AEGHANISTAN: In a country riven by ethnic, religious and linguistic conflicts, Afghanistan’s unity has always been precariously forged, now, with the appearance of powerful regional leaders and the enfeeblement of the Government in Kabul, the partitioning of the country into three autonomous territories is becoming a fact of life.
‘The disintegration of the country is evident in the northern region, where a former militia leader backed by two of Afghanistan’s Many ethnic groups controls the nation’s strongest military force and is establishing virtually a separate stale. The Uzbeks and Tajiks who support him make up about one third of Afghanistan’s 16.5 million people.
A second region, in the south and the cast, is inhabited mainly by Pathan’s, who form nearly half of the country’s population and who have traditionally dominated Afghan politics, that area includes the capital, Kabul.
In the west is a territory controlled largely by Afghans with close. Ethnic ties to Iran and open to
Several diplomats in Islamabad, the capital of neighboring Pakistan, said they regarded the fragmentation of Afghanistan as essentially completed.
Because of its location and its ethnic and religious links too many countries in the region, including the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Afghanistan, long a cold war battleground, is now the object of a competition for influence among Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Events here can also affect the stability of some of the emerging Central Asian republics, analysts say.
Since the overthrow of the President Najibullah in April, after nearly 14 years of civil war against a succession of Soviet backed Governments, a disparate group of guerrilla factions and warlords have fitfully tried to forge a stable central government. But ethnic and religious rivalries, personal animosities and a welter of uncompromising ambitions have wrecked those efforts.
Unlike Kabul, which is reeling under rocket attacks from dissident guerrilla leaders, severe food shortages and the absence of electricity, in Masari Sharif the markets are full, electricity pulses through a scattering of power lines and, most important, there is peace.
This is the base of Gen.Abdul Rashid Does tam, a former Communist militia leader whose sudden tum of heart last year helped bring down the Najibullah Government.
General Doe’s tam, an ethnic Uzbek who leads the grandly named National Coalition of the North and who commands the most powerful military force in Afghanistan, has issued an ultimatum to the fragile Government in Kabul demanding posts in the Cabinet and a sharp rollback of Islamic fundamentalism if national unity is to be achieved.
“We try to be self-sufficient,” he said. “We try to eam our income, we have agricultural lands.”
After a show of force in December by General Doe’s tam’s forces against the titular President, Burhanuddin Rabbani, an assembly of all the factions was called. But five of the nine major groups boycotted the meeting and Rabbani stacked the gathering with delegates loyal to him. The assembly chose Rabbani as the country’s President, But Rabbani’s formal accession of the presidency has not even given him authority over all of Kabul. Much of the west of the capital is controlled by a dissident guerrilla faction, Hezbi Wahadat, 4 groups composed primarily of the Iranian backed western Hazara minority. Sporadic clashes between Rabbani’s forces and Wahadat soldiers have broken out this month.
General Doe’s tam expressed disdain for the results of the assembly held last month in Kabul.
“The Government is so limited there,” he said. “It is not a Government of all Afghans.”
Indeed, Rabbani’s Government exists in little more than name, with his authority confined to a few sections of the capital and Stretching barely into the surrounding countryside.
In the country’s other power center, Herat, the heart of Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim community and a region where Iran is intent upon asserting its influence, a functioning government composed a local elders and militia commanders has assumed control.
General Doe’s tam’s continued role in Afghan politics has angered some of the more fundamentalist guerrilla leaders who say his association with the former Communist Government marks him as a traitor of Islam.
Hekmatyar has repeatedly attacked the capital with rockets because of the presence of some of the general’s forces in the city; He has said that General Doe’s tam’s association with the old Government made him ineligible for any position in an Islamic Afghanistan.
For his part, General Does tam has solidified his control over the country’s north and has assumed the title of president.
“Call myself president and military head of the shura,” he said, referring to the collective leadership. He has visited Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where he held talks with government leaders, and he indicated that he opted to be able to meet representatives of Western governments, particularly from the United States. Slowly, the general is shaping the policies that he hopes will prevail in the north. Indeed, he said, the northern government that he is. Building will be quite different from the Islamic fundamentalist state envisioned by Rabbani and other factions in Kabul. “Implementing those kinds of laws is almost out of the question,” the general said. “If he is really serious about these laws of Islam, then all intellectuals will flee Afghanistan. Nobody could stand to stay here. In Kabul, the technocrats: and most young people and broad minded people are supporting the north, whenever there is a problem in Kabul, people are escaping and coming to the north.” A rudimentary civil apparatus is functioning here, Schools are open and classes are being held in the local university. Customs duties are levied on all goods passing over the bridge from Uzbekistan at Heratyn, and efforts are being made to rebuild a public works department. Around MazariSharif, road crews were repairing the cracked and rutted asphalt that forms most of this town’s streets, A United Nation’$ official who travels often here said the northern region was already assuming the character of a separate state.
“He’s got consulates,” this official said, referring to Iranian and Uzbek diplomatic missions. “He’s got the United Nations, the Red Cross, tractors, farming, the buses is running, taxis, electricity, new construction, and none of this is in Kabul.”
(Courtesy of New York Times).
Article extracted from this publication >> February 26, 1993
