Page 1 of
2 The
great Afghan carve-up By Brian
M Downing
The United States is seeking a
negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. It hopes to
reverse the Taliban's momentum and bring them to
the bargaining table through a counter-insurgency
program, diplomacy with indigenous tribes and
foreign powers, and the attrition of Taliban
forces. This, the US expects, will give it an
important if not central role in a settlement.
But regional powers - primarily Pakistan
and China, with the support of Iran and Turkey -
see the lone superpower as overextended, weary,
and nearing a fiscal crisis - a situation they
seek to turn to their advantage. These four
regional powers are in a good position to play
crucial roles in a settlement and in an
excellent position to benefit
from one.
First, the regional powers,
especially Pakistan, will use their influence with
the Taliban to convince them to limit their
ambitions to the south and east and accept a
settlement with President Hamid Karzai at the helm
in Kabul.
Second, the regional powers,
especially Iran and Turkey, will press reluctant
Afghan peoples to accept the settlement.
Third, the regional powers will help to
form a rentier state to govern the country. Karzai
will receive substantial revenue from foreign
powers then allocate it to keep various peoples of
the country in a loose but viable political
framework.
Fourth, the regional powers
will cooperate in the development of Afghanistan's
resources - largely to the exclusion of other
powers - and accrue substantial geopolitical goals
as well.
This holds the promise of peace,
stability and prosperity, but nothing is without
pitfalls in this part of the world.
The
Afghan state, optimally Despite its ethnic
heterogeneity and unattractive geopolitical
position amid ambitious states and empires,
Afghanistan has known periods of peace and
prosperity. The state was never powerful or deeply
involved in the localities, and its officials were
never respected or trusted. Local officials were
considered outsiders and their purview was
circumscribed by custom.
The ruler in
Kabul - king or president - dealt with disparate
tribes and peoples, not through a parliamentary
body or loya jirga, (tribal councils) but
through dialog and pacts with local elders and
notables. The ruler apportioned sums of money to
them to be used largely as they saw fit, and in
return, the localities pledged support to Kabul.
Too much central power triggered
opposition, and if persistent, to jolting
rebellions. This took place in the late 1970s when
the state's reform efforts violated local custom
and the country rebelled, leading to breakdown,
Soviet intervention, and decades of war and
turmoil.
Too little central power bred
warlordism, foreign meddling and banditry. This
was the state of affairs in the early 1990s when
the Taliban rose to power by suppressing the chaos
left after the Soviet Union departed and its
client in Kabul lost control.
Because
Afghanistan historically had little wealth, the
money used by Kabul to hold things together came
from foreign coffers, alternately British or
Russian ones, in exchange for the country's
support or neutrality in the Great Game.
Afghanistan, then, was governed as a
rentier state since the 19th century and not along
the lines of a centralized state. Unappealing,
counter-intuitive, and seemingly unstable from the
outside, this quilt-work polity is nonetheless the
optimal arrangement in Afghanistan - one that
resonates with local sensibilities and with
memories of the country's best years.
Who will pay the rent? The game
continues, but Afghan's newly-found mineralogical
resources make it more complicated than the one in
Rudyard Kipling's day. Copper and iron, oil and
gas, and the increasingly coveted rare earths are
being discovered in Afghanistan in attractive
quantities. Afghanistan is also a likely route for
a pipeline connecting the oil and gas fields of
Central Asia to ports on the Arabian Sea. Karzai
knows all this and sees it as a sound basis for a
long and prosperous rule.
Countries in and
out of the region are looking to exploit these
resources, including the US, Russia and India.
However, history and events are working against
them. Russia had few friends when it left in 1989,
and India, though appreciated in northern
Afghanistan, is disliked elsewhere as the enemy of
Pakistan. The US has over the past nine years
failed to bring the prosperity it promised when it
invaded the country and is now deemed another
power to be expelled. Its departure will be an
essential part of any settlement.
Pakistan, China, Iran and Turkey are in a
better position to become Karzai's business and
state-building partners. Each has economic
interests that mesh well with geopolitical ones:
each wants to exploit Afghan resources and each
wants to expel the US from Afghanistan.
Pakistan has the advantages of proximity,
road systems into eastern and southern
Afghanistan, and capacious port facilities. It has
long tried to build commerce with Central Asia.
