Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 50-51

Special Report

Do Recent Assassinations Presage Return To Chaos in Afghanistan?

By Andrew North

Anywhere in the world, it is taken as a given that the leader of a country—however lacking in funds—is protected by his or her fellow nationals, for reasons of pride as much as for security. What other option could there be, most people would ask.

So the symbolic shock of the announcement in late July that Hamid Karzai, the recently appointed president of Afghanistan, would for the foreseeable future be guarded by American GIs and not Afghans cannot be underestimated. As one now-dismissed Afghan security guard was quoted in The New York Times as saying: “Whose president will he be if he’s not guarded by Afghan soldiers?”

But if Karzai’s decision to hand his security over to the U.S. was a blow to Afghan pride, it was also a demonstration of just how worried the Bush administration has become about his survival. With Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar still apparently on the loose, and with growing concerns about insecurity across the country, the establishment of the interim government led by Karzai is one of the few tangible achievements of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. move also came as a surprise to many because it plays straight into the hands of President Karzai’s critics, both within and without Afghanistan, who say he is simply an American puppet. Not that Washington was trying to hide the decision to provide the U.S. security detail. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke about it on the record, commenting diplomatically that: “it’s important that the Afghan people not have an interruption in their leadership, having just completed that process.”

The “process” Rumsfeld was referring to was the Loya Jirga: the grand council of 1,500 representatives who met in Kabul in mid-June to decide on a new interim government. What prompted the U.S. move, however, was the assassination in early July of one of Karzai’s deputies—also appointed as a result of the Loya Jirga—Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir.

Qadir was killed by an unidentified gunman as he turned up for work at the public works ministry in Kabul, which he had just been appointed to head. It was the second major assassination this year—in February, the aviation minister was murdered at Kabul airport—and immediately plunged the new Afghan government into crisis.

What frightened so many was that it looked like another giant step back for Afghanistan along the road toward a return to the turmoil and bloodshed of the early 1990s. Qadir’s killing occurred against a background of deteriorating law and order and growing concerns about the resurgence of the country’s so-called “warlords.”

This word, which now has become almost a term of abuse in the country, refers to the mujahideen commanders who led the fight against the Soviet invasion. When the Soviets left, however, many went on to become drug barons and virtual feudal bosses in their home regions—until the Taliban took power and pushed them out.

The late vice president was himself a commander and, although he was popular in his homeland in the eastern Pashtun provinces, many believe it was that status and the enemies he inevitably made that explain his killing.

Best known among the warlords are Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed, who are rivals in the north, and the Iranian-backed Ismail Khan in the region around the western city of Herat. All three have large private armies at their disposal, and all seem more interested in maintaining their own fiefdoms than cooperating with Kabul in trying to rebuild the country. It is the reappearance of so many lesser-known warlords, however, that has heightened fears about a return to the 1990s—particularly in the country’s major drug-producing areas.

It does not help that efforts to set up a new 60,000-strong national Afghan army are not going well—for which warlords are being fingered for some of the blame. The trouble is that, after completing their training with U.S. and French instructors, many recruits simply are leaving their units, and in some cases have rejoined the private armies of their former mujahideen commanders. The unit set up to provide security for the Loya Jirga, for instance, has lost more than a third of its soldiers.

In response, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has renewed calls for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to extend its operations beyond Kabul, to tackle concerns about growing lawlessness in the rest of the country. Washington—which backs the force, but does not actually participate in its operations—long has resisted such calls, saying it wants to keep the focus on hunting down al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. But neither Britain, the initial lead nation in ISAF, nor Turkey, which is currently in charge, have shown any inclination to take on the burden and obvious risks of extending operations further.

That infuriates some Afghans, who argue that the international community has helped to make the situation worse by turning a blind eye to warlord interference in the selection process for the Loya Jirga. Others, however, complain that it did not matter who was selected for the assembly, because Washington already had stitched up the outcome— ensuring that Karzai would become president and that the most important warlords were given enough to keep them quiet. One common gripe is that, in order to pave the way for Karzai, the U.S. prevented former King Zahir Shah from running as head of state.

Warlords and other regional bosses certainly did exert considerable influence over the process of selecting the 1,500 delegates to the meeting. There were widespread reports of people being intimidated or bribed into voting either for warlords themselves, or for their favored candidates. “We have no choice,” said one man on his way to a Loya Jirga meeting in a district visited by the Washington Report. “Not only do we have to vote for the warlord’s man, but we have to turn up to vote.”

