6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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A sailor inspects the stabiliser of an F14-B Tomcat during flight operations abroad the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea
The plan for Afghanistan
The result of the UN-brokered talks on Afghanistan's political future was a sticking plaster applied to deep political wounds. Gamal Nkrumah writes from Bonn
The Hotel Petersburg is perched on a hill overlooking Königswinter, a breathtaking suburb of the former German capital Bonn. It boasts magnificent views of the meandering Rhine.
Former US President Bill Clinton, one-time Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Queen Elizabeth II have all been entertained at the Petersburg as official guests of the German government. Its antique furniture and stately reception rooms have long echoed to the whispered dealings of the powerful. No stranger, then, to high diplomacy, the Hotel Petersburg was specifically rented for the convening of the Afghan talks.
"There is a certain logic in the choice of venue for the talks," explained Wolfgang Vorwerk, head of the Near East division at the German Federal Foreign Office. Vorwerk told Al-Ahram Weekly that Germany was accepted by all the different warring Afghan factions and tribal groupings. In sharp contrast to the United States and Britain, Germany is seen to hold the carrots, not the sticks.
The suspicion that Washington, in particular, has other plans for Afghanistan, mainly revolving around the vast oil reserves of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, remains alive. Rightly or wrongly, Afghans feel the Germans are less greedy for the region's oil. That is why delegates agreed to gather in a German suburb.
But the grandeur of the setting was at odds with the undignified diplomatic scramble that accompanied the talks. The various Afghan factions were near coerced by international pressure to establish a representative, interim government. Behind the scenes, German diplomats, working alongside their European and American colleagues, leaned, threatened and cajoled to get the mutually suspicious Afghan factions to reach a deal. For a long time, the brinkmanship came close to foundering on the obduracy of conservative Afghan tribal leaders. The clergy wields huge influence with the tribal chiefs and have vowed to veto any liberal policies adopted by an interim Afghan government.
But arm-twisting by the Germans and other donor countries eventually forced the Afghans to bow, many observers believe. The Germans, particularly, made it utterly plain that billions of dollars of humanitarian and reconstruction aid would be forfeit if the delegates failed to reach a deal. And the Germans set a deadline after which no more aid would be forthcoming. Delegates agreed that a final settlement must be reached before the Afghan new year festival, Nauruz, which traditionally falls on 21 March. Nauruz 2002 will be the first time in five years that Afghans have celebrated their national festival, which the Taliban banned as a pagan feast. As a result, delegates pledged to hold a Loya Jirga, or traditional Afghan grand tribal assembly, at the earliest possible opportunity.
The Germans, and the Japanese, the largest donors have reasons beyond altruism for their insistence, though. The two countries hope their tortured quest for permanent UN Security Council seats will be boosted by aggressively deploying their financial clout. One result of their pressure was clear. Western nations, while maintaining that Afghans themselves must sort out their problems, have openly tried to strengthen less conservative elements. Although Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign minister, issued a statement from Bonn on the opening day of the talks banning a demonstration by Afghan women in Kabul, several Afghan women representatives based in Germany participated in the Bonn talks.
Nevertheless, Western nations do not openly want to antagonise predominantly conservative Afghan elements. Even after the Taliban's fall, religion will feature strongly in Afghan public life. Islam, as all the delegates agreed, is the main unifying force in an Afghanistan fractured by tribalism and ethnic difference. Even at the conference, it was clear that Islam in Afghan political life remains a potent force. Afghan delegates vied to outdo each other in demonstrations of piety. As the talks were held during Ramadan, refreshments were absolutely forbidden, and delegates and aides packed the prayer rooms at prayer time.
But if the delegates were united by their displays of devotion, they were less than together when it came to politics. The Northern Alliance stubbornly opposed the presence of multinational peacekeepers. The representatives of the Pashtun people, on the other hand, were insistent that foreign troops stay. While the Northern Alliance asserted that it was capable of crushing resistance by the remnants of the Taliban regime and claimed already to be carrying out mopping up operations, other delegates argued that the Northern Alliance was unable to ensure security or put together a national police force without outside help. In the end the Northern Alliance conceded.
Many delegates viewed the Northern Alliance's recalcitrance with suspicion. They said they feared for their safety if security was left to the fiat of Northern Alliance leaders, especially as fighting still occasionally erupts between different factions. In further evidence of their bid to consolidate power before confirming popular support, the Northern Alliance has urged that future discussions about the political future of Afghanistan be held in Kabul: which it controls.
Certainly, the Northern Alliance, which is composed almost exclusively of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara tribal militias, was over-represented in Bonn. The Pashtun people, even though they constitute a large majority in Afghanistan, were poorly represented. Part of the reason was their lack of political unity. Burhanuddin Rabbani, former president of Afghanistan, at first spurned the Königswinter gathering, instead visiting a number of Arab and Muslim capitals to assure Arab leaders that there would be no anti-Arab backlash in Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban regime. In the United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries to have diplomatic relations with the Taliban before the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, Rabbani said that traditional warm relations between Arabs and Afghans would be strengthened in the coming few months. Rabbani also solicited Arab economic aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Rabbani withheld his approval of the proposals put forward by delegates at the Königswinter conference until the very last moment. He quite deliberately held up the talks, and it was only after he was promised a possible political position that he gave his consent.
That development may be ominous for liberals. One of the main reasons for Rabbani's change of heart was the proposed establishment of an Afghan Supreme Court, modelled on Iran's expediency council. Rabbani was offered a possible role as its new head, along the lines of the position now held in Iran by a figure not know for his liberal approach to politics: the Ayatollah Khamenei.
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