AFGHANISTAN: a never ending challenge.

• Author: Vasilieff, Peter
• Position: Civil war

Peter Vasilieff comments on the political and military strife in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan.

The unfortunate civil war in Afghanistan has become one of the greatest challenges to the international community, which has indicated an ability neither to elaborate a co-ordinated and coherent strategy nor to restrain the Taliban as it has pillaged the country since 1994.

The Taliban emerged as a movement of the students of religious schools (madrassas). Its spiritual leader, field commander Mullah Omar, arrayed himself in a Prophet cloak taken from the Kandahar shrine. He organised an Islamic militia, which by the end of 1998 brought under its control around 80 per cent of Afghanistan. The new state was proclaimed as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The Taliban had two fathers and one mother. The former were the Soviet Union and the United States, which for nearly a decade were waging an embittered proxy war in Afghanistan, devastating the country and sowing the seeds of Islamic radicalism. The latter was Pakistan, impatient to be impregnated and dreaming of extending its living-space. After the delivery, the child was abandoned by both fathers and left in the hands of the loving mom. It was too late when she discovered that the boy was an awful trouble and too costly to keep.

The Taliban, as specialists admit, represents a generation of young Afghans from the `poorest, most conservative and least literate southern Pukhtoon provinces', who `saw nothing but violence since their childhood'. Brought up in religious bigotry, they adhere to a `purified' version of Islam, introducing Shariah law, destroying the artefacts of the corrupted West (such as video recorders and television sets) and inflicting public executions. As a rule women are deprived of the right to work or to get education, and are compelled to appear in public clad in the black burqas.

Though Taliban officials claim that they have provided Afghanistan with `order and stability', arbitrariness prevails in the country. Town-dwellers nail up windows to make their houses look tenantless, for mujahideen (`freedom fighters') often burst inside, looting the premises and bullying the inhabitants. Having emerged as a stronghold of Sunni fundamentalism, the Taliban threatens those belonging to the Shia sect, as well as `depraved' Westerners.

Opium producer

The Taliban became the world's leading producer of opium, with 4600 tonnes of poppy harvested last year (Pakistani scholar Babbar Shah emphasises that 20 per cent of the opium income `goes straight to [the] Taliban chest'). It also provides a `national park' for terrorism, encouraging subversive activities in those parts of the globe where true believers cry out `for defence and vengeance' (Chechnya, Dagestan, Tajikistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indian Kashmir or the Middle East). Osama bin Laden, responsible for bombing the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, joined the Taliban in 1996 and found an excellent hide-out somewhere in the eastern part of Nangharar province. Although his health has deteriorated, bin Laden is still able to oversee three terrorist camps and to raise an armed cavalry squad.

The Taliban's opponents obviously lack unity. There is the national government in exile (nobody knows exactly whether it is stationed -- in Teheran, Faisalabad or Dusanbe?) representing the deposed `Islamic State of Afghanistan', which occupies Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations and fills most Afghan missions overseas. It inspires the Northern Alliance, backed by Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia, which is the main antagonist of Kandahar. However, it is `made up of odd parts', and commander Ahmad Shah Masoud (whose army of ethnic Tajiks today is the only real military force defying the Taliban) cannot find a common language with Uzbek generals Rashid Dostum and Abdul Malik. Besides the Northern Alliance, there are the former king, Zahir Shah, with a band of his zealots, the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA) led by Pir Sayed Gailani, the Afghanistan National Liberation Front, the Social-Democratic Party of Afghanistan and dissenting Pukhtoon tribes.

External powers regard Afghanistan as the gateway to the resources-rich Central Asia. There are plans under contemplation to lay pipelines through Afghan territory to pump oil and gas from Iran and Turkmenistan. It is not surprising that with such an alluring objective in mind, international players cannot perceive each other in the long run as anything other than competitors.

Similar approaches

For the time being Russia and the United States follow similar approaches. They reckon that the centre of the `international terrorism network' has been transferred to Afghanistan and both fervently castigate Kandahar's rulers. This feeling, though justified in itself, does not expand the scope of strategic thinking. In 1998 Washington fired rockets at bin Laden's hypothetical lair, which brought no dividends to American foreign policy. Recent threats by Moscow to carry out preventive strikes against military camps in Afghanistan (where Chechen militants were allegedly trained) had the same poor effect.

Ideological fervour is not much help in political work, for it takes away some opportunities and concentrates attention on secondary things. Russian and American diplomats (British as weld are not allowed to go to Afghanistan, and in...