KABUL, 4 September 2003 — Afghanistan has suffered a wave of violence from suspected Taleban guerrillas in the weeks preceding the second anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks which provoked the United States to declare its war on terrorism.
Despite the US-led coalition’s relentless pursuit of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda, the two networks are jeopardizing the country’s recovery from 25 years of war and strife, increasing pressure on President Hamid Karzai to bring stability to the landlocked nation. Pakistan is blamed for the resurgence of the Taleban but rejects the charge. Its president, General Pervez Musharraf, angered Karzai by suggesting during a visit to the US and Europe last month that Kabul needed political restructuring.
“There is a feeling amongst some Afghans that an understanding has been reached between the US and Pakistan that Afghanistan could be subcontracted to the Pakistanis. I want nobody to be under any illusions ... We are in control of our own destiny,” Karzai said in an interview with Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and Taleban expert. But doubts have long been cast on his administration’s ability to extricate Afghanistan from its past mayhem and put it on the road to peace, democracy and progress.
Karzai had been in office for just two months, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the Bush administration in February 2002 that Afghanistan could fall into violent chaos once again if steps were not taken to restrain the competition for power among rival warlords and to control ethnic tensions in the country.
And this July, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pakistani television channel on the eve of a visit to Kabul: “There is an awful lot of work to do, and all of that has to come along at the same time that a central government has to stand up that has some influence in the various provinces, and that is the work that remains.”
That the promise of transition to an elected government in June 2004 is facing problems became evident when the commission drawing up a new constitution called on Aug. 28 for a two-month postponement of the traditional “loya jirga”, assembly of tribal elders which is due to meet in October to approve the draft constitution.
Meanwhile, the Taleban have stepped up their guerrilla operations, mostly in provinces bordering Pakistan where Afghanistan’s ethnic Pashtun majority, once the Taleban’s power base, lives.
Karzai himself is a Pashtun but his interim government is dominated by non-Pashtuns, mainly ethnic Tajiks, who took advantage of the power vacuum created by the US overthrow of the Taleban.
There have also been armed clashes between anti-Taleban groups of Mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who fought in the US-backed guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Remnants of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda movements have declared a jihad against US-led coalition forces and their Afghan allies to avenge their defeat in 2001.
About 200 people have been killed in clashes between the two sides in south and southeastern Afghanistan in the past three weeks.
Aid and reconstruction efforts were halted in many parts of the country as the violence mounted, triggering concern among Afghans that the world may again abandon them, as it did after the Soviet left defeated in 1989.
After getting rid of the Taleban movement, which rose in reaction to the fighting among warlords that followed the Soviet departure, the Afghan people expected a better life.
“People not only received nothing in return, they also lost the security they had under the Taleban,” Waheed Muzhda, author of the book “Afghanistan and Five Years of Taleban Reign”, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, DPA. A weak central government and tensions in Karzai’s US-backed administration have instead led to a resurgence of the Taleban and guerrilla attacks in areas where they were once strong.
While most Afghans oppose the extremist Islamic militants, aid workers and officials fear lack of security, which is disrupting reconstruction and aid, could undermine support for US troops and bolster sympathy for the Taleban. Afghan authorities accuse Pakistan of sustaining the Taleban and of not doing enough to stop them criss-crossing the common border. Karzai set up his government with the help of former warlords who had battled against the Communist takeover of their country for 14 years and later resisted the Taleban and Al-Qaeda forces. Asadullah Walwalji, an Afghan politician and member of Afghan Human Rights Commission says the warlords see an advantage in the turmoil, believing the US and Karzai will seek their help to overcome the insecurity created by the Taleban.
