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Afghanistan and its Neighbours: A Primer for Today's World
By Michael W. Cotter
Ambassador Cotter, the American envoy to Turkmenistan from 1995 to 1998, discusses in depth not only Afghanistan, which has been in world news of late, but several of its lesser-known neighbors. We know of few individuals anywhere who has a better grasp of the subject than the author.—Ed.
While western media have focused attention on Afghanistan since the events of September 11, 2001, there has been little that sheds light on the history of the country or the region, yet some understanding of the past and of the perspectives of other countries in the region is indispensable to understanding Afghanistan today.
Afghanistan's Neighborhood
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| China · India · Iran · Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Pakistan · Russia · Tajikistan · Turkmenistan · Uzbekistan · Afghanistan |
Located at the mid-point of earth's largest continent, it's not surprising that Central Asia has been trampled on by most of the world's would-be conquerors. Alexander the Great passed through. So did an Asian tribe several centuries later, fleeing the Han consolidation of China. That group, known as the Huns in Europe, built the giant Buddhist statues recently destroyed by the Taliban. Centuries later, Genghis Khan destroyed many of the Silk Road cities. Tamerlane, a Turkic tribesman, created a new empire two centuries later with its capital in Samarkand. One of his successors, Babur, established a kingdom in Kabul and later founded the Moghul Empire in India. The language of culture in most of the region throughout this period was Persian, although rulers and ruled commonly spoke a variety of tongues.The history of modern Afghanistan is generally considered to begin in 1747, when a Persian ruler, Nadir Shah, was assassinated and the Afghans revolted under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali, a Pashtun of the Durrani tribe, taking Kandahar and establishing modern Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah defeated the Moghuls west of the Indus River and took Herat away from the Persians. His empire extended from Central Asia to Delhi, from Kashmir to the Arabian sea, becoming the greatest Muslim empire in the second half of the 18th century.
From Ahmad Shah's death in 1773 until Dost Muhammad Khan took the throne in Kabul fifty years later Afghanistan underwent turmoil, with continual tribal revolts and pressure from the Persians in the west. Proclaimed "Commander of the Faithful" (in Arabic Amir al-mu'minin— a title more recently assumed by Mullah Omar of the Taliban) in 1836, Dost Muhammad was well on his way to consolidating power in Afghanistan when the British arrived in collaboration with a deposed competitor. Thus began the First Afghan War and the history of British involvement in that country. In spite of pressure from Russia and Great Britain, Afghanistan retained its independence until the Soviet invasion in 1980. In the process, however, significant parts of its territory were lost. Most important from today's perspective, in 1893 the British imposed the Durand Line as Afghanistan's southern border, splitting Afghan tribes and incorporating major tribal areas into what is now Pakistan.
The tribal areas split by the Durand Line were and are occupied by the Pashtun clans. Also known as Pakhtoon or Pathan, the Pashtun are the peoples meant by the Persians when they first coined the term Afghans. The Pashtun are divided into more than 60 clans, all speaking the common Pashto tongue. They number some 12.5 million in Afghanistan, where the major clans are the Durrani and Ghilzay, and 14 million in Pakistan.
In order to understand what is happening there today, it is important to place Afghanistan in the context of today's Central Asia. The fall of the Iron Curtain did more than end the Cold War in the west. Although Americans have focused on this watershed event in world history from the perspective of reduced tension in Europe and reduced possibility of nuclear war, for the peoples and countries of Central Asia it has meant both great opportunity and uncertainty.
I define Central Asia in a broader sense than was used during the Cold War, when it was generally limited to the five Socialist Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Rather, I would argue, it is that part of the world between those countries oriented on the Mediterranean Sea on the west (i.e., the Levant and Asia Minor) and the heartland of China in the east; and between the Russian-populated parts of Siberia and the Steppes in the north and the Hindu areas of the Indian subcontinent. It thus includes Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, northern India, and the Xinjiang region of China, as well as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and southern Kazakhstan.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of each of those countries, particularly in their relationship to Afghanistan.
