Worsening Afghan imbroglio

UNTIL as recently as six months ago, President Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to say that Afghanistan was a success story, that the forces of terrorism had been defeated and that democracy was flourishing through the successful holding of elections and the countrywide approval of Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, as president.

It was claimed that Kabul had become a bustling city, with a construction boom and that the central part of the city gave the impression of a prosperous capital. The size of the foreign community, it was said, had grown with some 40 countries maintaining resident missions and there was a large UN presence. It was even claimed that the writ of the government in Kabul was spreading to the outlying parts of the country and that signs of insurgency were limited to the provinces bordering Pakistan which had deployed over 80,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan to help prevent the movement of terrorists in either direction.

But the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has grown at a remarkable pace over recent months. Though US forces in Afghanistan, said to number 1,8000, have been joined by a large Nato force, the growing insurgency has caused many casualties. With the war in Iraq also intensifying, President Bush is facing increasing criticism for his handling of the war on terror.

The recent visit of Presidents Musharraf and Hamid Karzai to Washington, where they held a joint meeting with President Bush, saw the two exchange hot words over their handling of the Taliban problem. Comments by serving and retired western generals, as well as an in-depth analysis of the situation inside Afghanistan, reveal a lack of carefully coordinated action by the western alliance.

Tracing the history of events since 9/11, US military operations that relied heavily on the Northern Alliance carried out operations in a manner that showed scant regard for Pashtun rights. One can recall the massacre of 5,000 Taliban who had been taken as prisoners during operations in the north. The US, though professing concern for civilian casualties, used carpet-bombing against the Taliban forces north of Kabul, resulting in massive civilian losses.

With the Northern Alliance striking out against the Taliban, who had driven them out of Kabul, and the US displaying its anger over the 9/11 attacks that were organised under the Taliban regime, there was a degree of indifference to Pashtun sensitivities that has resulted in the current breakout of Taliban resistance in east and south Afghanistan.

It is worth recalling that apart from deploying forces looking for Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, the US kept its military largely confined to Kabul. Indeed, even the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was kept confined to Kabul and during the first two years, requests from Karzai for western military support for other parts of Afghanistan was denied, so that the authority of the US-backed regime was limited to Kabul with local warlords assuming authority in other parts of Afghanistan. These warlords proceeded to expand the cultivation of poppy, which had been brought under control during the Taliban period.

The opinion is expressed increasingly by critics in the US that the diversion of the bulk of US forces to the attack on Iraq in March 2003, led to Afghanistan being treated as a secondary area of interest. President Bush had long planned to attack Iraq, both to gain control over oil, and to augment the security of Israel. Where he went wrong, was that while Saddam Hussein had denied any role to foreign inspired extremists, his removal virtually turned Baghdad into the nerve-centre of Islamic extremists.

Over the period starting with the attack on Iraq, Afghanistan appears to have become a country of secondary importance, because it hardly has economic assets, and was in desperate need of reconstruction after 25 years of conflict and destruction.

The presence of US and western missions had been reflected in the pledging of over 17 billion dollars for the rehabilitation and the reconstruction of Afghanistan. In actual fact, with Kabul lacking control over the countryside, and in the absence of infrastructure, very little has been achieved by way of reconstruction. Though nearly three million Afghan refugees were brought back from Pakistan and Iran, there was neither housing nor employment for them, and many of them went back. This has created disappointment with, even hostility against, the US and the Nato presence which are being seen as foreign occupations.

The Pashtun population, concentrated mainly in the east and south, has not only experienced neglect but also military repression. Though the policy of keeping the ISAF confined to Kabul has been changed and both US and Nato forces have taken on security duties in east and south Afghanistan they are running into growing resistance on the part of a people who are always armed.

Except for Osama bin Laden, and his close associates the Al Qaeda does not pose a serious threat, and President Musharraf was justified in claiming success in eliminating Al Qaeda elements who had gone to the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The resistance is now from the Taliban. The present force level of the US and Nato of about 40,000 is grossly inadequate to bring peace and order to Afghanistan.

The police and army under the Karzai regime is far from effective and, in keeping with Afghan tradition do not relish suppressing their own people. The US and affluent western countries have done very little in terms of economic reconstruction. President Karzai who is largely under the influence of the non-Pashtun ethnic groups of the Northern Alliance has very little credibility with the Pashtuns, and tends to blame Pakistan for allowing sanctuary to Taliban fighters. President Musharraf holds the view that the insurgency does not originate in Pakistan but is native to Afghanistan.

