Afghanistan's turbulent history

The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world. Lakhdar Brahimi, special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

The rising insurgency mirrors Afghanistan’s turbulent history marked by centuries of conflict and violence. Bridging trade routes between the Indian subcontinent, Persian Gulf and Central Asia, Afghanistan has persistently suffered foreign interference and invasions. But despite suffering perpetual instability and anarchy, its rugged terrain and people’s patriotic and religious zeal have helped preserve the nation’s independence.

It seems unusual that conquerors as prominent as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan suffered greatly to invade and control this small nation. It is also interesting to note that invading Afghanistan has caused many great empires to collapse.

The British in the 1800s and the Soviets in the late 1900s paid harsh prices for Afghanistan’s occupation. The British suffered three humiliating defeats, while the Russians were forced to withdraw and their empire collapsed right afterwards. The US-led coalition are therefore pursuing a battle of “hearts and minds” to prove themselves as peacekeepers, not occupiers, in order to avoid a similarly fatal fate.

Afghanistan is where Tsarist Russia and British Empire played the Great Game – but neither side succeeded. To prevent Russian influence, the British India East Company invaded Afghanistan in 1838 to oust King Dost Muhammad and install its own satellite regime in Kabul. But the occupation marked the beginning of a disastrous chapter in British military history. Only one out of the 16,000 British troops survived in retreat in the first Anglo-Afghan war. Afghanistan was then nicknamed “graveyard for foreign invaders”.

The lesson learned from all foreign invasion of Afghanistan is that it is easy to conquer the country, but rather difficult, and sometimes impossible, to control it, or get out of it with success.

But to avenge the massacre, Britain repeated the error of invading Afghanistan in 1878 – triggering the second Anglo-Afghan war. The British army conquered many Afghan provinces with ease, including the capital. But a similarly calamitous doom descended on the British army when a nationwide jihad was declared against them.
Nearly half of the British army of 2,600 were annihilated only in the southern city of Maiwand, a district of Helmand Province, where 3,300 British troops are now stationed.

The Taleban are now rekindling the past hostilities to turn the public against the British forces in the province. "The British have been defeated in the past. Afghans are not scared of death. The British are an old enemy of Afghanistan,” a local Taleban is quoted as urging people to fight the British in the region.

Afghanistan has always been an ultra conservative and hyper religious nation. Any attempts of modernisation have met stiff domestic opposition. Having declared independence from Great Britain in 1919, King Amanullah embarked on radical reforms aimed at curtailing the power of the clergy, imposing official dress code, and promoting democracy and women rights – efforts censured as acts of westernisation that led to his deposition in 1929. His successors remained cautious at brining any social changes.

Ironically, the resistance deprived Afghans of political and economic growth. According to Mark Urban, author of War in Afghanistan, Afghans failed to avail themselves of an infrastructure, an efficient civil service, an independent judiciary, an integrated national railway network and well-organised armed forces the British left behind where they colonised.

In 1893, the British also imposed the Durand Line treaty separating vast Afghan territories that now belong to Pakistan. Although Afghan leaders have repeatedly refused to accept the Durand Line as official boundary between the two nations before and after the expiration of the treaty in 1993, absence of a central government in Kabul has denied the country return of its lost territories.

Since the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, the Pakistani military and intelligence agency (ISI) have relentlessly strived to destabilise and weaken Afghanistan to maintain its national security and territorial integrity. “Military hardliners called me a 'security threat' for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan,” said Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani Prime Minister.

The Durand Line has recently come to international limelight as the areas now under Pakistan’s control (Baluchistan, North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and Federal Administrative Tribal Areas) have turned into headquarters for Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda activists. Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf’s call for building fences along the borders in 2005 met fierce opposition of Pashtun tribes on both sides of borders, as well as that of the Afghan government. “Barbed wire is a symbol of hatred, not friendship and hence it cannot stop terrorism,” Afghan President Hamed Karzai pointed out.

Afghanistan’s independence from Britain followed five decades of relative peace and stability – which ended with the overthrow of King Zaher Shah in 1973.

Zaher Shah introduced a new constitution in 1964 stipulating freedom of expression and equal gender rights for the first time in history. Although Zaher’s 41-year reign is described as the most tranquil era in Afghan history, it was marred by intense economic mismanagement and political negligence. Thousands died in severe droughts in the north, while he was building palaces in Kabul and Italy. His weak administration also paved the way for Russian influence that led to an invasion in 1979.

