Tribes, traditions and two tragedies

Asia Times
September 12, 2003
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States once fought against the former USSR and Iran, albeit through proxies. Ironically, now, the US finds itself fighting real wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, although this time round the middlemen have been cut out, and the enemy is much less defined, and infinitely more difficult to fathom. Crucially, though, the US appears to be applying the same tactics that it adopted for its proxy wars, even though the ground realities have changed.

The resistance movement in Iraq has very much established itself in the heart of almost all the important cities, including Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Mosul and even in Kirkuk, the latter two in the Kurdish north.

The resistance movement in Afghanistan, meanwhile, is also scattered across large parts of the country, apart from the capital Kabul, although it is rooted in rural areas and the mountains, and it is stronger in the southeast and along the border areas with Pakistan.

Opposition to the US-led military presence in Afghanistan comes mainly from a rapidly-regrouping Taliban, ousted from government at the end of 2001, mujahideen veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyr's Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), and fighters of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front, all grouped under the banner of the Saiful Muslemeen (the Sword of Muslims).

Operationally though, different area commanders have been controlling combat operations in their respective areas. As a result, the resistance movement has not been as effective as it could have been as it has lacked central direction. Recent reports, however, indicate that Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, has personally taken over overall command.

The resistance movement has been aided by a break down of law and order in the Pashtun belt, as the writ of Kabul does not reach that far. In this environment of lawlessness approaching anarchy, the Taliban guerrillas have found perfect hiding places.

At the heart of the US problems in Afghanistan is that it has failed completely in winning any allegiance among the local population, apart from the north of the country. Here, the non-Pashtun North Alliance, which, with strong US support led the drive to oust the ethnic Pashtun Taliban in late 2001, does have some roots in the country, and by default, the US is welcomed.

It is in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan where the problems lie, however. In the early days of the US-inspired invasion against the Taliban, the US hired Pashtun commanders such as Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadeer, who had been in exile in the United Arab Emirates and doing business in Peshawar, respectively.

Such men lacked popular support, and managed only to rally a few troops. Abdul Haq, in fact, was captured and executed by the Taliban. After this, heroin addicts and other dregs in the Pakistani border cities of Quetta and Chaman were rounded up and marched into Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, under the shelter of US air support. At this stage the Taliban finally decided to retreat, and the US's riff-raff proxies were elevated into local administrative positions.

It is of no surprise, then, that these people have proved less than capable, and easily swayed by the re-emerging Taliban - hardly a permanent arrangement for good governance.

In retrospect, the US authorities in Afghanistan ignored some important facts:
The Taliban were respected in many segments of Afghan society. Indeed, they had been invited in the early 1990s by the Pashtuns to eliminate the warlordism and anarchy that was pulling the country apart in the power vacuum left by the departure of the Soviets in 1989.
Many of the Taliban, after all, although educated in the madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan, were sons of the soil.
When the Taliban retreated, they were readily given protection by the Pashtun tribes to which they belonged.

The US adopted a policy from the inception, by supporting the Tajik and Uzbek-dominated Northern Alliance, which implied that the Pashtun were not necessarily the dominant power in Afghanistan. This ignored the fact that in the history of modern Afghanistan (from Nadir Shah's period in the mid-18th century) all the power pillars have emerged from Pashtun tribes, except for two brief occasions (in the early 20th century - Bacha Saqa - and Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani becoming president in 1993). Never has a non-Pashtun remained head of state for any length of time.

And the US, considering that the Taliban were Pashtun, turned a blind eye to the massacres of Pashtuns in the cities of Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif by the Northern Alliance. Later events have helped the ground situation change in favor of the Taliban:
After the assassination of Haji Abdul Qadeer in July last year, his brother Haji Din Mohammed was installed as the governor of Nagarhar. He has negotiated a ceasefire with the Taliban and agreed that once the Taliban movement sufficiently consolidates its position in southeastern Afghanistan and reaches Jalalabad (as per tradition), his forces will give them a safe passage to Kabul to take on the Northern Alliance-dominated administration of Hamid Karzai.
Malick Hazrat Ali has allowed Hekmatyr's HIA to operate and establish training camps in the Jalalabad region.
All Pashtun tribes have agreed in principle that they will not fight each other and will support any movement that makes it possible to topple the Northern Alliance government in Kabul.

