The facade of Afghan-Pakistani
tensions By M K Bhadrakumar
The motivations behind the failed attempt
on Sunday by a suicide bomber in the Kabul city
center on the life of Sibghatullah Mojaddidi,
former president of Afghanistan and now in charge
of a commission to encourage Taliban members to
lay down their arms, are not far to seek.
A controversial jihadi past as such does
not haunt Mojaddidi - unlike, for instance,
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Rasool Sayyaf. He
was,
admittedly, one of the so-called "Peshawar Seven"
[1] in the 1980s, but he was not a particularly
active mujahideen leader. He had a penchant for
sermonizing rather than fighting. He was more at
ease in Pakistani drawing rooms or in Western
capitals than in the rough and tumble of the
jihad.
Mojaddidi did not collaborate with
the Taliban, but he was not active in the
anti-Taliban resistance either. He did not figure
as a flag carrier for the US intervention in
Afghanistan in 2001. He may draw criticism as a
self-opinionated figure inclined toward vanities
or be viewed as a shrewd backstage operator
credited with holding ambitions totally out of
proportion with his actual political standing, but
no one would call him an "American stooge" in
today's context. Certainly, al-Qaeda should have
no reason to feel irritated with Mojaddidi.
But that is not the case with the Taliban.
Mojaddidi has annoyed the Taliban to no end in the
recent period - and, arguably, certain powerful
pro-Taliban circles in Pakistan. First, Mojaddidi
has increasingly come to be identified with
President Hamid Karzai.
Mojaddidi (or,
more precisely, some of his family members) is a
direct beneficiary of the regime that Karzai
heads. And, in turn, he imparts some semblance of
Pashtun content to the Karzai set-up. There is
talk that Mojaddidi may form a political party in
due course that can aspire to consolidate Pashtun
support for Karzai. Karzai himself comes from a
relatively minor tribe, but that is not the case
with Mojaddidi. Traditionally, Mojaddidi's
ancestors acted as the spiritual leaders in the
retinue of the Afghan king. The Mojaddidis stood
in the mainstream of the blue-blooded Kandahari
Pashtun tribal network.
Karzai rightly saw
that if anyone could engineer defections from the
Taliban ranks, that would be Mojaddidi. Karzai
duly appointed him as the head of the commission
working on inciting erstwhile Taliban figures to
cross over to Karzai's side. Mojaddidi's record in
this task has been patchy, though for no fault of
his. The Taliban simply are not susceptible to
factionalism. But all the same, Mojaddidi's
traditional influence in the Kandahar region and
the nature of his anti-Taliban activities have of
late acquired a heightened sensitivity for the
Taliban (and for the Pakistani establishment) in
the context of the developing situation in
Balochistan.
In essence, as Chris Mason, a
former US diplomat who served in Afghanistan and
is now with the Center for Advanced Defense
Studies in Washington, described recently, at the
strategic level of war, the Taliban have been so
far conducting a "defensive insurgency". The point
is, as Mason put it, "They [Taliban] are inserting
just enough insurgents to shut down meaningful
reconstruction in the south and keep the
population on the fence."
To be sure,
Taliban attacks have also intensified recently,
but that alone does not quite explain the new
level of belligerence bordering on hostility
toward Pakistan that the Kabul administration has
begun displaying.
Karzai has doubtless
raised the ante in a calibrated fashion. Afghan
state media have been staging some vicious attacks
on Pakistan, including unprecedented personal
attacks on President General Pervez Musharraf -
even questioning the Pakistani leader's soundness
of mind.
Last week, the Afghan state-run
newspaper Hewad wrote, "Pakistan's political
parties are trying to overthrow Musharraf's
despotic government. The demonstrations that
erupted in protest over the Prophet Mohammed
cartoons have now taken the form of a movement
against Musharraf's government. At the same time,
the freedom struggle by the Balochis is becoming
stronger by the day and it is poised to spread to
Pakhtunkhwa [North West Frontier Province], Sindh
and Kashmir, and assume the nature of a national
movement against Punjabi dominance."
This
is of course a gross exaggeration. But the Afghan
media are also making facile judgments regarding
the geopolitics of the region - that a convergence
of interests is working among the United States,
India and Afghanistan in cornering Pakistan (and
Musharraf) on the issue of cross-border terrorism.
How much of this scenario-building comes
out of political naivety, how much of it is
deliberately crafted for reasons of political
realism and how much of it is covertly encouraged
by the Americans is difficult to tell.
But
Karzai would seem to have very strong domestic
compulsions, too. Increasing tensions with
Pakistan could be a useful diversion from the
problems facing him on multiple fronts at home.
The power structure that has shaped up after the
creation of the Afghan parliament is turning out
to be quite different from what Karzai had wanted.
The parliament is in immediate terms
asserting its prerogative to ratify the
credentials of each and every member of Karzai's
cabinet of ministers. Karzai had wanted a single
act of endorsement by the parliament on the entire
cabinet. And parliament is all but certain to put
question marks on several appointment cabinet
ministers. This would mean a considerable loss of
prestige and authority for Karzai.
As a
fallback position, Karzai suggested that
parliamentarians should resort to open voting
rather than secret ballot. Karzai calculated that
members of parliament who had taken favors from
him at one time or the other would be hard-pressed
to cast their vote publicly against his
hand-picked cabinet ministers. But parliament has
insisted that the voting will be through secret
ballot.
All this may appear to take the
form of an inevitable trial of strength between
the organs of the executive and parliament toward
reaching an ultimate constitutional equilibrium.
