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Afghanistan: Pakistan's 'new force' to the
rescue?
By M K Bhadrakumar
The strong showing of the Mutahidda
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in Pakistan's elections last week
could, despite what was initially feared, work in favor
of the war on terror in Afghanistan.
The MMA, a
patchwork of at least six diverse Islamist parties, some
of whom had deep links with the Taliban, in a
post-election statement, said, "We are ready to
cooperate with the United States in the war against
terrorism, but the Americans should not expect support
from us in the war against Islam or Muslims." Senior
Pakistani officials also quickly affirmed that the
fundamentals of Pakistan's cooperation with the US in
the war in Afghanistan would remain unaffected by the
outcome of the elections.
And Ameer ul-Azeem,
spokesman of the alliance, told the Associated Press in
Islamabad that the MAA sought good relations with the
US, and that the latter need not have any misgivings on
that score. He expressed the MMA's readiness to
forthwith talk with American officials to work out their
mutual interests. He was reported as saying that the MMA
would show flexibility regardless of its pronouncements
in the heat of the election campaign, and would like to
cooperate with the war in Afghanistan.
The MMA
includes the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) faction led
by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Samiul Haq, which
has strong influence among the Taliban as many of them
were trained in JUP-run madrassas (religious
schools). The Jamaat-i-Islami party (JI), one of the biggest
MMA constituent groups, was the flag carrier of the
Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s and early 1990s. Its
leader, Qazi Hussein Ahmad, was the patron of mujahideen
leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
The MMA
secured 53 seats in the national parliament, and a
controlling representation in the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) Assembly, and the largest single party
status in the Balochistan Assembly, both of which
provinces lie in Pakistan's volatile Pashtun tribal area
on the border with Afghanistan. The MMA garnered the
third largest number of federal parliament seats - after
the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam (PML-QA) with 73
and the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarian (PPPP)
with 63.
In the days following the polls - the
first since President General Pervez Musharraf seized
power in a coup in October 1999 - Qazi Hussein Ahmad
clarified that the MMA's stated opposition to the
presence of American troops on Pakistani soil itself was
"negotiable". He assured the Americans, "We will show
flexibility and we will take all the steps in the best
national interest." Predictably, Qazi Hussein had spoken
with strident anti-American rhetoric to his local
audience, but he has assumed a voice of moderation and
reasonableness now that the hurly-burly of the elections
is done.
The Islamic parties' doublespeak on
issues of Pakistan's foreign and security policy is not
something new. Given the traditionally anti-American
public mood in Pakistan and the constant compulsion to
project themselves as political forces, parties such as
the JI and JUI resort to public rhetoric of an
inflammatory kind, while they have shown time and again
that they are capable of pragmatism bordering on
political cynicism in coming to terms with the realities
of Pakistan's national life and the raison d-etre of
Pakistan's geopolitics.
Most of the MMA leaders
are experienced in the ground rules of Pakistan's
parliamentary politics, and the culture of popular
governance. The more worthy among them are even the
progenies of the Pakistani establishment, and all of
them at one time or the other have been fellow
travellers of the establishment. In the present context,
most important of all, they will now be "stakeholders"
of the system, rather than embittered outsiders
intriguing to destabilize it.
But what is often
forgotten is that the Islamic parties of Pakistan are
extremely well known to the Americans historically.
These parties were pillars of the political
establishment under successive military dictatorships in
Pakistan during the Cold War era. They may be parochial
in their world views, but their leaders have worked
particularly closely with the Americans over decades.
For example, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, as chairman of the
foreign relations committee of the Pakistan National
Assembly in 1993-94, was even received in US State
Department, espousing the Taliban cause.
Thus,
the Pakistani security establishment's traditional
armlock on outfits such as the JI and JUI should come in
very handy for the US at this juncture in stabilizing
the Afghan situation. Pakistani political observers have
commented that the MMA's electoral success in Pakistan's
border provinces has not come as a surprise to the
Americans. The official American reaction, indeed, has
eschewed any note of alarm over the MMA's rise.
The MMA's showing in NWFP and Balochistan has
come at the cost of nationalist parties. Subsuming
Pashtun nationalism with Islamic fervor has been a
leitmotif of Pakistan's Afghan policy over the
years. At a time when Pashtun consciousness is
resurfacing in Afghanistan in the vacuum left by the
Taliban's compelling Islamist ideology, the MMA can
serve a useful role for furthering Pakistani (and US)
interests inside Afghanistan.
Significantly, the
political alignments within Afghanistan are themselves
changing, which would mesh with the changes in Pakistan.