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| Pakistan |
Pakistan, partitioned from India in 1947, was reduced to its present size—about twice that of California—when Bangladesh seceded in 1971. Its population is more than 144 million, forty percent of which is under fourteen years of age. Five major ethnic groups live there, of which the largest are the Punjabi peoples. Pashto speakers constitute only eight percent of the population. Not surprisingly, given the basis of its partition from India, ninety-seven percent of Pakistanis are Muslim, the great majority of whom are Sunni.
Pakistan's ethnic groups are not well integrated, and recent decades have seen significant ethnic fighting and unrest, particularly between the majority Punjabis and the Sindhi in the south, as well as between the Sindhi and the Muhajir, immigrants from India at the time of partition. Although the Pashtun are far from the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, they live primarily in the north along the Afghan border and thus play a critical role in relations between the two countries.
Pakistan wants an Afghan government dominated by ethnic Pashtuns that will provide it both strategic depth in its conflict with India and access to Central Asian resources. However, the rapid dissolution of the Taliban regime presents Pakistan with serious problems. One is its fear that, having taken Kabul, the Northern Alliance will not easily share power. At this point, Pakistan will be fortunate to achieve an Afghan government in which Pashtuns are represented proportionately. A second concern is the fate of perhaps several thousand Pakistani volunteers who joined the Taliban before and after September 11. The Musharraf government needs to avoid having the Taliban defeat spill over into its own unsettled internal dynamic, but its ability to act is constrained by the influence that the fundamentalist Islamic movement has gained in the past two decades.
The current situation is particularly delicate for U.S.-Pakistan relations. The Pakistani elite place a large measure of blame for the current situation on the United States, noting that it not only dropped Afghanistan like a hot potato after the defeat of the Soviets, but then froze its relationship with Pakistan over the issue of nuclear weapon development. Pakistanis fear the same thing happening again, and their concerns were not alleviated when the United States permitted the Northern Alliance to take control of Kabul after assuring them the city would remain open until an interim government could be formed.
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| India |
Turning to India, in 1947 the subcontinent was divided into the secular, but largely Hindu, state of India and the smaller Muslim state of Pakistan. Slightly more than one-third the size of the U.S., India has a population of over one billion, eighty-one percent of whom are Hindu and, even after partition, twelve percent of whom are Muslims.
Three wars have not resolved the conflict between India and Pakistan, and today the region is one of the principal potential areas of conflict in the world. Although the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir—an area largely Muslim in population that was left in India at the time of partition—is the most prominent, it is not the only bone of contention between the two. The potential consequences of further conflict between India and Pakistan is exacerbated by the fact that both possess nuclear weapons.
Given their origins in conflict, it isn't surprising that during the Cold War Pakistan and India ended up on opposite sides. India developed a close relationship with the USSR, although motivated as much or more by its fear of Chinese expansion as by its fear of Pakistan. Pakistan, in turn, looked to both the United States and China for help in consolidating its independence from the much larger India. A decade after the end of the Cold War this alignment was only beginning to change, as India and China slowly began to resolve territorial disputes and the United States tried to improve its relations with India. Such moves, of course, raise strategic concerns in Pakistan. They also concern Russia, which finds its influence waning in yet another area of the world, and which is already facing the potential challenge of a rapidly growing China.
Now there is concern that India may see both the short-term possibility of solving the Kashmir situation on terms favorable to it by identifying Pakistan with Islamic radicalism and thus isolating that country, and the longer-term potential of securing for itself critical energy resources, perhaps ignoring in the process the danger that an imploding Pakistan might have recourse to nuclear weapons as a last resort to defend its interests.
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| China |
China's influence reached as far as the Caspian Sea at various times early in the Christian Era, and Chinese ruled for short periods in Bokhara and Samarkand in the seventh century. The Chinese retreated with the spread of Islam and only reasserted their control of Xinjiang in the late seventeeenthth century. By the mid-nineteenth century Imperial Russia's eastward expansion had absorbed that part of Central Asia west of the Tien Shan Mountains. Xinjiang, east of the Tien Shan Range, then became another theater in the Great Game between Russia and Great Britain for control of the Asian heartland, and in that theater Russia eventually prevailed. As a result of a number of so-called "unequal treaties" which China was forced to sign with the Western powers after the Opium Wars, China had to surrender nearly 350,000 square miles of territory to Russia, as well as give the Russians special trading privileges and the right to establish consulates in the area.