These facts are certainly known to US decision-makers on Afghanistan. How they respond is another matter. Pakistani authorities have in the past suggested that the US engage "moderate" elements within the Taliban.

Initially, the US viewed this as a ploy by Pakistan to deceive the US and buy time. After all, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was instrumental in nurturing and bringing the Taliban to power, and it would dearly love to regain its lost strategic ground in the country.
But US intelligence had a change of heart, and it now sees the benefits in courting the erstwhile enemy, although it has made it clear that Mullah Omar will not be a part of any kiss and make up.

Asia Times Online sources close to these developments say that the first contact a few months ago between the US and the Taliban in Quetta foundered over the issue of Mullah Omar. However, within a few weeks, the ISI came up with another batch of Taliban, who, apart from Mullah Abdul Razzak, a Pakistani who was a defense minister in the Taliban regime, were much lower profile than the first group. They agreed to establish a forum under the name of Jaishul Muslim, and without Mullah Omar. Observers see this as a last-ditch attempt by the US to establish the semblance of a sufficiently stable government so that they can pull their troops out of the country, with at least some justification that they have done their job.

Unfortunately, without key leaders like Mullah Omar, this endeavor is destined to fail.

Similarly, the US's efforts in Iraq to win the support of credible local allies appear doomed.

The US has set up bodies like the Iraq Development and Reconstruction Council (IDRC) and other small organizations that have no footing in Iraq. These proxy networks are good at showing welcoming local faces to the US forces, but they are hardly the platform for good, stable governance in the long run.

Like in Afghanistan, the Sunni Arabs (although outnumbered by Shi'ites) have been the traditional rulers of the region for generations, and cannot be ignored. The order of society for a long time was: Sunnis as the ruling elite, ethnic Turkomen and Kurds used in the military, and the Shi'ites sidelined communities, such as the Marsh Arabs, and other rural, semi-literate groups that blindly followed the sermons of their clerics.

During Saddam Hussein's rule over the past decades this main order of society remained largely unaltered, except Saddam began to develop Shi'ite areas and open up opportunities for them in the Ba'ath Party. However, after the Iranian revolution (1979) and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the situation changed.

Shi'ite clerics issued religious decrees banning Shi'ites from government jobs and called Saddam's regime un-Islamic and secular, and those who were a part of it were called infidels (munkir). Nevertheless, many Shi'ites in government cut their ties with the religion, rather than give up their positions.

This gave birth to a completely new generation of Shi'ites who were part of ruling party, and who espouse doctrines such as Arab union and anti-Semitism.

The US administration, however, appears to think in black and white terms, as it were, of Shi'ites and Sunnis constituting two completely separate entities. And as the majority in the country (about 65 percent) they are being given majority representation - for instance, the US-appointed 25-member Governing Council - without consideration of the power of Sunni tribes. (The largest clan in which both Shi'ite and Sunni tribes are included is headed by a Sunni.)

As a result, the Sunni elite are being excluded, which does not lend itself future stability.

British authorities during the empire days had a keen understanding of the tribal systems in South Asia, as well as in the Arab world. In countries like India they made the Nawabs and the feudal lords responsible for raising armies, as they did in Yemen and Iraq. In return, they paid royalties and privy purses to the tribal chiefs. At the same time, these chieftains were made to understand that they were important and significant, so they always supported the government.

Once the sun set on the British empire, most countries abandoned colonial traditions, including that of chieftains raising armies. Except in Iraq. Saddam continued the practice with his concept of jaishul badviya , which guaranteed tribal chief as one of the pillars of power.

Up against the US's awesome military might (apart from those who were bought off) most of the Iraqi army (much like the Taliban in Afghanistan) melted away in the face of certain defeat to take protection with their tribes. Now they are re-emerging to take on the occupation forces, and with the full support of the tribal chiefs who have lost not only their power, but also their payouts for suppling soldiers for the army.

So, as in Afghanistan, in Iraq the tribal role behind the resistance has been underestimated, if not misunderstood altogether. Chaos and anarchy are the only possible outcomes from such ill-informed policy.

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Nieuwe Oorlog 2003 | Ander Nieuws week 38