Military

DATE=10/10/2001

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-00998

TITLE=ON THE LINE: THE PLIGHT OF AFGHANISTAN

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr: On the Line a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "The Plight of Afghanistan" Here is your host, Robert Reilly.

Host: Hello and Welcome to On the Line.

On October 7th, the United States and Britain began a series of air strikes against training camps of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and military positions of Afghanistan's ruling Taleban. Al-Qaida is being targeted because of its complicity in the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington -- among many other acts of terrorism. Afghanistan's Taleban regime is being targeted because it has sheltered and protected bin Laden. But the United States believes that the future of Afghanistan is critical to the stability of the entire region. And President George W. Bush has made it clear that this is not a war against the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. In fact, the military strikes have been accompanied by massive air drops of food and medicine to aid the Afghan people.

Joining me today to discuss the plight of Afghanistan are three experts. T. Kumar is advocacy director for Asia for Amnesty International. Patricia Gossman is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Ms. Gossman conducted research inside Afghanistan funded by the U.S. Institute of Peace. And Khalid Duran is a former chairman of the Solidarity Committee for the Afghan People, and he is the editor of Trans-Islam magazine. Welcome to the program.

T. Kumar, how would you describe the plight of the Afghan people today, as they face both these military strikes and the prospect of an Afghanistan without the Taleban?

Kumar: First of all, the plight of the Afghan people today is not different from the plight of Afghans before the 11th of [September]. Almost five-million people have fled the Russian invasion and the continued war after that, and have been living in refugee camps for the last twenty years or so.

Host: In Pakistan and Iran.

Kumar: In Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan at the moment has about two million. Iran has about a million and a half. And almost half a million children were killed during that time, and thousands and thousands of children died not directly due to shooting or anything -- but related to the war, like sickness, land mines, and the rest of it. Women were treated like spoils of war -- before the Taleban arrival, by the way -- they were abducted, raped, abused by everyone. And when the Taleban came, obviously, they shut down the schools, did not allow them to go to work, and enforced the dress code. So for an Afghan, for an average Afghan, suffering is something that has become a way of life for the last two decades. So unless the root cause of the suffering is being addressed, and a meaningful life [given] to Afghans per se, Afghan population, it's not going to end any suffering for them. That's my assessment.

Host: Patricia Gossman, what would be your answer to the question of what is the root cause of that suffering?

Gossman: I think Mr. Kumar gets to some of the issues that I think are of primary importance now, which is how do you address the crisis of impunity in Afghanistan. We look at twenty-three years of war, and war crimes committed by every faction that's been involved in the fighting, and nothing has been done at the international level to hold any of these characters to account. I think the other thing we really have to look at right now is what's going to happen following the military engagement. Afghans in the country are expressing grave concerns about what will follow the Taleban. I think it seems clear that the U.S. is intent on getting rid of the Taleban.

Host: Do you think that's the right thing to do?

Gossman: Well, I don't know whether it's the right thing to do or not. I think the question should be, what's going to follow? Right now all we have is an indication that the U.S. is supporting the Northern Alliance, also more properly known as the United Front. But no consideration seems to be given -- or not as much consideration -- to what the political strategy here really is going to be, what kind of government will follow. If it is a regime that is just made up of the same factions fighting for power in the country, I think we will be back to the days of 1992, 1995, which saw the destruction of a third of Kabul and tens of thousands of civilians killed as these factions fought each other for power. Right now there are many Afghans in the country who would like to see some other process put in place, a transitional mechanism by which more Afghans could participate and there could be a greater consensus developed about what kind of government should follow. And that I think is where the energy needs to be, and that's where the United Nations should be playing a role, and the U.S. should be supporting the U-N in taking that role.

Host: And Khalid Duran.

