Afghan
Battle Lines Become Blurred
By M K Bhadrakumar
19 May, 2007
Asia
Times Online
New
fault lines have appeared on the Afghan chessboard. While the "international
community" kept watch on the obscure lawless borderlands of Pakistan's
tribal agencies for the Taliban's spring offensive, templates of the
war began to shift - almost unnoticed.
Things are not going to be
the same again. The war is transforming. Adversarial lines are being
redrawn. The enemy's contours have changed. Front lines are being abandoned.
In another six to eight weeks, hot, dry winds will have arrived, bearing
fine, yellow dust that envelops everything, making appearances even
more deceptive. No one will be able then to tell with certitude who
is the enemy.
Looking back, the ground
began to shift on New Year's Eve, when the lower chamber of the Afghan
Parliament passed a bill that would grant amnesty to all Afghans involved
in any war crimes during the past quarter-century. The resolution said,
"In order to bring reconciliation among various strata in the society,
all those political and belligerent sides that were involved one way
or the other during the two and a half decades of war will not be prosecuted
legally and judicially."
The quarter-century covered
the entire period from the Saur Revolution in the spring of 1978 through
the bloody years of the Soviet intervention, through the riotous mujahideen
rule and the senseless civil war that followed, all the way to the Taliban
takeover in Kabul in 1996 until the ouster of that regime in the autumn
of 2001.
For the first time, Afghans
spoke out that they no longer held the United States in awe. At a single
stroke, the December 31 amnesty move deprived the US of the one weapon
that it wielded for blackmailing the "warlords" into submission
- powerful leaders of the Northern Alliance groups, the mujhideen field
commanders, and petty local thugs alike.
The prospect of a war-crime
tribunal was held like a Damocles' sword over any recalcitrant Afghan
political personality - be it Burhanuddin Rabbani, Yunous Qanooni, Rashid
Dostum or Rasool Sayyaf. In the able hands of former US ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad, it did wonders while ensuring Hamid Karzai's election as
president and in consolidating US dominance in Afghanistan.
What was astonishing was
that the amnesty bill covered even Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hezb-e-Islami
leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Clearly, an Afghan "revolt" was
afoot against the existing political order imposed by the US. Implicitly,
it called into question the raison d'etre of the war, since the largest
group in the mujahideen-dominated 249-member lower house of Parliament
consists of the elected members of Hezb-e-Islami besides a sizable number
of former Taliban figures (such as Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketti) who
act as the Taliban's political wing in Kabul.
A lot of homework had obviously
gone into the initiative. Afghan leaders, with their native wisdom,
estimated that the war was going nowhere and that the chance of "victory"
by the US, which was never good, had probably passed. They saw ahead
that the superpower, which arrived full of hubris, might well depart
humbled. They wished to be on call when the time came.
Of course, it was apparent
to anyone that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a divided
house and that the United States' old European allies didn't share its
apparent intention to turn Afghanistan into a client state under a NATO
flag from where US power projection into the Persian Gulf and the Middle
East and South Asia and Central Asia would become possible.
Most important, Afghans estimated
that as in Iraq, dialogue would become unavoidable, and a regional solution
involving Afghanistan's neighbors might become necessary. They were
deeply skeptical whether Washington would stay the course. They could
hear the Taliban's distant drums approaching Kabul's city gates.
The amnesty move unleashed
a wave of political activism in the subsequent few weeks, leading to
the formation of the new United Front early last month. The platform
of the United Front is interesting. It calls for a parliamentary form
of government; it wants to deprive the president of the power to appoint
provincial governors (who should be elected officials instead); it demands
changes in the electoral laws from the present so-called non-transferable
system to a proportional system, etc. It speaks of dialogue, reconciliation
and power-sharing.
But evidently the United
Front is bent on cornering Karzai in a typical Afghan way - incrementally
but relentlessly, until his political nerves give way and his US support
becomes redundant. It is harshly critical of the Karzai government's
ineptitude and corruption, and it draws attention to the great suffering
of the Afghan people.
