With the Taliban making a surprise retreat and the conflicting geopolitical interests of various countries coming in the way of forming a broad-based alternative political arrangement in Kabul, Afghanistan appears to be headed for an uncertain future.
THE "first war of the 21st century" has finally something to show by way of result, at least from the United States' point of view. The Taliban is ousted not only from Kabul but also from all the major provinces of Afghanistan. Barring Kandahar and three other provinces, the Taliban is on the run in the rest of Afghanistan. It is a spectacular victory indeed, but at what cost? No one knows how many lives were lost in the five weeks of relentless bombing. Another question that would remain uppermost in the minds of all Afghanistan observers is whether the U.S. and its allies have achieved any of the declared objectives of the military offensive that they launched on October 7.
By no stretch of imagination could the U.S. claim success in its pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda associates and the Taliban leadership that is accused of sheltering them. Barring the death of bin Laden's deputy Muhammad Atef, there is no news of any major casualty in the camps of the Al Qaeda or the Taliban. If television networks based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom are to be believed, all those who matter in the terror network are holed up in the territory still controlled by the Taliban. It would take some more time to get a full picture of the ground situation in Afghanistan, but it is clear that in spite of all the punitive B-52 aerial strikes, the U.S. and its allies are yet to close in on their main targets.
The swift manner in which the Taliban gave up control of one province after another is baffling. It left everyone wondering whether it was a sign of defeat or a tactical retreat. Hence the repeated warnings from Washington that the war is far from over.
The biggest worry of the "anti-terrorism coalition" and the other players in the region is the possibility of a protracted guerilla war. What makes such prospects real and frightening is the experience of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Of course, there is a vital difference between the two situations. In the 1980s it was essentially a proxy war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and Afghanistan was only the battleground. This time around the Taliban militia is virtually pitted against the whole world. But a closer and objective analysis of the situation would show that the situation is expected to get murkier as the jockeying among various countries for a say in the affairs of Afghanistan intensifies. So many countries, including those in the neighbourhood and others, have developed a vested interest in the affairs of Afghanistan that the establishment of a stable political entity has become a challenging task.
The irony is that barring the ordinary Afghan, everyone seems to have an agenda in and for Afghanistan. The biggest concern for anyone who is genuinely interested in the future of Afghanistan should be the clash of interests among its neighbours and other countries in the region. Perhaps Iran and Pakistan best illustrate the point. It seems Teheran just cannot wait to establish its embassy in Kabul while Islamabad demands that the Afghan capital should be demilitarised and placed under the supervision of a multi-national Muslim force. Among others, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, Saudi Arabia and India too have their own ideas about the future of Afghanistan. Each one of these wants to play a major role.
It is a fallacy to conclude that the action witnessed in Afghanistan in the past few weeks was under the auspices of the United Nations. The U.N. resolutions certainly do not envisage the take-over of Kabul by the Northern Alliance under U.S. patronage. So the most important point of debate in the coming days would be, who are the people who have taken over the territory vacated by the Taliban and under what authority they did so? And whatever has happened to the grand plan of the U.S. and its allies to put in place a "broad-based and multi-ethnic" political set-up?
The Northern Alliance, a disparate and opportunistic combine of ethnic groups minus the Pashtun majority, can hardly claim to be a representative of the Afghan population. The Alliance is mainly made up of three ethnic groups: the Tajiks, who comprise some 25 per cent of the population; the Hazaras, about 19 per cent; and the Uzbeks, about 6 per cent. Pashtuns, who form about 40 per cent of the population, dominate central and southern Afghanistan, the base of the Taliban leadership and the Al Qaeda.
That the Northern Alliance is not a representative group was implicitly acknowledged by U.S. President George W. Bush when he, in the presence of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, stated that it was necessary to counsel the Alliance to refrain from walking into Kabul. But the appeal fell on deaf ears. One wonders whether Bush was serious at all in his advice to the Alliance. And America did not show any restraint while bombing the front lines of the Taliban with little regard to civilian lives. The only possible explanation is that the U.S. was more eager to ensure the ouster of the Taliban than to take care of its consequences.
The consequences are there for everyone to see. A force that does not have a representative character has not only taken over Kabul but complicated the U.N.'s plan to work out a political alternative that would be acceptable to all ethnic groups.
THE fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance is a major setback for Pakistan. Islamabad invested far too much in Afghanistan in the past two decades under the conviction that a friendly regime in Kabul would give it the much-required "strategic depth". Although it chose to ditch the Taliban as soon as the U.S. accused the regime of sheltering the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, Pakistan never gave up its attempt to form a broad-based, multi-ethnic government in Afghanistan. It repeatedly talked about the need for adequate representation to the Pashtuns.
Addressing a press conference on October 8, a day after the U.S. launched its military campaign against Afghanistan, Musharraf claimed that Pashtuns accounted for 55 to 60 per cent of the Afghan population. The exaggerated estimate revealed Pakistan's eagerness to emphasise the Pashtun factor.
Right from the beginning of the military campaign, Islamabad had tried to impress upon Washington the dangers of allowing the Northern Alliance to take control of Kabul. Pakistan sees the hand of its rivals such as India, Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan behind the Northern Alliance's victory.
Pakistan had hoped for a friendly government in Kabul in the post-Taliban scenario too. With the Northern Alliance in the saddle, Pakistan has another hostile regime to deal with in the region. Successive governments in Pakistan had only antagonised non-Pashtun ethnic groups in Afghanistan and had never bothered to cultivate the commanders of the Northern Alliance.
Even at the height of the U.S.-led military campaign, the military government was busy working out a strategy to install a Pashtun-dominated set-up in Kabul. In October, hundreds of influential anti-Taliban fighters and tribal chiefs went to Peshawar to lobby for the return of Zahir Shah, the deposed King of Afghanistan who is in exile in Rome. At the same time, Abdul Haq, a legendary guerilla commander, slipped into Taliban-held territory to organise an anti-Taliban revolt, apparently with the blessings of the U.S. Within hours he was captured and executed by the Taliban forces. Pakistan has not given up, and it would any day prefer Zahir Shah despite its differences with him. Shah reigned as King from 1933 until July 1973, when his cousin Sardar Daud seized power and proclaimed the Republic of Afghanistan.
The developments in Afghanistan could not have come at a more inopportune time for Musharraf. He had just completed a successful tour of the U.S. and the U.K. In the new situation, when the U.S. has gained a foothold in Afghanistan through the Northern Alliance, it is not sure whether Western economic and political assistance would continue to flow into Pakistan. But at least one political commentator thinks that Pakistan will still play a crucial role in the region. According to him, Pakistan will get a central position in the future political set-up of Afghanistan because "the U.S. certainly wants oil and gas pipelines passing through south Afghanistan to the Pakistani sea port in the Arabian Sea."
Another view is that with the Taliban suddenly withdrawing from key areas in Afghanistan to the mountains with a view to wage a prolonged guerilla war in the eastern provinces and with the likelihood of an anti-Pakistan government controlling Afghanistan, Islamabad may be forced to lend covert support to the Taliban.
Where does it leave the U.N.? Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani has been making moves to set up an interim administration and promised to cooperate with the international community in its search for a broad-based government. He has said that he would welcome Zahir Shah, but only as a "private citizen".
A Pakistani commentator said: "In this perspective, it appears that Afghanistan will continue with its centuries-old traditions under which there will be no participation in government on the basis of anything but 'might is right' and that the only way in which Pakistan can have any sway in balancing unfriendly forces across its border is to lend support to the Taliban to help keep a guerilla war going."
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