Afghan-Pakistan Axis Ruptured As Region Prepares for Climactic Battle

By M.M. Ali

Pakistan helped the Afghans, the United States and Saudi Arabia to drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. In a 10-year period, however, some five million refugees poured into Pakistan, accompanied by a flood of illegal weapons and the establishment of narcotics-smuggling networks. Since the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, Pakistan also has been brokering peace agreements between the furiously feuding Afghan factions. No such agreement has lasted more than a week or two.

Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Masoud continues to occupy Kabul, the beleaguered capital of Afghanistan, along with Burhanuddin Rabbani, who initially was installed in May 1993 as an "interim president" but who refuses to vacate the office. Troops loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the chief of the right-wing Hizb-e-Islami party, remain entrenched just outside of Kabul, exchanging fire and occasionally skirmishing with the Masoud-Burhanuddin forces.

Adding to the fray is the entry of the Taliban, reportedly a human wave of younger Afghans who hope to eliminate the feuding tribal leaders and bring peace to the bleeding country. The wave that started from Khandahar in the south, reportedly with Pakistani backing, within months had occupied all of Afghanistan's southern region, and now has set up siege lines outside of Kabul. Neutral press reports indicate that in the past 12 months alone, close to 50,000 persons have been killed and thousands more injured.

Abdur Rasheed Dostam, an Uzbek leader who earlier had helped Masoud to oust Najibullah, the last Afghan collaborator with the Soviets, later joined hands with Hekmatyar and now appears willing to assist the Taliban.

Burhanuddin has accused Pakistan of aiding and abetting both Hekmatyar and Taliban. Just two months ago, the Pakistani embassy in Kabul was burned down by a mob. The Pakistani government retaliated by expelling Afghan diplomats from Pakistan. The goodwill that Pakistan had earned with Afghans through the years of turmoil seems to have been wiped out in weeks. Now the government in Kabul does not wish to have dealings with Pakistan, and Islamabad feels its love's labor is lost.

The Indian Express, a major English-language daily in New Delhi, wrote in an Oct. 19 lead story from Kabul: "While the world's attention has been riveted on TV screens bringing gory images of death and destruction in urban centers under siege in Bosnia, the plight of tens of thousands of poor Afghans caught in one of the bloodiest and long-lasting fratricidal wars of our times seems to have been forgotten."

In fact, the Afghan war has taken a serious and perhaps decisive turn with the capture of the Herat and Charsyab districts by the Taliban, which then began assembling heavy artillery and reinforcements for a final assault on Kabul.

The emergence of Central Asian Muslim republics has given new importance to the region.

The Indian Express of Oct. 20 printed a front-page photo of half-destroyed Amanullah palace, the presidential residence in Kabul, and reported that the Kabul government was willing to negotiate with the Taliban. Any such negotiations are complicated by the presence of factions, ranging from former communists to right-wing religious zealots, all vying for power.

One reason that these differing groups have been able to obtain funds and arms is that the Afghan civil war has its external dimensions as well. Land-locked Afghanistan has always been a buffer between Central Asia and South Asia.

There is Iran on the west, Turkmenistan in the northwest, Uzbekistan in the north, Tajikistan in the northeast and Pakistan to the east. All of these states, plus Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia and India, either are involved in what has been going on in Afghanistan or are keenly interested in the final outcome. While the Afghan people are sick and tired of the seemingly endless war, the outside country with the biggest stake in peace at present appears to be Pakistan.

This is because the emergence of independent Central Asian Muslim republics upon the collapse of the Soviet Union has given new importance to the region. While many of the present crop of leaders in the new republic are former communists and new converts to the ideology of democracy and an open-market system, the populace remains Islamic. A peaceful resolution of the civil war in Afghanistan can open active and commercially important lines of commerce between Central Asia and Pakistan's port city of Karachi on the Indian Ocean.

A Deeper Green

Such a development will deepen the green on the Islamic crescent that extends from Rabat to Islamabad, complicating and to some extent weakening the designs of powers outside the arc. Even if the United States has given up on the area for the time being, there is no doubt that Russia is pushing the Tajiks, and India is flying arms into Kabul to strengthen its defenses against the current onslaught.

Sadly, victory for any one party will not bring peace to Afghanistan. If the Taliban finally occupy Kabul, Tajiks under Ahmed Shah Masoud still will have the capability to continue the war from Mazar-e-Sharif. Also, it is doubtful that the Taliban would be able to work with Dostam, who now controls the Faryab, Jawzian, Balkh, Samanjan and Baglan districts. It is equally doubtful if the old warlord Hekmatyar would willingly share authority with Haji Qadeer of Jalalabad, now operating the shura (council) with Omar Farukh of the Taliban. A military victory obviously is not the answer. What is needed is a political settlement. Writes the Herald, Pakistan's leading English-language monthly magazine: "The prospect of the destruction, fragmentation and even total disintegration of the Afghan state looms large as the battle-weary Afghan people stand by to watch the next round of bloodletting in the country's 15 years of incessant warfare."

A likely but unhappy result of the current impasse is that Ahmed Shah Masoud and Abdur Rasheed Dostam, the two northern leaders of the Tajiks and the Uzbeks, would ally themselves against the leaders of the Pashtuns of the south, consisting of Taliban, Hekmatyar and others. In such an eventuality, Afghanistan would be caught in the grip of a larger and fiercer war between the north and the south.

That would have serious consequences for Pakistan as well, particularly in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan. At present, the Central Asian republics also will experience their share of the impact, and the elusive vision of a region of peaceful commerce and cooperation among Muslim countries of South and Central Asia would remain a dream deferred.

M.M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC.