Our Friends,
The Warlords
By Jonathan Steele
The
Guardian
30 October, 2003
Karim
Khan stands disconsolately outside the local government headquarters
in the remote village of Tuksar. He used to run the neighbouring village,
but was bundled out by a rival militia one night recently, leaving his
wife and family behind as virtual prisoners.
The incident is
not isolated. It is being replicated throughout northern Afghanistan
in what amounts to low-level civil war as militias use the autumn, the
country's traditional fighting season, to change the map of power.
Casualties are fortunately
few and front lines in this largely unreported struggle are invisible.
All that is different when places change hands, usually by night and
with one side running away, is the loyalty of the men who sit in the
fort which commands the highest point in every Afghan village. To which
warlord do the new local rulers owe their allegiance, and who will enjoy
the "taxes" that the militias exact from ordinary people?
While fighting is
growing in intensity in southern Afghanistan, as US forces engage resurgent
Taliban forces in the Pashtun heartlands two years after they were supposed
to have been defeated, the jockeying for power in the north is between
three main groups, all of which are financed and supported by the Americans.
How is it possible
that the Bush administration could launch its war on international terror
while being so unwilling to clip the wings of warlords who inflict terror
mainly on other Afghans? The cynics may say the question answers itself.
But even a less negative view has to accept that, just as in Iraq, no
planning was done for providing immediate security in Afghanistan once
the Taliban lost power. Most of Afghanistan was too poor to have had
electricity or piped water before the war, so Afghan complaints are
different from those of Iraqis. For Afghans, the lack of security is
the big issue.
It was not just
that a vacuum developed. The Americans encouraged the leaders of the
Northern Alliance to resume their old positions. Their forces played
little role in defeating the Taliban and only managed to advance on
the ground thanks to US carpet-bombing of Taliban positions. But in
victory, the Americans behaved as though they were in the warlords'
debt, rather than the other way round.
They ignored the
persistent demands of virtually every Afghan, including President Hamid
Karzai, to deploy an international peace-keeping force outside Kabul
to disarm the warlords. A few weeks ago the US line changed and the
UN security council was finally asked to mandate such a force. Implementation?
Germany is sending 450 troops to Kunduz, one of the least problematic
areas of the north, and no other foreign government has offered to put
troops into the Mazar region or the western city of Herat, which is
home to another US-supported warlord.
Earlier this year,
before the decision to expand the peace-keepers, the Americans and British
set up units of their own soldiers, special forces, and civilians who
work as "provincial reconstruction teams". In Mazar, the 85-strong
team is British. Its men try to prevent new land-grabs. They monitor
local ceasefires and persuade militias to turn in their guns to the
warlords' depots. Good as it is, there is still no plan to "decommission"
or destroy weapons and the team was too small to prevent fighting earlier
this month on the main road only 20 miles out of Mazar, between heavily
armed men loyal to the Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and
his Tajik rival, Ustad Atta Mohammed.
The British and
Americans regained the initiative later by sending Kabul's new interior
ministry up to Mazar to get the warlords' permission for 300 Kabul police
to come into the city. This week the central government appointed new
governors for Mazar and the surrounding province, promising the incumbents
good jobs elsewhere. The British and the Americans argue that this softly,
softly approach to extending the Karzai government's influence is more
productive in a heavily armed and naturally belligerent country than
confronting the warlords directly. It is too early to know whether they
are right. The ceasefire they brokered is tenuous, and what should have
been done two years ago to rebuild the Afghan state after the Taliban
is only starting now.
Like its American
variants in the central highlands and the south, the British "provincial
reconstruction team" in Mazar creates new problems while it tries
to solve old ones. Scores of attacks on aid workers in southern Afghanistan,
where a full-scale war appears to be resuming, are causing the big international
organisations anxiety. Long before the bombing of the International
Committee of the Red Cross building in Baghdad this week put the focus
on the dangers aid workers face, an ICRC man was killed near Kandahar.
Another dozen aid staff, mainly Afghans, have died since March this
year.
Foreign forces in
northern Afghanistan, unlike in the south, are popular for the moment,
but the mood could change. To try to forestall the danger, the professional
non-governmental organisations are warning that aid must not be allowed
to be seen as an arm of a British or American "hearts and minds"
campaign. In any case, they believe they have greater expertise.
It may seem innocuous
and a positive benefit to have doctors and dentists in combat fatigues
drop in to a village for a one-day "clinic". The army doctors
no doubt feel good. But they are blurring a crucial line of principle
which damages the image of impartiality of NGOs working in the same
field. The bigger NGOs worked under the mujahedin and Taliban regimes
and have earned long-term respect from Afghans. They do not want to
be seen as part of the political plans of governments which may lose
interest in a year's time or two. Nor do they welcome the risk of being
seen by Afghans, however mistakenly, as agents of the military.
Why should civilians
from the Department for International Development be attached to these
provincial reconstruction teams and work with them to identify "quick
impact projects" which Britain can fund? The wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq have already distorted many western governments' spending priorities,
making "reconstruction" a political exercise designed to satisfy
Washington rather than an impartially assessed response to need. Choosing
aid projects in collaboration with the military takes the distortion
a dangerous stage further.
The choice should
be left to national aid-receiving governments, the UN's specialised
agencies, and the NGOs. Under pressure, UN officials in Afghanistan
have accepted Washington's and London's demands for coalition forces
to have an aid role, while urging them to stick to infrastructure issues
such as road- and bridge- building or repairing local government offices.
The compromise is confusing and a mistake. Hilary Benn, DfID's new boss,
should have his people work with the Karzai government in Kabul and
the UN, rather than with the British and American military.
Security belongs
to the armed people in uniform. Aid is the task of civilians - who will
still be in Afghanistan when the "war on terror" caravan moves
on.