CIAO DATE: 01/03

Harmonizing Agendas in Afghanistan

Mandavi Mehta and Teresita C. Schaffer

The South Asia Monitor
Number 46
May 1, 2002

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

 

The Bonn Agreement gave Afghanistan an ambitious timetable for “promoting national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country.” Deepening rivalries among local leaders in a politically fractious and war ravaged country threaten its success. Afghanistan’s neighbors can either help or hinder this process, and their choices will affect the strategic balance of power in the region, and the future stability of Afghanistan. The United States needs to support expanded peacekeeping operations outside Kabul and encourage active regional coordination on Afghan policy.

The legacy of the Soviet invasion: When Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government fell in 1992, both internal and external rivalries continued to pull the country apart. A government led by ethnic Tajik commander Burhanuddin Rabbani never resolved the bitter rivalry among warlords who had accumulated significant armies during 10 years of war against the Soviets. The Taliban moved into the power vacuum two years later, enjoying financial and military help from Pakistan, and receiving the hopes of war-weary Afghans that this would restore peace after years of civil war. The Taliban, uncharacteristically for Afghanistan, were an entirely Afghan group in a country of astonishing ethnic diversity.

The United States largely withdrew from active interest in Afghanistan, but Pakistan remained deeply involved with the Taliban, pursuing its dream of an Afghan government beholden to Pakistan and of strategic depth on its western border. Russia and India provided some support to the largely Uzbek and Tajik Northern Alliance, which continued to oppose the Taliban. Iran came close to combat with Afghanistan following the murder of a group of Iranian diplomats by the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif in September 1998.

By the late 1990s, Afghanistan had become a haven for terrorists. Groups active in Kashmir were training there, with the covert help of Pakistan’s intelligence services. Extremist groups operating in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan also took sanctuary there. This was the period when Osama bin Laden and his Al- Qaeda organization based themselves in Afghanistan.

The transition process: The demise of the Taliban created a new power vacuum. A month after the Taliban fled Kabul, the key Afghan players and their international supporters signed the Bonn Agreement, which provided for short-term power-sharing and established a timetable for a two-year transitional period.

The interim government will govern for the first six months. Its immediate function is to facilitate the provision and distribution of internal aid in the country, and to set in place a legal framework and judicial system on an interim basis until a constitution is decided on. The interim government’s most important function, however, is to convene a Loya Jirga, a council of tribal leaders, in June. Former king Zahir Shah, who returned to Afghanistan on April 18, is to preside, giving the process legitimacy, but otherwise playing a largely ceremonial role. The Loya Jirga in turn will elect a Transitional Authority to govern until a representative government can be elected. Within two months, the Transitional Authority is supposed to establish a Constitutional Commission, followed within 18 months by a Constitutional Loya Jirga, to adopt a constitution for Afghanistan.

The interim government: The interim chairman, Hamid Karzai, is a Pashtun who broke with the Taliban early on and has a long-standing friendship with former king Zahir Shah. Pashtun representation is otherwise relatively thin, with the dominant presence coming from those who had opposed the Taliban in the Northern Alliance. Other key players include General Mohammed Fahim, Younis Qanooni, and Abdullah Abdullah, who are all ethnic Tajiks from the Northern Alliance.

The chaos and insecurity that afflict most of the country, however, put the interim government in danger. Afghanistan has never had a strong central government. Regional leaders, some of them represented in the government, have resumed their roles as warlords since the Taliban fell. They are accustomed to acting with impunity, and drug and arms trafficking is a lucrative business for many. They are resorting to traditional tactics like holding up travelers on Afghanistan’s few major roads, in an effort to establish their primacy over both the central government and rivals for local power.

With the Afghan national army currently in tatters, the interim government has less military force at its command than its internal rivals. In these conditions, bringing about internal distribution of reconstruction aid, let alone commanding enough respect to discourage fighting within the country is almost impossible. This explains the urgent requests of the interim government and, more recently, Pakistan for an expansion of the size and mandate of the United Nations-authorized International Security Assistance Force, currently limited to 5,000 troops in Kabul.

