TERRORISM at the international level has become a major problem. The United Nations, concerned at the increase in acts of international terrorism, which endanger the lives and well-being of individuals as well as the peace and security of all states has adopted a number of resolutions and conventions to fight it.

In these resolutions and conventions, the United Nations has been emphasizing the need for intensifying the fight against terrorism at the national and international level and to strengthen international co-operation on the basis of the principles of the UN Charter and the norms of international law.

However, there is a growing feeling throughout the world that, unless the root causes of terrorism are identified and addressed the fight against terrorism cannot be won.

The UN General Assembly’s resolution adopted on December 9, 1991, on measures to eliminate international terrorism. Inter alia, stated that nothing in the present resolution could, in any way, prejudice the right of self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, particularly under the colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination.

It is clear from this resolution that the struggle for emancipation cannot be equated with terrorism and the concept of territorial integrity cannot be invoked to counter the principle of self-determination.

The principle of self-determination and the maintenance of international peace and security are inseparable. Self-determination is also considered as a means to further the development of friendly relations among states and to strengthen universal peace.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, was yet another significant step towards the development of international human rights protection. The two international covenants adopted by the United Nations in furtherance of the Declaration of Human Rights and the three conventions of human rights, adopted separately by Europe, America and the African countries, also recognize the right of self-determination as an inalienable right of man.

The sanctity of the right of self-determination has also been upheld by the International Court of Justice on a number of occasions. Thus, the right of self-determination, as enshrined in the UN Charter, has now become the most important objective of the United Nations and its defence is binding on all its members. For more than fifty years the people of Jammu and Kashmir have waited in vain to exercise their right of self-determination. The denial of this right, in flagrant violation of the UN Security Council resolutions, is an irrefutable evidence of India’s contempt for human values and disdain for the United Nations.

The massive violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people, including murder, rape, torture, custodial killings, imprisonment without trial, arson and economic destruction, amount to the genocide of the Kashmiri people. India is committing all these atrocities under the guise of ‘counter-terrorism’.

Similarly, the Kashmiris who are struggling for their liberation cannot be branded as ‘separatists’ either. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory, as declared by the United Nations, which means that the inhabitants of that state, currently under the illegal occupation of India, are not Indian subjects by any definition. The Kashmiris are struggling for their legitimate cause and cannot be accused of undermining India’s territorial integrity.

Regrettably, in the aftermath of the September 11 carnage in the United States, much to the consternation of the Muslim World, a sinister campaign has been launched by some countries, inimical to the Muslim cause, to equate Islam with terrorism, notwithstanding the fact that in many parts of the world, the fundamental rights of the Muslims are being denied. Kashmir, Palestine, Kosovo and Chechnya are some of the glaring examples of the deprivation of human rights.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

IN Pakistan, people have varying assessment of the events in Afghanistan. But diversity of view would pose no problem if the country was united on an inspiring national objective, comprising a package of achievable goals in fields of science and technology, education and industry, welfarism and agriculture.

With the fall of Kabul the war in Afghanistan, has entered a new phase. The triumphant entry of the Taliban some years back has completed a full circle, and now the Northern Alliance is back. This war, in many ways, has special features. The attack is mainly aerial, but what is most important, the victor is least inclined to occupy the vanquished country. No one covets the land mass of Afghanistan. Terrorism and its networks have of course to be rooted out, but the menacing spectre once challenged, is fast disappearing.

Riding on the crest of international sympathy and UN support the US-led coalition forces launched the bombing on Afghanistan and the Taliban bubble started bursting within a month. As world leaders converged in Washington for the UN moot and meeting an elated President Bush, the Northern Alliance entered Kabul on Nov 7. The spanner has far-reaching consequences. The US call for Kabul remaining an open city was flouted. Pakistan was faced with a new situation.

Prior to the fall of Kabul a confident President Musharraf declared that he will remain president beyond the date fixed for the restoration of democracy. Vajpayee arrived in Washington after a pow-vow with Putin. US coalition partners: Russia, India and Iran had acquired an important bargaining chip.

The jig-saw puzzle of the regional configuration has been altered. Neighbouring countries may not have been targets of Taliban terrorism but they were victims of the export of Taliban fundamentalism. The Central Asian republics, China and India are all secular states. Iran has a different religious orientation.

