Author: Prem Shankar Jha
Publication: Outlook
Date: November 26, 2001
Introduction: The NA would want
to develop its own terms with Pashtoon leaders and Pakistan, not have terms
dictated to it.
The great powers of the western
'coalition' seem incapable of learning, either from history or from their
own past mistakes. The Taliban are down but not yet out. Mullah Omar and
Osama bin Laden are still very much at large and the dead of September
11 remain unavenged. There is still a lot of fighting ahead and if there
is one thing the Americans have learned in the past month, it is that this
is best left to the Afghans. Despite that, every western country has already
begun trying to dictate what kind of government a post-Taliban Afghanistan
must have.
Even as the Northern Alliance (NA)
was beginning its headlong rush to Kabul, the 'coalition' warned its leaders
not to enter the city but wait outside till they, or the now conveniently
remembered UN, could come and fashion an interim government. The NA treated
this 'advice' with the contempt it deserved and stormed into Kabul. Here,
the first cameramen faithfully captured the rapture of the people-the unveiled
women, the jeans-clad teenagers and the barbers doing brisk business in
beards. They also captured the sharp contrast between the civilised behaviour
of the Uzbek and Tajik troops and the brutality of the Taliban when they
took Kabul in 1996.
But this did not suit the larger
agenda of the Great Powers, which was to impress upon the world that the
Afghans are warlike adolescents who need to be nannied to ensure they do
not get into trouble again. The cameras thus began to focus more and more
on the few bodies of Arab and Pakistani Taliban fighters who had not got
away, and to describe their end in gory detail, while the commentators
sounded carefully-scripted doubts about how long the shaky alliance between
the often barbaric northerners would hang together. Then, predictably,
they cut to Kofi Annan addressing the UN Security Council, telling members
in his measured tones exactly what the US and its allies wanted him to
do-that without immediate and active UN intervention, Afghanistan was likely
to slip back into internecine war and unending human misery. Then began
an effort to sell the idea of a UN peacekeeping force for Afghanistan whose
purpose would be to keep the peace while the Afghans worked out the future
composition of a broad-based, multi-ethnic government. And in a crowning
irony, the end of this exercise is to be a western-style democratic election-in
a country more than half of whose population is Pashtoon and has been dominating
the other half for the past 300 years.
One can see what the 'coalition'
is trying to do. It wants the south to be left in Taliban hands while it
woos Pashtoon leaders away from Mullah Omar. It hopes these 'moderate'
elements will hand Osama and Omar over to the 'coalition' and thus qualify
for inclusion in the next government. This will minimise bloodshed and
maximise the chances of all parties working together to restore political
stability to Afghanistan. Since all this will take time, it wants to introduce
an international force that can act as a buffer between the Taliban and
the NA.
But this grand plan has a fatal
weakness-it makes a mockery of both history and psychology. The NA has
been at the receiving end of unspeakable Taliban brutality in Kabul, Herat,
in and around Bamiyan, and Mazar-e-Sharif for seven long years. It assassinated
their supreme commander Ahmed Shah Masood only two months ago in an attack
regarded as deceitful and cowardly. Now that the NA has the arms and the
support it needs to defeat it, how can the commanders stop their men from
going for a complete victory and exacting at least some revenge?
The NA knows that any Pashtoon elements
foisted on it as its partners in a future government would be Pakistan's
surrogates.When it blames Pakistan for virtually all of its misfortunes-first
because it instigated and supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's attack on Kabul
and then because it switched its full support to the Taliban-how does the
coalition expect the NA to accept a third set of surrogates now?
Lastly, the 'coalition' and Mr Annan
were obviously not paying much attention to what Pashtoon mujahid leader
Hamid Karzai said to the BBC on the telephone a few days before the advance
on Kabul. Karzai, who probably had been rescued from the Taliban by a US
helicopter, went out of his way to deny it and claimed that he was forewarned
by the villagers and fought his way to safety. He then went on to say that
he wanted to free Afghanistan of foreigners. He mentioned Arabs and Pakistanis
but clearly meant all foreigners, including the Americans. What he voiced
was the common yearning of all Afghans, not since 1979, but 1839. Karzai
knew that this goal could unite all Afghans and was clearly sending a message
to the NA via the BBC. How anyone sitting in Washington or New York can
believe that the Afghans will exchange the Russians, the Arabs and the
Pakistanis for Turks, Malaysians and Bangladeshis defies understanding.
The NA is perfectly capable of managing
its own affairs. After the fate of the first Rabbani government, it knows
that it will simply not be able to rule Afghanistan without coopting a
number of important Pashtoon leaders into the government. Its members also
know that no matter what Pakistan may have done in the past, they must
learn to live with it as they have learned to live with the Russians.
There is a world of difference,
however, between choosing their partners from among the Pashtoons and having
partners chosen for them. The 'coalition' and the UN want to do the latter,
while the NA will only settle for the former. Similarly, it will one day
want to negotiate the terms of its future relationship with Pakistan. What
it will not stomach is having them dictated to it. The 'coalition' needs
to cultivate patience, and just a touch of humility.