Daud Khan’s coup d'état of 1973 put an end to the period of monarchy. He established a republican, devised a development marshal plan and sought closer relations with western nations - arousing the wrath of Russians. “I would be the happiest to light my American cigarette with Russian matches,” was his foreign policy motto. In his last meeting with Daud in April 1977 in Moscow, Russian President Leonid Brezhnev complained about Daud’s permission of experts and aid workers from NATO member countries in Afghanistan. Daud is quoted as replying:

“We will never allow you to dictate to us how to run our country and whom to employ in Afghanistan. How and where we employ the foreign experts will remain the exclusive prerogative of the Afghan state. Afghanistan shall remain poor, if necessary, but free in its acts and decisions.”

His souring relations with Russia led to his assassination by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in April 1978.

PDPA’s bloody revolution saw the killing of thousands of the intelligentsia, Islamic scholars, university professors, leaders of ethnic minorities and civilians. Despite understanding of people’s deep cultural and religious sensitivities, they tempted fate by imposing a Marxist system of social reforms and welcomed the dispatch of Russian troops inside the country – instigating nationwide rebellion and mass migration of people to neighbouring countries, mainly to Pakistan and Iran.

The Afghan resistance coincided with the climax of the Cold War. As John K. Cooley, author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, points out: “The tacit consensus in USA was that the Muslim religion, fundamentally anti-Communist, if translated to politics, could be harnessed as a mighty force to oppose Moscow in the Cold War.”

The United States therefore forged an alliance with Pakistan’s then military government, which sought to topple the Russian-backed regime in Kabul and install its own mercenaries to enable expansion of Pakistan’s trade routes to Central Asia.

America thus fostered close ties with Islamic extremists and provided them with massive heavy and light military hardware – a relationship which went dreadfully wrong afterwards and led to creation of terrorist organisations allegedly responsible for many recent terror activities, including the 9/11 attacks on America.

Thousands of Islamists from the Arab world joined the Afghan mujahedin. According to John Cooley, CIA, unable to continue funding the mojahedin, promoted illicit drugs production and trade in tribal areas of Pakistan and remote Afghan provinces to keep the battle running – a policy that led to flourishing illegal business the world is striving to eliminate now. Thus Afghanistan changed into a hub for international drugs mafia and Arab fundamentalists, including al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

The 300,000 Russian troops and an annual aid of 3bn dollars failed to help Kabul suppress the mounting revolt. Thus they withdrew in 1989 in utter humiliation, leaving behind 15,000 deaths. The Afghan occupation is termed in Russian history as the beginning of the Union’s collapse. Author of Embattled America Richard Crockatt describes Afghanistan as the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam” – both in the failure on the battlefield and the collapse of consensus at home. The difference, according to him, was that the United States could afford such a failure, the Soviet Union could not.

Soon after Russian pull-out in 1989, America turned its back on Afghanistan. Kabul government fell in 1992, but disunity between mujahedin factions led to devastating civil war. And to depose the anti-Pakistan regime in Kabul, Pakistan hatched the monster of the Taleban in 1994. Taleban were an alliance of students at Pakistani madrassas (religious seminaries), previous Afghan resistance fighters, Arab extremist Islamists and even a handful of Chechen and Chinese Islamic fundamentalists. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who had left Afghanistan in 1990, returned in 1996.

At first, the Taleban won the support of Pashtun population in the south by promising them peace, security and the rule of sharia law. But after they captured Kabul in 1996, they started a series of unprecedented atrocities and severe punishments – such as amputation of hands for theft, stoning to death for adultery, execution for sodomy, and flogging for those breaching their code of dress. They also banned music, movie and still pictures, certain sports, and worst of all, education and work for women. They destroyed two gigantic Buddha statues in Bamian Province in early 2001.

Although the world community had not recognised the Taleban government – with the exception of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – it was not until the 9/11 incident that the world reacted to oust the brutal regime.

Following 9/11, America called on the Taleban to hand over Bin Laden, allegedly responsible for the assault. But the Taleban’s refusal led the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

The US heavy air assault supported by ground troops of Northern Alliance, the sole anti-Taleban forces left, drove the Taleban out of Kabul in no time. But the Taleban were never eliminated. Some fled the country and took sanctuary in Pakistan, while others took off their turbans and melted into villages in the south and east.

They established safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas and continued to regroup, recruit fighters, raise funds and re-supply their forces. But America failed to pressure Pakistan to crack down on their activities. Thus they regrouped and are now back to take revenge.

Hamed Karzai, appointed head of the Interim Authority at the Bonn Conference in 2001, won Afghanistan’s first free presidential elections in 2004. Yet five years since the fall of the Taleban, the president, with enormous international economic and military backing, is still struggling to establish nationwide security, promote national unity, boost shattered economy, disarm local warlords and tackle drugs production.

