Afghan impasse
As the world awaits the fate of an Iraq without Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan's future continues to lie in precarious imbalance, writes Negar Azimi
While Afghanistan may have slipped off the media's front pages, the invasion of Iraq has managed to inject momentum into the causes of extremist elements, resulting in intensified clashes with the American-led peace-keeping forces. Against this backdrop, President Hamid Karzai's government lacks any muscles apart from those provided by the United States.
In fact, Karzai wields no control beyond the capital city of Kabul -- which is effectively as far as the reach of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) extends. Regional warlords control mini-fiefdoms throughout the country, by virtue of a potent combination of endemic favouritism, arms supplied by US forces in exchange for favours and power bases bankrolled by informal customs revenues and a thriving opium trade.
Warlords like Herat's Ismail Khan, Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzi and renegade former exile and mujahedeen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, continue to pose routine threats to the fragile Karzai administration. As for the Taliban, some of their leaders have found refuge in Pakistani cities, such as Quetta, and are operating from there.
Last month, attacks on both government and foreign installations escalated in the southern provinces, especially as extremist groups exploit what is often framed as a US-led war against Islam in Iraq. Barnet Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan and director of New York University's Centre on International Cooperation, confirms that the war has proven timely for such elements, despite the fact that most Afghans know that Saddam once supported the invasion of their country by the Soviets. "The Taliban and Hekmatyar are using the war in Iraq in their propaganda and appeals, and not just the war, but also the fact that the government said it was justified. The war is also figuring in more and more Friday sermons," Rubin told Al-Ahram Weekly.
On 27 March, a staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross was shot dead by suspected Taliban gunmen near the southern city of Kandahar. According to Maki Shinohara, public information officer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan, the killing has sent shock waves through the aid community. "This was the first serious attack on a neutral aid worker. As a consequence, aid activities in southern and southeastern Afghanistan have slowed down due to restrictions on movements," she said in an interview with the Weekly.
Two weeks later, a close ally of Karzai was shot and killed in southern Afghanistan in what appeared to be the latest in a wave of attacks by a resurgent Taliban. Only days after that, an Italian tourist was shot and killed while in a taxi in the southeastern part of the country.
Most, including the governor of the southeastern province of Zabul, Hamidullah Tokhi, have squarely laid the blame on the Taliban. The following day, former Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah told the BBC that he intended to wage jihad against the foreign presence in his country.
And the blood continues to run. On 9 April, eleven civilians were killed and at least one wounded when American special forces mistakenly dropped a1,000-pound laser-guided bomb on a home in eastern Afghanistan. The bomb missed its intended target of rebels heading toward the Pakistani border, crushing instead the house and its inhabitants.
Rebel groups have mushroomed as a result of the absence of tangible change in the country's standard of living since the US invasion. According to NYU's Rubin: "The continued lack of political progress and the lack of visible progress in reconstruction probably does more to enhance the Taliban's appeal than anything else."
Amidst such a volatile backdrop, one cannot help but consider the fate of both the Afghans who never left the country and those facing repatriation after years in exile.
Today, upwards of 500,000 Afghans are internally displaced. Refugees repatriating from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran face the spectre of routine instability born of dismal economic prospects, a non-existent civil society infrastructure and a humanitarian disaster in progress due to a pervasive drought. In addition, security concerns and continued fighting do not make for the sorely needed fresh start that countless Afghans have been seeking after more than two decades of fighting.
Afghans continue to constitute the largest refugee population in the world. According to UNHCR's Shinohara, repatriation was significant in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Taliban, but things have changed significantly this year. "We do have considerably lower rates of return this year compared to the last, and security is a foremost concern for returning Afghan families," she said.
Meanwhile, ethnic Pashtuns continue to be persecuted for their associations with the Pashtun-dominated Taliban and factionalism has become the norm. This time around, however, the stakes are in favour of the Tajik-dominated government.
Last week, in a grand show of force, General Tommy Franks, commander of the US forces in Iraq, travelled to Afghanistan to reaffirm the Bush administration's commitment to the reconstruction of the country and the complete dismantling of Al-Qa'eda and Taliban vestiges. Franks effectively conveyed that the US is more than capable of fighting two wars at once. Nevertheless, the US has announced that the 23- nation coalition force, in which 8,500 US troops participate, will be scaled down considerably by July of 2004 -- when Afghans are due to elect a government to replace the interim regime of Karzai.
And while the training of a new Afghan national army under the direction of US, British and French forces continues -- with 3,000 men already trained -- chronic failure to pay the troops and members of the police forces has weakened the security backbone of the country as hundreds strayed from their commitments.
The parallels between Afghanistan and Iraq merit attention. Like Afghanistan, Iraq has had precious little history of popular governance. Like Afghanistan, the question of security during any reconstruction process will be paramount. Like Afghanistan, Iraq is populated by a diverse set of opposition factions, and like Afghans, Iraqis have been promised a transition to peace that is worthy of cinematic proportions.
But today, it remains to be seen whether Western-style democracy will manage to survive in Afghanistan -- something that will doubtless have resonance for those yet unnamed architects of the Iraqi reconstruction project. After all, Afghanistan's transition to peace has and continues to be an elusive one.
