Afghanistan could again be engulfed by civil war
Afghanistan could again be engulfed by civil war
By Rachel Morarjee
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: November 21 2006 19:54 | Last updated: November 21 2006 19:54
Here in this extraordinary piece of desert is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out.
Speaking those words on Monday at Camp Bastion, the British military base in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, Tony Blair made clear to the 800 troops lined up to meet him that the UK and its allies would “stand up and defeat” the resurgent Taliban.
It was a commitment the visiting prime minister later repeated to President Hamid Karzai in the leafy grounds of the Afghan leader’s palace in Kabul. Mr Blair’s concern was the battle against Taliban supporters and their al-Qaeda and drug gang allies in the bitterly contested south of the country, where violence has risen to heights not seen since the toppling five years ago of their authoritarian regime.
The 5,200 British troops stationed in Helmand – part of a 32,800-strong Nato-led force in the country – have faced almost daily fighting that has been as fierce as many engagements in Iraq. More than 3,700 people have been killed this year, most of them in the south and east, where Taliban’s Pashtun fighters remain the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s fragile democracy.
On Nato maps, Afghanistan’s southern provinces and eastern areas along the border with Pakistan are shaded a fiery red, reflecting the hot spots of a persistent insurgency. By contrast, the northern and western provinces are shown in green, dotted with yellow to indicate pockets of instability.
But the colour-coding is deceptive. The government and its international backers can no longer take the relative peace of the north and west for granted. It is becoming clear that warlords and commanders from other ethnic groups are increasingly a menace.
The Northern Alliance warlords – who, backed by a US air campaign, swept the Taliban from power in 2001 and in Bonn that December set out a five-year blueprint for democracy – have been marginalised by Mr Karzai’s government. Many are angry about being pushed aside and hostile to anything that will erode their power at a local level – from counter-narcotics efforts to police reform.
“In the south the Taliban is an armed opposition but in the north there is growing political opposition. The government is being pushed from both sides,” says Saleh Registani, a member of parliament from the fortress valley of Panjshir, just north of the capital, which held out against Taliban fighters in the 1990s. “The security crisis is spreading like an oil slick across the country.”
Afghanistan is a nation riven by ethnic and factional divisions, which flared into a bloody civil war that left thousands dead before the Taliban militia swept to power in 1996. “The insurgency in the south has the potential to open up fissures along ethnic and factional lines which have so far been contained,” says Joanna Nathan, senior South Asia analyst with the International Crisis Group.
Moreover, the war in the south is draining attention and resources from the north and west and stoking public anger towards the government in those regions, western officials in Kabul warn. “We do have a serious problem in the south, but the north is a ticking time-bomb. There is not a single unifying leader and there is the potential for chaos,” says a diplomat in Kabul. “We are moving back to the days of the civil war where all the neighbouring countries were worried, concerned and involved in Afghanistan.”
The issue will be at the centre of a two-day Nato summit that starts in the Latvian capital, Riga, next Tuesday. That follows the transfer of peacekeeping command to the alliance from the original coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, the final phase of the nationwide deployment of its International Security Assistance Force.
The north is not immune from attacks by the Taliban and other disruptive forces, with incidents in Herat city in the west and the northern city of Kunduz, where German troops are based and which saw its first suicide attack in June. Islamic militants linked with the Hezb-e-Islami group headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who appears on US most-wanted terror lists, have been active in the north this summer, as have others linked to Afghanistan’s large and rapidly growing drugs trade.
“What you have is a thinly spread gloss of governance over an area that is not under any power broker’s control. It is fragmenting,” says a senior US official in Kabul, adding that any attempt to force a government presence further into the north and west could kick off violent power struggles.
Local militia commanders are rethinking their backing of the central government and Islamic militants are moving to mobilise support outside their southern strongholds by exploiting the factional fault-lines in the north and the west. As the fighting has raged in the south, the instability has begun to infect previously secure areas.
“The north has become very unstable. A lot of weapons have been distributed and stockpiled. The warlords of all ethnic groups have come together with the drug mafias,” says Mohamadullah Shoiab Shamkar, deputy director of tribal affairs for Fedayeen-e-Sol, a group of tribal elders from around Afghanistan who are looking at ways to stem the growing insecurity. “None of these people wants the constitution or the rule of law to succeed.”
Since July in Faryab province, which borders Turkmenistan, there has been a spate of factional battles between forces loyal to Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, and a rival commander. Their brief clashes have killed tens rather than the hundreds who have died in battles between the Taliban and Nato troops in the south but could herald more trouble to come. “The tensions between warring factions are now being exploited by insurgents and we have reports of militant activity in the south of Faryab,” says one person involved with the Nato-led force in the country.
The bulk of the 2,700 troops in the north are German and are constrained by caveats that would not allow them to leave their bases to intervene in a big clash in the region. Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian troops in the west are similarly hidebound.
Last month, gun battles between rival factions in Shindand, near Herat, left about 30 dead. The main factor holding the west of Afghanistan together is the positive influence of neighbouring Iran, which “is pumping a lot of money into the reconstruction of the west”, says a senior US administration official in Washington.