Moreover, it is in the midst of a transition from the rule by clerics to the rule by the masses. Pakistan is a ‘moderate Muslim state’ notwithstanding its recognition of the Taliban regime. It joined the international coalition as an active member and contributed its bit to the anti-terrorist cause. The 90 per cent silent majority opposes terrorism and fundamentalism.

The immediate need in Afghanistan is peace and a modicum of order so that life may return to normal and the refugees start trekking back. An intermediate level strategy is required for reconstruction, especially for providing an infrastructure.

In the long term a Marshall Plan type of strategy will be required to reconstruct Afghanistan. A tribal society where every family is self-sufficient in material goods, where no taxes are paid and no services expected, where every individual is his own soldier, policeman, prosecutor, judge etc. is an anomaly in the highly complex industrialized world.

The mainstream political parties of Pakistan may have their differences with the military dispensation, but on the issue of joining the anti-terrorist coalition they have offered unconditional support to the government.

The events in Afghanistan have altered the prevailing situation in Pakistan and the region. Pakistan has to do much soul-searching and come up with policies in harmony with its location and environment. If the coalition bombing catapulted it in the mainstream of nations, the fall of Kabul is redrawing the regional configuration.

THE state of Afghanistan did not exist as a separate political entity before the 18th century, but it was through a process of political and religious evolution, arising out of the conflict of interests between Mughal India, the Safavid Empire of Persia and the Uzbek Khanates of Trans-Oxiana that made the Afghans emerge as a political force.

The mystery shrouding the obscure Afghan socio-political fabric could not be deciphered unless insight into its ethnic and demographic complexities, which as well holds a key to the success of Loya Jirga, now considered as the last prescription of enduring peace and political stability in Afghanistan. Afghans rank top in population with 47 per cent majority, Pushto as their language and Sunni being their sect.

They are concentrated in the oases of eastern Afghanistan and the Helmand, and the Arghandab valleys. The major tribes are the Ghiljai and the Durrani. The Ghiljais are a formidable tribe and are both feared and respected by their neighbours, and those who come into contact with them.

The British during the First Anglo-Afghan war had to pay a heavy price when they thought that they could buy the Ghiljai loyalty with subsidies. It only ended for them with the loss of Ghazni and the terrible massacre in the Khurd Kabul Pass in 1842. Subsequent British relations with the Ghiljai tribe ceased after this experience.

The British, thereafter, preferred interaction with the Durranis who despite their martial qualities are more inclined to exercise moderation. With the result that they were able to forge a precarious cohesion among the diverse Pushto speaking tribes and the non-Pakhtun races through tactful and diplomatic handling rather than exercising coercion, undue force or intrusive manoeuvres something which is always outrightly rejected by the tribal Afghan society.

Tajik, another important segment with 26 per cent of the total Afghan population are predominantly Sunni with Dari (Farsi) as their language. A sedentary race, living in the highlands along the southern slopes of the Hindukush range subsisting on agriculture. They are excellent horticulturists, artisans and farmers, they tend to form the urban elite of all the major population centres in Afghanistan.

Basically they are a mild-tempered but a courageous people, who have an ancient tradition of culture and education extending to pre-Islamic times. They have always looked down on Afghans as boors, and consider themselves the custodians of the ancient Aryan civilization of the region. Majority of the literate and intellectuals in Afghanistan are from the Tajik community.

Hazaras constitutes 12 per cent of the population with Dari (Farsi) as their language and Shiaism as their sect. By origin, the Hazaras are Mongols. They claim to be the descendants of the trapped Mongol “Tuman” or formations who had garrisoned Afghanistan during the period of the Ilkhans. However, the complexity of the Hazaras is their division in the two major sects of Shias and Sunnis and call themselves Aimaqs while the tribes in the central massif of the Afghan highlands are orthodox Shias.

Uzbeks and the Turcomans together form 8 per cent of the population are the major race living between the river Oxus and the Hindukush. The Uzbeks tend to predominate in the region. The Turcomans are mainly refugees who fled before the Czarist armies until the 19th century and later during the war after October Revolution of 1917. They are a very steady and disciplined people unlike the volatile Afghans. But since their population was comparatively less, as the bulk of the Turkic races live across the Oxus in the Russian Turkistan, the Uzbeks and the Turcomans were never able to play a major role in Afghan politics except in the recent past owing to increasing trans-frontier support lent to the Uzbeks forces under their warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Historically, the Uzbeks were confined to their provinces in the north, living a life of their own in splendid isolation. The recent high profile role by the Uzbeks is likely to have its own ramifications with its trans-frontier cultural and political affinities. Much would depend on how, their political existence is stabilized with military aid and the time span for such a life support measures from across the border is another serious threat to the already volatile situation well in advance of the Loya Jirga. Such dissension if backed from across the border will pose a serious threat and is capable of endangering the geographic stability of Afghanistan in particular and the South East Asian general.

