The Afghan cauldron is on the boil again, with a witches’ brew of untold trouble for all concerned. In the past few months the remnants of the Taleban have rallied and set up a base close to the Iranian border village of Dost Muhammad. Their fugitive leader, Mulla Muhammad Omar, has felt confident enough to announce a 10-man “leadership council”. Taleban elements have started attacking villages in the Nimroz and Arzangan provinces. The guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, operating from Pakistani Balochistan, has formed an alliance with the Taleban and is trying to seize control of some border villages.
The mini-revival of the Taleban and Hekmatyar is largely due to support from Islamist groups in Pakistan, including elements in the Pakistani military. The Islamist-dominated provincial government of the Northwest Province in Pakistan is providing more than a helping hand. With the fall of the Taleban, Pakistan was left with no clients in Afghanistan, a country of vital importance to its national strategy. Pakistan is now trying to win some influence by backing Pushtun clans opposed to the Karzai administration.
Iran, happy to see the Taleban go, is none too happy to see them replaced by a pro-American government. Russia, another traditional player in “the great Game”, has revived and expanded contacts with its former tactical allies, the ethnic Tajiks and Ismailis, with support also coming from India and Tajikistan. Smaller players like Turkey and Uzbekistan, backed by China, have put their chips on ethnic Uzbeks and the Char-Imaq tribes.
Part of this jockeying for position is inspired by reports that the US plans to extend the period of transition so as to give Karzai time to deal with “the warlords”. One idea, aired in some op-ed columns in a number of American newspapers, is to cancel elections for a new Loya Jirgah (Constituent Assembly) scheduled for October. Such a move would leave Afghanistan without a new constitution and no prospects of holding a general election in 2004 as promised.
The Bush administration would be wrong to listen to that advice. The fact that Karzai might not win a majority in any elections in the foreseeable future does not mean that the process of democratization should be halted. What the US must do is to make sure that elections are held in a free and fair atmosphere and under international supervision. Who emerges the winner is for the Afghan people to decide.
Today a majority of Afghans regard the US as a friend if only because it helped them throw away the Taleban yoke. The US has no interest in becoming identified with any particular ethnic faction or political group in Afghanistan. The men vilified as “warlords” by some commentators are, in fact, the most effective leaders of their communities at present. To be sure, none could be presented as a choirboy, and all have a war background. This is not surprising because Afghanistan has been at war since the mid-1970s. It would take years for this generation of “warlords” to fade away, opening the way for new leaders capable of reflecting new realities and aspirations.
In the meantime, the most realistic course is to publish the draft of the new constitution as soon as possible so that it can be debated in public before the Loya Jirgah elections. The “warlords” must remain part of the process with one condition only — they must respect the rules of the democratic game. Only the Taleban leadership, which should be charged with crimes against humanity, ought to be excluded. Several so-called “warlords” have already indicated a readiness to play the democratic game by creating political parties. They include Former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and former guerrilla-leader-turned politician Abdul-Rasul Sayyaf.
To prevent Afghanistan from becoming a battleground for rival powers once again, it is imperative to give it a government that reflects its ethnic and religious diversity. For the US to try and impose a narrow-based government, no matter how good its intentions and how capable its members, would be a disastrous move in the context of Afghan politics. It could only encourage other communities and factions to seek foreign patrons in a bid to sabotage the work of a central government that they would regard as an imposition.
