| |
Afghanistan: A body blow to
US
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - It is yet to be determined who is
behind the assassination of Haji Abdul Qadir, the most
powerful warlord of the eastern provinces, but the fact
remains that his death is an irreparable blow to the
United States' plans for Afghanistan.
Qadir, an
ethnic Pashtun and a former anti-Soviet mujahideen
leader in eastern Afghanistan, was the sole binding
force of pro-US Pashtun warlords in Nangarhar province,
where until recently he had been governor, and now
intensified political instability is inevitable.
Qadir was shot dead on Saturday at lunch time as
he drove away from his first day of office in the center
of Kabul. He was one of five vice-presidents as well as
holding the portfolio of public works minister.
The manner in which Qadir was gunned down in the
heart of the capital has led many fingers to point
towards the mostly non-Pashtun Northern Alliance. Qadir
was known to be in conflict with the Minister of
Defense, General Qasim Fahim, on many issues related to
command of eastern Afghanistan. An ethnic Tajik, Fahim,
took over as the military leader of the Northern
Alliance after the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud
last September.
In turn, the Northern Alliance
immediately alleged that the Hezb-i-Islami, led by
former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was behind
the assassination. However, although the Hezb-i-Islami
is rightly termed the only anti-US force in Afghanistan
which has access in Kabul - and it has the men capable
of carrying out bomb and rocket attacks in Kabul -
killing such a high profile person as Qadir and escaping
unscathed in broad daylight seems beyond their
capabilities.
Sources say that many factors
caused severe conflict between Qadir, one of the US's
most trusted allies in the eastern provinces, and the
leaders of the Northern Alliance. As the
recently-installed public works minister, he was in a
position to handle the vast sums of money due to flow
into the country for rebuilding the shattered nation. It
was no secret that Fahim wanted his own man in this
lucrative position, but President Hamid Karzai and the
US authorities favored Qadir, which upset the Northern
Alliance leadership no end.
Even though he was
one of the few Pashtuns in the non-Pashtun dominated
Northern Alliance that swept the Taliban from power last
year, backed by US air power, Qadir was often at odds
with his colleagues. Indeed, he walked out of the very
first day of the Bonn talks following the demise of the
Taliban saying that what he was witnessing was a
hegemony of non-Pashtuns at the conference.
Similarly, the appointment of Hazrat Ali as
Corps Commander of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar,
when Qadir was still governor, irked him. Hazrat Ali
belongs to the Jamiat-i-Islami, led by a former
president, the Tajik Burhanuddin Rabbani. Qadir has his
own constituencies and interests in the eastern
provinces, and he took the imposition of Hazrat Ali as a
direct threat to his ambitions there.
It is
rightly said that Qadir wore many hats. He comes from a
powerful feudal family, of which Nangarhar was the
political fiefdom. Traditionally, his family had close
ties with the royal family in Kabul. Qadir and his
brother, the legendary commander Abdul Haq, retained
this relationship and remained loyal to the exiled king
Zahir Shah. Abdul Haq was executed by the Taliban
shortly after the US launched its air strikes on
Afghanistan, for trying to raise opposition against the
Taliban.
However, among the jihadis, Qadir was
never able to find a strong enough group to make
Nangarhar its undisputed stronghold. Instead, two
groups, the Jamiat-i-Islami and the Hezb-i-Islami
emerged, and they were bitterly anti-monarchy. There was
also Maulvi Yunus Khalis, the head of a Hezb-i-Islami
faction, who although not in Zahir Shah's camp, was not
reckoned as one of his foes.
Over the years,
Qadir has occupied many villages around Jalalabad, where
poppies are grown and harvested. These are then smuggled
out of the country with the help of his friend Ayub
Afridi (a notorious Pakistani drug baron who was
recently released from a Karachi prison. (See related
story)
Qadir made a fortune through this trade -
he was one of the country's richest men - and was able
to buy further influence among the jihadi groups, and he
was rewarded with the governorship of Nangarhar when the
communist regime was routed in the 1990s. And he
welcomed Osama bin Laden to Jalalabad when he left
Sudan, providing him residence and allowing him to use
the cave complexes in Jalalabad.
When the
Taliban retreated, they handed over Nangarhar to Maulvi
Yunus Khalis, but the following day, on the arrival of
Qadir, he quickly handed over his office Qadir, who then
convened a meeting to announce a shura-i-sharqi
(council of the Eastern provinces) and installed himself
as its chief. At this time, Afridi was being sentenced
to seven years prison in Karachi. But after a few days
he was inexplicably set free and transported immediately
to the Pakistani tribal belt.
Afridi is said to
have been a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conduit
during the US-sponsored jihad against the former USSR in
the 1980s. Since the CIA had limited official resources
to fund the Afghan war, Afridi was encouraged by the CIA
to smuggle heroin to generate revenue to finance the
war. Qadir and his brother Abdul Haq were the Afghan
connection.
After the rout of the Taliban, the
main question became how the majority Pashtuns could
unite their tribes. They had been organized under the
Taliban, but this of course was no longer an option.
Many tribes were neutral or leaned towards the exiled
monarch Zahir Shah, but they were mostly politically
ineffective and inactive.
Thus Qadir was given
the task to activate them. His links with Afridi in the
poppy business were seen as a good way to do this, hence
the latter's release. This nexus worked effectively, and
Qadir emerged as a binding force, certainly as far as
Nangarhar was concerned. Other eastern provinces, such
as Khost, Paktia and Paktika, remain unstable by
contrast.
In this situation, Qadir and the US
were inevitable for each other. The Northern Alliance
had never been particularly in favor of the US, but
since the US was not able to incite an effective revolt
against the Taliban in the Pashtun belt on its own, the
Northern Alliance was perpetuated.
But none of
the alliance's groups trust the US. Islamist elements
such as the Jamiat-i-Islami lean towards Iran and
Russia, the communist elements, like as Fahim and
Abdurrashid Dostum (in Mazar-e-Sahrif) favor the Russian
bloc. As far as the US were concerned, they could only
trust "liberal" Pashtun commanders from the pro-Zahir
Shah camp. And Haji Qadir was the most prominent of
these.
After being elevated into the national
government, Qadir had an important role to play in the
eastern provinces through his poppy influence by
bringing the commanders in Khost and Paktia, for
example, to heel. Now, with his assassination, these
plans are in tatters, and the United States has been
deprived of an influential ally in stamping Washington's
blueprint on the country.
(©2002 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