In the sphere of foreign
affairs, the United Front vaguely seeks "coordination" with
the foreign forces present in Afghanistan, and leaves it at that for
the present. Significantly, it calls for the official recognition of
the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan - known as
the Durand Line.
At first glance, the United
Front lineup resembles erstwhile Northern Alliance - Burhanuddin Rabbani,
Mohammed Fahim, Yunous Qanooni, Abdullah, Ismail Khan, and Rashid Dostum.
But curiously, the United Front also includes two top Khalqi leaders
from the communist era - members of the politburo of the Afghan Communist
Party, General Nur al-Haq Olumi and General Mohammad Gulabzoi.
They were close associates
of former defense minister General Shahnawaz Tanai, another top Khalqi
leader, who staged an abortive coup attempt in March 1990 against the
government in Kabul with the help of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and eventually fled to Pakistan seeking
asylum.
Khalqis, who are drawn from
the Pashtun tribes, have had a strong nexus with the Taliban over the
years. Tanai, who is based in Pakistan, used to provide the Taliban
with a skilled cadre of military officers, who flew the Taliban's "air
force", drove their tanks and manned their heavy artillery, absolving
the need of Pakistani regulars except in very selective roles. In the
recent years, he has been a visitor to Kabul.
Therefore, questions arise.
Is a far-reaching restructuring of the Taliban going on? Mullah Dadullah's
killing seems part of the process. It does seem that Hekmatyar and the
mujahideen/Khalqi elements within the Taliban are slouching toward mainstream
politics in Kabul. A sidelining of the extremist, "jihadist"
elements by ISI could be under way.
Pakistani President General
Pervez Musharraf could be acting, finally. Hekmatyar has certainly positioned
himself somewhere in the vicinity of the United Front. He is almost
visible. Mullah Dadullah's killing no doubt strengthens him. Equally,
Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani (who is second only to Taliban supreme
Mullah Omar) too has a mujahideen pedigree. Also, Haqqani and Hekmatyar
go back a long way. In the Afghan jihad of the early 1980s, Haqqani
was a camp follower of Professor Rasool Sayyaf (one of the prime movers,
incidentally, of the amnesty move in Parliament).
The mystery deepens insofar
as Hekmatyar also has a strong "Iran connection", having spent
five years in exile in Mashhad after the Taliban takeover in Kabul in
1996. The big question is whether Iran would countenance a Taliban organization
that is cleansed of murderers of monstrous ferocity like Mullah Dadullah
(or rabidly obscurantist extremists like Mullah Omar) entering mainstream
Afghan politics.
Arguably, it might. At any
rate, almost on the heels of the consultations in Pakistan by Ambassador
Ronald Neumann, US special envoy on Afghanistan, early this week, Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Islamabad on Thursday.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is due to visit Kabul in June.
Musharraf's close confidant, Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid, was received
by Ahmadinejad in Tehran early this week.
While Mullah Dadullah's killing
might have dealt a significant blow to the Taliban insurgency, Iran
will still be cautious about the Taliban's command structure. Iran will
also factor the growing anti-American sentiments among the Afghans.
But Iran cannot be missing the point that it has indeed become a meaningful
interlocutor for the US with respect to Afghan situation - just as over
the future of Iraq.
The Afghan bazaar perceives
that Ahmed Zia Massoud (brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud and vice president
in the Karzai government) is the leading figure in the United Front.
Some say Massoud staged a putsch against Karzai. There is bound to be
speculation about ascendancy of Russian influence. Moscow went on a
publicity binge over the visit by the delegation of the Collective Security
Treaty Organization to Kabul on March 9-13. But these are early days.
What cannot be overlooked
is that Russia and Iran are not quite on the same page. The acrimony
over the Bushehr nuclear power plant has taken a toll. Ahmadinejad's
public criticism of Russian policies while on a visit to the United
Arab Emirates last week underscored that the trust deficit is real.
The alignments remain fluid.