Just about the size of the continental United States, and sharing borders with seven of the other countries in Central Asia, China clearly has the interest and clout to have a major say on the future of Afghanistan. China, however, is the neighbor with the smallest percentage of Muslims in its population. Only two to three percent of its 1.2 billion people follow that religion, reinforcing the fact that China's major interests are strategic rather than religious. Its short-term interests do focus on eliminating secessionist desires among the majority Uighur population of Xinjiang, where most Muslim Chinese live, and reducing the influence of fundamentalist Islam in the region is an important part of its strategy. China's historical alliance with Pakistan and antipathy toward India, as well as its competition with Russia for a dominant position on the Asian continent will color its views of an Afghan solution. In particular its alliance with Pakistan may conflict with its desire to eliminate aggressive Islam from the region. China also has a keen interest in Central Asia's energy resources, and various plans have been proposed to lay both oil and gas pipelines from the region to eastern China.
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| Russia |
Russia, 1.8 times the size of the U.S., but with a post-USSR population of just 147 million, shares borders only with China and Kazakhstan in the region, but its influence remains much greater. From Imperial Russia's expansion into Central Asia in the mid-nineteenth century through the debacle of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century, Russia has been a major player in the region. Going back even further, the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century put a fear in Russian souls that remains a major psychological characteristic of that people yet today.
After consolidating power, the Bolsheviks first left Imperial Russia's Central Asian colonies remain united as Soviet Turkestan. In the 1920s, however, Stalin, fearing that the region's Muslims would take seriously Soviet ideals such as equality of all peoples and thus present a threat to Russian dominance in the USSR, divided the region up into five socialist republics. Those republics, firmly under Moscow's thumb, were formed along ethnic lines in order to divide the peoples of that region. They are today's five former Soviet Central Asian republics.
Russians resent the loss of control over the region's energy resources, and some in that country have not abandoned the idea of reestablishing their hegemony over Russia's former Central Asian possessions. With the fall of the Taliban regime, Russia will try to limit Iranian, Pakistani, and Turkish influence in Afghanistan. Although the Russians want to play a major role in determining Afghanistan's future, and their military presence in Tajikistan helps ensure that they will, their motives are distrusted by all of the other major players in the region—whether their former subjects, Afghanistan's other neighbors, or the various Afghan factions themselves.
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| Kazakhstan |
Kazakhstan, although the largest of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, has few equities in the situation in Afghanistan. It shares no border with that country and ethnic Kazakhs constitute barely fifty percent of the population. In fact, only forty-seven percent of its population is Muslim. The nomadic Kazakhs were never very fervent Muslims, and fundamentalist forms of that religion have made little headway. With Russians making up forty-four percent of the population, and with the country's industry and agriculture still dependent on trade with Russia, Kazakhstan is likely to take a position on Afghan issues close Russia's.
Kazakhstan's major concerns are eliminating drug trafficking, and creating a climate of security that will enhance the possibility of attracting additional foreign investment to develop the country's significant energy resources and get them most effectively to Asian markets.
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| Kyrgyzstan |
Kyrgyzstan, the smallest (about the size of South Dakota) and poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, has borders with Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, sharing the fertile Fergana Valley with the latter two. The most heavily populated area in Central Asia, the Fergana was the site of serious ethnic unrest in the last years of the USSR. It is also the home of the most devout Muslims in former Soviet Central Asia, and has been the target of efforts by Muslim fundamentalists to overthrow the successor, regimes in those countries.
Only fifty-two percent of Kyrgyzstan's 4.7 million people are ethnic Kyrgyz, Uzbeks comprise another twelve percent, and there is a significant minority of Tajiks. seventy-five percent of the population follows Sunni Islam.
Kyrgyzstan's future is tied closely to a positive outcome in Afghanistan. Very vulnerable to unrest fomented by Islamic fundamentalism, the Kyrgyz have one main goal in the region: eliminating instability that might be used by its larger neighbors to justify once again swallowing up the smaller countries.