A new phase of transition in the post-Taliban power
structure in Kabul is under way. Ground is being
prepared to ensure the preeminence of President Hamid
Karzai within the transitional government in Kabul. This
is a pressing prerequisite for the advancement of Afghan
reconstruction, especially for the proposed massive
Trans-Afghan oil and gas pipeline project.
Accordingly, the Northern Alliance groups are
being downsized. These groups, which provided the foot
soldiers for the overthrow of the Taliban government,
are no longer indispensable to the war, which has a
manifestly wider agenda today; they may even be standing
in the way.
Fortuitously, the easing out of the
Northern Alliance is not that messy since the alliance
itself is disintegrating.
The Shi'ite groups in
the alliance have shown a willingness to work under
Karzai. Hazara leader Karim Khalili has been
accommodated as de facto number two in the hierarchy.
Jumbish-i-Milli Islami leader Rashid Dostum has worked
out a deal with the Americans to safeguard his turf in
the Amu Darya region. The Tajik leader in Herat, Ismail
Khan, is also receiving strong overtures from the
Americans, with recent visitors including US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Tim
O'Neill and the US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul
Wolfowitz.
Thus, with Shi'ite groups careering
away to pursue sectarian interests and the Jumbish
choosing its own course, the Tajiks, who were the
largest constituents of the Northern Alliance, face
isolation, and they have yet to fill the huge void left
by the assassination of Ahamed Shah Massoud last year.
Factionalism has erupted - cliques from Badakhshan and
Takhar provinces challenge elements from Panjshir;
Tajiks in the western provinces are dissociating
themselves from "Badakhshanis" and "Panjshiris" alike;
the nominal supremo, Burhanuddin Rabbani, is ploughing
his own path in Kabul; and the field commanders of the
Tajik-dominated Jamiat-i-Islami are becoming
increasingly autonomous.
The Americans (and
Karzai) had waded deep into the Tajik camp. The defense
portfolio that was held by Tajiks in the transitional
government in Kabul is being brought under Karzai's
supervision. A commission for the defense of the
motherland (CDM) has been created under Karzai in which
the defense minister becomes one among equals within a
collegium of high-ranking military figures. On October
7, the CDM appointed Karzai as commander-in-chief of
armed forces. And at a CDM meeting in Kabul last week,
which adopted the basic document setting out ethnic
representation in a new Afghan army (described by the US
commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General Dan
McNeill, who attended the meeting, as an historic
document), the defense minister was not present,
instead, he left Kabul on a two-week "private visit"
abroad.
Karzai is directly dealing with various
cliques in the Tajik camp. Recently he undertook an
extended tour of Badakhshan and Takhar to network with
the Tajiks there. Instances are multiplying. The
Americans are ensuring that outside powers which used to
provide succor to the Tajik military forces during the
anti-Taliban resistance do not meddle in the changed
circumstances.
Russia, which was to have
provided training for the Tajik militia at its base in
Tajikistan, has indefinitely postponed the program.
American Special Forces have been deployed on
Afghanistan's western border with Iran. A new Afghan
currency printed in Germany has been introduced for
demonetising the old currency, which used to be printed
in Russia. Donor countries are being told to route all
future aid through Karzai.
The perceived
preponderant influence of Tajiks (and of external powers
traditionally supporting them) in the post-Taliban setup
in Kabul has been a sticking point for Pakistan. But by
realigning the power structure, the Americans are
fulfilling an important pre-condition for Pakistani
cooperation, which is vital for the Americans at this
juncture for the overall success of the war in
Afghanistan and even further abroad.
This is
particularly so in the south and southeastern regions of
Afghanistan. It is here in the Pashtun provinces
(contiguous to Pakistan's NWFP and Balochistan) that the
war is showing mixed results. Pakistan wields deep
influence among the Ghilzay confederation of Pashtun
tribes and among the disorganized eastern Pashtun
tribes. These tribes were deliberately favored by for
Pakistani strongman General Zia ul-Haq during the Afghan
jihad in 1980s as a state policy of whittling down the
dominance of the Durrani confederation of Pashtuns, who
had formed the mainstay of the Afghan monarchy from 1774
onwards, and who were the fountainhead of Pashtun
nationalism.
The American dependence on Pakistan
in this regard is particularly acute since the
southeastern tribes are today lacking in unified
leadership. In the initial stages of the operation to
overthrow the Taliban regime, the Americans had counted
on the prominent figure from the southeastern region,
Abdul Haq, (Karzai's name came up later) to lead the
setup in Kabul.
