BAGHDAD - Politically speaking,
the US government is engaged in none-too-orderly
about-turns in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and also
indirectly in South Waziristan in Pakistan.
Despairing of the competence of pro-US Iraqi and
Afghan emigres to deliver and lead their countries'
transition to the hoped-for democracy, US policymakers
have opted for questionable shortcuts.
To pacify
and administer Iraq, Coalition Provisional Authority
chief L Paul Bremer has begun inducting former Ba'athist
officials into the civilian administration being put
together there, hoping that they do not have a
particularly bad record of having oppressed their own
people.
There was an outcry about a former
Republican Guard general who was given command of the
newly organized Iraqi army to guard Fallujah city.
Washington had to make the lame excuse that the general
in question had not been adequately vetted before being
appointed. But it is the general policy that matters:
rely on the experienced Ba'athists to run the new
administration.
Promoters of President Hamid
Karzai in Afghanistan, meanwhile, have had a similar
experience. His inability to look like the head of a
government that works had become obvious soon enough
after he took over in early 2002. Now Karzai is engaged
in negotiating with "moderate" Taliban, seeking their
cooperation in running the country, especially in
containing the influence of the warlords. The Taliban,
remember, were the people the United States bombed out
of government in late 2001.
Battles in Iraq
On Thursday, US forces battled militiamen loyal
to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Karbala and outside
Najaf. Some reports said US troops destroyed Muqtada's
office in Karbala before taking up positions in the city
center. Earlier in the day, US troops seized the
governor's office in Najaf. US forces also exchanged
heavy fire with Muqtada's militia east of the city,
killing, the US military said, some 40 fighters.
The moves came shortly after Bremer announced he
has appointed a new governor for the Najaf region.
Bremer said the new governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, will have
US support to recruit, train and equip a new Iraqi
police and civil-defense force.
The troubles
with the Shi'ites come as a blow to the US. Shi'ite
Arabs are the majority cultural group in Iraq, composing
about 60 percent of the population. Since the Shi'ites
are a majority, their support is absolutely critical to
keep a general level of stability in the country.
Furthermore, before the start of the invasion,
Washington policymakers believed the Shi'ite population
to be an easy group to win the "hearts and minds" of.
The Shi'ite community was harshly repressed under Saddam
Hussein's Ba'athist government and were occasionally the
recipients of brutal crackdowns due to their open
resistance to Baghdad's rule, as was seen in the wake of
Operation Desert Storm in 1991 when Iraqi troops loyal
to Saddam forcefully quelled a Shi'ite uprising that
began due to the power vacuum created after the retreat
of the Iraqi military from Kuwait, and also due to the
first Bush administration's call for them to rise up.
Additionally, there was the effort by Washington
policymakers to marginalize Iraq's Sunni Arab
population, since they were the traditional power base
behind the Ba'ath Party. Often the recipients of special
favors by Saddam's government in Baghdad, Iraq's Sunni
Arab population was more privileged than the country's
other major cultural groups, such as Sunni Kurds and
Shi'ite Arabs. For these reasons, the administration of
President George W Bush decided that its best course of
action would be to push this population off to the
sidelines and deal with the victims of the Ba'ath
Party's brutality since it would be likely that they
would be more open to supporting the United States and
therefore more beholden to US interests.
Therefore, shortly after the invasion, it is
likely that the guerrilla movement in Iraq was exactly
as Washington claimed: disfranchised Sunni Arab
militants who were taking up arms against US-led forces.
Yet as the occupation continued and Washington was
unable to achieve relative stability in the country, it
became clear that it was not only Sunni Arabs that were
taking up arms against US-led forces. This development
was evident by the various tapes sent to Arab news
networks, such as Aljazeera, by Iraqi insurgents; in the
videos, various militants expressed their hatred for
Saddam's Ba'ath Party in addition to their hatred for
the US-led coalition.
As the occupation
proceeded, and the level of stability in Iraq did not
improve, the insurgency became more and more
diversified, as attacks were launched against US-led
troops, Kurds in the north, Sunni Arabs and Shi'ite
Arabs. During this time, various groups in Iraq were
taking advantage of the power vacuum created after the
fall of Saddam to weaken the power base of their enemies
or ideological opponents - indeed, not only is it
possible that Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs were killing each
other, but, as the US alleges, Shi'ite leaders may have
been assassinating other Shi'ite leaders.