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| Tajikistan |
Tajikistan, the second smallest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, is about the size of Wisconsin. It has a 900 mile border with Afghanistan. Sixty-five percent of its 6.5 million people are ethnic Tajiks, and another twenty-five percent are Uzbek. The Tajiks are the principal non-Turkic ethnic group in the former Soviet Central Asia. Descended from the Persians who once controlled the region, their language is very closely related to Persian and Dari, the official language of Afghanistan. Although they are Persians, most Tajiks profess orthodox Sunni Islam, rather than the Shi'a form followed in Iran. This fact differentiates the Tajiks in Afghanistan from the Hazara minority, who speak Afghan Persian, but are Shi'a.
Tajikistan is the only Central Asian republic that still hosts Russian military forces in any numbers—a brigade that supported the government during Tajikistan's own 1993-97 civil war (and, according to many, profited and continues to profit handsomely from drug trafficking). The Tajiks have consistently supported, in a covert fashion, the Afghan Northern Alliance, composed largely of their ethnic brethren. They will support an Afghan solution that ensures the security (and, if possible, dominance) of the Afghan Tajiks. An ancillary benefit to Tajikistan of a stable Afghanistan should be the removal of the Russian brigade, something Russia will resist.
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| Uzbekistan |
Uzbekistan, about the size of California, is the most heavily populated of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, with a population of twenty-five million. It is also the only one that borders on each of the other former Soviet republics in the region, and has a short, eighty-mile border with Afghanistan as well. Some 80 percent of the population is ethnic Uzbek, and eighty-eight percent profess Sunni Islam.
Uzbekistan is a key Central Asian state for several reasons. It too shares the Fergana valley, but with a population more than twice as large as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan together, it clearly is the dominant partner. At the same time, that large population, including as it does many potentially devout Muslims, makes the Uzbek government particularly concerned about Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, an armed Islamic fundamentalist opposition has been active in the Fergana area since 1998. News that Juma Namangani, the leader of that opposition, was killed in the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif was undoubtedly greeted with relief in Tashkent.
Tashkent was the administrative center of Soviet Central Asia, and at independence Uzbekistan had more experienced people, particularly in its armed forces, than any other Central Asian state. Since independence the Uzbek government has been in the forefront of those former Soviet states resisting continued Russian influence and has both sought a "strategic" relationship with the United States and been an active participant in NATO's "Partnership for Peace." So it's not surprising that Uzbekistan has become the most active Central Asian partner in the struggle against the Taliban.
The Uzbeks also have numerous ethnic brethren in northern Afghanistan, particularly around Mazar-i-Sharif. The Northern Alliance warlord now in control there, Abdul Rashid Dostum, a general in the Soviet-backed Afghan army until he defected to the Mujahedeen, is an ethnic Uzbek, although his ties in the years since his expulsion by the Taliban have largely been with Turkey. Like the Tajiks, the Uzbeks will support an Afghan solution that protects their ethnic cousins. However, unlike the other former Soviet republics in the region, which are primarily interested in preserving their own independence, the Uzbeks may have broader ambitions. The country's national hero is Tamerlane, honored as the ostensible founder of an expansive Uzbek empire. Not surprisingly, that image and the specter of resurgent, aggressive Uzbek nationalism are not viewed with equanimity by the country's neighbors.
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| Turkmenistan |
Turkmenistan is in many ways the odd man out of Central Asia. Just a little larger in area than Uzbekistan, its population is about 4.5 million, a majority of whom still live on cooperative—formerly collective or state—farms. Turkmenistan shares a 600-mile border with Iran and a 450-mile border with Afghanistan.
The Turkmen, notoriously aggressive nomads through much of their history, were the last groups to be conquered by the Russians during their expansion in Central Asia, not succumbing until 1880. Seventy-seven percent of the population is ethnic Turkmen and another twelve percent ethnic Uzbek. Although eighty-nine percent profess Islam, the Turkmen government does not appear concerned about the potential impact of fundamentalism. The nomadic Turkmen were never very devout Muslims, and, in fact, retain much Zoroastrianism in their beliefs. They are, therefore, much less susceptible to fundamentalist blandishments than their more devout, sedentary neighbors in and around the Fergana Valley. Unlike Uzbekistan, whose major cities of Samarkand and Bokhara have great historical significance for Muslims and other countries in the region that might harbor imperial dreams, Turkmenistan's arid, lightly populated territory is much less attractive to either fundamentalists or would-be imperialists.
