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The west is walking away from Afghanistan - again
The modernising forces are quickly losing ground to the warlords
Jonathan Steele
Monday June 24, 2002
The Guardian
I n the heady days after the Taliban fell, western politicians developed a simple
refrain. "This time we will not walk away," they promised. By that they meant no
repetition of what happened after western-supported mojahedin forces gained
control of Afghanistan a decade earlier. Foreign governments had cheered their
allies' victory, but when the mojahedin factions fell out and destroyed Kabul in an
orgy of artillery shelling, rape and murder, they turned a blind eye.
It was an experience that Mohammed Latif will never forget. A civil servant who
now earns more by driving a taxi, he lives across the street from the site of the loya
jirga or grand tribal council which chose the country's new government last week.
His house was damaged during the mojahedin fighting. Huge shell-holes are still
visible on the two-storey facade, now partly filled by bricks. Latif pointed up the
hill
to the Intercontinental Hotel (where most of the loya jirga press corps was staying)
and described how forces loyal to the main Tajik mojahedin commander, Ahmed
Shah Massoud, had fired down from the ridge on to his neighbourhood during the
years of anarchy.
He hoped the west would exert a restraining hand this time. Yet, as the loya jirga
ended, it was hard to be optimistic. Admittedly, there had been unprecedentedly
open debate. Around half the delegates were chosen in elections which were
reasonably free. When it came to sharing jobs in President Hamid Karzai's new
government a balance was struck between the country's main ethnic groups, the
Tajiks and the Pashtun. But on the major issue of whether Afghanistan will be run
by educated people with a vision of democratic development, the loya jirga was a
disaster. The struggle between the modernisers and the old mojahedin leaders was
won decisively by the latter. Men responsible for the mayhem of the early 1990s
hogged the microphones to boast of their role in resisting Soviet occupation but
ignored the more recent destruction they caused and the fact that ordinary Afghans
despise them as reactionary warlords. They forced their fundamentalist views of
Islam on to the assembly, demanding - and getting from Karzai - the right to call the
government "Islamic". A chief justice was appointed who believes in a strict
interpretation of sharia law. The minister for women's affairs was denounced as
"Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie".
The loya jirga also failed to enhance the power of the central government and
extend it to the provinces. The thugs who run the cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif
rejected offers to join Karzai's government in Kabul, preferring to stay in monopoly
control of their regional fiefdoms. How much western governments could do to stop
these internal processes can be debated. But by refusing to send international
peacekeepers out of Kabul to help Karzai to disarm the warlords the west is helping
the forces of conservatism. By declining to make aid for regional government
projects conditional on human rights progress, it is doing the same. Indeed, it is not
even providing all the aid it promised, with or without strings attached.
The World Food Programme estimates that over half of all Afghan families are in
need of emergency supplies, but it has received only 57% of the food it asked for
from foreign donors. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is also
short of funds. Afghan refugees in Pakistan have been coming home in far higher
numbers than the UN anticipated. Their mass return is not necessarily a sign of
confidence in the "new" Afghanistan. Many lived in Pakistani cities rather than
refugee camps, and complain that government- encouraged police harassment
forced them to leave Pakistan. They come back to a country where homes are
destroyed and livestock is dead. Yet the UNHCR had to cut food rations to the
returnees by two-thirds last month. Now it is warning it may have to end all food
handouts if foreign governments do not deliver the cash they promised.
Removing the Taliban was not the primary purpose of the US air strikes on
Afghanistan last autumn. "Regime change" became a war aim relatively late in the
day. The main goals were to capture Osama bin Laden and eliminate the danger of
further al-Qaida attacks. But neither Bin Laden nor his main lieutenants have been
found. A new audio tape obtained by the al-Jazeera TV station says they are alive
and ready for more outrages. So the hunt for al-Qaida inside Afghanistan has failed,
as Britain's decision to abandon its help for the United States and withdraw its
marines next month demonstrates.
And the Bush administration now admits the threat may be greater than it was
before it bombed Afghanistan. The New York Times last week reported senior US
government officials as saying that a group of mid-level operatives have taken over
from Bin Laden and have forged links with extremists in several Islamic countries.
"This new alliance of terrorists, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning
and carrying out potent attacks on American targets as the more centralised
network once led by Osama bin Laden. Classified investigations of the Qaida threat
now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan
failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the
war
might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers
across a wider geographic area," the paper wrote.
By this analysis the internal politics of Afghanistan are the only area where the
United States can claim success from its decision to respond to the September 11
attacks with military force. Forget, for a moment, the hundreds of civilians killed by
bombs and the thousands who died of hunger during the disruption of aid supplies.
Ignore the dangerous precedent of accepting one nation's right to overthrow a
foreign government, however brutal, by bombing another country. The crude test of
the operation depends on whether the fall of the Taliban outweighs the high costs.
In the euphoria of last December many people felt it did. Can they feel so sure six
months down the line?
The Taliban's collapse created real opportunities for progress and Kabul has
become a vibrant city once again. Women are able to lead normal public lives, and
at the loya jirga, in spite of efforts at intimidation, many spoke out against the
warlords with more courage than the men. But signs of regression are already
emerging. Many delegates were concerned that when they left the spotlight of
publicity and returned to the provinces they could be targeted. The fundamentalists
are reasserting their authoritarian rule. In spite of its loud promises the west has
begun to "walk away".
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