Ingen planar om å fjerne CIA-islamistane frå makta, berre nokre
utskiftingar og disiplinering. Alle som bøyer seg er per definisjon
"moderate".
Asgeir Bjørkedal
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/22/world/world5.html
Terrorist past no bar to future power
ANALYSIS by Christopher Kremmer
Afghanistan's largest and most thoroughly fortified
terrorist training
camps are burrowed into the mountains near the eastern
town of
Khost. Yet the United States has studiously avoided
hitting them.
Now we know why.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said at the weekend it
had begun
talks with the Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, the
man who
controls Khost, and a key ally of the ruling Taliban
militia.
It is now clear that since day one of the bombing, US
military
planners have been at pains to avoid alienating Haqqani,
a military
commander with experience stretching back to the Soviet
invasion
in the 1980s.
In August 1998, when the US attacked Afghanistan with
about 70
Tomahawk cruise missiles, Khost was the main target. Five of
them hit Haqqani bases. Yet the commander was unmoved.
"What can 60 or 70 long-range, largely inaccurate American
missiles do to a fortified place built into mountains?"
he boasted.
The complex of caves and tunnels - built partly by Osama bin
Laden when he was a US ally against Russia - once housed
hospitals, auditoriums and schools. It is the alma mater
of thousands
of Arab Islamic militants and others who have gone to war in
Kashmir, Chechnya, the Balkans, Palestine, the former Soviet
Central Asian republics and the Philippines - perhaps
even the US.
Yet such is the price powerful ethnic Pashtun warlords like
Haqqani can command that their role as patrons of terror
is no
obstacle to a slot in a future Afghan government - so
long as they
part company now with the Taliban leadership in Kandahar.
Haqqani's base in Paktia province bordering Pakistan is
geographically pivotal. The southern Pashtuns - many of
them loyal
to ousted king Zahir Shah - take pride in their
historical role of
ousting northern usurpers from Kabul.
Haqqani has long had a symbiotic relationship with Pakistani
intelligence agencies, which played a key role in
forming the
anti-Russian mujahideen and the Taliban.
Haqqani's defection to the Taliban in 1995 was crucial
in their
successful campaign against Kabul. He was later given
command
of the Kabul front and made a government minister.
But not being from Kandahar - the Taliban's political
and military
capital - he seethes over what he considers the token
say he is
given in political and military decision making. He has
long been
critical of the Taliban's military shortcomings.
If his forces revolt they could quickly cut the main
highway linking
Kandahar with Kabul, and threaten the main road to Pakistan
through Jalalabad.
If the allied forces lure Haqqani to their cause they
will be half way
to putting the Taliban in the dustbin of history.
At 66, the commander is a man of fierce countenance with
a long
black beard, and a devout Muslim who has completed the haj
pilgrimage to Mecca.
His visit to Islamabad last week means he is open to
offers. The
least he will settle for is the position of defence
minister,
undoubtedly the most powerful position in any new
government.
Had the Northern Alliance military commander, Ahmed Shah
Massoud, not been assassinated early last month, their
rivalry for
the position would have scotched any chance of a deal. But
Massoud's death removed an important obstacle.
Although Northern Alliance commanders like the Tajik General
Fahim, the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Shia Commander
Anwari will find Haqqani hard to take, they may just
remember the
days when they fought the Russians together.
WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 78
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US POST-TALEBAN PLANS HIT PROBLEMS
American and Pakistani officials are finding it hard to come up with a
blueprint for a post-Taleban administration for Afghanistan
By Michael Griffin in London
Pakistan's need to recruit an acceptable face from among the Taleban if it
is to have any say in a post-war Afghan government threw up an unlikely
candidate last weekend in the form of the mercenary warlord Jalaluddin
Haqqani, a veteran of the anti-Soviet war.
Afghanistan's minister of tribes and a commanding figure in Afghanistan's
eastern frontier, Haqqani travelled secretly to Pakistan over a week ago
with Taleban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakhil, during the
course of US secretary of state Colin Powell's visit to Islamabad.
Mutawakhil's presence in Islamabad - and numerous reports of his holding
secret meetings with Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency, ISI -
triggered speculation that an ideological split might have occurred at the
highest echelons of the hardline Islamist movement.
Despite three weeks of almost uninterrupted US bombing, the loosely
affiliated Taleban administration has shown no sign of splintering into the
numerous factions from which it was formed in the early 1990s.
