By Jon Pattee
Senior English Editor
The US-led Western alliance is encouraging the formation of a broad-based government to replace Afghanistan’s Taliban militia, but in the process risks igniting an ethnic meltdown like that of the early 1990s.
The US and Britain are now feverishly working on what the UK-based Guardian newspaper calls “an elaborate plan to topple the tottering Taliban as quickly as possible through diplomatic pressure and replace it with a broadly based government that is to some degree democratic.”
But it will take an elaborate plan indeed to avoid a return to 1992, when the fall of a pro-Soviet regime saw US-backed mujahedeen fighters descend into a bloody civil war that often mirrored their “diverse ancestry: Pathan, Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, Turkmen,” according to a report last year by the New York Times.
Only the Taliban’s iron fist restored some stability in 1996, and even now, the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim militia, drawn mainly from the Pashtun ethnic majority, has yet to conquer an odd mix of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara fighters lumped together in the so-called Northern Alliance.
This week’s Guardian report say that as part of the maneuvering to establish a replacement government, “the Northern Alliance…is calling Afghan tribal groups to a special meeting, the Loya Jirga, the rare but traditional forum for making momentous political changes.”
Such appeals may bring in moderate Pashtun tribal leaders – themselves elbowed aside by the Taliban, according to an AFP report this week. For some Pashtun, another attraction of the hoped-for coalition could be the return of former king Mohammad Zahir Shah, ousted in 1973, who the agency said was “assured of support.”
In a sign that such a shift may already be taking place, the Taliban has relinquished its total control of three provinces, allegedly to counter growing support for the ex-king. "Tribal elders…or their representatives will be included in the government machinery," a senior Taliban official told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).
But the Western plan could spell a return to civil war for a variety of reasons, including hardline Pashtun attitudes about ethnic minorities, the ambitions of the Northern Alliance, and the confused political currents in the Afghan exile community.
The Northern Alliance, for its part, faces Western powers that are simultaneously cheering it on and warning it off. Although the allies are working closely with the rebel group, British officials are “adamant” that it “will not be allowed to take charge,” said the Guardian report.
Meanwhile, according to a CNN report this week, the Northern Alliance may have other ideas. Alliance officials told the network they were working “in cooperation with the United States to decide how and when to proceed with their ultimate objective, which is an advance on Kabul and the seizing of power in Kabul itself.”
When that day comes, there may be scores to settle before the niceties of Western diplomacy take hold. The Times reported that in 1999, for example, the residents of Hazar Bagh village, who later joined the alliance, had to watch as the Taliban militia “destroyed the homes…burned the wheat fields… killed the livestock…[and] rounded up scores of young men, who have yet to be seen again.”
Then there is the squabbling Afghan exile community, whose ranks split along both political and ethnic lines. According to Pakistan’s online Dawn newspaper, the Cyprus, Bonn and Rome exile “processes” are a contentious mishmash of former nationalists, royalists, democrats, former Communists, technocrats, bureaucrats, generals and ethnic minority leaders.
The chances of this divided community closing ranks for a Western-backed government look even slimmer in light of the comments of one opposition leader, who told the Times that "Switching sides is the way of Afghanistan."
Last on the list of potential obstacles to the US-UK plan is the most daunting: potential Pashtun extremism. Reporters for the news agency UPI reported this summer that a tract calling for wholesale ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan was circulating there and in Pakistan.
Citing a report by the French television station TF-1, the agency said that the booklet called for the non-Pashtun Tajik and Hazaras populations “to be removed from key areas and replaced by Pashtuns from the south of Afghanistan.”
The booklet maintained that minority inhabitants of these strategic areas “must be must be cleared out and given equivalent land” in the west and south of the country – an area known for its deserts. In the meantime, they would be replaced by “homeless” Pashtun, reported UPI.
Despite such potential obstacles to the idea of a broad-based Afghan government, Western figures such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been quick to give the plan an optimistic spin.
Blair, who swooped through Pakistan this week on a whirlwind 5,000-mile tour of the region, said he believed the elements were coming into place to destroy the Taliban. The Guardian quoted him as saying that "The purpose is to ensure that we have a trap set around Afghanistan in which everyone supports the things we do."
But if Afghanistan’s ethnic groups go to war following the installation of a shaky pro-Western coalition government, Americans and British alike could find that “everyone” may turn out to have a different agenda.