Duran: Well, people have a very distorted image of what really happened in Afghanistan, unfortunately. You see, in '78 the coup took place, the pro-Soviet coup, and just a few months later resistance started. Then in '79 that became very strong. But that resistance was not the resistance that we later on had, it was not what we have now with the Taleban, it was not what we have with the Northern Alliance. It was something very different. It was when nationalist Afghans -- some even were leftist but anti-Soviet, there were some pro-Chinese elements and so on -- but it was overall nationalist Afghan resistance. That was soon crushed in a crossfire between, on the one hand, what you call a Communist, pro-Soviet regime and with its Russian advisers already then and before the Russian invasion, and on the other hand, people that were sent in from Pakistan, later on also from Iran: Islamists who were previously totally unimportant in Afghanistan. Afghans nowadays often say, we don't want any of this, neither Communists nor Islamists -- because, you see, Islamism is something different from the traditional religion of Islam. Pakistan is in a sense the main culprit, because it wanted simply to take over Afghanistan, and they sent in these masses of Pakistan-trained and Pakistan-armed Islamists in their pay, who later on took over as Mujahedin from the Communist government, and then created that havoc that both of you have talked about -- and I'm glad you mentioned it -- the sale of women for example, tens of thousands of Afghan women sold to the other countries. The Taleban later on were another creation by Pakistan, because when Pakistan saw that with the first set of Islamists it didn't work, they sent in a second set: those are the Taleban.

Host: Let me ask if indeed, T. Kumar, that is the case, that the Islamist radical ideology of the Taleban is alien to the traditional Islamic practices in Afghanistan? Is that true?

Kumar: Yes, I will say it's true. The majority of Afghans are not extreme in their views.

Host: Nonetheless, the Taleban was welcomed at the time because it stopped the civil strife.

Kumar: Yes, the bottom line was, it was anarchy at that time. Thugs were ruling the country, basically. Every half a mile was controlled by one warlord. So in a nutshell they were looking for some savior to come, and Taleban was the first force in Kandahar, the city they captured. And what happened afterwards, immediately after they captured Kandahar, was where things started to change. Pakistan got involved, and then it got murkier.

Gossman: Well I think we need a little more nuanced view of the Taleban, because it's not a monolithic entity, and it's not an entity that hasn't changed over time. When the Taleban first emerged -- and while certainly Pakistan has been crucial to the success of the Taleban, I don't think it's quite accurate to say they were a creation of Pakistan. They have their roots -- really you have to see the thing as a regional phenomenon -- they have the roots in, obviously emerged from the refugee camps and the madrassas of Pakistan, and there are many entities now in Pakistan which support the Taleban, quite apart from the government. The links between the two run very deep. And when the Taleban first emerged in '94, their stronghold was in the southern Pashtun areas around Kandahar and so on, and the kind of practices that they espoused had some credibility or legitimacy in those areas. But over time, as they consolidated their control in the rest of the country, and confronted minority groups who did not share their views, and cosmopolitan areas at Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, those practices and their need to repress the local population in order to consolidate their control became more evident, as did, over time, the growing influence of the foreign element of the Arab fighters. And that has actually divided the Taleban itself. There are divisions that have become much more obvious in the past year within the Taleban, over some of its practices and the influence that Osama bin Laden and other Arabs have had in directing policy. The destruction of the Buddhist statues is one example, where there were great disagreements within the Taleban about going ahead with that.

Host: And some Taleban leaders have defected, have they not?

Gossman: That's right, and I think now deals are sort of being negotiated among those who might see that they also want to defect in the coming weeks, days or weeks.

Host: Let me just take a moment to remind our audience that this is On the Line and I'm Robert Reilly. This week we are discussing the plight of Afghanistan with T. Kumar from Amnesty International, Patricia Gossman of Georgetown University, and Khalid Duran from Trans-Islam magazine. Please, Mr. Kumar.

Kumar: Yes, I mean, Pakistan's involvement is something we can't underestimate -- the logistical support, military support, intelligence, as well as anything else you want.

