Page 2 of
2 A stumble over the 'W' word in
Afghanistan By Tarique Niazi
Afghanistan and Pakistan, wanted to
engage them in peace efforts to end the violence
in Pashtun territories.
Karzai considers
tribal leaders to be the foundation of Pashtun
culture and believes in their primacy over all
other cultural and political institutions to
resolve internecine conflicts. Since 2002, when he
came to power in Afghanistan, Karzai has attempted
to revive this institution, which earned him many
critics among the international community and
beyond. Despite growing detractors
of his
approach, he continues to stick to his conviction
that the jirga is the most effective tool
in Pashtun society for conflict resolution.
Karzai is unhappy that Musharraf has
contributed to "destroying Afghan culture" and its
hallmark institution of the jirga.
Musharraf, who was born in India and migrated as a
child to Pakistan, lacks any ethnic base in the
country. Viewing the general as a rootless
carpetbagger, the tribal leaders don't treat him
as their equal. In volatile northwestern Pakistan,
especially North and South Waziristan, hundreds of
Pashtun tribal leaders instead pledge their
allegiance to Afghanistan and the Afghan
president.
Musharraf has been ambivalent
about the success of the proposed jirga
from the very outset and has spared no effort to
undermine its authority. First, he delayed
convening it for 10 months. Second, he let the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's
premier intelligence agency, name the delegates,
including a substantial number of ISI agents
themselves. Third, he failed to name even a single
delegate from North and South Waziristan, where
the United States suspects al-Qaeda is regrouping.
As a result, all of the 70 tribal leaders of
Waziristan agencies stayed away from the
jirga.
Finally, Musharraf pulled
out of the event only a day before it opened on
August 9, citing "pressing commitments" in
Islamabad, which turned out to be his plan to
impose emergency rule in Pakistan, which he later
dropped. The Bush administration was baffled by
his last-minute walkout. It took a telephone call
from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the
early hours of August 9 to change his mind on both
emergency rule in Pakistan and abstaining from the
jirga. By August 9, however, only 175 of
the planned 350 Pakistani delegates attended.
Success or failure? If the
jirga was not a complete success, it was
not a failure, either. After all, it was the
grandest gathering of Pashtun leaders since the
Durand Line was drawn in 1893 to divide Pashtun
territories between Afghanistan and the British
Raj.
The lineup included pre-eminent
Pashtun leaders who tower over even Karzai and
Musharraf: Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan, who leads
the Awami National Party, and Mehmood Khan
Achakzai, who heads the Pashtun Milli Awami Party.
Both scorn Musharraf for dumping Arab and non-Arab
al-Qaeda members into Pashtun tribal areas and
then committing what they call genocide against
Pashtuns by ruthlessly bombing them.
The
jirga, which represented the 50 million
Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, further
bolstered the standing of Karzai as a Pashtun
leader. His embrace by the leading lights of the
Pashtun nation sends a strong message to the
Taliban that they do not have a monopoly on
Pashtun nationalism.
Finally, from the US
standpoint, the jirga was a success for its
unequivocal commitment to end terrorism and
eliminate al-Qaeda from Pashtun territories. Since
September 11, 2001, no such commitment was ever
made at such a grand forum of Pashtun leaders. The
jirga's call shatters the vogue idiom of
"Pashtun terrorists", "tribal badlands", and
"lawless tribal areas" that cast Pashtuns in bad
light. At the jirga, Pashtuns demonstrated
their stake in peace within and between
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet the
jirga was "long on generalities and short
on specifics". US and NATO leaders should engage
this institution to supply the missing "specifics"
to foster peace. It is deceptively simple to dub
the Afghan resistance "Taliban militancy" or
"al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism".
Although
Pashtuns reject al-Qaeda and its terrorism, as the
Kabul jirga resoundingly demonstrated, they
are resentful of their loss of power in Kabul,
which they held for 200 years, to the
ethnic-minority-dominated and US-backed Northern
Alliance. The Taliban, who are predominantly
Pashtuns, are drawing on this sense of exclusion
among the majority community to sustain their
struggle. An ethnic balance to the current
distribution of power, therefore, would help drain
the Afghan resistance of energy and serve as well
the long-term security interests of the Northern
Alliance.
Karzai, aided by the 50-member
Tribal Council, is best placed to pull off this
feat. He is a devout Muslim, a former cabinet
officer of the Taliban government, a member of the
Pashtun royalty, a nominee of the ruling Northern
Alliance, and the only hope for the international
community to bring peace in Afghanistan.
He already has been in discreet talks with
the Taliban and with Hizb-i-Islami leader and
former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His
outreach is, however, unsupported by the
international community, especially the Bush
administration. Now that Asfandyar Wali Khan and
Mehmood Achakzai - the two most influential
Pashtun leaders who are pro-Afghanistan,
pro-Karzai secular nationalists - have added their
voices to the call for talks with the Afghan
resistance, the international community and
especially the Bush administration should take
notice.
Tarique Niazi is an
environmental sociologist at the University of
Wisconsin at Eau Claire (niazit@uwec.edu)
and a contributor to Foreign Policy In
Focus.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
