Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Taliban is on the run. What happens now? Who should govern Afghanistan? And how hard will it be to win the war of the caves?
Nov 14, 2001 | After Taliban forces retreated Tuesday from Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance took control of the city. The White House said that President Bush was "very pleased" with the advance. The Taliban's unexpectedly sudden withdrawal -- on the heels of defeats in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif -- represented an important military triumph for the U.S. (On Tuesday, it was reported that Northern Alliance troops had pushed on from Kabul to the Taliban's stronghold, Kandahar.) But the Taliban's unexpectedly sudden withdrawal also gave new urgency to major issues -- Afghanistan's political future, the trustworthiness of the Northern Alliance, the next step in the military campaign, the status of humanitarian aid and the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.
Several experts on the region spoke with Salon about what the future holds for Afghanistan and the region and what the United States should do next.
Joel Charny, Asia expert from Refugees International
The Northern Alliance progress means that 70 to 80 percent of the Afghans in need of assistance are now in Northern Alliance territory. This is critical. We need the Northern Alliance to provide enough stability and security so we can provide humanitarian aid.
If it can do this, we'll be able to save a lot of lives. This is potentially a huge victory for humanitarian efforts, but it can only happen if Mazar-e-Sharif becomes a normal city where the international community can set up a base of operations. We need to make this clear to the Northern Alliance. We need to tell them that any future role they might have in the Afghan government is dependent on their ability to create a stable place for assistance. The Afghan people desperately needs someone to govern this country, if only to make a way for the international community to help.
This is also important for the coalition. They can't attack terrorism and bomb the Afghan people and then pull out when it comes to human aid. I think the international community is aware of this, but here's our chance. We need to become proactive. If people die unnecessarily, that will be a blow to the Northern Alliance and to the coalition. We can't underscore this enough.
The Northern Alliance's past record is dismal. They've been unable to work together among themselves. There have been a lot of betrayals among them over the past 10 years. Furthermore, they have a very poor human rights record. So the question now is whether cooler heads will prevail, whether they know what's at stake and whether they'll comply.
There's also been talk of creating a multinational police force under U.N. auspices. But because there is no standing force like this already in place, it takes a while to organize. And yet, Kofi Annan has said that the U.N. has to act as swiftly as possible, so it might happen sooner than expected. But surely, one way to potentially control the situation on the ground is to have a multinational police force -- preferably with people from Muslim countries.
The difficulty is going to be in implementing that. It's clear that putting U.S. special forces in charge of anything in Afghanistan is a non-starter. [Lakhdar] Brahimi, the U.S. special envoy, went out of his way to make that point when he started working on Afghanistan again in September. You can't look to the U.S. because no American force will be accepted there. So you're stuck with exerting U.S. force on the Northern Alliance or creating and asserting influence on an international force.
Robert Legvold, political science professor at Columbia University specializing in former Soviet states
There's more nuance to [the falling of Kabul]. My reading of the news is that commanders have restrained troops from sweeping in. Instead they've sent in limited numbers in order to go from house to house to make sure that the Taliban have left. Abdullah Abdullah [the Northern Alliance's foreign minister] has said that it's very much in the interest of the Northern Alliance to respect the wishes of the international community, for them not to seize Kabul, and they seem to be complying.
The question is whether there is a spontaneous movement on the part of some of the forces under warlords that can't be controlled by the central leadership. It's a matter of how much control the Northern Alliance has over itself.
The second question is whether the international community can get their act together in time. Secretary of State Colin Powell has agreements from Muslim countries, but not Arab countries, and I think that's the key. There needs to be an Arab presence that then creates a constabulary force, an international monitoring force to oversee what the Northern Alliance does. This should be in place until the larger question of the shape of interim government can be answered.
So you have two kinds of institutions that are needed: one, a quick monitoring force that ought not to be Western powers; and second, a solution to this longer-term problem of trying to find some kind of broad government. Both of those things should fall under the mediation of the international community, preferably the U.N.
But we're having a lot of trouble getting that off the ground. The main problem with the first institution is time urgency. They need to do this as soon as possible.
So the real issue for now is whether and where the Taliban will make their stand. Presumably they'll build up their military power around Kandahar. The further south they move from Kandahar, or the closer [north] to Iran, the weaker they are in terms of tribal support. So my guess is that the war will intensify south of Kabul and east to Pakistan.
I've also heard that the Taliban has been fractured, that they don't have communications with each other. If that's true, then it may be that regardless of their will or strength, they won't be able to pull themselves together militarily and will be much weaker. But I wouldn't count on that until we see it happen.
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