Afghan 'warlord' put to the
sword By M K Bhadrakumar
There are three possible ways of looking at the
the removal of Herat governor Ismail Khan by Afghan
interim President Hamid Karzai. Khan's dismissal has
lent itself to interpretation as the checkmating of a
warlord by the authorities in Kabul. Muted references
have appeared linking it to the forthcoming presidential
elections on October 9. But a third aspect lies
submerged in ambiguity - the timing and modalities of
the fall of the charismatic Herat governor.
The
new governor of Herat, Sayyed Mohammad Khairkhwa, has
pledged to disarm factional fighters in the area.
Khairkhwa, a former ambassador to Ukraine, said this
would be one of his top priorities. Earlier, the United
Nations Security Council condemned the attacks on UN and
other humanitarian agencies operating in Herat. UN
offices were burned and looted following Khan's
dismissal. Seven people were reported killed and over 20
injured in the incident, after which the UN flew about
40 international staff from Herat to Kabul and suspended
refugee operations.
Warlordism, in the Afghan
context, is a pejorative bequeathed to us by the corpus
of "think-tanks" and media persons who trooped to Kabul
following the American military intervention in October
2001 to oust the Taliban regime. In a conflict that had
lost moral clarity, they had probably no other way of
describing a phenomenon that seemingly defied the
best-laid plans to bring order into Afghanistan. And, in
the process, the phenomenon became demonized out of its
cultural context. Currently, "warlordism" is attributed
to just about any element (except Taliban and al-Qaeda)
that opposes the legitimization of Karzai's interim
leadership.
One of the very few rational
explanations of Afghan "warlordism" appears in the
British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee's
report which was recently been published in London. The
report was prepared by British parliamentarians who
actually visited Kabul and doubtless took pains at
gaining an understanding of the many brews churning
within the Afghan cauldron.
The report is
dismissive of the pejorative "warlords" as a creation of
"Western media", and it prefers to address the
phenomenon as "local military commanders". The report
takes note that commanders took de facto control over
most of Afghanistan outside Kabul when the Taliban were
ousted; "at the time, they were a force of stability; in
fact, the actions of the commanders were in large
measure responsible for Afghanistan's avoidance of the
anarchy which later descended on post-conflict Iraq".
The report goes on to identify the "malign
activities" in which the commanders became involved: (a)
Poppy cultivation and drug trafficking; (b) Human-rights
abuses; (c ) Smuggling; (d) Misappropriation of tax
revenues; (e) Obstructing non-governmental organization
(NGO) activities or reconstruction and rehabilitation
work.
By these yardsticks, arguably, Ismail Khan
could be labelled as a "warlord" on a single account,
namely, that he had not been passing on to Kabul the
annual customs revenue estimated to be to the tune of
half a million dollars or so, out of Herat's border
trade with Iran. Even his detractors agree, though, that
he spent this money largely for undertaking development
activities in his region rather than drinking whiskey or
building opulent palaces.
Those who have known
Khan vouch respect for him as a soft-spoken, deeply
religious man. Everyone agrees that he harbored no
political ambitions of being the "amir" of Afghanistan;
he was preoccupied with keeping Herat (until last week)
as an oasis of stability.
As for his openness to
the outside world, he did encourage NGOs and foreign
governments to undertake reconstruction and
rehabilitation work. The only exception was that he
consistently opposed the stationing of American forces
in Herat. He felt there was simply no need for that.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited
Herat in 2002 and personally tried to persuade Ismail
Khan to change his mind. Not that Khan did not know why
the Herat region was so important for US strategic
interests - Shindand air base (built by the Soviets) was
one of the biggest such facilities in the Central Asian
region. Access to Shindand, which dominated Iranian air
space, could drastically reduce US dependence on the
"lily pads" in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan in a
potential conflict situation with Iran.
But Khan
said "no" to Rumsfeld, politely but firmly. His thoughts
must have wandered back by a quarter century, and dwelt
on the miseries that came in the wake of all occupation
forces. For, if one were to mark a date of the
commencement of the Afghan jihad, that should be March
14, 1979. That was the day of the Herat uprising against
communist rule when a young major in the Afghan army by
the name of Ismail Khan mutinied and refused to fire on
protesting crowds. Instead, with some devoted followers,
he took to nearby mountains, which eventually became the
nucleus of the Afghan resistance against the Soviet
invasion.
General Andrushkin, the Soviet
commander in Herat, apparently warned Khan that his fate
would be no different than that of Basmachi leader
Ibrahim Beg, who defied the Bolsheviks. Khan, it seems,
disdainfully wrote to Andrushkin, "You Russians still
remember Ibrahim Beg after 70 years, I want you to
remember me for 200." The Soviets never quite gained
control of Herat.
During the turbulent 1992-95
period of mujahideen rule in the wake of the Soviet
withdrawal, Khan insulated Herat from anarchy. The
Taliban had to overthrow him through guile and
treachery. Thereafter, he led the anti-Taliban
resistance. For the natives of Herat, he is a living
memory. Those who label him as a "warlord" must explore
why his people respect him so much.
Yet an
elaborate charade has been played out through the past
two years to wear out Khan. His "rival", Amanullah, a
small-time renegade, had links with US special forces.
The strategy was transparent - when a tall leader got
nettled with a lumpen element, his stature would
inevitably suffer. The ethnic angle was also thrown in
as Amanullah is a Pashtun, Khan of Tajik origin; a blood
feud arose when Amanullah murdered Ismail Khan's son;
dissensions were created within Khan's camp.
Incrementally, Khan was weakened.
Amanullah has
since merged into the shadows. We may never hear of him
again. Meanwhile, Karzai announced that Khan was being
"promoted" and offered a post in Kabul as the minister
of mines and industries. But Khan modestly responded
that he knew so little of mining and would rather stay
at home as a "private citizen" in Herat, the city of his
heart's desires.
Into the void created by Khan's
fall, US troops have appeared in Herat. They first took
control of Shindand. The timing of the putsch is
immaculate - at a juncture when Iran (which has been
backing Khan) is "distracted" elsewhere, mobilizing
resources to address the ominous US-Israeli threats in
the Gulf.
Karzai's own interests mesh with
larger American objectives. All indications were that
Khan would have supported the main opposition candidate
in the presidential election, Yunus Qanooni. A
possibility arises now for Karzai to rectify this
"imbalance". Karzai's choice of the new governor of
Herat, Khairkhwa, belongs to the Burhanuddin Rabbani
faction of the Jamiat-i-Islami. Rabbani's son-in-law,
Zia Masoud, is Karzai's vice presidential running mate.
But a larger question remains: what to do with
"warlords" like Khan? The British House of Commons
report says, "We conclude that Afghanistan's 'warlords'
or commanders are both a large part of the problem and
an essential part of the solution ... On balance, we
believe that taking on the commanders militarily is
neither a sensible nor a realistic option in the short
to medium term. Yet the commanders cannot be ignored.
They are in a very real sense stakeholders in
Afghanistan's future, be it constructive or negative ...
If the commanders are to be persuaded, this may mean
recognizing the realities of their political power."
Karzai and, more importantly, US special envoy
Zilmay Khalilzad to Afghanistan, would seem to disagree.
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian
career diplomat who has served in Islamabad, Kabul,
Tashkent and Moscow.
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