Afghanistan has sunk deep into factional strife and warlordism. Since the Soviets retreated in 1988, the power-struggle among the various Islamic sects and tribes of the Mujahidin has periodically erupted into warfare, claiming more lives than were lost in the 10 year-long jihad against the Russians. The recent fighting has been particularly fierce, with over 1000 killed and many thousands wounded. Kabul has been razed to the ground, embassies have been evacuated and 70,000 refugees are knocking at the gates of the Khyber Pass demanding to be let into Pakistan.
As we predicted earlier, Mian Nawaz Sharif’s much touted Afghan “peace accords” or power-sharing in 1992 and 1993 have broken down. The militias of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, vice-President Rashid Dostum and Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are at each other’s throats. The bitter irony is that the friends of yesterday have become the foes of today.
For the last two years, the combined northern forces of ethnic, Persian-speaking Tajiks under Rabbani and the Uzbeks under Dostum have clashed with the southern and central Pashtuns under Hekmatyar. Now Dostum has teamed up with Hekmatyar against Rabbani. The Hazara, pro-Iran, Hizbe Wahdat has shed its ‘neutrality’ and also lined up behind Hekmatyar. Rabbani’s ‘government’ is isolated and in deep trouble.
The policies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have also changed radically. Until 1992, their blue-eyed favourite was Hekmatyar. In 1993, Rabbani was propped up and Hekmatyar was alienated. When the two began to squabble over power-sharing, the Islamabad “peace accord” was abandoned in despair and both countries became “neutral”. Also, having previously spurned UN mediation for peace, both countries are trying to enlist UN help for a “regional peace conference” as early as possible in 1994.
Further complications have arisen because of the vested interests of the Central Asian states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Sizeable populations of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmens exist in Afghanistan’s northern belt bordering these states. Governed by secular strong-men from the Soviet ancien regime, the governments of Central Asia fear domestic destabilisation if militant Islamic fundamentalists spill over from Afghanistan into their countries. Indeed, Tajikistan is already in the throes of a civil war where the opposition is backed by the Jamaat-i-Islami forces of Afghan President Rabbani and Defence Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Pockets of pro-Saudi Islamic revivalism also exist in the Ferghana valley in Uzbekistan where the situation is compounded by the presence of significant Tajik populations in the “cradle of Islamic civilisation” in Samarkand and Bokhara. Consequently, the Central Asian communists remain supporters of General Dostum, the communist Uzbek warlord in north Afghanistan.
Joint Pak-Saudi pleas for a cease-fire have fallen on deaf ears. Efforts by dozens of tribal notables to knock sense into the heads of the three major warlords have proven futile. Hekmatyar has lashed out at the Saudis and told them to keep out. Pakistan has closed its border to refugees. The fighting is getting bloodier by the day. But who can afford to wash their hands of Afghanistan?
Pakistani and Central Asian stakes are high. Apart from the political dangers that a highly volatile, sectarian Afghanistan poses for these western-looking neighbours, each of which has ethnic Afghan populations overspilling its borders, Kabul straddles the strategic divide between landlocked Central Asia and the ports of the Arabian sea in Pakistan. Iran is a possible outlet to the Gulf but the Central Asians worry about relying too much upon an aggressive Islamic country. Thus, without peace and stability in Afghanistan, Central Asia cannot reduce its crippling dependence on Moscow by building road, rail, oil and gas pipelines to Pakistan. Nor can Pakistan extend its home market by exporting goods and services to them.
In a recent visit to Central Asia, the Pakistani foreign minister Sardar Assef knocked heads with his counterparts in order to win approval for an overland route to Pakistan through the hitherto peaceful and stable north-western and southern regions of Afghanistan. However, with the recent outbreak of fighting in some of these areas, even this initiative seems fated to flounder.
Afghanistan’s future looks very bleak. Even if a new cease-fire is negotiated, it is not likely to endure. The Afghan state, which once claimed to exercise its writ over central Afghanistan at least, has now ceased to exist. Ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, ideological and regional contradictions scar the landscape. Neighbours on the north, west and south are scrambling to chalk out areas of influence. The Western powers, which might have played a meaningful role in mediating the internecine conflict because of their vast economic clout, have lost interest in the backwaters of Asia.
As long as stocks of guns and ammunition last, the Afghan factions will continue to spew fire and venom in a mad jostle for power and territory. In the end, fatigue may set in and some warlords may be knocked out in the battle. The real fear, however, is that the country may be partitioned by its uneasy neighbours long before it is wholly annexed by some capricious warlord or the other.