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WASHINGTON, Feb 21: A classified CIA report warns that Afghanistan could fall into violent chaos if measures are not taken to restrain the power struggle among rival warlords and control ethnic tensions, The New York Times said on Thursday.
While the Central Intelligence Agency concludes that the danger of a civil war in Afghanistan is not immediate, it warns that the “seeds of a civil conflict” are still present, a senior US official said.
“The report points out that there are tensions between the central and regional authorities and competitions for power within the regions,” a senior official said.
“The basic message is that we can’t be complacent. There is a medium-term potential for a renewal of civil conflict and problems out there that need to be addressed,” said the official quoted by The New York Times.
The report comes amid US plans to build an army and national police force in Afghanistan, which could be effective in controlling internal tensions but which US officials believe will take many months to complete.
“If it takes six months or more than a year to create a single army, what do we do in the meantime to deter war among the warlords?” a senior official said.
The official said several options were being considered to stabilize Afghanistan in the meantime.
These options include expanding the existing security force, asking allied nations to deploy security troops in several Afghan cities, expand the role of the US security forces to deter conflicts among rival warlords, or station international observers in Afghan cities to encourage peaceful resolution of local conflicts.
PARTITION, OCCUPATION: Afghanistan risks being plunged back into war and will consequently disintegrate if Afghans do not rally behind the UN-sponsored interim government, an exiled Afghan politician warned Thursday.
“The present administration should be assisted. The other option is fighting which I am afraid would lead to the disememberment of the country,” Qareeb-ur-Rahman Saeed, a former prime ministry spokesman, told AFP from Norway.
“The Russians say they have interests in Afghanistan’s northern areas, the Pakistanis claim they need a strategic depth in Afghan Pakhtoon-inhabited southern regions while Iranians are allegedly trying to win over Ismael Khan (in the west),” he said.
Saeed, a prominent figure in the Afghan anti-Soviet 1979-1989 resistance, warned that foreign security forces could manipulate security concerns into maintaining a long-term presence in the country.
He said soon after the murder of Afghan civil aviation and tourism minister Abdul Rahman last week at Kabul airport, there was talk of deploying up to 30,000 foreign troops throughout Afghanistan.
“In case the security deteriorates, they (the foreigners) will be more involved and will try to fish in the troubled water,” he said.
“Various forces have come and occupied Afghanistan under different names,” he said, adding that the only way to end their presence in Afghanistan was “to assist the present administration.”
The International Assistance Security Force (ISAF) was deployed here days before interim leader Hamid Karzai’s government took over in December, but its strength is expected to peak at around 4,500 troops later this month.
Saeed warned that foreign powers would soon find Afghanistan to be a “headache” if they intended staying put, long-term.
“It will be a headache as the problems of the past several days showed and there will be resistance against it and there will eventually be a foreign backing to this resistance,” he predicted, inissting that Afghans were capable of ensuring their own security.
He said that the foreign forces will have no excuse to stay when the regime is “stable and there is a parliament chosen through fair and free elections”.
British troops, part of the ISAF contingents, came under fire and returned fire Wednesday night in Kabul.
Last week they said they killed one Afghan man and wounded five other people in a western suburb when they came under fire Saturday for the first time since their deployment in Kabul.
But the family of the dead man has contested saying no shots were fired at the British troops and 19-year-old Hamayon Yaqob was killed as he drove his pregnant sister-in-law to hospital.
A former member of Afghanistan’s Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was granted political asylum Normay in 2000, Saeed said his comments were personal.
Hekmatyar, currently living in exile Iran, sees Karzai administration as a foreign puppet.
“Afghans were punished for an uncommitted guilt,” Saeed said, adding that two to three times more “innocent Afghans were killed in the US bombardement of Afghanistan than those in the sad September 11 attacks”.—AFP
