Afghanistan under the Taliban Substance of a talk given by Peter Coleridge to the Brecon Political and Theological Discussion Group on 15th December, 2005
Our purpose is not to condemn but to understand.
Peter Coleridge was working in Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001 with the UN-organised CDAP (Comprehensive Disabled Afghans' Programme). He was working with a team of 400 people, a quarter of them women, which during that time was in contact with around 20.000 disabled people.
As introductions to the problems and politics of the country he recommends Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace by Chris Johnson, Jolyon Leslie, Zed Books, ISBN: 1842773771, Price: £14.95 and Revolution Unending Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present, by Gilles Dorronsoro, Columbia University Press, ISBN: 0-231-13626-9, c£16.95 (Amazon paperback price)
The main question to be answered: what does democracy mean in a country like Afghanistan?
The purpose is not to show that there are goodies and baddies, the goodies all Afghan and the baddies all foreign. The purpose is to get past the ill-informed journalism that we are all exposed to, the short soundbites, the Kate Adie gung-ho approach to news which paints everything in black and white. We need a Robert Fisk approach to trying to understand all the different dynamics.
Outline of the main demographic features of the country (a collection of useful maps may be found here)
The Northern border of Afghanistan has been well established over several hundred years, but the southern border was based on the 'Durand Line' and imposed by the British, who controlled what is now Pakistan. It runs through 'Pashtunistan', the territory dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group which now finds itself split between two countries.
There are about ten main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, each with its own language. There are two 'national' languages Pashtu, spoken in the South, and Dari, spoken in the North. Pashtu is a Sanskrit related language, Dari Persian. Kabul is situated at the meeting place between Pashtun and Dari dominated areas.
The centre of Afghanistan is mountainous. All the major towns, with the exception of Kabul, are in the periphery. In the East, the Hindu Kush with the famous Khyber Pass looks to Peshawar in Pakistan as its centre, which has had a large population of Afghan refugees since the early eighties..
The centre in Afghanistan (Kabul) was historically never able to control the periphery.
The Hazara people (Dari speakers) in the centre of the country are a Shia mongoloid people with strong links to Iran. Tajiks and Uzbeks are the second most dominant groups after the Pashtuns, ethnically the same as those living in Tajikstan andUzbeksitan.
The Soviet Union wanted to use Afghanistan to gain access to the Indian Ocean. They encouraged Afghans to study in the Soviet Union and it was largely these students who established the Afghan Communist Party.
The Soviets invaded in Christmas 1979 and left in 1989. They provided an average of $35 billion per year in economic and military support after 1979. The US provided $2.8 billion between 1980 and 1989 to the mujahedin resistance. US aid stopped abruptly the moment the Soviet army left. The Afghan mujahedin were convinced that they personally had brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Afghanistan under the Taliban
Afghanistan fell into the hands of regional warlords such as Ismael Khan, Emir in Herat. There was no central control. The Taliban were initially welcomed as putting an end to a situation of chaos. Their advance was astonishingly rapid. In particular they managed to overthrow Ismail Khan in Herat in only a few weeks. The Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum held out in the North at Mazar-e-Sharif but was finally overcome by the Taliban in the heaviest fighting of the campaign. But the Taliban never managed to take the very different terrain in the North East (which appears on maps of Afghanistan like a thumb).
The US initially supported the Taliban and were anxious to negotiate with them to establish a pipeline to the Indian ocean. 'The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lost of Shari'a law. We can live with that.' (A US diplomat). Saudi Arabia has an atrocious record on human rights and women's rights. It beheaded 200 people in 2000 and 2001, stones to death women for adultery, etc. But Saudi Arabia is a friend of the US.
The change came when the Taliban gave refuge to Osama bin Laden, especially after the attacks on US embassies in Africa in 1998. The work of demonising the Taliban was assisted by the fact that most journalists were based in Kabul where the Taliban were not welcome, and they did not understand the historical and cultural context of Afghanistan. The moral order imposed by the Taliban made little difference to the order already in place in other parts of the country, especially in the Pashtun south, but in mainly Persian/Dari speaking areas, a more modern society had developed and many of the Taliban edicts, especially those affecting women in education, were experienced as absurd.
