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Tribes, traditions and two
tragedies
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United
States once fought against the former USSR and Iran,
albeit through proxies. Ironically, now, the US finds
itself fighting real wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq,
although this time round the middlemen have been cut
out, and the enemy is much less defined, and infinitely
more difficult to fathom. Crucially, though, the US
appears to be applying the same tactics that it adopted
for its proxy wars, even though the ground realities
have changed.
The resistance movement in Iraq
has very much established itself in the heart of almost
all the important cities, including Baghdad, Basra,
Tikrit, Mosul and even in Kirkuk, the latter two in the
Kurdish north.
The resistance movement in
Afghanistan, meanwhile, is also scattered across large
parts of the country, apart from the capital Kabul,
although it is rooted in rural areas and the mountains,
and it is stronger in the southeast and along the border
areas with Pakistan.
Opposition to the US-led
military presence in Afghanistan comes mainly from a
rapidly-regrouping Taliban, ousted from government at
the end of 2001, mujahideen veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyr's
Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), and fighters of Osama
bin Laden's International Islamic Front, all grouped
under the banner of the Saiful Muslemeen (the Sword of
Muslims).
Operationally though, different area
commanders have been controlling combat operations in
their respective areas. As a result, the resistance
movement has not been as effective as it could have been
as it has lacked central direction. Recent reports,
however, indicate that Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader,
has personally taken over overall command.
The
resistance movement has been aided by a break down of
law and order in the Pashtun belt, as the writ of Kabul
does not reach that far. In this environment of
lawlessness approaching anarchy, the Taliban guerrillas
have found perfect hiding places.
At the heart
of the US problems in Afghanistan is that it has failed
completely in winning any allegiance among the local
population, apart from the north of the country. Here,
the non-Pashtun North Alliance, which, with strong US
support led the drive to oust the ethnic Pashtun Taliban
in late 2001, does have some roots in the country, and
by default, the US is welcomed.
It is in the
Pashtun areas of Afghanistan where the problems lie,
however. In the early days of the US-inspired invasion
against the Taliban, the US hired Pashtun commanders
such as Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadeer, who had been in
exile in the United Arab Emirates and doing business in
Peshawar, respectively.
Such men lacked popular
support, and managed only to rally a few troops. Abdul
Haq, in fact, was captured and executed by the Taliban.
After this, heroin addicts and other dregs in the
Pakistani border cities of Quetta and Chaman were
rounded up and marched into Kandahar, the Taliban
stronghold, under the shelter of US air support. At this
stage the Taliban finally decided to retreat, and the
US's riff-raff proxies were elevated into local
administrative positions.
It is of no surprise,
then, that these people have proved less than capable,
and easily swayed by the re-emerging Taliban - hardly a
permanent arrangement for good governance.
In
retrospect, the US authorities in Afghanistan ignored
some important facts:
The Taliban were respected in many segments of
Afghan society. Indeed, they had been invited in the
early 1990s by the Pashtuns to eliminate the warlordism
and anarchy that was pulling the country apart in the
power vacuum left by the departure of the Soviets in
1989.
Many of the Taliban, after all, although educated in
the madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan,
were sons of the soil.
When the Taliban retreated, they were readily given
protection by the Pashtun tribes to which they belonged.
The US adopted a policy from the inception, by
supporting the Tajik and Uzbek-dominated Northern
Alliance, which implied that the Pashtun were not
necessarily the dominant power in Afghanistan. This
ignored the fact that in the history of modern
Afghanistan (from Nadir Shah's period in the mid-18th
century) all the power pillars have emerged from Pashtun
tribes, except for two brief occasions (in the early
20th century - Bacha Saqa - and Professor Burhanuddin
Rabbani becoming president in 1993). Never has a
non-Pashtun remained head of state for any length of
time.
And the US, considering that the Taliban
were Pashtun, turned a blind eye to the massacres of
Pashtuns in the cities of Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif by
the Northern Alliance. Later events have helped the
ground situation change in favor of the Taliban:
After the assassination of Haji Abdul Qadeer in July
last year, his brother Haji Din Mohammed was installed
as the governor of Nagarhar. He has negotiated a
ceasefire with the Taliban and agreed that once the
Taliban movement sufficiently consolidates its position
in southeastern Afghanistan and reaches Jalalabad (as
per tradition), his forces will give them a safe passage
to Kabul to take on the Northern Alliance-dominated
administration of Hamid Karzai.
Malick Hazrat Ali has allowed Hekmatyr's HIA to
operate and establish training camps in the Jalalabad
region.