Fallout with the Shi'ites This state
of affairs continued for months, with the Shi'ite
community largely remaining docile in the hopes that
true democracy in Iraq would be achieved, thus
guaranteeing their ascension as the majority
powerbrokers in any new government. Washington, worried
over the possibility of too much Shi'ite control, began
to backtrack slightly on its promise of national
elections, and attempted to work certain balancing
constraints into the interim constitution. These
constraints attempted to equalize the power between
Sunni Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shi'ite Arabs.
Angered by the change in US policy, Shi'ite
leaders began to become more outspoken toward the US-led
coalition, with both more radical leaders, such as
Muqtada, and more moderate leaders, such as Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, speaking with a unified voice
over their disapproval of Washington's plans.
This increasing anger caused the Shi'ite
community to move away from outspoken support of US
policies, and also paved the way for more radical
Shi'ite leaders such as Muqtada to increase the size of
their following. Muqtada, whose power rests upon his
Mahdi Army, a private militia containing thousands of
fighters, heightened his rhetoric against the US-led
coalition to the point that Washington policymakers
decided to punish him, closing down his al-Hawza
newspaper and arresting one of his top deputies on a
murder charge.
Muqtada's rebellion, which may
have initially been supported by a small minority of
Shi'ites, had a unifying effect on the Shi'ite
community, as Washington's open confrontation with Mahdi
fighters put Iraqis in the position of either supporting
one side or the other. As in all cases of occupation,
the local population generally supports those who share
their culture and history over foreign occupiers, no
matter either side's ultimate intentions. Indeed, this
was partly the reason other more moderate Shi'ite
leaders, such as Sistani, have been careful about
criticizing Muqtada and have, in effect, offered him
safe haven in Najaf.
More balance
needed After witnessing the explosive power of
the Shi'ite community, Washington policymakers came to
the understanding that they would not be able to revive
Iraq through the support of Shi'ite Arabs and Kurds
alone; Iraq's Sunni Arab population would have to be
better incorporated into the government. Faced with an
insurgency encompassing both Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs,
Washington has now attempted to remove some of the
grievances behind the insurgency.
Also, because
Iraq's Sunni Arab population was favored by Saddam, they
were often the most educated and skilled Iraqis, a
reality that has hurt Washington since it has excluded
these pertinent individuals from government and societal
affairs. Recognizing its mistake, Washington has now
reversed its de-Ba'athification policy and is actively
reincorporating former Sunni Arabs, who worked with the
Ba'ath Party, into positions of influence.
The
threat of Shi'ite rebellion also forced Washington to
draft a better solution to the continuing problem of
Sunni militants. While before the Shi'ite rebellion
Washington had enough troop power to spar with these
militants, faced with an insurgency encompassing two of
Iraq's three main cultural groups, Washington quickly
discovered that it did not have the troop force to fight
so many different enemies at once. Now, in an effort to
alleviate this danger, Washington has recruited former
Ba'athist generals and placed them in positions of
military power. By giving many former soldiers their
jobs back, Washington hopes to eliminate much of the
fodder that is impelling Sunni militants to attack
US-led troops.
Of course, this balancing act is
difficult to maintain. As Washington helps Sunni Arabs
achieve their interests, it risks upsetting Iraqi
Shi'ites, thus throwing off the balance once again. To
be successful, Washington has to be very attuned to the
concerns of all groups involved in Iraqi affairs and be
able to rapidly shift its strategy in light of new
political shifts and developments. Failure to do so will
mean that inevitably Washington will be unable to
sustain its balancing act; should this occur, a
debilitating situation on the ground will likely erupt.
Battles in Afghanistan As the United
States seeks to draw the Taliban into the political
process, it should not be forgotten that the Taliban
posed the problem in Afghanistan in the first place and
that US-led forces carried out war on the country in
November 2001 because of them. The war's whole point was
to overthrow the obscurantists so that Afghanistan could
be modernized and that a more open and free system
should replace the Taliban theocracy, and to prevent
them harboring people such as Osama bin Laden and his
al-Qaeda.
To seek the Taliban's cooperation now
- the moderates among them, to be sure, if there is such
a thing - while equally bigoted warlords rule the roost
over most of Afghanistan is to leave people bewildered.