US and Pakistani efforts to design a post-war government require the active
participation of leaders of Afghanistan's largest tribe, the Pashtun, who
dominate the Taleban. The country's Tajik, Uzbek and Shia minorities make up
the Northern Alliance.
Unless a significant wing of the Taleban movement breaks away from its
leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, Washington and Islamabad will be unable to
forge a broad-based, representative government in Afghanistan, led by
ex-king Zahir Shah, who is also Pashtun.
The outcome would be calamitous in two ways. On the one hand, Zahir Shah
would be exposed as lacking the support of his own people's tribal leaders,
and therefore unfit to lead a moderate, post-Taleban regime. On the other,
ethnic war between the Pashtun and the minorities could continue for years
to come, with or without the US realising its goal of eliminating Osama bin
Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network.
An insouciant Mutawakhil travelled home to Kandahar late last week, killing
any further rumours of his defection in a brief interview in which he
"reposed full confidence in the leadership of Mullah Mohammed Omar".
But his sidekick, Jalaluddin Haqqani, remained and the speculation about
division in the Taleban continued unabated.
A Pashtun warlord, appointed head of the southern military command by Mullah
Omar, Haqqani has allegedly expelled al-Qaeda's Arab fighters from his
native Khost, near the Pakistani border, and reportedly maintains the
loyalty of large numbers of Taleban stationed in Kabul.
"The US and Pakistan are gambling heavily on Haqqani," said a local press
report, adding that the US had been persuaded by the ISI intelligence agency
to postpone bombing runs planned for Khost airport until the warlord finally
showed his hand.
Haqqani reportedly held regular meetings with the ISI in Miramshar in North
West Frontier Province, to arrange his defection and ultimate conversion to
the moderate cause, the Pakistan press reported.
But Haqqani is not the shining knight that Washington so badly needs, if it
is to patch together a government representing all the political and ethnic
powers in Afghanistan. A prominent commander during the Soviet war, he
became personally responsible for the maintenance and defence of the former
mujahedin training camps built by Pakistan and the US near Khost.
After defecting from the Hizb-i-Islami mujahedin faction to the Taleban in
autumn 1996, these same camps were turned over to bin Laden's recruits and
militants of the Pakistan-backed insurgent movement in Kashmir, Harakat
ul-Mujahedin, HUM. HUM is closely linked to al-Faran, the Kashmiri militant
group that kidnapped six Western tourists in 1995, decapitating one, a
Norwegian.
The camps were targeted by US Tomahawk missiles on August 20, 1998, 12 days
after the suicide bombings of the American embassies in East Africa by
terrorists loyal to al-Qaeda.
After his appointment as Taleban tribes minister, Haqqani immediately set
about the ethnic cleansing of the Northern Alliance supporters in the
Shomali Plains, north of Kabul, in 1999. As many as 200,000 mainly Tajik
inhabitants were forced out of their homes in a Taleban campaign of
destruction that the UN protested was a "scorched earth" policy.
In the last few days, Haqqani appears to have scotched any suggestion that
he might be prepared to join a post-Taleban government. In a Pakistani press
interview, he was defiantly supportive of the Islamist movement's current
leadership. And he made some revealing remarks about the current state of
its morale - and why it appears to be so unphased by the current bombing
campaign.
"The Afghans are with the Taleban simply because it is an Islamic
government," he said. "The so-called broad-based national government will,
by its very nature, be secular, which will never be acceptable to the
Afghans. No one from the Taleban will be part of such an unacceptable
government, which will be filled with American, Russian and Indian stooges."
He also had some words of warning for US ground forces "I tell you," he
said, "the Soviets were a brave enemy and their soldiers could withstand
tough conditions. The Americans are creatures of comfort. They will not be
able to sustain the harsh conditions that await them."
It is this innate contempt for the courage of the US frontline soldier that
chiefly sustains the morale of the Taleban rank-and-file.
Michael Griffin is author of Reaping The Whirldwind - The Taleban Movement
in Afghanistan, and is project coordinator of IWPR's Afghanistan project.
ALLIES 'DIFFER' OVER AFGHAN SETTLEMENT
Britain and US appear to have differing views on the establishment of a
post-Taleban government in Afghanistan.
By Michael Griffin in London
The British foreign secretary Jack Straw this week committed Britain to a
costly programme of political and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan
after the overthrow of the Taleban, a pledge that included a guarantee that
the next government will be decided by ordinary Afghans, in spite of the
country's history of factional fighting and its lack of democratic
experience.