Other races in Afghanistan include Nuristanis and the Balochs who together form 7 per cent of the population. The Nuristanis are the descendants of some forgotten Aryan people cut off from the world, in their inaccessible valleys in the eastern arm of the Hindukush. Amir Abdur Rehman Khan forced their conversion to Islam in the later part of the 9th century. He pre-empted the British, who were thinking of sending Christian missionaries to proselytize among these fair skinned Eurasian people. The Baloch are confined to the desert zone, south of the Helmand River, and are a spill over of the race from Balochistan. They are more in number than the Nuristanis but they have never played any important role in Afghan politics.

Amir Dost Mohammed Khan is remembered as the Amir-i-Kabir (The Great Amir). He consolidated his power by establishing familial links with all the major Pakhtun tribes and the other races in Afghanistan. He was a very broad-minded man who had no class or racial prejudices. His policy continued after him, with the result the ruling family of Afghanistan, the Mohammadzais, were linked to all the foremost Tajik, Hazara, Nuristani, and the Uzbek families other than their relationships with the major Pakhtun tribes of the country.

In other words almost everyone could claim a relationship, or at least close ties, with the Muhammadzais. It was a vast and complex exercise of establishing blood links, which probably had never been done before in the region lying between the Sulaiman Range and the River Oxus.

The Muhammadzais of Kabul even lost their language, Pushto, because a majority of them had non-Afghan mothers. By the turn of the century the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and the Nuristanis all began to call themselves “Afghans” and became the part of a “nation”. The later Muhammadzai ruler, Zahir Shah, even went to the extent of discouraging the royalty, and the noble Barakzai families from attaining influential positions in the Government. This had its own unfortunate backlash for the royal family.

By opening the door to the corridors of power to commoners on a basis of some crude form of meritocracy, those deserving Barakzais who could have strengthened the hands of the king were excluded by this rather liberal and idealistic attitude had there been no external influence at work in the social and political fabric of Afghanistan, instituted by no one less than the father of the nation, Ahmed Shah Durrani would have evolved from a tribal democracy of traditional respect and understanding between the chieftain families into a true national democracy. But this was unfortunately not to be in the Afghan case because of the aggressive and intrusive foreign manoeuvring which has not ceased till date.

The Durranis are divided into two main branches, the Zirak and the Panjpia. The Zirak branch of the Durranis was dominated by the Popalzai of which origin is the Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, who has an uphill task to prove his mantle in the wake of the surrender by Pakhtun dominated Taliban forces in Kandahar. Much would depend on Hamid Karzai’s policy of reconciliation and appeasement than vindictive measures which might be expected from him by his behind the stage benefactors. Ahmed Shah was a scion of the chieftain family (Sadozaa) of that clan.

‘Piryan’ in Pushto with English translation of ghost is the current code word used in Pushtu speaking parts of Afghanistan for foreign intelligence operatives. Ghosts are found in horror stories and so goes the Afghan history. The invisibility and destructive nature of this evil influence could be a logic behind the usage of this terminology. The recent death of a CIA agent in Mazar-i-Sharif attaches much significance to this terminology of the foreign power dependence on clandestine methods to influence Afghan affairs which in fact has been so far the recipe of disaster for Afghanistan.

After the Kingdom of Afghanistan emerged in 1747 under Ahmed Shah Durrani, the ghost of foreign spirits seems to haunt the Afghans till this day. The history of this unfortunate state seems replete with foreign imposed conflicts, tragedies and wars. The First Afghan war, the second Afghan war, the third Afghan war and now the fourth Afghan war.

The Afghan story at the CIA closed on the eve of Soviet withdrawal. No rehabilitation of handicapped war victims or haven for orphans, destitutes and widows. No war heroes or solemn ceremony in honour of the unknown soldiers who died for an unknown cause at least not for their own. Humanity seems to have gone into slumber. Chaos, internal conflicts and anarchy began to reign Afghanistan. Thousands more were to die while the world walked away leaving the innocent and hapless Afghans in the lurch.

The writer is King Zahir Shah’s cousin and a defence analyst.