[R-G] Intrigue takes Afghanistan to the brink

Tue Feb 5 09:31:22 MST 2008

Intrigue takes Afghanistan to the brink
By M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JB06Df01.html

The people in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan would  
vouchsafe that General Rashid Dostum's behavior can be depended on as  
an unfailing barometer of their country's political climate. The  
tough Uzbek leader from Shibirghan keenly reacts when tensions begin  
to mount in his country. The brief three-year spell between 1998 and  
2001 was an exception when the Taliban regime forced him into exile  
in Ankara, Turkey. But no sooner had the September 11, 2001, attacks  
taken place, Dostum found his way back to Afghanistan.

On Sunday night, Dostum appeared on the roof of his villa in the  
upmarket Kabul district of Wazir Akbar Khan and showered invectives  
at a detachment of 100 Afghan police officers who surrounded his  
compound with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up  
trucks. (The police later lifted the siege after receiving orders "to  
hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation".)

The "case" involved an incident earlier in the evening when Dostum,  
accompanied by 50 heavily armed men, entered the house of his  
estranged former political aide Akbar Bay and allegedly assaulted and  
kidnapped him. The police later rescued Bay and had him hospitalized.  
Two of Bay's bodyguards were shot. Dostum's associates later alleged  
that the Afghan government was plotting against their leader. They  
warned, "If General Dostum is surrounded and anyone touches even one  
hair on Dostum's head, they must know that seven or eight northern  
provinces will turn against the [Kabul] government."

They feigned indignation, "Certainly, we were not expecting that from  
the security forces - particularly from the Interior Ministry - to  
surround the house of General Dostum in Kabul, [he] holds a higher  
position than the Interior minister." Dostum, who leads the political  
party Junbish-i-Milli and holds the symbolic post of chief of staff  
to the commander in chief, has an uncanny knack for appearing on the  
center stage whenever Afghan politics is at a crossroads. Of course,  
the most famous instance was in 1990.

That was also in Kabul in another extraordinary tension-filled time  
when the blame game had already begun, the Soviet Union was on the  
wane as a superpower, Mohammad Najibullah's regime was on its last  
legs and the Afghan mujahideen forces were stealthily advancing on  
their capital city - like the Taliban today. In the summer of that  
fateful year, Dostum, who was the Praetorian Guard of Najibullah's  
regime, began negotiating with Ahmad Shah Massoud, blurring enemy  
lines, possibly with Soviet encouragement, and paved the way for the  
mujahideen takeover in Kabul. The rest, as they say, is history.

Vying to succeed Karzai
That is why such incidents as Sunday night's can be pregnant with  
possibilities. It happened in the prestigious residential district of  
Kabul where the Afghan elite and foreigners live, far away from the  
Uzbek heartland on the Amy Darya, which is Dostum's power base, and  
such incidents often tend to have strong undercurrents that may  
simply refuse to go away. At any rate, as Radio Liberty pointed out,  
Dostum "consistently chafed at central authority out of Kabul" and  
caused "embarrassment" to President Hamid Karzai's government and  
highlighted a "smoldering debate over the influence of current and  
former warlords whose actions undermine the rule of law and public  
confidence in central authorities".

But what remains unclear from the Radio Liberty report is whether  
Dostum acted on his own, which is improbable, or whether he felt  
encouraged to enact a drama, which is not unlikely. Dostum can be  
theatrical - in fact, he mostly is. No doubt, as the Western media  
highlighted, Sunday's incident underscored that even in the capital  
city of Kabul, Karzai's authority has weakened.

The incident comes soon after another Northern Alliance leader,  
Abdullah Abdullah (whom Karzai unceremoniously removed from office as  
foreign minister) , suddenly showed up in the US out of nowhere after  
a gap of nearly three years, meeting influential think-tankers and  
American officials and leveling devastating criticism against  
Karzai's leadership qualities as president.

The protagonists of the erstwhile Northern Alliance are coming out of  
the woodwork. But are they being encouraged to do so? Even though the  
presidential election is due only in end-2009, an element of  
uncertainty has gradually come to envelop the Afghan political  
landscape - the sort of haze that one associates with long sunsets.  
Former Afghan Interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, who fell out with  
Karzai, is also being lionized in Western capitals as a potential  
candidate in the presidential race.