Nonetheless Peter found in his own experience that Taliban leaders could be amenable to a process of negotiation. He described how he had wanted to bring a British physiotherapist, a woman, to teach people how to deal with the problems of children with cerebral palsy. Initially the Taliban refused to consider the possibility but after a long process of argument (during which the Taliban had suggested that she could be allowed to teach from behind a curtain) they finally conceded the whole case.
In fact the Taliban had very little knowledge how to run a country and much of the actual administration of social services etc in Afghanistan was in the hands of NGOs largely coordinated by the UN.
The Taliban tried to control and coral the aid agencies, but with limited effect. These NGOs and some UN agencies took the lead in objecting to the Taliban, e.g. Save the Children in Herat, Oxfam in Kabul and UNICEF over education. But some Afghan women came to question the UNICEF position.
The UN as a body tried to implement a 'Strategic Framework' for Afghanistan under the Taliban, which meant negotiating on the basis of 'rights' and non-discrimination. This was never satisfactorily concluded before September 2001.
The demonising of the Taliban by the west was in itself a political act that polarised the country into for and against. This set the scene where aid agency officials are regarded as fair game because they are seen as part of the US/western conspiracy against Afghanistan.
The US invasion
Although efforts were made to build a case for the campaign against the Taliban, and to portray this as a joint endeavour, there was no explicit agreement under international law for the USA to go to war. But few states wanted to be seen to oppose military action against al Qa'ida and their protectors the Taliban.
But the problem was what to bomb in a country with little infrastructure. Bombing began on October 7, 2001. The objective seemed to be to inflict heavy casualties in order to split the leadership. In the first week 400 civilians were killed. This increased tenfold over the next three months. But the US portrayed the air war as a human endeavour in which the civilian casualties were the result of the Taliban placing their troops in urban areas. A 'just war' required the human cost of the conflict to be hidden.
The US tried to avoid US casualties by paying any militia opposed to the Taliban to fight.
But the military action moved well ahead of the political. By the time the Taliban had been defeated there was no plan for what came next, and militia opposed to the Taliban had already had their expectations raised. The vacuum allowed the Northern Alliance to take over Kabul. But what Afghans needed and wanted was a demilitarised city secured by the international community.
The fight against the Taliban was then taken to the hills, reminiscent of the Soviet war. This is a hopeless task and continues to this day. The notion that you can eradicate such a movement by military means is wishful thinking.
The profits of war: not only religious but also economic. For many commanders the war was profitable, enabling them to pillage the country's resources or deal in illegal goods. Peace does not offer such rewards.
Disarmament is up against the same interests. No compensation for commanders can match the wealth they gained from war-time businesses, mainly in the opium trade. Building a new army: half those trained have deserted. Less than a third of the 60,000 strong army had been deployed by mid 2004.
The cost of the US intervention is currently running at some $11 billion a year, but has failed to give them military control of the country.
The conflict now has two aspects: between militia who are supposed to be part of the government and who are vying for power, and the Taliban who never accepted the idea of defeat in the first place.
The idea that you can bomb your way to peace is fatuous. It has simply made the prospect of peace more distant.
Identity and values
Afghans are proud of and retain values that they will not lose even in the hardest of times.
"Honesty, unity, honour, pride, that we help each other, do not care about money. Language and behaviour, hospitality. The importance of family, eating together, the young respecting the old. Taking tea."
It is those who have least power in society who suffer from the collapse if values.
The family is the single most important institution in Afghan society. The private home is an inviolable sanctuary, a place of security and protection. Visitors are separated from the family by a guest receiving room. The women are seldom seen by visitors. Even the militia respect private homes and do not conduct search and destroy missions. The Americans have not grasped this point. Their intrusions alienate all members of the community, and make it easier for forces opposed to the government to gain ground in these areas.
Honour is the base of Afghan society and values. The spoken word is more powerful than the written. This was one of the problems of the attempt to persuade the Taliban to surrender bin Laden. They saw him as a guest and believed they had obligations of honour towards him.
