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>From the Independent of London
Robert Fisk: What will the Northern Alliance do in our name now? I
dread to think...
'Why do we always have this ambiguous, dangerous relationship with
our allies?'
14 November 2001
It wasn't meant to be like this. The nice, friendly Northern
Alliance, our very own foot-soldiers in Afghanistan, is in Kabul. It
promised � didn't it? � not to enter the Afghan capital. It was
supposed to capture, at most, Mazar-i-Sharif and perhaps Herat, to
demonstrate the weakness of the Taliban, to show the West that its
war aims � the destruction of the Taliban and thus of Osama bin
Laden's al-Qa'ida movement � were inevitable.
The corpse of the old man in the centre of Kabul, executed by our
heroes in the Alliance, was not supposed to be on television. Only
two days ago, Alastair Campbell's 24-hour Washington-London-
Islamabad "communication centre'' was supposed to counter Taliban
propaganda. Now Mr Campbell must set up his team of propagandists in
Kabul to fight the lies of our very own foot-soldiers of the Northern
Alliance.
Was it not the US Secretary of State Colin Powell who assured General
Musharraf of Pakistan the Alliance would be kept under control, that
the United Nations' envoy, Lakhdar Ibrahimi, would be allowed to
construct a truly representative government in Kabul to replace the
Taliban?
General Musharraf had promised his support to the United States � at
the risk of his nation and his life � in return for American promises
that Afghanistan would be governed by a truly representative
coalition. Pakistan's air bases, its very support for the "war on
terrorism'', was contingent on Washington's word that the Northern
Alliance would not take over Kabul and impose its own diktat on
Afghanistan.
Yesterday, the pictures from Kabul were almost identical to the
videotapes of April 1992 when the pro-Russians and Communists were
defeated. We saw the same jubilation by the non-Pushtu population.
And within two days, Hekmatyar Gulbeddin began to bomb the city. The
division of ethnic groups plunged the Afghan capital into civil war.
Yesterday, the Alliance was supposed to wait on the outskirts of the
city while the Americans attempted to construct a workable coalition.
But for the present, Afghanistan � without the Taliban � is a country
without a government.
What on earth is going on? And what, for that matter, has happened to
Mr bin Laden? Are we driving him into the mountains � always
supposing he is not already there � or are we pushing him into the
tribal areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan? For
without a city, the Taliban themselves will melt back into their
birthplace, the madrassa schools along the Pakistan border which
created the puritan, obscurantist spirit which has inspired the
rulers of Afghanistan these past five years.
The Northern Alliance is advancing, meanwhile, with all its baggage
of massacres and looting and rape intact. We have so idolised these
gunmen, been so infatuated with them, supported them so
unquestioningly, pictured them on television so deferentially that we
are now immune to their history. So, perhaps, are they.
General Rashid Dostum, our hero now that he has recaptured Mazar-i-
Sharif, is in the habit of punishing his soldiers by tying them to
tank tracks and then driving the tanks around his barracks' square to
turn them into mincemeat. You wouldn't have thought this, would you,
when you heard the jubilant reports of General Dostum's victory on
Monday night?
Nor would you have thought, listening to the reports from Afghanistan
yesterday, that the Northern Alliance was responsible for more than
80 per cent of the drug exports from the country in the aftermath of
the Taliban's prohibition of drug cultivation. I have a ghostly
memory of writing this story before, not about the Taliban but about
the KLA in Kosovo, a guerrilla army which was partly funded by drugs
and which, once its political aspirations had been met by Nato's
occupation of the Serbian province went on to become "terrorists''
(our former Foreign Secretary's memorable description) inside
Macedonia. True, Nato's wheel of fortune moves in mysterious ways but
it's not difficult to understand how our allies � praised rather than
controlled � follow their own agenda.
Why, I wonder, do we always have this ambiguous, dangerous
relationship with our allies? For decades, we accepted the received
wisdom that the "B" specials were a vital security arm of the
Northern Ireland authorities on the grounds that they "knew the
territory" � just as, I fear, we rely upon the Northern Alliance
because it "knows the land".
The Israelis relied upon their Phalangist militia thugs in Lebanon
because the Christian Maronites hated the Palestinians. The Nazis
approved of their Croatian Ustashi murderers in 1941 because the
Ustashi hated the Serbs.
Is this, I ask myself, why the Northern Alliance is our friend? Not
because it is a loyal ally but because it hates the Taliban? Not
because it opposes poverty and destitution and the destruction of
Afghanistan under an Islamic regime but because it says it loathes
Osama bin Laden?
There are brave men in the Alliance, true. Its murdered leader, Ahmed
Shah Massoud, was an honourable man. It's not difficult to turn our
allies into heroes.
But it remains a fact that from 1992 to 1996, the Northern Alliance
was a symbol of massacre, systematic rape and pillage. Which is why
we � and I include the US State Department � welcomed the Taliban
when they arrived in Kabul. The Northern Alliance left the city in
1996 with 50,000 dead behind it. Now its members are our foot
soldiers. Better than Mr bin Laden, to be sure. But what � in God's
name� are they going to do in our name?
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