Indeed, Pakistani intelligence (Inter-Services
Intelligence - ISI) helped to build up the Taliban
back in the 1990s to suppress the banditry that
was interfering with commercial traffic with the
north. The ISI deployed Pakistani troops to fight
alongside the Taliban (and al-Qaeda) against the
Northern Alliance, prior to and during the US
intervention in 2001.
Today, the ISI
supplies the Taliban and other insurgent groups
and provides them safe havens across the Durand
Line that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last
year, the ISI demonstrated that it could round up
Taliban leaders on short notice and impress upon
them, and the US as well, that no negotiations
could proceed without its say-so and without its
positions given considerable weight.
Crucially, the ISI has a great deal of
power over the Taliban and is the only entity that
can force them to the negotiating table and get
them to sign a settlement and abide by it.
Pakistan's collaboration with Karzai at
the expense of the US will bring many benefits.
Pakistan's assistance to the US in Afghanistan has
brought it into conflict with domestic militant
groups such as the Tehrik-i Taliban (TTP), which
is conducting a devastating bombing campaign in
Pakistan - one that kills scores of people every
month.
Breaking with the US will mollify
the TTP and permit redirecting their talents
toward the insurgency in India-administered
Kashmir - the centerpiece of Pakistani foreign
policy and the ISI's idee fixe since the
country's inception. Pakistan also seeks to weaken
India's position in northern Afghanistan and press
it on the Kashmir conflict.
Further, the
wealth from exploiting Afghanistan will bolster
Pakistan's economy and military as well, and
strengthen its partnership with a rising power in
the region and the world - China. China's
booming economy and need for commodities
constitute one of the principal dynamics in world
affairs today. Blocked by powerful developed
countries along much of its periphery, it's
looking westward to Central Asia.
It has
already skillfully, and with little notice, placed
itself ahead of the other powers in the new Afghan
game. It is operating an immense copper mine in
eastern Afghanistan, developing iron mines in the
central region, and building a railroad connecting
the promising oil and gas wealth of Kunduz
province in the north to the Khyber Pass and
Pakistan in the south.
China shares
Pakistan's wish to limit the presence of a mutual
rival, India. It is bolstering its military
partnership with Pakistan by sending in thousands
of "flood relief" workers and by building a naval
facility on the Arabian Sea, which in conjunction
with its presence in Afghanistan and naval bases
in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, poses a formidable
problem for New Delhi.
These bases will
also take China a long way on its quest to become
a global military power - one whose navy operates
near the Persian Gulf and one that can challenge
the US in a growing portion of the globe. Not for
nothing is the navalist thought of American
geostrategist and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan
avidly read in Beijing today.
The
prospects for considerable Chinese influence
across the Central Asian land mass are quite good.
Not since the Yuan Dynasty of the 13th and 14th
centuries will China have wielded so much power
and commanded so much respect. English geographer
Halford Mackinder's writings on Central Asia's
geopolitical import are also enjoying a readership
in Beijing.
Existing enterprises in
Afghanistan offer insight into an already
operational arrangement. China obtained mining
licenses by delivering a sum of money to the
appropriate persons in Kabul, and then set to
work. It extracts huge amounts of ore then
transports them south - with little if any
difficulty from the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other
insurgent bands that roam the area. Evidently,
Pakistan, the insurgent groups and China have
already reached a working arrangement, which,
though preliminary, augurs well for all parties.
Iran shares the same economic and
geopolitical interests as Pakistan and China. Hurt
by US-led sanctions, it seeks greater trade
opportunities and geopolitical support. Persia
once reigned over large parts of Central Asia and
its culture and influence have persisted well
after the last of the Safavids and Qajars.
Iran loathes the Taliban, which massacred
thousands of Shi'ites, killed several Iranian
diplomats in Mazar-i Sharif in 1998, and
contributes mightily to the country's drug
problem. However, Iran would agree to a settlement
that restrained the Taliban, opened economic
opportunities, and expelled the US.
Iran
presently enjoys good relations with the northern
peoples of Afghanistan (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras
and others) as it long supported them against the
Taliban and helped them (and the US) oust the
Taliban in 2001. Today, Iran contributes to
rebuilding western Afghanistan and revitalizing
commerce between the two countries.
Iranian influence will be critical to any
negotiated settlement. The northern peoples,
though a slight majority of the population, feel
increasingly marginalized in public life by Karzai
and other Pashtuns in his coterie. Northerners
have been ousted from key ministries and from high
positions in the military - a process somewhat
reversed in recent weeks, perhaps at Tehran's
request.
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