The north goes its own way in
Afghanistan By Ron Synovitz
Much of the world's attention on
Afghanistan is now focused on the country's
Pashtun-dominated south and east, where Taliban
fighters are battling North Atlantic Treaty
Organization troops and US-led coalition forces.
But there is a different kind of tension in
northern Afghanistan.
Illegal
ethnic-Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militias in the
north appear to be using the threat of a resurgent
Taliban as an excuse to hoard weapons and more
forcefully protect their interests, such as
ruling over land they have
controlled since the Taliban's collapse or
defending drug export routes that are a major
source of income.
Experts say the
entrenchment of the militias, who once fought
together against the Taliban, reflects divisions
and mistrust among regional commanders of
different ethnicities which - if left unchecked -
could exacerbate tensions in the country at a time
when its security situation is already on a
razor's edge.
"Obviously, what is
happening in the north is really the growing
Balkanization of the country," said Sam
Zia-Zarifi, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch and
field researcher in Afghanistan who has monitored
programs by the United Nations and Afghan
government to disarm the militias.
"It's
been an ongoing trend in Afghanistan for warlords
who are ostensibly allied with the government to
entrench themselves even more fully," Zia-Zarifi
told RFE/RL. "A lot of them are now swollen with
the narcotics trade - profits from the sale of
poppy and heroin. They have a lot of political
clout because many of them have allies in the
Parliament, if they are not directly members of
the parliament. And the next step is to openly
flex their military muscle."
Disarmament falls short Attempts
to demobilize the patchwork of rival militias
across Afghanistan were once trumpeted as a
necessary step toward peace and the creation of a
functioning democracy. But UN officials have
acknowledged that their initial voluntary
disarmament program failed to reach its targets.
Militia leaders in the north still command
the loyalty of thousands of fighters who can be
mobilized quickly in the event of a local dispute
or crisis.
Brigadier General Abdulmanan
Abed, an Afghan Defense Ministry official involved
the country's ongoing disarmament program, says
there is an "environment of mistrust" in the
northern city of Mazar-e Sharif about the Kabul
government's ability to prevent Taliban
infiltrations.
The commander who holds
sway in Mazar-e Sharif is Abdul Rashid Dostum, a
powerful general whom Afghan President Hamid
Karzai appointed as chief of staff for the Afghan
National Army.
Dostum is enormously
popular among his fellow ethnic Uzbeks in the
north. According to the London-based Institute for
War and Peace Reporting, Dostum also is one of
several regional commanders who appear to be
exploiting Kabul's preoccupation with the
violence-ridden south and east in order to stake
claims on their old fiefdoms.
In May, when
Dostum's supporters staged protests against a
controversial governor of the northern province of
Jowzjan, the demonstrations turned violent -
leaving at least 10 people dead and more than 40
injured.
Armed supporters of Dostum also
clashed with authorities in Faryab province in
May, forcing Kabul to send in troops to quell the
violence.
Provincial authorities in
Jowzjan accuse Dostum's political faction,
Junbish-e Melli, of rearming its supporters in the
north. But Junbish representatives have repeatedly
denied those accusations, telling RFE/RL's Radio
Free Afghanistan that they are only a political
group and have no weapons.
Another
powerful commander accused not fully disarming and
demobilizing his factional militia fighters is
Mohammad Qasim Fahim. Fahim commanded ethnic-Tajik
fighters from the Panjshir Valley in the former
United Front - also known as the former Northern
Alliance. The US-backed alliance also had included
Dostum's fighters. But the former United Front
disintegrated as the rival militias raced to stake
out territory after the collapse of the Taliban
regime.
It was Fahim's fighters who,
against the pleas of the international community,
seized control of Kabul when the Taliban fled
Kabul in late 2001. And Fahim's Islamist political
faction - Jam'iat-e Islami-yi - used its de facto
control of Kabul as a negotiating position at the
Bonn Conference in December of 2001.
That
initially gave Jam'iat-e Islami-yi commanders
control of some of the most powerful posts in
Karzai's post-Taliban transitional administration
- heading the ministries of Defense, the Interior
and Foreign Affairs as well as the Afghan
intelligence services.
Fahim himself was
defense minister from late 2001 through most of
2004. But he was removed from the post in December
2004 after being accused of illegally occupying
land in Kabul.
Commanders of other
factional militia also have accused Fahim of
hoarding weapons for his own militia fighters at a
time when, as defense minister, he was in charge
of the government demobilization efforts.
Unilateral hoarding of
weapons Christopher Langton, an expert on
conflict and defense diplomacy at the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies,
says that amid a perceived spread of the
Taliban-led insurgency during the past two years,
as well as disturbances further north and heavy
fighting in the south, some former United Front
commanders have decided unilaterally that they may
need weapons in the future.
"Some are
quite senior, some close to the government and in
politics," Langton says. "And they don't see why
they should have to disarm whereas groups in the
south remain armed - and some of the groups in the
south have actually been armed by international
forces in order to fight on the side of the
[Afghan] government."
Other independent
experts say the lack of detailed information about
local militia command structures has compromised
the effectiveness of disarmament efforts.
The International Crisis Group says it is
not formal militia structures, but rather, the
informal structures that must be understood in
order to identify commanders at the village level
responsible for calling into action the militia
fighters who have stashed away their weapons.
After decades of war, Langton describes
Afghanistan as "a country based around armed
groups". He says it is naive for anybody to think
such a situation could be changed by a voluntary
program to disarm and disband militia.
"If, at the beginning, there wasn't the
threat of Taliban coming back [to the north],
there were other reasons for retaining weapons,"
Langton says. "Self-protection in a place like
Afghanistan is one reason. The possibility of
having to guard opium convoys or heroin
consignments going abroad is another reason. And
the other reason is commercial - selling armed
guards to local authorities to guard their
properties. What I think the so-called resurgent
Taliban does is to give some perceived legitimacy
to" the hoarding of weapons.
Kabul's
overtures to the Taliban Langton says fears
among non-Pashtun commanders in the north have
been heightened by recent overtures in Kabul about
bringing moderate Taliban into the government - an
issue he says is closer to reality now than ever
before.
"It does strengthen the belief
among the former Northern [Alliance] groups that
they may have to be prepared to stand up to some
kind of Pashtun-dominated government," Langton
says. "The United Afghan National Front opposition
group, which was given birth last year, came
together as a political opposition to the
government largely because the people in the party
feared that there might be a need to be united
once again. And, of course, these are the former
Northern Alliance commanders.
"The
formation of this political group is an indication
that there is a retention of weapons because there
is a fear of increasing Taliban involvement both,
possibly, in legitimate government and as a force
which is encroaching further north illegally,"
Langton says.
Still, Langton and other
experts conclude that the Afghan government is not
about to face an armed insurrection by commanders
from the former United Front. They say such a
development would require a degree of unity among
northern militia that doesn't appear to exist. And
they say the political coalition formed last year
by northern commanders does not translate into an
armed alliance - except at local levels where
militia commanders are trying to protect their
personal and vested interests.
Ron
Synovitz covers Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
as well as economic transition and human-rights
issues. He reported on the US Army's advance from
Kuwait to Baghdad as an embedded journalist.
Copyright (c) 2007, RFE/RL Inc.
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