Analysts said Straw's commitment went far beyond an acknowledgement earlier
this month by Prime Minister Tony Blair and by the US Secretary of State
Colin Powell last week that Pakistan should have a significant say in
determining who rules Afghanistan when the Taleban are eventually deposed by
American-led military action.
Foreign Office sources attributed the apparent discrepancy between US and
British plans for a post-Taleban political settlement to "differences in
thinking" about Afghanistan. "But there is a coalescence of views on the
future," the source said, "that any government has to be broad-based and to
have the support of all Afghanistan's neighbours."
Straw told an audience at the influential International Institute of
Strategic Studies in London, "Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network find
safe havens in places, not just Afghanistan, where conflict, poverty, ethnic
and racial tensions, exploitation, corruption, poor governance, malign
interference from outside or just plain neglect have brought the collapse of
responsible government and civil society.
"Our message to the people of Afghanistan is this: in the past, we have let
you down. But we will not turn our back on you again. We will work with you
to build a better future for you and your children."
Straw identified four guiding principles for the resolution of the crisis in
Afghanistan. They include self-determination for Afghans, with the UN taking
the lead in the political process, a massive reconstruction programme, and
the "political will to finish the job".
Citing the UN's successful record of political and economic rehabilitation
in Cambodia, Kosovo and East Timor, Straw outlined a programme of rebuilding
Afghanistan after the Taleban have been ousted that could stretch into
decades. He said that the cost of rebuilding Bosnia had been 5 billion US
dollars, but that Afghanistan had four times the population and the task
would take longer.
Straw did not elaborate how a new Afghan administration might function in a
country with no history of democracy and where more than a third of the
population live in refugee or displaced camps - except to say that the UN
had the instruments and expertise to implement it.
But last week, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi dismissed
the possibility of the organisation taking over Afghanistan's
administration, while cautioning against the insertion of a foreign,
peacekeeping force after the collapse or defeat of the Taleban. "We are in
contact with everyone, here and elsewhere," said the former Algerian foreign
minister. "What needs to be done is being done, but we cannot produce a
solution out of a hat."
Straw's speech marked an advance on the ruling Labour party's thinking about
Afghanistan since his statement on the coalition's campaign objectives to
parliament last week. The reintegration of Afghanistan within the
international community then came in third place among Britain's strategic
goals, after the elimination of terrorism and the deterrence of states
supporting it.
The creation of a broad-based government representing all Afghanistan's 55
ethnic groups, led by ex-king Zahir Shah, underpins Western thinking about
the shape of the war-torn country after the Taleban have been driven from
power. In addition to Western humanitarian aid, an internationally
recognised government in Kabul would see a flood of reconstruction funding
arrive from global institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank, as well as the Asian Development Bank and development funds
run by oil-rich governments in the Gulf.
"We have a duty to the people of Afghanistan," Straw concluded, "just as we
have a duty to our own citizens. Today, it is clear that these duties
coincide. Bringing order out of chaos is one of the great tasks of the first
part of the 21st century."
The gist of Straw's speech contrasts sharply with recent US assurances to
President Pervez Musharraf that, in exchange for the use of Pakistani bases
and air space for operations inside Afghanistan, Islamabad will be consulted
over membership of the first, post-Taleban government.
Musharraf has pushed for the inclusion of the elusive moderate wing of the
Pashtun-dominated Taleban movement, while disputing the possible involvement
of the opposition Northern Alliance, which is largely composed of the
minority tribes of north and central Afghanistan. Nor is Pakistan enamoured
of the restoration of Zahir Shah, although the former monarch has said he is
not interested in becoming king.
British foreign ministry staff prepared for Straw's policy speech by
consulting a number of Afghans living in London, including members of the
Harrow-based Afghan Society, NGO employees and other exiles.
"It's time for the West to be more clear about its objectives," said Afghan
analyst Zahir Tanin. "Russia and India said last Friday in New Delhi that
they cannot agree with the Taleban remaining in government. Musharraf wants
Pakistan to have a say in the next government. It's time to make clear that,
taking into account the interest of all our neighbours, no country has a
right to have a say in what kind of government Afghanistan should have.
That's the right of Afghans."
But how that right will be exercised in practice - and whether is the UN or
a multinational force that will defend it - still remains to be seen.
Michael Griffin is author of Reaping The Whirldwind - The Taleban Movement
in Afghanistan, and is project coordinator of IWPR's Afghanistan project.
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