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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
We're seeing that people have decided that the Taliban is on the way out. In the north they fell because it wasn't their territory. However, in the south a good chunk of their forces are composed of the so-called Afghan Arabs, who will fight it out for ideological reasons. But most Afghans have a much finer grained sense of self and don't readily ally themselves with a larger group. This isn't like Yugoslavia, where you saw people allying themselves with their ethnic groups. In Afghanistan the sense of ethnicity is very fluid, with a few exceptions like the Hazaras. Traditionally there's lots of intermarriage. Politics is not based on ideology or ethnicity. If the Pashtuns want to come over to the Northern Alliance then they'll be accepted.
One of the problems is that everyone brings their own lens to this. For most people, the first time they'd heard about Afghanistan and its ethnic groups was six weeks ago. Suddenly people learn really quickly and focus on these ethnic groups, and the most recent thing we've read about ethnic groups was in the Balkans, where every time you create a nation for an ethnic group you get new revolts. The Afghans are not like that. There is not a single party in Afghanistan that has threatened to join a foreign country like the Kosovars in Macedonia. The amazing thing about Afghans is that they have co-ethnics along all their borders, and despite that not a single group has said "if we don't win we're going to form our own country or join with a foreign country." These guys are like poker players -- they argue about the division of the pot, not the table.
Afghanistan is the size of France and Afghans understand that you need a country of a certain size in order to survive. If you're five different countries then each one becomes an appendage to a neighboring country and everyone gets screwed. Central Asian ethnicity is very different from Eastern European ethnicity. They've always lived in multi-ethnic societies and have never suffered the ethnic problems of Eastern Europe.
One of the things that surprised me is how quickly the Pashtun areas seem to be unraveling. Until recently it had been thought that the country could be divided between the North and South along ethnic lines, but Pashtuns seemingly want to have no part of this.
Why should we think that a new government can work in Afghanistan?
The entire country has undergone considerable change. After the communist government fell in 1992, there was a real government to seize. But since the Taliban rose there hasn't been a government there. There's no army, no institutions, it's just a symbolic shell. That's one of the reasons they can agree to accommodate one another.
In the past it was a Pashtun-dominated government but all power came out of Kabul. The Pashtuns dominated because they controlled the monarchy and the military while the Tajiks controlled most of the bureaucracy. The Hazaras were discriminated against and got the short end of the stick. Then in the war against the Soviets they all learned that they could all fight. Previously the Pashtuns said "we're the best fighters." In that war the Tajiks proved to be among the best fighters under Massoud. The Hazaras also proved considerably tough warriors and pushed the Pashtuns out of some areas. So what has happened is that all ethnic groups have a certain amount of respect for one another. The Pashtuns know that there's no way of recreating the ethnic balance that existed before 1978 and everyone else is much more secure in their regional identities than before. Everyone is now talking about a central government, but it's not clear that will be very strong. They'll need a central government, at a minimum, to cash foreign aid checks and divide it up.
So you don't expect the new government to be effective?
Afghanistan has collapsed before, in 1929. The central government was restored but it took many years for it to become effective. The deal that the communists broke was that the Afghan central government leaves everyone alone as long as you're peaceful. No one collects taxes in Afghanistan, the government relied on taxing trade and smuggling for its revenue. That means that Afghan national governments rarely interfere in local affairs. The communists interfered by insisting on local land reforms and other policies. We'll probably go back to an era in which the central government allows local areas to administer themselves. Kabul used to appoint regional leaders; now local areas have appointed their own.
Will a weak central government hamper international aid efforts?
You don't even need a central government to do this sort of reconstruction. Every major city is close to another country: Mazar-e-Sharif is something like 60 miles from Uzbekistan, Kabul and Kandahar are right across the border from Pakistan and Herat is just 80 miles from Iran. If you want to set up reconstruction projects or policies based in each neighboring region then you can run all of that from outside. So let them spend next six-eight months arguing about the form of a central government while the international community actually does the rebuilding.
What reconstruction needs to be done?
There's relatively little that needs to be done because there wasn't much there before. They need roads and agriculture and little else. The first thing they need is a large amount of grain because Afghanistan has suffered three years of drought. USAID is planning to ship in tons of grain in order to bring the price down across the country. They only have one main road, the circuit road around the country, that needs to be rebuilt. It's a relatively simple job to do but needs to be done. Actually all these returning refugees from Iran have been doing road work in Iran for the past 10-20 years, so put them to work.
The northern part of country is the agricultural center, so they need to get their roads up in order to feed the south and then run transit from Pakistan to Central Asia which represents lots of revenue for the country. Afghanistan's not a cul-de-sac -- all its neighbors would like to have its infrastructure together too because they all want to get their trading routes back up and running.
Does the Taliban pose a lasting threat in Afghanistan?
Mullah Omar says his forces will retreat to the hills and start a guerilla war. The West says "oh my god," but they forget that guerillas need to be resupplied. The mujahedin won against the Soviet Union because we resupplied them and they could retreat into Pakistan. If Omar goes into the hills he can buy supplies from smugglers but he will have to pay cash and can't retreat to another country; he will be stuck in the hills and caves. It will be especially difficult for him to hide if the country becomes more developed because his hiding places will rapidly disappear.
The United States' demand is that Afghanistan turn over all foreigners. It's relatively easy for the Afghans to turn over foreigners. The interesting thing is that you don't see one Afghan in one of these terrorist groups. They're very parochial. Even the Taliban were intent only on putting the Islamic revolution in place in Afghanistan, while Osama wanted to spread it to the world. It was a symbiotic relationship, but the Afghans haven't had any interest in going off to kill anyone outside their territory. They even had to bring in Arabs to kill Massoud because they probably couldn't get Afghans to do it.
Second, Afghans of whatever ideology really don't want to sacrifice themselves outside of their own country. If you get the economy going they won't even attend madrasas because they'll have better things to do. It's an easier problem to take care of rather than many of the other difficulties we've been dealing with. In some ways we've invented some bogeymen. The collapse of the Taliban has taken many people by surprise, but if you look at their rise it's exactly what happens in Afghanistan's political history.
You hear military experts on TV saying that the flip side could be that the Northern Alliance is moving so fast that it could be counter-attacked, but the guys who were Taliban yesterday are part of the Northern Alliance today. And they won't change back, because they will go with their own interests which are now firmly aligned with the Northern Alliance. And given the power and resources Afghanistan might actually stabilize. Twenty-five years of fighting has taught the warlords that there are better things to do.
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