True, the standing armies of the leading warlords who ousted the Taliban – such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ismael Khan and Mohammed Atta – have been disbanded. Their factions remain splintered, even in parliament, where they are unable to present a solid block against the Afghan government. But the fault lines between the groups are exposed and ready for insurgents linked with the Taliban to exploit.
Riots that swept Kabul six months ago, leaving more than 20 dead, emboldened factional leaders across the north and west. The May violence in the capital sent a signal about the weakness of the central government around the country, says Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. “Commanders in the north saw the riots in Kabul just 5km away from Karzai’s palace and asked themselves, ‘Why should we be afraid of these guys sitting in the capital and give up our guns?’ ”
Weapons prices in northern Afghanistan more than doubled over the summer as commanders again began stockpiling arms. Consequently a UN-backed programme to disarm illegal militias has ground to a halt countrywide.
As local commanders seek to strengthen their hands against the central government, aid and reconstruction workers are increasingly being caught in the crossfire. Since the beginning of the year, more aid workers have been killed in the north and west of Afghanistan than the south.
Nine staff with aid agencies or the UN were killed in the north, 13 in the west and four in and around Kabul, compared with two in the south, according to the Afghanistan NGO Security Network. Although there are fewer aid workers in the restive south and east, the numbers also reflect the remobilisation of Islamic militant groups such as Hezb-e-Islami in the north and west as well as growing lawlessness linked to drugs and crime.
As the traditional ethnic enemies of the Pashtun Taliban who hail from the south and east, the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militia in the north and west are against the Taliban’s return – but this may have lulled western governments into a false sense of security.
Michael Shaikh, a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, says that Northern Alliance leaders – who battled each other and then the Taliban during the civil war of the early 1990s before coming to power in 2001 – need the Karzai government as a bulwark against the violence in the south. But he adds: “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to weaken the government and try to gain autonomy in their own areas. There are factors up there that could enable an insurgency.”
With leading members of the Northern Alliance sidelined by Mr Karzai, their support for the government is waning, western officials and Afghan legislators say. “We agreed to work together in Bonn. We had an unofficial agreement. It was a promise but it was our mistake to trust Karzai. He called all the Northern Alliance leaders warlords and none of them are in positions of power now,” says Mr Registani.
Younus Qanooni, parliamentary speaker and one of the architects of the Bonn agreement for the Northern Alliance, says the government is losing support and could face a crisis of public confidence. “We have seen that people who laid the foundations of the government have been pushed to the side,” he says.
Although many of the marginalised still support the government, that could easily change.
Additional reporting by Guy Dinmore
By Rachel Morarjee
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: November 21 2006 19:54 | Last updated: November 21 2006 19:54
Here in this extraordinary piece of desert is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out.
Speaking those words on Monday at Camp Bastion, the British military base in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, Tony Blair made clear to the 800 troops lined up to meet him that the UK and its allies would “stand up and defeat” the resurgent Taliban.
It was a commitment the visiting prime minister later repeated to President Hamid Karzai in the leafy grounds of the Afghan leader’s palace in Kabul. Mr Blair’s concern was the battle against Taliban supporters and their al-Qaeda and drug gang allies in the bitterly contested south of the country, where violence has risen to heights not seen since the toppling five years ago of their authoritarian regime.
The 5,200 British troops stationed in Helmand – part of a 32,800-strong Nato-led force in the country – have faced almost daily fighting that has been as fierce as many engagements in Iraq. More than 3,700 people have been killed this year, most of them in the south and east, where Taliban’s Pashtun fighters remain the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s fragile democracy.
On Nato maps, Afghanistan’s southern provinces and eastern areas along the border with Pakistan are shaded a fiery red, reflecting the hot spots of a persistent insurgency. By contrast, the northern and western provinces are shown in green, dotted with yellow to indicate pockets of instability.
But the colour-coding is deceptive. The government and its international backers can no longer take the relative peace of the north and west for granted. It is becoming clear that warlords and commanders from other ethnic groups are increasingly a menace.
The Northern Alliance warlords – who, backed by a US air campaign, swept the Taliban from power in 2001 and in Bonn that December set out a five-year blueprint for democracy – have been marginalised by Mr Karzai’s government. Many are angry about being pushed aside and hostile to anything that will erode their power at a local level – from counter-narcotics efforts to police reform.
“In the south the Taliban is an armed opposition but in the north there is growing political opposition. The government is being pushed from both sides,” says Saleh Registani, a member of parliament from the fortress valley of Panjshir, just north of the capital, which held out against Taliban fighters in the 1990s. “The security crisis is spreading like an oil slick across the country.”
Afghanistan is a nation riven by ethnic and factional divisions, which flared into a bloody civil war that left thousands dead before the Taliban militia swept to power in 1996. “The insurgency in the south has the potential to open up fissures along ethnic and factional lines which have so far been contained,” says Joanna Nathan, senior South Asia analyst with the International Crisis Group.