Nonetheless, surrounded by larger, more populous countries that might covet its energy resources, and left with a weak, poorly-led military after independence, in 1996 the Turkmen Government declared the country to be neutral and gained UN General Assembly endorsement of that status. The Turkmen have maintained their neutral status quite successfully. They insisted all along that the Taliban did not represent a security threat, and Turkmenistan was the only country in the area that enjoyed good working relationships with both the Taliban and the northern alliance, trading openly with both.
The Turkmen do have interests in a stable, peaceful Afghanistan. An estimated 1.5 million of their ethnic brethren live there, although in most Western media they are lumped together with the Uzbeks (since the Persian Tajiks and the Pashtun see both simply as "Turks"). Western Afghanistan is also the best route for the export of Turkmenistan's significant natural gas reserves to Pakistan and India. The same route would provide a short, cheap way to get Kazakhstani oil to markets in East Asia.
The Turkmen have maintained a friendly, but largely arms-length relationship with the United States. While they nominally support the anti-Taliban coalition, they have not offered much in the way of concrete support in spite of their long border with Afghanistan. However, the Turkmen are more likely to offer their capital, Ashgabat, as a neutral site acceptable to all factions for discussions to work out a new government for Afghanistan.
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| Iran |
Iran will be a key player in any Afghan solution. In fact, although Americans tend to see Iran as a Middle-Eastern country because of its role in oil production as well as its tendentious relations with Iraq and Israel, Iran is preeminently a Central Asian country. The size of Alaska, it has borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan in the region. Only about 51 percent of the population is Persian, with a wide variety of other ethnic groups represented as well. Some 58 percent speak Persian as a mother tongue, with 25 percent speaking a Turkic language.
Although its identity as the preeminent Shi'a Muslim nation is important to Iran, and its immediate interest in an Afghan solution is the protection of the fellow-Shi'a Hazara groups there, when it comes to its relations with Central Asia we need to think of imperial Persia rather than black-clad Mullahs. The Iranians have a strong sense of their identity and past and see themselves as the natural heirs of a leadership role in the region.
Iran has a long list of goals in Afghanistan. In addition to ensuring that Hazara interests are accommodated, another short-term Iranian goal is for Afghanistan to be stable enough to permit the 1.5 to 2 million refugees now in Iran to return home. A longer-term goal is to prevent Russia, Pakistan or Turkey from dominating the region and its resources. Iran's perspective is complicated by the fact that Central Asian energy competes with its own resources. The Iranians have plans to build oil and gas pipelines to Pakistan and India that would compete with pipelines from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Finally, Iran, like Russia, wants to ensure that the United States does not remain a dominant player in whatever new order emerges in the region.
The antagonistic U.S.-Iran relationship will complicate the search for an equitable solution in Afghanistan. However, the fact that Iran objects to United States presence in the region and supports Hezbollah against Israel does not mean that it condones Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, as both represent a Sunni form of Islamic fundamentalism that is anathema to the Iranians. As difficult as it is for the United States to engage Iran, it is probably even more difficult for the Iranians to cast aside their fear and hatred of the United States to work closely with it on a solution for Afghanistan. Any mutual cooperation will probably have to be through the U.N.
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| Afghanistan |
Turning to Afghanistan itself, the country is the size of Texas, and is bordered by Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. It is home to a complex mix of ethnic groups, reflecting its complicated history. Of Afghanistan's approximately twenty-six million people, thirty-eight percent are Pashtun, twenty-five percent Tajik, nineteen percent Hazara, six percent Uzbek, and twelve percent minor ethnic groups including Turkmen and Baluchis. Eighty-four percent of Afghans are Sunni Muslims and fifteen percent Shi'a. Although most Afghans speak more than one language, Dari (Afghan Persian) is the mother tongue of fifty percent of the people, Pashto of thirty-five percent, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) of eleven percent, and some thirty minor languages are spoken by four percent.
