Whither Afghanistan?

Amitava Mukherjee

(Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator.

He can be reached at amitavamukherjee253@gmail.com)

At this juncture of peace negotiations over Afghanistan, it may not be proper to hold Zalmay Khalilzad solely responsible for the stresses that the exercise has been subjected to because the US Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation was always under an apprehension that American President Donald Trump might have anytime declared total troop withdrawal from Afghan soil if the former’s negotiations with the Taliban were too prolonged. At the same time this is also beyond question that Khalilzad’s inadequate understanding of the Afghan imbroglio has not helped reaching a lasting solution in the Islamic terrorist-infested strategic theatre of war. An agreement for temporary peace has been signed between the US and the Taliban. But violent attacks by the latter continue.

But Khalilzad is unpopular with both the contending camps which matter in today’s Afghanistan — the Taliban as well as the former Mujahideen warlords who are now bracing themselves up for waging another civil war. Till the Bonn conference of 2001, he was on the right track as he had successfully brought all Afghan factions on a single platform. But after the Bonn conference, Khalilzad, as a confidant of the US president George Bush, outmaneuvered the supporters of King Zahir Shah, pushed the Pashtun community to an uncomfortable position and incurred their wrath. Similarly during the 2004 Afghan loya jirga (constitutional convention), he imposed a centralized Presidential form of government although the mujahideen warlords present there wanted a loose federation where all the ethnic communities, and not just the numerically dominant Pashtuns, would get meaningful levers of power. This created a mutual distance and disbelief between Khalilzad and the warlords of Afghan ethnic minorities who dominate the Northern Alliance.

This time too, the US has committed a serious mistake by entering into an agreement with the Taliban only and assuring Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of western support in his struggle against Abdullah Abdullah, the former Chief Executive of the Afghan government and a contender for the post of President in the last election, who had complained of widespread rigging in the referred to hustling. But here again, Washington has taken a false step. Abdullah Abdullah is half Pashtun and half Tajik; and the warlords of the Northern Alliance are supporting him. But Donald Trump has his eyes on the coming US Presidential election and he is prepared to sacrifice Afghanistan for scoring a few brownie points from the American electorate by pulling out troops from Afghan soil.

The most vital part of peace in Afghanistan concerns intra-Afghan talks. So long, Taliban has dropped clear hints that it abhors the Ashraf Ghani administration. But more important than Ghani are Atta Mohammed Noor, Abdul Rashid Dostum, BismillahKhan Mohammadi and Gulbuddin Hekmatiyar, who command very powerful ethnic militias in their spheres of influence; and may, at any time, plunge Afghanistan into a theatre of civil war. Negotiations with them are much more important than that with the official Afghan administration.

After the death of Ahmad Shah Masood, Atta Mohammed Noor can easily be called the most powerful leader of the Tajik community. He is also the chief executive of the Jamiat-i- Islami, the political party of the Tajiks. A former Governor of the Balkh province and a mujahideen warlord of the former Northern Alliance, Noor commands local militias which operate within the Afghan Local Police and the Afghan National Police.

Of all the ethnic minorities of Afghanistan, the Tajiks are the most powerful and they are regrouping to give a fight to the Pashtun-dominated Taliban. Apart from Atta Mohammed Noor, the Tajiks have another powerful warlord named Bismillah Khan Mohammodi, a former Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army and a former Defence Minister of the country whose base is in the Panjshir province — the hotbed of anti-Taliban operations. Since the middle of last year, Mohammodi has been regularly visiting the security posts of the province and directing the overwhelmingly Tajik-dominated ANA in Panjshir which publicly expresses loyalty to Mohammodi. The American withdrawal would herald a scenario where the control of the Ashraf Ghani government would quickly dissipate.

The Tajiks would always be a difficult customer for the US even if the latter tries to build up a general consensus over the future of Afghanistan because this ethnic tribe has no recent history of cooperation with Western powers. But no such assumption can be made about the Uzbeks whose unquestioned leader Abdul Rashid Dostum still controls large parts of North-Western Afghanistan particularly the Jowzjan and Sar-e-Pol provinces where the repository of Afghanistan’s natural gas lies. Dostum is a former Communist and is known for incredible brutality. He has a history of changing sides too often and has worked for countries like Soviet Union, Iran, US and Turkey. Dostum has already held three consecutive meetings with militia commanders who are loyal to him in Jowzjan. The Pashtuns, which the Taliban claims to represent, do not present a homogeneous block either; and the picture becomes confused with the presence of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar comes from the Ghilzai sect which happens to be very influential among the Pashtuns. So in any intra-Afghan talk, the Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani will mean very little because Ghani is a Kochi Ahmadzai, a sect which wields not much influence so far as the Pashtuns are concerned.

So it can be said with a fair amount of certainty that the US has not made a judicious beginning. In the last two months, the Taliban carried out a number of suicide attacks on the Hazara Shias who inhabit a number of provinces in central Afghanistan. In response, the Hazaras are regrouping and rearming themselves under the leadership of Abdul GhaniAlipur. Iran, another Shia state in the region, is coming to the Hazaras’ help. There are information that Tehran is transferring men and armaments from its Fatemiyun division, composed of mainly Shia Afghan refugees and who fought in Syria on the side of Bashr-al-Assad, to the militia commanded by Alipur. The Afghan situation has grim portent. If it really goes out of control then not only Kabul but the whole of Indian subcontinent and parts of China will be affected.