A combination of ingrained attitudes and fear, moreover, meant that there were very few women candidates, despite the fact that 160 of the 1,500 places had been reserved for them. To fill the slots at the meeting in June, the Loya Jirga commission had to appoint more than half of them. Some, however, have been heavily critical of commission officials, saying they made little effort to overcome male resistance to female representatives. “I’m not happy,” said Tajwar Kakar, deputy minister for women’s affairs. “They didn’t work hard enough for women.”

In some cases, such as in the district around the huge Bagram air base, where most U.S. and Western troops are stationed, the commission did attempt to stop local bosses from hijacking the process. Here, officials refused to recognize the result when two warlords were voted in, and banned them from running again. That led to further disputes—not least because these bosses were well aware that more powerful warlords like Dostum in the north had been allowed to get their way.

Eventually, it took four attempts to select the two candidates from Bagram to go on to Kabul. It was clear even on the fourth vote, witnessed by the Washington Report, that the two banned warlords were manipulating things to their advantage. They were present throughout the proceedings, talking constantly to officials and candidates, and at one point even giving a speech to the whole gathering.

Yes, one commission official at the Bagram meeting admitted, the process was far from perfect, but there was only so much he could do. “They are human, they have relations, they live together,” he explained. “I can’t interfere with their rights concerning their district.” Then, getting a little annoyed at the line of questioning, he turned and said: “Look, you say it’s not democracy, but what about in the United States and the election for Bush—was that such good democracy?”

Hopes that the Loya Jirga would set Afghanistan on the road to democracy, however, were always unrealistic, according to Ian Woodmansey, one of the international monitors responsible for observing the process. “The warlords are the most powerful people in the country and have been for the last 23 years,” he said. “So it’s naïve to think you could suddenly flip from one system to another. Discouraging them from being involved in politics is going to take many months, and even years. I think we have to accept that.”

Some go further and argue that, in Afghanistan’s current state, with fighting still going on in parts of the country, the fact that the Loya Jirga took place at all is a triumph. In other words, there are still grounds for optimism about the country’s future. Whatever the case, with the meeting now out of the way, no one with any clout is suggesting ripping things up and starting again.

What is now equally clear, however, is that the future of the new interim administration—which has an 18-month term—now depends almost entirely on President Karzai’s survival. Not only would Karzai’s demise be a devastating blow in itself, it might also destroy the delicate balance that has been struck between Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups. Even after the Loya Jirga, the Tajiks, who made up the bulk of the victorious Northern Alliance, dominate the ranks of the new government. Thus it is crucial that the president is a Pashtun, the country’s largest and, some believe, majority ethnic group.

The Afghan leader also must perform an increasingly difficult balancing act, between the wishes of his citizens and his Washington backers and their determination to continue the war on al-Qaeda. Disquiet about the rising number of civilian deaths from continuing U.S. military action is growing, particularly after American forces killed more than 50 wedding guests in central Afghanistan in June. With each incident like this, it gets harder for Karzai to maintain his unequivocal support—especially as he knows that, with his U.S. bodyguard, he now is much more susceptible to charges of being an American puppet. The issue already is causing strains within his government, Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah taking a somewhat tougher line than Karzai on U.S. mistakes.

Another worry for the fledgling Afghan government is absorbing the ever-increasing flow of refugees returning home from neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Thousands are now coming back every week, putting the country’s war-battered infrastructure under massive strain. Afghanistan is still suffering the effects of drought, and water is at a premium. So, too, is food, with international agencies struggling to meet demand. In late-July, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, citing safety as well as humanitarian concerns, actually called on the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to end its voluntary repatriation program for Afghans. The UNHCR is under strain in any case, having recently admitted a $70 million shortfall in funding for its Afghan operations.

Of greater concern in the long term, however, are signs that Western and other donors are being very slow in coming up with promised funds for reconstruction. By one estimate, they are holding back some $777 million in money for work such as building roads, bridges, water and electricity supplies. “Reconstruction has not begun in earnest,” Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani recently admitted.

It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, however. Without greater security and stability, donors and the contractors who will perform the work are reluctant to commit funds and effort to Afghanistan. But, say Afghan officials, without long-term investment and commitment the country will remain insecure and unstable. Certainly, after the chaos that followed in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal, no one needs proof of that. Yet, right now, there are many Afghans who fear a return to that kind of turmoil. Afghanistan’s future is very much in the balance.

Andrew North is a reporter for the BBC who recently was in Afghanistan.