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UNITED NATIONS: Armed with a UN blueprint, the international community is rushing to forge a political strategy for Afghanistan but the task is complicated by rampant self-interest and rivalries.
Before the Sept 11 attacks on the United States provoked war and cataclysm in Afghanistan, the Central Asian country was ignored by most of the world.
Now that American-backed Northern Alliance rebels have seized the capital Kabul and set Taliban rulers on the run, countries with a vested interest in the final outcome in Afghanistan are once again jockeying for position.
One telling measure is UN plans to add 13 more members to a working group of eight states — six Afghan neighbours plus the United States and Russia — which pre-Sept 11 pursued a desultory peace effort in Afghanistan.
“Many countries want a role in Afghanistan because they are interested in Afghanistan — not because they want to serve Afghanistan’s interests but because they want to serve their own interests,” an Indian official said this week.
However, competitors who engage in a new “great game” in Central Asia will find that “Afghanistan is an indigestible piece of meat,” said the official who spoke anonymously.
Washington, which undertook military action in Afghanistan to wipe out militants blamed for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, had hoped for better control over events.
Initial plans envisioned an internationally endorsed Afghan supreme council broadly representing various factions that would act as a transition government and take possession of Kabul and other cities as the Taliban was defeated.
But despite President George W. Bush’s urging to hold back, the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul, alarming Pakistan which fears a hostile government on its eastern border.
SETBACK FOR PAKISTAN: “At this moment, the Pakistanis are the biggest losers,” said T. Kumar, a South Asia expert with Amnesty International.
Pakistan’s suspicions are well-founded. The rebel alliance has been backed by Iran, Russia and India, Islamabad’s nuclear rival, in its struggle against the Taliban.
Pakistan supported the Taliban from its creation in the mid-1990s until Islamabad joined the US-led anti-terrorism coalition after the Sept 11 attacks.
In UN speeches last week, world leaders, including Musharraf, stressed that for any Afghan political settlement to be successful it must be home-grown and not imposed.
Beyond taking Kabul, the Northern Alliance has shown other signs of going its own way. It was making military gains in the southern part of the country, insisting a meeting on future political arrangements be held in Kabul and preparing for the return to the capital of its exiled leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Rabbani’s return could further embolden the alliance since he was recognized by the United Nations as Afghanistan’s president when the Taliban controlled 90 per cent of the country.
He has rejected a post-war political role for the Taliban and said former Afghan King Zahir Shah could only return to Kabul as an ordinary citizen.
Some UN diplomats on Wednesday dismissed Rabbani as irrelevant given current dramatically changed circumstances.
Still, Kumar said, “Last week the Northern Alliance was willing to listen to a lot of players but this week they will be a lot more likely to try and dictate terms.”
OTHER PLAYERS: Beyond Pakistan, Iran is a major player in Afghanistan, supporting the Shia Hazara minority in the majority Sunni country. So is Russia, which lost an Afghan war in the 1980s.
Underscoring the proxy war nature of Afghanistan’s conflict over two decades, several countries have competing favourite Afghan leaders, with Russia backing Rabbani; Iran, military commander Ismail Khan, a former Rabbani ally whose forces took the western city of Herat on Monday; and Turkey, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose forces took Mazar-i-sharif in the north.
For the moment, Pakistan and Iran seem to be seeking common ground.
Deep animosity between the two states results from the 1998 massacre of Iranian diplomats by the then-Pakistan backed Taliban in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Other countries also assert an interest in Afghanistan.
These include NATO ally Turkey which sees itself as a model of a modern secular Muslim state and has offered peacekeepers to Afghanistan, Pakistan ally China and Saudi Arabia, whose money and brand of Islamic militancy fuelled the Taliban.
In the search for a stable Afghan political future the key question’s is whether these countries are going to “demand a piece of the pie,” Kumar said.
“If all the countries stick to the first principle then it will be easier to find a solution than if they insist on actually advancing their interests,” he said. —Reuters
