KABUL: In a country lacking a postal system, paved roads and a telephone network, the newly empowered authorities in this capital couldn’t exert their influence over the far-flung regions and rebellious warlords even if they tried.
But the patchwork of ethnic fiefdoms that, stitched together, form Afghanistan are beyond the reach of central rule for more reasons than poor logistics. Power-hungry regional kingpins and hidebound local traditions provide more comforting refuge to many Afghans than does the lofty concept of a united, multi-ethnic nation.
Still, there is some nationalist mortar that holds together the ethnic blocks and makes Afghanistan and its varied peoples one country. Unlike Europe’s failed multi-ethnic federations — the Yugoslav union of Balkan peoples and Czechoslovakia’s myriad Slavs — the Pakhtoons, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others in this jigsaw puzzle of a nation take pride in their shared Afghan label.
Much as Americans can embrace being Southerners, New Yorkers, Angelenos or Kansans and still be moved by the sight of the Stars and Stripes, so, too, do Afghans feel more that binds them than breaks them apart.
“I think the common Afghan man does see himself first as an Afghan. Do you think this country would still be around if the average Afghan man hadn’t been so much devoted to his home country and identity in these 23 years of disasters here?” President-elect Hamid Karzai replies when asked what unites his disparate people. “It’s precisely because of the strength of the common Afghan’s identity with it that keeps this country together.”
The past week’s “loya jirga,” a traditional gathering of regional delegates to decide the nation’s future, reflected this collective will to project Afghanistan and Afghans as one nation, says Ashraf Ghani, Karzai’s chief adviser.
Government officials acknowledge that central authority doesn’t yet reach much beyond Kabul. Ethnic clashes between rival chieftains in the north are impervious to appeals from officials here to unite in the daunting effort to rebuild a country largely reduced to rubble.
The opium politics of the east still promise a better life for poppy farmers than can the fledgling government in Kabul. And in the conservative south, especially around Kandahar, the ousted Taliban still enjoy much allegiance from Afghans who reject any notion of being ruled by leaders seen as Western puppets.
While Karzai acknowledges that his reach remains limited, he blames the gaps in national reconciliation on the legacy of foreign interventions. The 1979-89 Soviet occupation forced the fiercely independent Afghans to wage armed resistance from the fringes, often with the aid, arms and counsel of self-interested neighbours and Soviet foes.
The invasions are over and the internecine fighting that has ravaged Afghanistan for the past decade also appears in check following a six-month power-sharing agreement worked out in Bonn, Germany, late last year.
The challenge now, as Karzai and his government colleagues see it, is rapidly to repair the damage so Afghans again can trade and travel, restoring the cultural and commercial bonds that made this country the heart of the fabled Silk Road.
Afghanistan, unlike European multi-ethnic states forced together by peace treaties, emerged to unite ethnic enclaves at the behest of the peoples guided by 18th-century king Ahmad Shah Baba. Despite subsequent invasions and resistance, it remains largely within its original borders. United in their triumph of ousting intruders Afghans tend to see their shared nationality as a geopolitical strength rather than a cultural weakness.
But with so much destruction around them, rivalries and resentment can easily flare as aid is doled out in disproportion. It will take as much domestic initiative as foreign assistance to solidify Afghans’ commitment to living in a cohesive, multi-ethnic state.
“I always tell my Afghan friends that they can’t expect foreigners to love their country more than they do,” the US special presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, says.
Key advisers to the central government insist their dependence on foreign protection is temporary. Like the US officials providing the training for the fledgling Afghan National Army, Afghan leaders say the freshly minted domestic troops gradually will fill the security vacuums that have allowed regional warlords to thwart central rule.
International relief, although slow in arriving, also aims to enhance national cohesion through means such as mass media that can transcend self- interested local propaganda.
Even the foreign military presence in the country, the nearly 17,000 troops and special forces of the US-led coalition against terror, are trying to wage a hearts-and-minds campaign to steer isolated peoples toward respect for central authority.
Other foreign observers of Afghanistan’s rapid transformation agree with the government’s contention that what divides Afghans isn’t ethnicity but their recent history of abuse. And what unites them, the observers say, is a desperate desire to recover the Afghanistan that existed before the Soviet invasion.—Dawn/The Los Angles Times News Service.