Host: But it seems to me that we're facing two questions here. One is the internal composition of the various ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, and can they, given the opportunity, actually reconcile in such a way that there can be a unified, effective government in Afghanistan? That's the number one question. The number two question is, the surrounding countries have their own interests, as you've mentioned most primarily Pakistan, but we haven't talked about Russia, or Iran, or India, or Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. And to what extent is it in their interest to finally see a peaceful, unified, civilized Afghanistan? So two big questions for all of you.

Duran: I think it's related, you know, to what Professor Gossman just mentioned. You see, I didn't want to make it too complicated for the listeners. I mean in fact the Taleban composition is even more complex than you described, because when they got to power, so many forces joined them in the initial stage that it's now a real big hotchpotch. As a matter of fact, many members of the Soviet Communist regime joined them, because for them that was a way of survival, particularly, and then also again what you just mentioned, the ethnic factor. The Communists in Afghanistan were split ethnically into one faction called Parcham, the northerners more, and Khalq, the southerners, the Pashtun. And most of those Khalqis then joined the Taleban, but again I must also point out, that was also largely because of signals from Pakistan, because some of those had actually found refuge in Pakistan, and the Pakistanis then said, okay you are trained army people, you are officers, you are pilots, and so on -- you join the Taleban. And the Taleban had to accept them, because Pakistan said so. We have to be aware of the fact that a former chief of the Pakistan military intelligence used even to go around the country and brag about himself, Naseer Babar, himself having created the Taleban, I mean the core of the Taleban. Of course now the whole thing has changed. Suddenly it has become more and more often ethnic factors: certain Pashtun tribes -- not all the Pashtun again -- at this moment already, a large chunk of Afghanistan in the south and southwest, quite close to the Taleban center, Kandahar, has become practically independent. There has been an uprising and people have set up something like a little republic of their own, which is about to expand. The question is then, what will happen when they get in the way of the Northern Alliance.

Host: We've gotten into many of the subtleties of what divides the peoples of Afghanistan. What can possibly unite them?

Host: Is it King Zahir Shah?

Kumar: The king is one option, but we have to be mindful that the king was away for more than thirty years.

Host: Maybe that's an advantage.

Kumar: Well, that also is a disadvantage, because he was not active. He did not go to refugee camps, he did not meet people there. The Loya Jirga process started only about three years ago. He just got active, yes. But having said that, there is no one among the Pashtuns. That's the key now. Northern Alliance, I mean whoever we call it, it's different ethnic groups and religious groups. They are basically sticking together because of Taleban: the enemy's enemy is my friend. The minute the Taleban collapses you will see these guys fighting among themselves. But given that they need one Pashtun who can be a figure -- you know, General Abdul Haq is there, but I don't think they can rally the people around. So at least for name's sake they need someone. That's why the king is important.

Gossman: I'd like to stress again -- I think you're exactly right I've heard also about a kind of resistance, almost autonomous groups claiming the area now in southern Afghanistan. And I think what needs to happen to make this work, and so that the country doesn't dissolve again into chaos, is while Zahir Shah can play a certain role possibly, because there does seem to be a certain genuine affection for him -- even though there was a certain amount of corruption in his rule as well -- but I don't think that the Rome process by itself is sufficient. It does involve a lot of Afghan exiles who have certain technical skills and certain links with other groups in Afghanistan, but many more groups in Afghanistan now want to play a role in what happens next, want to be part of the next government or have a say. And I think that is why -- and I have heard from a number of sources -- that they see a role for the U-N in sort of coordinating this, bringing this together, at least supervising in some way a transitional process. If you do not have that, I think there is every reason to fear that the country will then fall into a kind of real battleground between these various factions vying for power.

Host: Do you agree with that, Khalid Duran?

Duran: Yes, absolutely. I would like also to point out that there's a huge Afghan expatriate community in Europe and here in the United States, and it's a most admirable community. For example, in Germany alone you have more than two-hundred Afghan medical doctors in very leading positions. And most of them did not run away because they didn't want to serve the people, but because they were chased away by the Islamists -- they were not on the party line, and they had to run, because otherwise they would have been liquidated by the Islamist Hezbe-Islamia of Gulbudin Hekmatyar, an Islamist body. So, if some of these people can be made to go back to Afghanistan, this country has a good future. I mean, it's a really fantastic elite.