All Pashtun tribes have agreed in principle that
they will not fight each other and will support any
movement that makes it possible to topple the Northern
Alliance government in Kabul.
These facts are
certainly known to US decision-makers on Afghanistan.
How they respond is another matter. Pakistani
authorities have in the past suggested that the US
engage "moderate" elements within the Taliban.
Initially, the US viewed this as a ploy by
Pakistan to deceive the US and buy time. After all,
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was
instrumental in nurturing and bringing the Taliban to
power, and it would dearly love to regain its lost
strategic ground in the country.
But US intelligence
had a change of heart, and it now sees the benefits in
courting the erstwhile enemy, although it has made it
clear that Mullah Omar will not be a part of any kiss
and make up.
Asia Times Online sources close to
these developments say that the first contact a few
months ago between the US and the Taliban in Quetta
foundered over the issue of Mullah Omar. However, within
a few weeks, the ISI came up with another batch of
Taliban, who, apart from Mullah Abdul Razzak, a
Pakistani who was a defense minister in the Taliban
regime, were much lower profile than the first group.
They agreed to establish a forum under the name of
Jaishul Muslim, and without Mullah Omar. Observers see
this as a last-ditch attempt by the US to establish the
semblance of a sufficiently stable government so that
they can pull their troops out of the country, with at
least some justification that they have done their job.
Unfortunately, without key leaders like Mullah
Omar, this endeavor is destined to fail.
Similarly, the US's efforts in Iraq to win the
support of credible local allies appear doomed.
The US has set up bodies like the Iraq
Development and Reconstruction Council (IDRC) and other
small organizations that have no footing in Iraq. These
proxy networks are good at showing welcoming local faces
to the US forces, but they are hardly the platform for
good, stable governance in the long run.
Like in
Afghanistan, the Sunni Arabs (although outnumbered by
Shi'ites) have been the traditional rulers of the region
for generations, and cannot be ignored. The order of
society for a long time was: Sunnis as the ruling elite,
ethnic Turkomen and Kurds used in the military, and the
Shi'ites sidelined communities, such as the Marsh Arabs,
and other rural, semi-literate groups that blindly
followed the sermons of their clerics.
During
Saddam Hussein's rule over the past decades this main
order of society remained largely unaltered, except
Saddam began to develop Shi'ite areas and open up
opportunities for them in the Ba'ath Party. However,
after the Iranian revolution (1979) and the subsequent
Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the situation changed.
Shi'ite clerics issued religious decrees banning
Shi'ites from government jobs and called Saddam's regime
un-Islamic and secular, and those who were a part of it
were called infidels (munkir). Nevertheless, many
Shi'ites in government cut their ties with the religion,
rather than give up their positions.
This gave
birth to a completely new generation of Shi'ites who
were part of ruling party, and who espouse doctrines
such as Arab union and anti-Semitism.
The US
administration, however, appears to think in black and
white terms, as it were, of Shi'ites and Sunnis
constituting two completely separate entities. And as
the majority in the country (about 65 percent) they are
being given majority representation - for instance, the
US-appointed 25-member Governing Council - without
consideration of the power of Sunni tribes. (The largest
clan in which both Shi'ite and Sunni tribes are included
is headed by a Sunni.)
As a result, the Sunni
elite are being excluded, which does not lend itself
future stability.
British authorities during the
empire days had a keen understanding of the tribal
systems in South Asia, as well as in the Arab world. In
countries like India they made the Nawabs and the feudal
lords responsible for raising armies, as they did in
Yemen and Iraq. In return, they paid royalties and privy
purses to the tribal chiefs. At the same time, these
chieftains were made to understand that they were
important and significant, so they always supported the
government.
Once the sun set on the British
empire, most countries abandoned colonial traditions,
including that of chieftains raising armies. Except in
Iraq. Saddam continued the practice with his concept of
jaishul badviya , which guaranteed tribal chief
as one of the pillars of power.
Up against the
US's awesome military might (apart from those who were
bought off) most of the Iraqi army (much like the
Taliban in Afghanistan) melted away in the face of
certain defeat to take protection with their tribes. Now
they are re-emerging to take on the occupation forces,
and with the full support of the tribal chiefs who have
lost not only their power, but also their payouts for
suppling soldiers for the army.
So, as in
Afghanistan, in Iraq the tribal role behind the
resistance has been underestimated, if not misunderstood
altogether. Chaos and anarchy are the only possible
outcomes from such ill-informed policy.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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