The friends of Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the United  
Nations and an ethnic Pashtun, have launched an altogether  
independent campaign sponsoring his candidacy to the post of  
president. From all appearances, the search has begun for a worthy  
successor to Karzai.

Britain's covert operations
Therefore, the latest "leak" by the Karzai government about Britain's  
controversial role in the "war on terror" has hidden meanings. If the  
calculation of Western intelligence is to threaten Karzai by reviving  
the political profile of his detractors, that doesn't seem to work.  
Karzai is certainly not impressed. He is retaliating. Over last  
weekend, the intelligence apparatus in Kabul has almost dealt a fatal  
blow to Britain's reputation in the "war on terror". Such a thing  
couldn't have happened without political clearance at the highest  
level in Kabul.

The Independent newspaper of London reported on Monday that according  
to Afghan intelligence sources, Britain has been talking to the  
Taliban without the knowledge of the Karzai government and working on  
a top-secret plan to train renegade Taliban fighters in a special  
camp and set them against Mullah Omar's militia. The training camp is  
to be set up outside Musa Qala in Helmand province. The Independent  
claims unnamed British diplomats, the UN and other Western officials  
have confirmed the outline of Britain's clandestine project.  
Apparently, British agents have been paying the Taliban out of slush  
funds.

Indeed, we may be seeing only the tip of the iceberg. But the  
sensational leak leads us to reassess many recent happenings - the  
North Atlantic Treaty Organization's much-touted operation to capture  
Musa Qala on December 11; the Afghan government's expulsion of the  
acting head of the European Union mission in Kabul, Michael Semple, a  
Briton, and the third-ranking United Nations diplomat in Afghanistan,  
Mervyn Patterson, an Irishman, on December 25; Mullah Omar's sacking  
of senior Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah on December 29.

The big question is: was Britain acting alone? Most certainly, not.  
US forces played a big role in the Musa Qala operations in December.  
In fact, B-52 bombers attacked Musa Qala before the Americans and  
British entered what was left of the town. After Musa Qala's  
"liberation", on January 13, American ambassador in Kabul William  
Wood visited the town and met renegade Taliban commander Mullah Abdul  
Salaam in charge of the area.

Wood told the Taliban commander: "You can count on the support of the  
United States ... The eyes of the world will be on Musa Qala ... We  
want to see the voice of the people of Musa Qala represented in the  
government of Lashkar Gah and the government of Kabul through [Mullah  
Salaam's] voice. And we want to see the government of Kabul and the  
government of Lashkar Gah represented in Musa Qala through [Mullah  
Salaam's] voice."

Karzai strikes back
Exactly a week after Wood's meeting with Mullah Salaam in Musa Qala,  
Karzai struck. While on a visit to Davos, Switzerland, in a series of  
high-profile press interviews with the Western media, he displayed an  
uncharacteristic defiance. He told the Times newspaper of London, "We  
[Afghans] suffered after the arrival of the British forces. Before  
that, we were fully in charge in Helmand. When our governor was  
there, we were fully in charge. They came and said, 'Your governor is  
no good.' I said, 'All right, do we have a replacement for this  
governor, do you have enough forces?' Both the American and the  
British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I  
made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the  
Taliban came."

He then told the BBC that Paddy Ashdown couldn't become the UN's  
super envoy to Afghanistan. Thereafter, Karzai went on to comment in  
his interview with Die Welt, "I'm not sure sending more [NATO] forces  
is the answer." In yet another interview with CNN, Karzai pointed the  
finger at the "misguided policy objectives" of certain countries and  
organizations, which he refused to name, as contributing to the  
violence in Afghanistan. Talking to The Washington Post, Karzai said,  
"It [war] will make a difference when the Americans are clear and  
straightforward about this fight," adding that the US should "mean  
what they say ... [and] do what they say".

Significantly, in the Washington Post interview, Karzai went out of  
the way to underline that his problem was not with Islamabad or  
Tehran. He said he found Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf "more  
cognizant of the problems of extremism and terrorism. And that's a  
good sign, and I hope we will continue in that direction ... we do  
see eye-to-eye more than before on this question ... Oh, he  
[Musharraf] absolutely agrees that there is a problem and that we  
have to fix it."

