followers were killed.
South and east
In Afghanistan's south and east, where no single warlord is yet paramount
and where the now politically marginalised Pashtun majority is openly hostile
to the post-Taliban central government and its US overlords, rival contenders
for power are vying for Washington's approval.
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