E-Notes

Afghanistan: the Endgame

by Michael Radu

November 15, 2001

Michael Radu, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, specializing in the study of terrorism and political violence.

As of this writing, the military situation in Afghanistan is increasingly clear. The Taliban remnants are cornered in their traditional bastion of Kandahar in the southeast, the center of power since 1994 for Mullah Mohammed Omar, the self-appointed Amir al-Mumemeen (“Commander of the Faith”), and also survive in an isolated pocket in the northeastern town of Kunduz. Otherwise, all other cities and towns of the country are under the control of anti-Taliban (or at least non-Taliban) forces.

In Kunduz a large Taliban force — variously estimated at between 5,000 and 20,000— is completely isolated and surrounded by Northern Alliance troops. Some top Taliban leaders are also there: its defense ministry has relocated to Kunduz. A very large number of the Taliban forces are foreigners, mostly al-Qaeda elements: Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, and Pakistanis. This explains their ferocious resistance against all military sense. They know full well that they have no place to go, and in fact the Northern Alliance commander on that front, Mohammed Daud, has made it clear that he will only accept the surrender of Afghans, not foreigners, in Kunduz. The likely scenario, guaranteed to send shudders among human rights activists, is that any foreigners captured will be dealt with summarily. Irene Kahn, Secretary General of Amnesty International, has already “expressed concern about the summary execution of soldiers,” saying “Human rights abuses committed by the Taliban cannot be used to justify new abuses by the Northern Alliance; these killings must be stopped” (AI News Flash, 11/13/01).

But would one really expect the Northern Alliance to keep in camps, feed and respect the thousands of the aliens who brought disaster upon the country for seven years? That is not the Afghan way of warfare, nor would it make much practical sense. One would hope that some trials will take place, but that is just a hope. The fact remains that, from an American (and world) viewpoint, the more al-Qaeda members who are eliminated, the smaller the future pool of trained and indoctrinated terrorists.

Taliban resistance continues in Kandahar, not least because all indications are that Mullah Omar remains in the city. As in Kunduz, the fact that the hardcore Taliban and al-Qaeda are concentrated makes them vulnerable and facilitates our own goal of eliminating them.

Present Dangers from the Past

It is important that the Pashtun tribes of the south and southeast have finally found the resolve to act against the Taliban in their midst rather than continue with their complaints that the Northern Alliance’s victories threaten their traditional claims to control in Kabul. But this also poses the main threat to the future of Afghanistan: a return to the bad habits of the past.

Even during the rule of the strongest of Afghanistan’s kings, the reach of Kabul over the provinces was relative at best. The basic principle of Afghan politics was that the less control the government had, the better. That fit with the fact that Afghan loyalties were never with a country called “Afghanistan” but with their own ethnic group, their own version of Islam (Sunni, Shi’i or Ismaili), and the traditional leaders of their own local clans and tribes, in that order.

The Soviet occupation of 1979–89 did little to change this. The communist puppets of Moscow were virtually all Pashtuns, and they were divided between two factions of the Communist Party: one based on the Ghilzai and the other on the Durrani Pashtun tribal confederations.

Today, following the collapse of the Taliban, one sees the potential for the rapid return of that pattern and the revival of warlordism. In Mazar-e Sharif the wily Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of the National Islamic Movement (Jombesh-e Melli Islami), is back in control, as he was between the last years of the Soviet occupation and the fall of that city to the Taliban in 1996. He is also repeating his old patterns of behavior: ruthless persecution of enemies combined with a relatively enlightened social policy (religious tolerance, rights for women, and competent administration).

Further southwest, in Herat, another warlord, Ismail Khan— less ruthless than Dostum but equally “progressive”— is back in control as well, and more popular than ever. In the hardcore Tajik areas, the relatives and proteges of the late Ahmed Shah Massoud are in control— albeit still without a clear leader. And in the Pashtun regions in the south and northeast the number of local warlords is proliferating again. In the provinces of Pakhtia, Paktika and Khost, former Taliban minister of borders Jalaludin Haqqani has “retired his turban,” as Le Monde put it. In Ghazni, the Taliban themselves left control to their previously submissive local leaders — to the good luck of the eight Western humanitarian workers left there and immediately released. In Kandahar and north of it, King Zaher Shah loyalist Hamid Karzai is trying to wrest control. In Jalalabad, to the northeast, a multitude of warlords jockey for control, including Haji Kadeer, the former governor and brother of the murdered Abdul Haq. The Hazara Shi’i leaders in Bamyan have emerged in the center of the country and in Mazar-e Sharif, and so on.

Some of these warlords are relatively modern-minded: Ismail Khan, Dostum and the Massoud successors being the cases in point; others, such as Younis Khalis, are only slightly more enlightened than the Taliban, which originated as a splinter from Khalis’ Hezb-e Islami Party; and there are dangerously fundamentalist and anti-American warlords in search of a base of support— the worst being Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a protege of Iran, a pathologically anti-Western and fundamentalist character and the individual most responsible for the destruction of Kabul in 1992–94.

Any international force deployed to Afghanistan will have to follow three basic principles:

For these and many other practical reasons, if an international Islamic force is to be sent to Afghanistan, its core and commanding structure should be Turkish— respected, tough, no-nonsense forces, rather than the UN’s usual forces of Fijians, Swedes, etc.

And the Taliban?

We are being bombarded with rumors and dire predictions of a likely Taliban retreat into a guerrilla mode of warfare— and, at least by implication, into a Soviet- or Vietnam-like nightmare. These predictions come either from military experts with minimal understanding of Afghan sociology and history or from ill-informed academics and journalists.

As Olivier Roy, perhaps the West’s best scholar of Afghan affairs, has stated, “If the Taliban lose Kandahar, they are done in.” (See interview in Le Monde, “Les talibans ne sont pas des gu,rrilleros, c’est un mouvement urbain,” November 16.) Why? Because, as he correctly explained, the Taliban are a basically urban movement, and Afghans are not a mobile people. In other words, they could only operate within their own tribal-controlled area. And where are the Taliban controlled areas now? Most of the remaining Taliban forces are Arab foreigners— hated by the locals, unfamiliar with the terrain, and lacking outside logistical, military, or indeed any other form of support, resupply, and reinforcements. Add to that the attractiveness of the $25 million price on Osama bin Laden’s head and the future of al-Qaeda in the mountains of southern Afghanistan is dim indeed.

The bottom line is that the military aspect of the first phase of the war on terrorism— what could be described as “the Afghan lesson”— is close to completion with practically no American casualties. Meanwhile, arrests and the subsequent dismantlement of al-Qaeda cells in Western Europe are proceeding apace— much more quickly, one might add, than in the United States. Which only proves, if proof is needed, that this is a strange war: one in which computer software engineers, accountants, and law enforcement officials — including your friendly neighborhood cop — are as important as the special operations commandos and the Marines.

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