Historically, loyalties in Afghanistan lie primarily with the clan and tribe, a situation only reinforced after two decades of war. After successfully expelling the Soviets, the Mujahedeen leadership broke down into squabbling factions largely along ethnic and regional lines. Pashtun clans supported various warlords; Ismail Khan, a Tajik, ruled (and apparently rules again) in Herat; Uzbek areas were and are dominated by Abdul Rashid Dostum; Hazara loyalties were divided among several leaders; and the Tajiks were under Ahmed Shah Masood. The nominal government in Kabul, led by Burhannudin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, governed little, reducing life in Kabul to chaos.
The Taliban arose as a reaction to this chaotic situation and with the active support of Pakistan, which feared that the non-Pashtun groups and their presumed backers in Moscow and Tehran would dominate Afghanistan. Over time, primarily by establishing peace in areas under their control and exploiting the venality of other leaders, the Taliban were able to extend their control over 90 percent of the country.
During the course of Taliban expansion a familiar pattern emerged: when one side felt it had the advantage it refused to negotiate a solution, while the weaker side sought international mediation. And the relative strength of the two sides changed repeatedly, often depending on the arrival of arms and military equipment from external supporters. None of the contending leaders covered themselves with glory during this struggle. Ahmed Shah Masood, for instance, was not considered a great Afghan hero, but rather simply the last of the ethnic warlords to resist the Taliban, able to do so only because of the impossible terrain in his base area and support from Russia, Tajikistan and Iran.
Nor have the Taliban lent themselves to easy definition apart from the fact that they were largely from Pashtun clans. Indeed, even when they controlled 90 percent of Afghanistan it was impossible to identify a coherent Taliban government structure. Mullah Omar, as an example, never became a formal head of state, simply referring to himself as "Commander of the Faithful." As Pashtun leaders now quickly abandon the Taliban and come to terms with the Northern Alliance, eliminating the Taliban appears to be coming down to capturing or killing Mullah Omar, some of his assistants, and the hard-core "Arab Afghans."
The implications of the current conflict in for the United States and the rest of the world go far beyond the narrow goal of eliminating Al Qaeda and the regime harboring it. Of primary concern must be the future of the Asian heartland for this century and beyond. Identifying and achieving an acceptable stability in that region will be at least as difficult as the war against terrorism, but has even greater implications for world peace.
One thing the events of the past two and one-half months have made abundantly clear is the fact that the United States cannot avoid playing an active and activist role in the world. Isolationism is simply not an alternative. Equally clear after the second effort in a decade to organize an international coalition against an international threat, is that unilateralism cannot form the basis of United States foreign policy. Just as the United States wants and needs the cooperation of other countries to achieve its national goals, so Americans must be willing to understand their goals and help achieve them whether they coincide with ours or not. Nowhere in the world will the United States need to work more closely with others, and nowhere will doing so be as difficult, as in Central Asia.
From the "Great Game" of the nineteenthth century until the end of the Cold War, Central Asia was in many ways frozen, its countries pawns on the chessboard on which great powers determined the fate of the world. Even then Afghanistan was practically unique as a buffer state that managed to maintain its independence almost to the end. After the demise of the USSR, the United States failed to foresee the impact that major world event would have on Central Asia or the importance Central Asia could have for its national security. American inability or unwillingness to exercise a dominant role in the region left the field open for competition among the regional powers. In effect the stage is set for a new "Great Game" there, of which the current Afghan conflict is but act one. The players in that competition share a common political goal of replacing the vacuum at its center that Afghanistan has become with something more stable, but each wants the replacement to favor its national interests and, in some cases, hopes to thwart the ambitions of others. Also, all of the regional countries covet the significant natural resources of the former Soviet republics.
With the elimination of the Taliban practically a foregone conclusion, the issue is what will replace it. While the outcome remains murky, two points do seem pretty obvious: first, a successful government will have to take into account and respect the interests and customs of Afghanistan's various ethnic groups. We know such a government is possible, because they have existed in the past. Second, foreign presence in, or obvious hand behind, any government will inevitably doom it. The one thing that brings Afghans together is their hatred of foreign meddling in their affairs. Beyond that is anyone's guess. The op-ed section of The Washington Post of November 18 featured four articles by regional experts each of whom espoused a different solution as the only one possible.
