What came first; the chicken or the egg? (The Taliban ideology has to be removed from the Pashtuns)
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav072604.shtml
EURASIA INSIGHT July 26, 2004
AFGHANISTAN'S TALIBAN UPRISINGS: WHO'S TO BLAME? Afzal Khan: 7/26/04
A EurasiaNet Commentary
By ignoring Afghanistan's majority Pashtun population, President Hamid Karzai's government has laid the groundwork for the Taliban-related attacks that continue to jeopardize the country's fragile security. Though Northern Alliance leaders have blamed neighboring Pakistan for the ongoing violence, that country's responsibility for the insurgencies is far from absolute.
The current unrest in southern and eastern Afghanistan can be traced to the period soon after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001.
In the North, Northern Alliance militias dominated by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic groups began to exact revenge on Ghilzai Pashtuns who had supported the Taliban campaign against the rebel fighters. Nearly three years on, suspicion of the Pashtuns, whose Durrani tribe made up the bulk of the Taliban leadership, still persists.
Though Hamid Karzai is himself an ethnic Durrani Pashtun, Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, complain that they have been routinely excluded from positions of influence and power, as well as shortchanged from development projects. Currently, four ministers from the 15-member Afghan Cabinet - including the interior and finance ministers - and one of Afghanistan's four vice-presidents are Pashtun. Overall,
the country's majority Pashtun clans make up some 42 percent of Afghanistan's population of 28.5 million.
Consequently, for the past two and a half years, Pashtun warlords in southern and eastern Afghanistan have increasingly been trying to make their presence felt. Firefights routinely flare in the Pashtun-dominated regions surrounding Kandahar, disrupting international aid supplies and voter registration efforts. In one recent skirmish, 11 Afghan militia members and five government soldiers were killed during an ambush not far from the town of Deh Rawood, in the province of Uruzgan, home of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. On July 22, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit announced that it would be withdrawing from southern Afghanistan after killing an estimated 100 fighters believed to be connected with Taliban and al Qaeda forces. Overall in Afghanistan, more than 600 people have been killed this year in insurgency-related violence or battles between rival militias.
Already, the violence has led to the rescheduling of Afghanistan's presidential and parliamentary elections, and still shows no sign of diminishing. The presidential poll is now slotted for October 9 and parliamentary elections have been scheduled for spring 2005. Barnett R. Rubin, senior fellow at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, told Inter Press Service in February that separating the two votes could make the presidential ballot seem like "an all or nothing" for ethnic groups, like the Pashtuns, who are skeptical of the current government.
Karzai has acknowledged the danger of Pashtuns feeling excluded from the electoral process, saying that more must be done to increase their stake in the country's political and economic reconstruction. So far, however, little sign of such an overture has occurred.
Rather, greater attention is being paid instead to disarming the country's private militia, which are believed to have as many as 60,000 troops. In a July 11 interview with The New York Times, Karzai named these armed groups - rather than the Taliban insurgencies - as the greatest danger facing Afghanistan.
To make that point stick, the president signed a sweeping decree on July 12 for the prosecution of any militia that fail to disarm in accordance with the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program. No doubt hoping to lessen the decree's sting, ten days later the Karzai administration appointed the powerful militia leader General Ustad Atta Mohammad as governor of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan and two other anti-Taliban militia leaders as police chiefs in Nangarhar and Kandahar provinces in the south. All three warlords were also removed from their posts as Afghan army commanders.
But while Karzai points a finger at private militias, Northern Alliance members - among whom are some of the country's most powerful, militia-equipped warlords - are pointing a finger at Pakistan for fostering the Pashtun-related violence that disrupts the South.
After the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, Taliban fighters, some of them linked with al Qaeda, scattered throughout Afghanistan's remote, mountainous border area, eventually spilling into the Pakistani tribal territory.
At least initially, the Pashtun-populated North and South Waziristan tribal districts and the Pashtun belt of northern Baluchistan seemed a welcoming refuge. Many in Pakistan saw the Taliban leaders and senior al Qaeda members as heroes of the Pakistan-backed mujaheddin war against the Soviet Union's 1979-1988 occupation of Afghanistan.
Consequently, even after ending Islamabad's support of the Taliban, Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf was forced to do a balancing act. He cooperated with the United States in the war on terror only so far as it did not compromise his standing among Pakistani voters, many of whom were outraged by the US invasion of Afghanistan and its targeting of Islamic militants associated with terrorist organizations.
Northern Alliance members claim this ambivalence allows Taliban fighters to cross effortlessly across the border back into Afghanistan.
Grounds certainly exist for the suspicion.
Ethnic ties between the Afghan Pashtuns and the inhabitants of Waziristan provide one strong link; opium routes running from southern Afghanistan to Pakistan strengthen the bonds with cash. Taliban and al Qaeda cells in Quetta and northern Baluchistan have also reportedly begun to supply young fighters with motorbikes for easy movement into the Afghan provinces of Zabul and Kandahar.
But the Northern Alliance's accusations have lost much of their sticking power. Under pressure from the United States, Pakistan has recently revved up its war against Taliban and al Qaeda supporters in the tribal regions, notably in South Waziristan. Two assassination attempts against Musharraf in 2002 and 2003 have provided an even more urgent incentive for a crackdown.
In March and June, the Pakistan army undertook two large-scale operations in the tribal areas, one of which resulted in the June 17 death of the pro-Taliban tribal leader Nek Mohammed. Economic sanctions have followed, and reports now exist of additional military excursions into the tribal areas of Kurrum and North Waziristan. Meanwhile, Afghan refugee camps not far from Quetta have been closed on suspicion that they are harboring Taliban and al Qaeda supporters, a decision that has sent thousands of refugees spilling back over the borders into Afghanistan.
Millions in US aid money means that these military operations are likely to continue. The US has already supplied $73 million to bolster security along the border with Afghanistan and has named Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally" of the US, a designation that qualifies Pakistan for expedited arms deliveries, loan support for arms exports and participation in defense research programs, among other items. On July 19, the US House of Representatives also approved the allocation of $701 million to Pakistan from a $3 billion, five-year aid package. The bill authorizing the allocation is now before the Senate for approval.
Although the Pakistani army's US-backed operations are meant to rout suspected high-ranking al Qaeda and Taliban members - among them, Osama bin Laden - into the open, the broader impact could well undercut a key line of support for Afghanistan's Taliban.
But even so, making the tribal areas less hospitable for Taliban fighters on the run will only address one part of the problem. As was the case for Pakistan-based mujaheddin during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Taliban-friendly fighters from the tribal regions can only come to support fellow Pashtuns in Afghanistan if they are welcome.
For now, little suggests that that welcome will soon be rescinded. A poll conducted in February and March by the Kabul-based Afghan Media Resource Center suggests the extent of that feeling.
While 62 percent of 804 respondents nationwide evaluated Karzai's performance as "good" or "excellent," that number fell to 35 percent in the Pashtun-dominated South. Similarly, while only 13 percent of Afghans nationwide had favorable views of the Taliban, that number increased to 25 percent for the population in the South and Northeast.
As preparations for this fall's presidential elections continue, it is a statistic the Karzai administration would do well to keep in mind.
Editor's Note: Afzal Khan is a political analyst specializing in Afghanistan and Pakistan.