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THE ROVING EYE
Enlightened
warlordism
By Pepe Escobar
JALALABAD - While al-Qaeda may have fled
Afghanistan - and is now maintaining dormant cells in
Pakistan and reorganizing itself in northern Africa -
the anti-American jihad in the Afghan Pashtun belt is in
full swing. As Asia Times Online has reported, this has
been the inevitable outcome of a series of American
blunders in Afghanistan.
Everybody and his dog
is on board the new jihad to "kick out the foreign
invaders": infamous Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar;
extra-well-connected Arab protege "Professor" Sayyaf;
the "Emir of the Southwest" Ismail Khan; Mullah Omar
(hidden in the depths of Kandahar province), the Taliban
leadership and their former military commander, the
formidable Jalaluddin Haqqani; and vast mid-level
sectors of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI).
Afghanistan everywhere is warlord
country. Uzbek warlord General Dostum, currently
vice-minister of defense, ignores Kabul, runs the north
like a personal fiefdom, and is rumored to be very much
interested in the jihad (Dostum and Sayyaf were always
very close; Sayyaf was practically Dostum's mentor).
Ismail Khan runs the southwest - and he has joined the
jihad. Khalil Khalili runs the center - but for the
moment he is mum. Gul Agha Sherzai - who barely escaped
the assassination attempt against Hamid Karzai in
Kandahar recently - runs the south and remains cozy with
the Taliban leadership. And the opportunist but weak
Hazrat Ali - handsomely paid by the Americans - sort of
runs the east, after the killing of Haji Qadir in Kabul,
which the whole Pashtun belt is convinced was ordered by
the Northern Alliance. Bacha Khan Zadran was in control
of the southeast (Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces)
until Kabul nominated another governor. Zadran
collaborated with the Americans, but he won't quit until
he totally defeats Kabul.
Afghan returnees
from the US and Europe complain - in vain - in Kabul
that warlords still command thousands of soldiers, and
deeply believe everybody needs their leadership. Although at
the beginning of 2002 in Tokyo the international
community promised US$4.5 billion in reconstruction aid,
the Afghan population - especially the almost 1.7
million refugees who came back from Pakistan and Iran -
see no tangible benefits, apart from the road Iran is
paving from Herat to the Iranian border at Islam Qilla.
A crucial joint aid package from the US,
Saudi Arabia and Japan for road building was announced
last week to President Hamid Karzai in New York. The
joint project will rebuild the backbreaking road - or
rather moonscape - linking Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. The
US will contribute $80 million, and Saudi Arabia and
Japan $50 million each. (To meet costs, somebody has to
still come up with $70 million.) The road should be
finished by the end of 2005. The US Congress approved
$255 million for Afghanistan in 2001, but the White
House rejected part of that aid, and it has not made any
request for Afghan aid in 2003.
Corruption is
rampant in Kabul: even Kabulis criticize Karzai's
cabinet as a bunch of greedy American puppets. In the
vast countryside, kids still cannot go to school - no
schools have been built - and teachers have not been
paid in months. Returnee advisers with top American
diplomas are getting desperate: they admit that if the
inefficient American-sanctioned Karzai government breaks
down, it would be like the end of a ceasefire. All bets
will be off,and the only ones to gain will be well-armed
and extremely resentful Pashtun warlords.
All
over the Pashtun belt there are three key recurrent
themes: people feel totally ignored by Kabul, are sick
of tired of the ubiquitous insecurity, and deeply resent
the American presence. The Taliban are making a killing,
distributing pamphlets all over the Pashtun belt,
reminding people of the lack of security everywhere,
even inside the bazaars, and that TV, music and movies
are "forbidden by Islamic law". UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan and Karzai both pleaded for a larger international
force at a recent high-level meeting of donor
and neighboring states in New York. Karzai begged for
a few hundred extra troops in the main cities - like Kandahar,
Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat - as a means of proving
graphically to average Afghans that the international
community was committed to Afghanistan's security. The
Pentagon once again vetoed the idea.
Amid so
much doom and gloom, there is at least a ray of hope in
Jalalabad. Nasirullah Baryani is the younger brother of
the slain Haji Qadir and the current Nangarhar governor,
Din Muhamad. He is also the brother of famous mujahideen
commander Abdul Haq, captured and killed by the Taliban
last November. They are all members of the grand family
of Nangarhar - 100 cousins in only one generation. But
now only two brothers remain alive: Baryani and Din
Muhamad.
Baryani also fought the anti-USSR jihad
in the 1980s. Afterward he "put away the guns" and lived
for years in Germany (apart from Pashto and Urdu, he
speaks fluent German and English). In these past two
years, he lived in Peshawar, always talking about
rebuilding Afghanistan. He came back to Afghanistan last
November, after the assassination of his brother Abdul
Haq and the fall of Jalalabad to the so-called Eastern
Alliance - allied to the Northern Alliance. The Eastern
Alliance supremo was none other than his older brother
Haji Qadir, whose portrait now adorns every shop and 4X4
vehicle in Nangarhar.
Baryani was the only
notable in eastern Afghanistan who did not want to be
associated with the Americans. He now runs the Abdul Haq
Foundation in Jalalabad, "Only money from the family, no
help or aid from outside." There are unconfirmed rumors
in Kabul that the family wealth was built on heroin
trafficking - but it does not matter. The main fact is
that Baryani is not a Dostum, or a Fahim, a Sayyaf or a
Hekmatyar.
Baryani's motto is "put out the guns,
pick up the pens". This is scribbled on mud walls all
over Nangarhar, especially on the road from Jalalabad to
Torkham, on the Pakistani border. Baryani believes that
the traditional loya jirga (grand council) system
is capable of solving all of Afghanistan's problems. He
is obviously not talking about the jirga in Kabul in
June which put in power the new Hamid Karzai government:
there is a wide consensus in most Afghan provinces
that the meeting was hijacked by the American
envoy, "oil man" Zalmay Khalilzad.
Baryani is
extremely critical of the Northern Alliance's
incompetence and of American meddling. Like any educated
Pashtun, he views Kabul as controlled from Washington.
He is especially critical of the fact there's no Pashtun
representation at the top. But at the same time he
abhors the Kalashnikov culture, so he does not advocate
a violent solution. Baryani is extremely suspicious of
Hekmatyar's motives - and does not see the emergence in
the near future of a genuine Pashtun leader.
Baryani is involved in something absolutely
unheard-of in post-Taliban Afghanistan: with the help of
a German businessman, he is devising a strategic
business plan to develop his province. Three key areas
have been identified for investment: transport and
commerce; orange culture (during the communist
government in the late 1970s and early 1980s, orange
culture in Nangarhar was a very successful model of
socialist agriculture); and energy (the province has
eight dams, and it could sell plenty of solar and
hydroelectric energy). And most crucially, Narngahar is
also the only province in Afghanistan with a network of
functioning schools and qualified teachers.
Baryani is not in it for the money - or the
power. The motto says it all, "Put out the guns, pick up
the pens". He's one of the few trying hard. A recent
United Nations report in Kabul, quoting figures from the
Afghan Ministry of Education, confirms the daunting
task. Only 3 million Afghan children - from a total of
4.5 million - are now enrolled in school. Afghanistan
immediately needs at least 2,500 more schools and 30,000
more teachers. The average salary of a teacher is now
170,000 afghanis, a mere $36 monthly. The moral high
ground of the international community will be mere
rhetoric rubble if there's no urgent help for Afghans to
pick up their pens.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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