Family attitudes, not government decrees, determine the future of girls. Women carry the honour of the family. An educated Afghan who works for a western agency inviting a westerner to his house told him: 'If you talk to my wife first, I will kill her.'
The Taliban were not imposing anything new. They simply systematised it in a series of decrees.
Beyond the family, the solidarity group is normally the village. 'Afghan identity is based on a common political culture which could be summarised as follows: "Real political life is played out at the local level and primary loyalty lies with the "solidarity group", whatever its sociological basis. Ethnic identities are important but they never prevail over this primordial identity, nor do they undermine a common Afghan identity.' (Oliver Roy 2003).
The basic solidarity group in rural areas is usually the village, which in many settlements is actually an extended family.
The notion of protection is very important. You protect your own, and those in the solidarity group. So you do not divulge to outsiders information that might harm any of them, including who has joined the Taliban.
Breaking the moral code leads to ostracism. You cannot survive alone. The Soviet communists failed to understand the social and power relations in Afghan society and the west is repeating this failure. If the traditional forms of decision making are bypassed, they will simply be used outside the structures set up by outsiders.
The landowner looks after people. While this is certainly a 'feudal' system it enables people to survive, especially in time of harshness. Land is given by God and its possession imposes responsibilities.
Government jobs used to be prized. They conferred status and a job for life, even though poorly paid. That has gone. Government jobs are seen as an opportunity for personal enrichment. This is seen by others as a shame on the whole society.
Afghans survive because people do not operate only as individuals; they also operate as members of networks. You look after those in your network. A salary does not just feed you and your family. Links between village and town remain strong for this reason. Separating from your social network is a very radical step indeed and is usually only done to hide a heinous deed.
The word qawm refers to a kinship group, and also implies a solidarity group.
Civil society?
The idea of western democracy hinges on there being a civil society which somehow acts as a counterbalance to bureaucratic government, and to which government is accountable (eg. letters to MP re Iraq, rendition etc.) But what does such a concept mean in Afghanistan?
The problem is that qawm cuts across both government and non-government. Politicians in power keep their qawm relationships very much alive and are expected to benefit the network of people in these relationships.
In parallel with the Bonn negotiations in November 2001 there was a side meeting with individual Afghans who were picked to represent 'Afghan civil society', but they were individually very unhappy with this role. It was another example of westerners trying to create an alternative or parallel structure which did not work.
Shuras and jirgas
These are the traditional decision-making bodies in Afghanistan, where decisions are reached by discussion and consensus. But they are primarily to solve conflicts as they arise, and are not a form of local government.
Tradition is one thing, actual practice another. There is a tendency for Afghans to romanticise about their traditions and their past, as a way of dealing with the crisis of identity they currently face.
Shuras are coopted by both commanders and the aid agencies. This is discussed in Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace, pp.42-43.
The old power lay with the shuras. The new power lies with the commanders. Arms have changed the pattern of power and of debate. Protection is the key issue, sought by everybody who wants to keep their position.
Warlords: Ismael Khan, the ruler of Herat and presumptive emir of western Afghanistan , is seen as a warlord by central government, as a reactionary by educated people, as an abuser of human rights by the human rights movement. But local officials are paid on time, there is investment in public services, and security is taken seriously.
The one thing that unites all Afghans is the need to drive out invaders the British in 1842. The Soviets in the eighties.
A new constitution
Nonetheless Peter felt that the US is generally more welcome in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq and he felt that, facing an impossible task, Hamid Karzai had done surprisingly well. His power now extends all over the country. He has sidelined powerful regional commanders like Ismail Khan and Dostum and given them symbolic ministerial positions in Kabul. His own governors now control Mazar, Herat and Kandahar. A parliamentary structure is now in place with provincial assemblies, a national assembly (249 members) and a Senate (64 members). The Provincial and national assemblies are both elected while the Senate members reelected from provincial assemblies. 32 members of national assembly are appointed by Karzai (by constitution) and National Assembly decisions have to be ratified by the Senate.