Dealing with the Taliban inevitably involves
Pakistan, which recruited them from its madrassas
or Islamic seminaries in Balochistan and the North West
Frontier Province, which border Afghanistan. Their
ethnic distinctions are two. First, they are Pashtuns,
and second they are Islamic zealots fired by the
Deobandi or Wahhabi Islam.
Pashtuns in
Afghanistan are estimated to be just under 50 percent of
the population. Pashtuns live contiguously in both
Afghanistan and Pakistan's Pashtun belt, traditionally
disregarding the famous Durand Line between the two
countries. The Pashtuns on both sides speak the same
language and all of them are Muslims of the same faith,
except for a small minority of Shi'ites.
Pakistan had promoted and protected the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan, regarding it as its own
extension. The US authorities then forced Pakistan to
change tack and join the "war against terrorism". But
the social and political commonalities that united
Islamabad and the old Afghan regime continue to exist in
Pakistan's Pashtun belt.
The US government has
been looking for the leaders of al-Qaeda and the
Taliban's regime and their information was that they
were still hiding in the Waziristan Agency, especially
South Waziristan. They asked Islamabad to ferret them
out. Despite being bound by myriad ties and the fact
that those Pashtuns are of Pakistani citizenship,
Islamabad mounted a big operation in March to catch bin
Laden's lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri and his supporters.
Since the residents of the tribal areas are
armed and are famous as sharpshooters, the 15-day
operation incurred scores of fatalities on the Pakistani
army's side, and 40 on the tribesmen's side.
The
operation was halted halfway, and later the traditional
method of talks with the help of jirgas or
assemblies was adopted. Tribesmen wanted amnesty for
themselves and their foreign supporters of the Taliban
and al-Qaeda.
Although negotiations are still
ongoing, all arrested foreigners and resisting tribesmen
have been released. Pakistan has agreed not to hand over
any foreign suspect to the US government - and all of
them will come under the amnesty only if they register
and promise not to break the nebulous law of that area.
In short, they can go on living legally in Pakistan.
Thus the operation in South Waziristan,
centering on Wana town, was a serious setback for
Pakistan. Islamabad, with Washington behind it, got
nothing out of it. Indeed, the tribesmen's traditional
privileges have been reaffirmed.
There is no
firm information about Pakistan and the US government
having pursued a joint strategy in Islamabad's
acceptance of virtually all the tribesmen's demands
against vague verbal promises.
It would be odd if
the US government was out of the loop, because the
operations were only reluctantly undertaken by Islamabad
under US pressure. It stands to reason that experts may
have advised that continuing to do what Islamabad was
doing could cause a general uprising among all the
Pashtun tribes - inside and outside Pakistan.
The prospect must have looked too horrifying to
the normally gung-ho US officials. But then the top US
general in Afghanistan has again advised Islamabad to
use force in Pakistan's tribal areas. It would be odd if
this remains the firm Washington view after what Bremer
in Iraq and Karzai in Afghanistan are engaged in -
calling in previous "outcasts" to get them out of
trouble.
Parallels between Iraq and
Afghanistan The growing instability in
Afghanistan has been overshadowed by news of the
escalating violence, torture and killings in Iraq. But
analysts say security in Afghanistan remains "tenuous"
and "has shown no signs of improvement". And they
predict that the explosive situation there might soon
turn out to be as bad as Iraq, though on a smaller
scale.
The similarities are striking. As in
Iraq, insurgents in Afghanistan have been attacking not
only the multinational military force but also local
police and foreign aid workers. The Pentagon, responding
to charges of torture by US soldiers, said on Wednesday
that at least 25 prisoners had died in US custody, in
both Iraq and Afghanistan.
But unlike Iraq, the
potential destabilization of Afghanistan has taken added
momentum since last week's announcement of possible US
troop withdrawals from the politically troubled country.
During a visit to the Afghan capital Kabul,
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs
of Staff, hinted that Washington might gradually reduce
its 15,500 troops immediately after nationwide elections
scheduled for September.
Any such action, say
Afghan analysts, would be a recipe for political and
military disaster. "If the United States cuts the number
of troops after the Afghan elections, it would be the
clearest confirmation of what many have feared - that
the US's main interest in Afghanistan is not stabilizing
the country or improving people's lives, but getting
Hamid Karzai elected president and making Afghanistan
look like a 'war on terror' success in time for US
[presidential] elections in November," says James
Ingalls of the California Institute of Technology.