One issue is whether the solution lies with leaders who have remained in Afghanistan or with exiles such as the ex-king. The former may have been so corrupted and radicalized that they cannot cooperate; the latter may be too isolated from Afghan reality, resented by those who have fought the battles, and, in the case of the king, be too old to play a role.
A second issue, and one that also involves the question of foreign interference, is what kind of rights different segments of Afghan society will enjoy. The group receiving most international attention these days is women. Although women in some ethnic groups, principally the Turkic minorities, enjoy significant freedoms, the same is not true in Pashtun and some Tajik areas. Afghans are likely to resist heavy-handed efforts by the international community to accord women the rights they enjoy in western societies or to impose other "modern" social standards on these traditional, conservative cultures.
The most likely scenario for a successful Afghan government is probably a form of federal system, with limited powers accorded to the central government and regional authorities organized along geographic and ethnic lines given wide authority over local matters. The problem will lie in finding leaders at all levels who are not fatally tainted by previous actions and associations. Again, a heavy foreign hand in imposing leaders would doom a new government.
In spite of their distrust of foreigners, however, the Afghans at this point have no choice but to accept significant foreign assistance in feeding the population and rebuilding the economy and infrastructure. Inevitably that assistance will come with strings, which may include a ban on poppy cultivation as well as increased rights for women. The most effective way for international assistance and advice to be channeled to Afghanistan will be through the United Nations, doled out by UN staff who are not from the United States or any of Afghanistan's neighbors.
Although this article has focused on the Afghan conflict in its regional context, it is worth a few words to place events in Afghanistan in a broader context of changes occurring around the world. Rather than being unique, the recent course of events in Afghanistan has parallels in other parts of the world, where the end of the bipolar Cold War conflict also has left societies searching to recreate lost identities or forge new ones. From the Balkans to the Congo and Somalia to Indonesia political structures in multi-ethnic societies breaking down. Experience in those other areas argues for exercising caution in imposing solutions from the outside, however brutal the consequences of inaction might be. The cost in human and financial terms for the United States alone or the West as a whole to impose a new worldwide order would clearly exceed the tolerance of public opinion in those countries.
Yet Afghanistan is different from seemingly similar conflicts elsewhere in the world because its internal conflict has become identified with a broader sense of unhappiness with Western cultural influence. While conflicts in Somalia and Sudan, to use examples of other Muslim (or partially Muslim) societies that are undergoing civil strife, focus on local political differences and have not threatened to place the West in conflict with Islam, the Afghan situation has taken on that coloration. In part because it began not as an internal conflict, but as the latest in a long line of Afghan efforts to throw off foreign occupiers, the conflict always was focused on outsiders. But, unlike the Afghan wars against Great Britain that were nationalist in nature, a new factor was present this time—the resurgence of Islam that began with the Iranian revolution in 1979. Shi'a Iran's declaration of independence and religious superiority caught the imagination of Sunni Muslims as well. And, in fact, it probably led fundamentalist Sunni Islamic groups, primarily in Saudi Arabia, to promote their own ideas more aggressively, in part to counter the Shi'a.
So the Soviet war in Afghanistan became a focal point for Muslims eager to fight the infidel. The West, and particularly the United States, seeing the vulnerability of the USSR and convinced that Afghanistan could become its Vietnam, actively supported the opposition, turning a blind eye to longer-term consequences that now become painfully apparent. I do not mean to imply that we were wrong. Defeating world communism was an overriding concern, and United States success in that effort remains a significant victory for human freedom worldwide. Nor did Americans close our eyes to the fact that the defeat of communism would mean many changes in the world as it groped for what President George Bush senior called a "New World Order." Clearly, however, longer-range vision has been less than perfect.
So now the United States is engaged in a war against terrorism and facing a new challenge in Afghanistan. Policy choices are being made on a daily basis that will have long-term consequences. While they cannot be readily identified today, there is no doubt that they will have enormous implications for the world as a whole. Meeting the challenges they pose is likely to require as firm and lengthy a United States national commitment as did the challenge of defeating the "—isms" of the twentiethth century.