Host: But do you agree that the capabilities of the U-N, and the respect in which it may be held by the various groups inside Afghanistan, is sufficient to pull something like this off?

Kumar: I mean, the U-N was conducting this six-plus-two process.

Host: The what?

Kumar: Six-plus-two, that's being called six-plus-two: six neighboring countries, including China, because China is one of the. . . .

Host: Has a border, yes.

Kumar: Plus the U.S. and Russia. For the last I think about four or five years, they have been trying to bring these people together because they understood that all these six countries have some interest there, which is true. As for Russia and the U.S., obviously two major powers that were involved there in the Cold War. But it was dragging on and on and on. So, we have to, there is no other body other than U-N we can think of.

Gossman: But now, you know, Lakhdar Brahimi has been reappointed as the special representative, and certainly someone. . . .

Host: Special representative of?

Gossman: Of the [U-N] Secretary General, on Afghanistan. And he is going to have within his brief both the political and the humanitarian, and also of course human rights. And I think there is hope that that, the force of his own personality and his influence, could help bring this together. It does need member support, member-state support. I mean this is where the U.S. could play a role in giving support to such a process. And I'd like to bring up again the regional factor. Obviously all the bordering countries have a very deep interest in seeing what happens in Afghanistan. If this could be combined -- and this is what's being discussed now -- with a major reconstruction package, there would be, there should be seen an interest in these countries in a strong stable economy that would be region-wide. They have an interest, Pakistan certainly has an interest, in trade and better economic ties to central Asia. There could be good incentives for all of these countries to see, to align themselves with a process to establish a more peaceful Afghanistan.

Host: Do you agree with that, that the interests of the countries around Afghanistan can be reconciled to the point that they would all get on board?

Kumar: I mean, the point is, we're actually talking.

Host: Russia, Iran, Pakistan.

Kumar: We are actually talking the premise that the military strikes are going to succeed peacefully, and the U.S. and Britain are going to withdraw, everything is okay, let's sit and see who is going to be there. That as a prospect is extremely dim according to a different analysis. I mean, I am not pessimistic, but I am saying that exit strategy, we don't know the exit strategy for the U.S. and Britain -- when are they going to leave. But there is one other element that we have to take into consideration: the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They, along with the U-N, can play a role. Because, what was said and done -- we may like it or not -- the whole issue of Islam has been brought into the Afghan conflict now. It was brought in not now, by the way; it was brought in during the Russian invasion. Jihadic forces were created at that time by General Haq in Pakistan. Of course the U.S. was supporting that. That's when the whole jihadic forces were brought in. Now it is more than Afghanistan. It has spread worldwide, so all the Muslim countries under the leadership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference should take an active role, along with the U-N. They are meeting next week, actually, or this week they are meeting.

Host: We just have a few closing moments. What do you think about the United States response to the humanitarian crisis -- that we're already giving one-hundred seventy-four million dollars. Last week President Bush announced an additional three-hundred twenty million. In addition, these air drops are taking place, as we speak, of additional food packets to these people who are in such dire straits, which seems to indicate a very serious commitment on the part of the United States, long term, toward some kind of restitution for these people -- not restitution but help that will allow them to get back on their feet.

Gossman: Well, there's no way to solve the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan unless you address the political crisis. Until there is a stable government in Afghanistan, you're going to continue to have a humanitarian crisis. So, no matter how much -- I mean, obviously we need to see as much funding as possible because we are in the throes of a very serious crisis now -- but we must begin to think long term. The only way to stop the suffering and to create a more stable economy is to think more strategically in terms of a political process that can involve the greatest number of Afghans. Otherwise, we're going to be talking about these same things for the next decade.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have this week. I'd like to thank our guests -- T. Kumar from Amnesty International; Patricia Gossman from Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; and Khalid Duran, from Trans-Islam magazine -- for joining me to discuss the plight of Afghanistan. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line.