Best-case scenario and challenges: Under these tough constraints, the best near-term scenario is the successful convening of the Loya Jirga, which then elects a transitional authority that is broadly similar to the present interim government, but with a greater mandate and legitimacy. Local rivalries will continue to be a major factor, however, and the transitional authority will continue to face a major security challenge. Its task will become much more manageable if U.S. military operations against terrorist groups have become localized by then, so that reconstruction efforts can begin. Power will remain diffused and Afghanistan will remain a weak state for the foreseeable future. The goal for the central government is not to exercise power throughout the country, but to persuade holders of local power that peace will serve them better than fighting and sustaining a drug economy.

In the near term, however, the government will lack the military force to do this by displaying its power. Its only tool is foreign aid. This will be effective, however, only if the aid is effectively distributed around the country, and if the central government is able to play some role in this process.

A regional issue: The Central Asian republics, India, Iran, China, Russia, the United States, and Pakistan all have a stake in a peaceful and stable Afghanistan that does not infuse instability and violence beyond its borders. They can achieve this goal, however, only if they are prepared to make stability their top priority, and eschew some of the ambitious goals for influence in Afghanistan that have put them at odds in the past. The faster some degree of security returns, the better will be the chances that Afghanistan’s neighbors continue to back the governments established in the Bonn process. Conversely, if the chaos deepens, several countries will be tempted to try to help their traditional friends in Afghanistan achieve a dominant position at the expense of the others.

Pakistan has more to gain from stability in Afghanistan than any of its neighbors. However, the end of the Taliban rule was looked on as a strategic debacle for Pakistan. Mutual suspicions run deep. For Pakistan, the interim government still seems dominated by non-Pashtuns friendly to India. Several key members of the Afghan government still speak darkly of having narrowly escaped an “invasion” by Pakistan during the Taliban era. Karzai’s visit to Pakistan was an important effort to begin establishing good relations but Islamabad will closely watch the composition and policies of the next government—and vice versa.

For the Central Asian countries, notably Uzbekistan, a key issue is the role of militant movements such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Although the U.S.-led war has destroyed training camps and disrupted extremist networks that sought refuge in Afghanistan, the danger of these groups resurfacing there are very real. The Central Asian republics will need to address the underlying causes for the growth and popularity of the IMU and the Hizb ut-Tahrir. These challenges will need to be met primarily at a domestic level, but these countries need the continuing support of the international community.

For Russia and China, the demise of Taliban rule represented a welcome reduction in the scope of militant Islam. However, both have mixed feelings about the implications of a longer term U.S. presence in Pakistan and Central Asia. The same is true of Iran and to a lesser extent India. In addition, Iran will look on the role of the predominantly Shi’a Hazaras as an important indicator. India will be looking for signs that militants active in Kashmir are coming back to Afghanistan. Each of these countries is capable of affecting the balance of power within Afghanistan. A relatively successful outcome depends on the willingness of all to put stability ahead of their other goals.

The most important potential tool for stabilizing Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbors is Central Asian energy, which benefits no one unless it can be transported to markets outside the region. U.S. policy opposes building a pipeline through Iran, and has supported building one from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean. China and India are the two fastest-growing energy markets, and both are interested in access to Central Asian gas. A pipeline across Afghanistan into the subcontinent would represent a tremendous opportunity to bring in construction jobs, transit fees, and some energy into Afghanistan. It would also unite its neighbors in a common interest. Once again, the critical prerequisite is security.

Implications for the United States: Afghanistan’s fragile interim government is in danger, and if it breaks up, the resulting chaos is likely to spread northward into Central Asia and eastward into Pakistan, undercutting the success of U.S. operations to date. Beyond the military operations in which U.S. troops are engaged, two elements are critical in staving off this scenario. The first is enhancing security outside Kabul, both in Afghanistan’s other cities and on the roads. The Afghan army will not be able to do the job for at least a couple of years, so in the short term only foreign troops can do this. The United States needs to vigorously support a practical security plan, and to look creatively for ways of ensuring that the security force and the residual military operations stay out of each other’s way.

The other element is an active coordinating process among Afghanistan’s understandably wary neighbors. The United States and India should be participants in this. The objective would be to focus the entire group on the primacy of stabilizing Afghanistan. Each will have to live with a “second-best solution,” because each of their incompatible first choices is a recipe for continuing the regional conflict that has done so much damage around the region and the globe.