Moreover, the war in the south is draining attention and resources from the north and west and stoking public anger towards the government in those regions, western officials in Kabul warn. “We do have a serious problem in the south, but the north is a ticking time-bomb. There is not a single unifying leader and there is the potential for chaos,” says a diplomat in Kabul. “We are moving back to the days of the civil war where all the neighbouring countries were worried, concerned and involved in Afghanistan.”
The issue will be at the centre of a two-day Nato summit that starts in the Latvian capital, Riga, next Tuesday. That follows the transfer of peacekeeping command to the alliance from the original coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, the final phase of the nationwide deployment of its International Security Assistance Force.
The north is not immune from attacks by the Taliban and other disruptive forces, with incidents in Herat city in the west and the northern city of Kunduz, where German troops are based and which saw its first suicide attack in June. Islamic militants linked with the Hezb-e-Islami group headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who appears on US most-wanted terror lists, have been active in the north this summer, as have others linked to Afghanistan’s large and rapidly growing drugs trade.
“What you have is a thinly spread gloss of governance over an area that is not under any power broker’s control. It is fragmenting,” says a senior US official in Kabul, adding that any attempt to force a government presence further into the north and west could kick off violent power struggles.
Local militia commanders are rethinking their backing of the central government and Islamic militants are moving to mobilise support outside their southern strongholds by exploiting the factional fault-lines in the north and the west. As the fighting has raged in the south, the instability has begun to infect previously secure areas.
“The north has become very unstable. A lot of weapons have been distributed and stockpiled. The warlords of all ethnic groups have come together with the drug mafias,” says Mohamadullah Shoiab Shamkar, deputy director of tribal affairs for Fedayeen-e-Sol, a group of tribal elders from around Afghanistan who are looking at ways to stem the growing insecurity. “None of these people wants the constitution or the rule of law to succeed.”
Since July in Faryab province, which borders Turkmenistan, there has been a spate of factional battles between forces loyal to Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, and a rival commander. Their brief clashes have killed tens rather than the hundreds who have died in battles between the Taliban and Nato troops in the south but could herald more trouble to come. “The tensions between warring factions are now being exploited by insurgents and we have reports of militant activity in the south of Faryab,” says one person involved with the Nato-led force in the country.
The bulk of the 2,700 troops in the north are German and are constrained by caveats that would not allow them to leave their bases to intervene in a big clash in the region. Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian troops in the west are similarly hidebound.
Last month, gun battles between rival factions in Shindand, near Herat, left about 30 dead. The main factor holding the west of Afghanistan together is the positive influence of neighbouring Iran, which “is pumping a lot of money into the reconstruction of the west”, says a senior US administration official in Washington.
True, the standing armies of the leading warlords who ousted the Taliban – such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ismael Khan and Mohammed Atta – have been disbanded. Their factions remain splintered, even in parliament, where they are unable to present a solid block against the Afghan government. But the fault lines between the groups are exposed and ready for insurgents linked with the Taliban to exploit.
Riots that swept Kabul six months ago, leaving more than 20 dead, emboldened factional leaders across the north and west. The May violence in the capital sent a signal about the weakness of the central government around the country, says Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. “Commanders in the north saw the riots in Kabul just 5km away from Karzai’s palace and asked themselves, ‘Why should we be afraid of these guys sitting in the capital and give up our guns?’ ”
Weapons prices in northern Afghanistan more than doubled over the summer as commanders again began stockpiling arms. Consequently a UN-backed programme to disarm illegal militias has ground to a halt countrywide.
As local commanders seek to strengthen their hands against the central government, aid and reconstruction workers are increasingly being caught in the crossfire. Since the beginning of the year, more aid workers have been killed in the north and west of Afghanistan than the south.
Nine staff with aid agencies or the UN were killed in the north, 13 in the west and four in and around Kabul, compared with two in the south, according to the Afghanistan NGO Security Network. Although there are fewer aid workers in the restive south and east, the numbers also reflect the remobilisation of Islamic militant groups such as Hezb-e-Islami in the north and west as well as growing lawlessness linked to drugs and crime.
As the traditional ethnic enemies of the Pashtun Taliban who hail from the south and east, the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militia in the north and west are against the Taliban’s return – but this may have lulled western governments into a false sense of security.
Michael Shaikh, a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, says that Northern Alliance leaders – who battled each other and then the Taliban during the civil war of the early 1990s before coming to power in 2001 – need the Karzai government as a bulwark against the violence in the south. But he adds: “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to weaken the government and try to gain autonomy in their own areas. There are factors up there that could enable an insurgency.”
With leading members of the Northern Alliance sidelined by Mr Karzai, their support for the government is waning, western officials and Afghan legislators say. “We agreed to work together in Bonn. We had an unofficial agreement. It was a promise but it was our mistake to trust Karzai. He called all the Northern Alliance leaders warlords and none of them are in positions of power now,” says Mr Registani.
Younus Qanooni, parliamentary speaker and one of the architects of the Bonn agreement for the Northern Alliance, says the government is losing support and could face a crisis of public confidence. “We have seen that people who laid the foundations of the government have been pushed to the side,” he says.
Although many of the marginalised still support the government, that could easily change.
Additional reporting by Guy Dinmore
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