Furthermore, even before 9/11, there were many religious madressahs in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The anti-Islamic rhetoric of the Bush administration has made the Americans unpopular, notably in the Pashtun areas and President Musharraf has to attend to domestic issues, that include using the tribal system to discourage the resort to jihadism. The success that the Pashtun residents of Afghanistan are confronting in their insurgency is partly a reflection of the Afghan tradition of resisting foreign occupation.

The indepth analysis of the poor performance of the US and Nato in Afghanistan is being traced to two major factors. The first is that the western military presence is too small. When US and Nato forces were sent to the Balkans in the 1990’s they were much more substantial in numbers and equipment. Nearly 40,000 allied forces had been stationed in Kosovo that is less than five per cent of Afghanistan. A similar situation existed in Bosnia. Western military commanders, both serving and retired, believe that Nato and the US must increase their military involvement substantially to effectively bring under control a country like Afghanistan.

Perhaps more important is the need for urgent action to step up economic reconstruction. According to figures mentioned in Newsweek, the amount spent on economic reconstruction in Afghanistan works out to be nine dollars per person as against $ 249 in Kosovo. Above all, the anti-Pashtun bias emanating from the Afghan government in Kabul, which is dominated by non-Pashtuns, must be corrected.

We in Pakistan have a stake in a united, stable and peaceful Afghanistan. The policy of extending assistance to Afghanistan, without any desire to interfere in its internal affairs, is basically correct. The future economic development of our region will be ensured if there is peace and stability in Afghanistan. In particular problems of scarcity of both energy and water require the participation of this neighbour.

 By Maqbool Ahmed
 

Iraq’s unsafe streets

NINE months into the “Year of the Police” in Iraq, and three months into “Operation Together Forward” in Baghdad, the security forces remain disorganised and the city dangerous. The Bush administration and the Iraqi government are running out of strategies, if not slogans, as they try to bring some measure of stability to Iraq.

The news from Baghdad is particularly horrifying. Operation Together Forward, announced with great fanfare in June, was supposed to bring humanitarian aid and police protection to the most troubled areas of the city. Instead, with depressing regularity, Iraqi citizens report that police, or militiamen in police uniforms, have abducted people from their homes, arrested them at checkpoints and even, in one especially grisly scene reported in the Washington Post, dragged Sunni patients out of Baghdad hospitals controlled by the Shia-dominated Health Ministry. Bullet-riddled corpses — some handcuffed, some bearing the marks of torture — are routinely found, but never the perpetrators.

As Latin Americans well know, death squads in police uniform can undermine public faith in government so utterly that it can take decades to restore. It is up to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, not U.S. forces, to establish and enforce the rule of law. But if the United States wants a viable alternative to “cutting and running” from Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his new interior minister will have to make good on their promises to overhaul the police force and purge units that have been infiltrated by militias — if they still can.

Progress to date has not been encouraging. In March, three months after the Pentagon declared a Year of the Police in Iraq, Gen. John P. Abizaid acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee what was already widely known: At least some Iraqi police units had been infiltrated by militias. “There may be some Iraqi police commandos who by day follow the orders of the government and by night might be doing the work of some of the various militia groups,” Abizaid said.

Last month, Abizaid offered the Senate committee a much grimmer assessment. Local police are honest and capable in some places, he said, but infiltrated by militias in others, notably in Basra and Baghdad. In Basra, British forces are attempting to disband the corrupted units and restart them. In Baghdad, he said, several battalions would probably have to be “stood down and retrained.” Pressed by Sen.

Ben Nelson about the extent of the problem, Abizaid estimated that 30 per cent of the Iraqi national police units had been infiltrated. By some estimates, scrapping and retraining the Iraqi police force could take up to two years and cost many millions of dollars. Leaving aside the military costs, such a move would be tantamount to an admission of failure by the Bush administration on one of its signature projects — a political nonstarter during an election year.

It now seems clear that the two most prominent and influential Shia militias, the Badr Brigade and the Al Mahdi army, are fiercely competing with the Iraqi police for control in Basra and Baghdad. Sunnis in these areas have good reason to fear the police almost as much as the insurgents and criminals who are terrorizing them. They are fleeing for Sunni-dominated areas, just as Shias run from regions controlled by vindictive Sunnis.

—Los Angeles Times