On Afghan-Iranian relations, Karzai point-blank said, "We have had a  
particularly good relationship with Iran the past six years. It's a  
relationship that I hope will continue. The United States very wisely  
understood that it was our neighbor and encouraged that  
relationship ... the United States has been very understanding and  
supportive that Afghanistan should have a relationship with Iran."

Karzai was hitting back at Washington and London. Make no mistake  
about it. He was retaliating against a systematic Western attempt to  
undercut his political stature and his authority. How much of the  
Western game plan stems from a well-thought out strategy aimed at  
replacing Karzai is difficult to tell at the moment. But, without  
doubt, there is an attempt to browbeat him and to discredit Karzai's  
own endeavor in the recent period to distance himself from his  
Western backers.

Karzai's refusal to allow the hare-brained American plan to eradicate  
opium poppies by crop spraying; his warming up to Musharraf; his  
refusal to review the decision to expel the two EU and UN diplomats,  
despite heavy diplomatic pressure from London; his insistence on  
friendly feelings toward Tehran; his spats with Britain; his pouring  
cold water on the candidacy of Ashdown (knowing full well it was a  
joint Anglo-American decision at the highest level) - surely, a  
pattern has emerged.

Afghan sense of independence
Maybe, as the Independent newspaper sarcastically noted, Karzai is  
simply overworked. "He [Karzai] has not had a holiday since September  
11, 2001, and he is showing signs of fatigue, contributing to the  
whispering campaign against him and talk of his 'misjudgment' in  
taking on the powerful donor countries. Maybe he should consider a -  
short - vacation soon," the daily concluded a highly critical  
commentary.

But what the Western capitals don't want to concede easily is that  
Karzai would have his reasons - including some genuine ones - for  
putting the powerful donor countries in their place. First, he is as  
proud an Afghan as any in the Hindu Kush, no matter the circumstances  
of his elevation as the president of Afghanistan six years ago.

Today, he is in an unenviable position. On the one hand, he is  
denounced in the Afghan bazaar as a "US puppet", and on the other  
hand the powerful donor countries constantly trample on his authority  
and conduct themselves as if Afghanistan is NATO's colonial outpost.

Karzai seems to have decided that he won't allow himself to be taken  
for granted any longer. A limit is certainly reached when a powerful  
donor country begins its own clandestine "war on terror" on Afghan  
soil directed against Afghan people without even informing him or  
anyone in his government - and Afghan intelligence operatives learn  
about it accidentally from the memory stick of a laptop. The  
sensational leak by Afghan intelligence about Britain's covert war in  
Afghanistan must be seen in perspective. If Anglo-Afghan relations  
have sunk to such a low point, is Karzai to be blamed?

Given the backlog of history in the region, Britain should never have  
cast itself in a lead role in an Afghan war, howsoever compelling the  
geopolitical compulsions of containing Russia or China might be.  
Afghans still take pride in the Anglo-Afghan wars. Equally, it is a  
gross error of judgement on Washington's part to have overlooked this  
fact.

Besides, NATO's war isn't going too well, to say the least. Karzai  
cannot be faulted if he visualizes that it is an uphill task for the  
lame duck administration in Washington to bring about an historic  
course correction to the war at this stage.

He would be sensing that the blame game is poised to escalate and it  
is prudent to distance himself. Again, Karzai is savvy enough to read  
the political message when powerful donor countries begin to  
destabilize him by openly or surreptiously sponsoring his detractors,  
like Abdullah or Jalali or Dostum. He feels bitter that he has been  
used by Western powers and is now being summarily dumped.

It shouldn't come entirely as a surprise, therefore, if Karzai too -  
somewhat like his counterpart in neighboring Pakistan - chooses to  
drape himself in the Afghan flag and declare unilateral independence.  
Beyond the call of self-respect or good old-fashioned nationalism, it  
is also a shrewd survival instinct in challenging Afghan conditions.

Washington could consult the Soviet archives and still learn a few  
things about Afghanistan - how the comrades in Kabul in the 1980s and  
1990s, who veteran Politburo members in Moscow considered to be their  
helpless surrogates in an impoverished Third World country, often  
dictated how proletarian internationalism should operate under  
pristine Marxist-Leninist principles.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign  
Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador  
to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).