Ingalls, a founding director of the Afghan
Women's Mission, also remains skeptical about the
ability of the Karzai government to hold "fair and free
elections", postponed until September from the original
June timetable.
"The US-backed warlords continue
to control parts of the country with impunity," he told
Inter Press Service (IPS). "If allowed to participate in
the political process, they will likely bully and buy
their way into parliamentary positions, as they have in
the past. Those who don't get their way will resort to
force. They have little incentive to do otherwise," he
said.
"At best," Ingalls predicted, "the
elections will be meaningless because the people have no
real choices - who are Karzai's challenger[s]? - at
worst, the elections could spark a new civil
war."
Mark Sedra, a research associate at the
Bonn International Center for Conversion, where he leads
a project that monitors and analyses security in
Afghanistan, is equally pessimistic about the future. "A
significant reduction of US troops in Afghanistan would
send a very negative signal to the Afghan people," Sedra
told IPS.
"It would fuel the growing perception
among Afghans that the United States and the
international community are once again turning their
backs on the country - as they did after the withdrawal
of the Soviet Union," he added.
The Soviets, who
militarily occupied Afghanistan for more than a decade,
pulled out in 1989. The Taliban government that followed
was ousted by US military forces in late 2001.
Washington then installed Karzai, described by many as a
US puppet, as the new president.
While insurgent
groups such as the Taliban are not in a position to
overthrow the central government, says Sedra, they still
pose a potent security risk. "By focusing their attacks
on 'soft targets' such as aid workers and Afghan
government employees, they have effectively halted
development work in approximately one-third of the
country," said Sedra, who recently returned from
Afghanistan, where he managed, on behalf of the United
Nations, the security section of the Afghan government
study tabled at last month's donor conference in Berlin.
Reconstruction of war-battered Iraq has come to
a complete standstill because of the security situation.
Both the World Bank and the United Nations, along with
major humanitarian-aid groups, have withdrawn all of
their international staff because of security fears.
Since the killing of a UN aid worker in
Afghanistan last November, most international staff
working for more than 30 UN agencies have been withdrawn
from southern and eastern Afghanistan. As a result, the
UN has also suspended aid to refugees returning from
neighboring Pakistan.
Jean Arnault, the UN
special representative in the country, said he was
shocked by last week's "brutal slayings" of two local
aid workers in the southern city of Kandahar. The two
worked for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, an
international aid organization.
"This and other
recent attacks in Kandahar urgently point towards the
need to make more forces available to the provincial
authorities in order to enable them to uphold the law
and facilitate the expansion of reconstruction," Arnault
told reporters last week.
The Taliban,
warlordism and the booming opium trade are other current
threats to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, according
to Sedra. "The US military presence in the country,
while limited compared to Iraq, serves as a powerful
deterrent to the outbreak of major hostilities, whether
perpetrated by the Taliban or a regional warlord," he
said.
The US military also provides vital
support to the multinational International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), which is in the process of
expanding outside Kabul. "The timing of the potential
troop reduction, however, is also disconcerting, for if
elections do take place in September, the period
immediately following will likely be extremely tense,"
Sedra pointed out.
"It is in the immediate
aftermath of the polls that we will see whether the
country's major powerbrokers will accept its result. The
withdrawal of even a small number of troops would
provide a psychological boost to insurgent groups and
terrorists; embolden regional warlords to challenge the
central government; and encourage interference in the
country's affairs by regional actors, notably Pakistan
and Iran," he said.
After his return from Kabul
in January, UN Special Representative to Afghanistan
Lakhdar Brahimi said that despite a heavy Western
military presence and a two-year-old US-backed
government in Kabul, Afghanistan was reduced to a
country with no rule of law.
He implicitly
criticized the government, the police, the army, the
international community and the 4,500-strong ISAF for
their failure to resolve the problem of insecurity.
"There is of course what we see in our press, what we
hear about on the radio, what we see on television about
bombs that blow up here and there, about rockets that
fall here and there," he said. "But there is [also] the
insecurity we don't see in the press: the fear that is
in the heart of practically every Afghan because there
is no rule of law yet in this country."
(Inter
Press Service/Power and Interest News Report/Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty)