Qanooni, who is close to Tehran, is keeping a low profile. "Ustad"
Rabbani is doing the talking. He is a great bridge-builder. Meanwhile,
Karzai alleges that the United Front is "supported by foreign embassies".
Indeed, the Front includes personalities who kept links in the 1980s
and '90s with Moscow, Central Asian capitals or Tehran.
The United Front has rattled
Karzai (and Washington). Karzai wouldn't like the initiative to slip
into the hands of the United Front. The Senate, which is dominated by
his nominees, passed its own resolution on May 8 calling on the government
to hold direct talks with the resurgent Taliban and other opposition
forces - "direct negotiations with the concerned Afghan sides in
the country".
The Senate resolution also
sought that in the meantime, NATO military operations against the Taliban
should cease. It said, "If the need arises for an operation, it
should be carried out with the coordination of the national army and
police and in consultation with the government of Afghanistan."
This partly aims at assuaging
Afghan public opinion, which is incensed over Karzai's inability to
protect the people from the excesses perpetrated by the trigger-happy
US forces. Meanwhile, the lower house of Parliament has raised the ante
by exercising its constitutional prerogative to sack Karzai's close
confidant, Dadfar Spanta, pinning responsibility for the recent deportation
of 52,000 Afghan refugees from Iran. Karzai promptly questioned the
legality of the move.
To be sure, Karzai is coming
under multiple pressures. On the one hand, there are the incipient moves
by political opponents eroding his credibility and authority. On the
other hand, the "international community" has become critical
of him. At a high-level conference in Brussels on April 28, Richard
Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the United Nations in Bill Clinton's
administration, said Karzai government had "lost momentum"
and transparency and was alienating its erstwhile supporters.
He added that Karzai was
"walking away from democracy"; that NATO was successful in
containing the Taliban but the Karzai government's bad performance was
rejuvenating the Taliban's support; that there had been a "massive
waste" of US and European money in Afghanistan because of very
poor coordination of the aid effort; and that Karzai was losing his
authority.
Holbrooke harshly reprimanded
Karzai: "We don't want to see in Kabul the kind of political chaos
which in Baghdad is destroying the coalition effort."
NATO Secretary General Jaap
de Hoop Scheffer, who was present, shared Holbrooke's concerns. Given
Scheffer's record of parroting US thought processes, Karzai would have
felt exasperated. Indeed, within a week of the conference in Brussels,
Scheffer headed for Islamabad, accompanied by the United States' supreme
commander in NATO, where he and Musharraf pledged new anti-Taliban efforts.
Scheffer said in Islamabad,
"It is my strong opinion that the final answer in Afghanistan will
not be a military one and cannot be a military one. The final answer
in Afghanistan is called reconstruction, development and nation-building."
The new buzzword is an "integrated
approach" in Afghanistan. But no one has fleshed it out. There
is an Afghan opinion building up over the imperative of an intra-Afghan
dialogue leading to genuine power-sharing. But the US and NATO pretend
they aren't seeing the groundswell of opinion.
Their emphasis is on the
existential challenge posed by Afghan war to NATO's global role. They
look over the Afghan ridge toward the new cold-war horizon. Meanwhile,
the US is inexorably losing its monopoly over conflict resolution in
Afghanistan. And regional powers include some that are against the open-ended
presence of NATO forces.
It may turn out that the
real "tipping point" is not over the Taliban's much-awaited
spring offensive (which may not even happen), but if regional powers
begin seriously to exploit the political rifts in Afghanistan for undermining
the NATO strategy.
Not surprisingly, Washington
shudders to think of any "regime change" in Islamabad in the
present circumstances, no matter the political turmoil within Pakistan.
As Scheffer put it in Islamabad on May 8 during the first ever visit
to Pakistan by a NATO secretary general, NATO and Pakistan find themselves
in the "same boat", and should seek an enduring, mutually
beneficial partnership that goes beyond the "war against terror".
And who else could hold the Pakistani end of the bargain better than
Musharraf?
M K Bhadrakumar
served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than
29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98)
and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times
Online Ltd.)
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