But in reality, the rivalries are political, and
the protagonists are engaged in a proxy war, the
outcome of which remains uncertain.
Karzai
seems to be facing growing isolation politically.
Apart from Mojaddidi, Karzai's equations with
other influential figures are also in a state of
flux. A realignment of interest groups is likely.
Thus former president Burhanuddin Rabbani,
who supported Karzai during the presidential
election in October 2004, has been keeping a
distance. Rabbani seems to be rallying support for
a leadership role for himself. He couldn't have
forgotten the summary fashion in which he was
asked to vacate the presidential palace and make
way for Karzai in the thick of the Afghan winter
after the Bonn conference in December 2001.
Lately, Rabbani has resumed speaking out
against Karzai. In an interview by a
Dushanbe-based Tajik weekly, Tojikiston, on March
2, Rabbani has been quoted as saying, "The regime
that rules our country is contrary to the wishes
of our nation ... We consider this a conspiracy
against our religion, our freedom and security ...
They [foreigners] have not come to reconstruct
Afghanistan, but they have come here to corrupt
... In Afghanistan, our politics should be defined
by our own nation, not by any foreign country. The
current Afghan government's policies are not
acceptable to the people. We have to protect our
freedom. If a foreign country gives aid, that must
be without conditions attached. Otherwise people
will not accept it."
Clearly, Rabbani is
reverting to his time-tested platform of Islamism,
Afghan nationalism and political opportunism with
the unstated underpinning of Tajik ethnic
identity.
It is entirely conceivable that
experienced politicians such as Rabbani are
beginning to keep a distance from Karzai now that
direct US involvement may be scaled back. General
James Jones, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's supreme allied commander in Europe
and also the chief of the US-Europe command, told
a Pentagon briefing last week that NATO would
assume full responsibility for the security of
Afghanistan by November, and that concurrently, US
forces that were slated to draw down from 19,000
to roughly 16,500 by July could shrink further
through the second half of the year.
The
growing perception in the Afghan bazaar is that
the Americans simply do not have the stomach for
the long haul. Therefore, disparate political
elements are seeking out fresh political options
on the Afghan chessboard - preparing for the
"post-American" phase.
It will be
fascinating to see whether Afghan leaders will
bend to the wishes of the incoming NATO viceroys
from "New Europe" or the Anglo-Saxon countries
with the same meekness and eagerness they
displayed when the US presence was in full cry in
Kabul, especially under the formidable stewardship
of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.
There are
already disturbing signs of regional leaders
plainly ignoring Karzai's leadership. Rashid
Dostum, the armed forces chief of staff, made an
interesting proposition publicly two weeks ago to
the effect that if only Karzai turned over the
overall military command in Kabul to him, he would
carry the war to the Taliban's hideouts and
destroy them.
Northern Afghanistan is once
again becoming volatile. Clashes have erupted
between the supporters of Dostum and his old
adversary, Abdol Malek. The sectarian clashes
recently in the western city of Herat had serious
political overtones, including the possible
involvement of outside powers. The Herat riots had
all the hallmarks of contending forces testing the
water. The escalating US-Iran tensions provide a
complex regional backdrop.
Karzai is
having a hard time claiming political loyalties
through disbursement of favors. For example, one
of the first acts of Karzai after the
parliamentary elections last year was to peg
extraordinarily high salaries for the members of
parliament - and that too, in US dollars - apart
from doling out perks such as free vehicles.
Now provincial council heads are
beseeching Karzai for comparable pay and
allowances. A senior Afghan figure was quoted
recently as saying that Karzai's government itself
had become the country's biggest non-governmental
organization.
Behind all this, what is
systematically eroding Karzai's political
credibility is that the state structures remain
dysfunctional. Government appointments are
invariably made on the basis of cronyism and
nepotism, which has paved the way for corruption,
inefficiency and disruption of day-to-day
governance. The administration in Kabul is
increasingly out of touch with the issues
affecting the lives of the people.
Commenting on the recent riots in Kabul's
main prison, the prominent independent daily
Cheragh wrote, "Dozens have been killed or
injured. This is the second outbreak of violence
in the prison in the past year. The true situation
is being covered up. The authorities are with
impunity suppressing the prisoners' legitimate
complaints and the outburst of their grievances
... Women and children are abused and cast away.
Women and children who go to prison on whatever
grounds never return home without being sexually
abused."
The daily commented, "The
authorities invariably blame the Taliban and
al-Qaeda in such incidents so that the cases will
not be investigated." Curiously, it was
Sibghatullah Mojaddidi whom the rioting prisoners
in Kabul had demanded to see as their interlocutor
from the Karzai government.
Note 1. At the time of
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979,
Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq hand-picked the
so-called "Peshawar Seven" groups - known by most
Afghans as the "gang of seven" - who had served
Pakistani interests in the past as the primary
beneficiaries of funding and arms, to wage the war
against the Soviet Union. The groups were:
Hezb-i-Islami (Party of Islam), led by Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar; the Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Society),
led by Burhanuddin Rabbani; the Itehad Islami
(Islamic Unity), led by former university
professor Abdul Rasool Sayyaf; the Hezbi-Islami
(Party of Islam), led by Maulavi Younas Khalis;
Mahaz-i-Milli Islam (National Islamic Front of
Afghanistan), led by Pir Sayed Ahmad Gilani;
Jabha-i-Nijat-Milli (Afghan National Liberation
Front), led by Sibgratullah Mojadidi;
Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami (Islamic Revolutionary
Forces), led by clergyman Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
(Copyright 2006 Asia
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