He would have been a solid
choice given his correct jihadi pedigree and
bazaari (merchant) instincts, and his tested
reliability for serving American interests. The
swiftness with which the Taliban murdered him shows that
Mullah Omar acted with foresight. The same fate awaited
Haji Abdul Qadir, whose credentials were comparable to
Haq's. These two murders have left the eastern tribes
bereft of any recognizable leader.
Karzai's
leadership has not gained acceptability among the
southeastern Pashtuns. Equally, the restiveness among
these tribes provides fertile ground for Taliban
sympathizers, and mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is equally opposing the US presence in
Afghanistan, and the two might join forces. Pakistan can
lend a big hand in incrementally isolating these forces
of militancy and in harnessing a support base for
Karzai.
Within this context, the Islamic parties
in Pakistan are useful conduits. They can be expected to
act in concert by finessing the forces of resurgent
Pashtun ethnicity and tribalism (and Islamist fervor) in
directions that become reconcilable with overall
American geopolitical interests. The Islamic parties can
bring to bear into the situation their deep and
extensive networking with the jihadi constituency in the
southeastern provinces.
They are in a position
to act as a bridge between the Americans and the
"acceptable faces" of the erstwhile Taliban leadership.
The recent unpublicized visit to Kabul and Islamabad by
Peter Tomsen, (formerly Ronald Reagan's special envoy to
the Afghan mujahideen), indicates that Americans are
indeed pulling out all stops to get the correct message
through to the alienated sections of the Afghan jihadi
constituency as regards the contours of a modus
vivendi.
George Arne, who was the BBC's
correspondent in South Asia during the 1980s, narrates
in his book, Afghanistan: The definitive account of a
country at crossroads, a briefing to journalists by
American ambassador Arnie Raphel in Islamabad in April
1989. "The final rounds of Geneva talks had already
begun, and we were anxious to know how the ambassador
envisaged a post-Soviet Afghanistan. Mr Raphel, a
cultivated and intelligent State Department official
with years of experience in Afghan affairs, did not need
to ponder the question. It would, he speculated, either
be run by tribal maliks [tribal elders], mullahs
and traditional religious leaders - a variation on the
old establishment - or it would become an orthodox
Islamic state controlled by Wahhabi-style
fundamentalists. In either case, he said, 'the chances
of a progressive, secular state in Afghanistan are
negligible'. As for the dangers of fragmentation, Mr
Raphel admitted it was likely, but, he said, 'eventually
an Abdur Rahman Khan will be found who can weld the
country together again'."
An orthodox Islamist
state with Wahhabi leaning, indeed, was established in
Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1996. But it did not live
up to expectations and instead got drawn towards
pan-Islamic radicalism, like a moth to a flame, and
perished. It left behind a succession question which has
to be addressed.
The "old Afghan establishment"
in Afghanistan cannot be revived. It was an entente
cordiale among diverse groups - the traditionalist group
of mullahs, maulvis (clergy) and pirs
(holy men) and a relatively modernist ulema
(community) trained in theology, together comprising an
ultra-conservative group of religious leaders; tribal
networks based on Pashtun nationalism; bazaari
groups; an emerging entrepreneurial class; bureaucracy;
assorted shades of intelligentsia, broadly progressive
and secular, ranging from liberals who wanted change and
development and were supportive of the king's
progressive policies, to noisy orthodox Marxists rooting
for revolution.
But, during the 30 years of
upheaval since the overthrow of former king Zahir Shah,
radical Islam overtook a wide variety of Islamic
traditions in Afghanistan; tribal networks of
maliks were smashed by the mujahideen, who made
sure that power flowed from the barrel of the gun;
Durrani tribes which held power came to be challenged by
Ghilzays and eastern Pashtun tribes; bazaari
interests were scattered, though they went through a
brief revival under the Taliban (Karzai himself
initially being a Taliban supporter); bureaucrats and
technocrats driven into exile; liberal, progressive and
secular elements of the colorful Afghan intelligentsia
were sidelined and systematically eliminated unnoticed
and unwanted in the refugee camps in Peshawar and
Quetta.
A new social contract for sustaining a
"variation on the old establishment" is called for in
the circumstances. And one is in the making - built
around Afghan bazaari interests, vigorously
supported by the forces of globalization, with a
residual Pashtun tribal network and ulema,
Diaspora of technocrats and royalists brought in, and an
anointed king of an earlier era lending legitimacy
whenever occasions arise - which can, hopefully, consign
the Afghan mujahideen and their guns to history.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career
diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29
years, with postings including India's ambassador to
Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and Turkey (1998-2001).
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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