Afghanistan proving British Vietnam, British MP says

Afghanistan could prove a British Vietnam unless we pull out from the dangerous south immediately, a senior British politician has warned.

Labour MP Paul Flynn in an exclusive interview described the current international campaign in Afghanistan as a “mission impossible”, and sharply criticised US-led counter insurgency and counter narcotics policies in the country.

Support for the Afghan war is dramatically diminishing amongst British public and politicians as the country four years after the ouster of the Taleban is still teetering on the brink of anarchy and collapse.

“We are sending troops to defend Karzai, and his brother is a crook. If that becomes publicly recognised, the support for the war will drain away. That is a reality. We are propping up a very nasty regime. Not Karzai himself, but all his henchmen who run the provinces.”

Mr Paul, who served as government’s spokesman for social security before being elected to the House of Commons, believes the Afghan mission could not succeed because of “ill-conceived” US strategies. “Vietnam started a small thing. And there was assumption by the Americans that they could tell a country what kind of system they should have and there is the same arrogance there. They are trying to impose a system which is in America.”

He ascribed the recent surge in insurgency and violence to “counter-productive drug strategy” being implemented and warned of dire consequences if current forced eradication efforts are not halted. “It is an idiocy and it’s always been and idiocy. I said in 2001 that getting rid of poppies was idiotic… I would rather go to Afghanistan to get rid of al-Qaeda, but I have always been against poppy eradication. And if we go on we will lose lives.”

His scathing remarks come as the British troops recently sustained heavy casualties amid the deadliest Taleban offensive since the troops’ deployment to the turbulent province of Helmand last year.

He emphasised that drug problem could not be tackled on the supply side and called for robust international effort to reduce the demand in America and Europe. “This year there will be more heroin – the biggest harvest ever – yet the price of heroin on the streets of Britain is the lowest it has ever been. And it’s absolutely no good,” he pointed out. “Let’s say if they reduce the production by half in Afghanistan as they did something similar in Columbia, and what happened was that coca was the produced in Peru and Bolivia… It is still failing in Columbia. They have spent 4.7bn dollars in Columbia, but coca production increased by 20 per cent last year.”

Mr Paul, who has also worked as member of European Parliament, backs licensing opium cultivation for production of medicines – a proposal by the Senlis Council, an international security and development think tank. He is strongly against US drug policies being pursued in Afghanistan. He says the drug policy in Afghanistan is a “repeating error” of Columbia – what he termed as “Columbiaisation of Central Asia”.

The current eradication campaign combined with US planes bombing villages, according to Paul, has moved the local population closer to the Taleban.

Paul describes Afghanistan as a rouge nation that could not be run as a unified country. “To come to the sober conclusion, it can’t be run as a unified country. It will always be run by warlords, cooks and so on. And the best thing what America must consider is to deal with crooks.”

Paul recalled Russian MP’s warning at the outset of US invasion that America and its allies would face the similar fate Russia met in the 1980s. “When we first moved in, a Russian MP laughed and said well you conquered Afghanistan. He said we conquered Afghanistan in six days and we were there for ten years, and we left, 15000 Russian troops killed.” He also noted that there was a whole series of 200 years of invading armies coming in and leaving their death bodies behind – a calamitous fate, according him, awaiting foreign troops in the country at present.

British Secretary of Defence John Reid at his trip to Afghanistan early this year said that his troops would come back within three years “without firing a single shot”. Describing his remarks as “idiotic”, Paul said: “In any conflicts we go through this process where everyone underestimates the problem. In the First World War we said we would win by Christmas, and we were there for four years then.”

He also questioned coalition forces’ claims the casualties were Taleban fighters and said that they could be civilians. Increase in the number of civilian casualties is said to be another factor changing public opinion against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Mr Paul warned that consequences would be terrible if civilian casualties were not avoided in future. “They can’t win the war without the support of the local people,” he said.

Asked whether Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf was doing enough to crack down on Islamic extremists and terrorist elements on its soil, he replied: “I don’t see what advantage would be for him to have trouble and instability on its borders.” He however pointed out that while Musharraf had reacted on madrassas, he had yet to react on trainees.

He also criticised Afghan President Hamed Karzai for appointing “nasty officials” in key positions. “They are trying to strengthen the rule of Karzai and that seems another mission impossible, because he has appointed all these crooks to run this show.”

Paul called for immediate withdrawal of British troops from the volatile province of Helmand. Asked who could fill the vacuum of power to avoid a Taleban comeback, he said: “I don’t see a threat of the Taleban comeback. The Taleban are coming because Americans are there… I don’t think the Taleban need a base now or al-Qaeda needs one. They can run their operation from Somalia, Indonesia or Iran. There is no deterrent.”

When asked whether a British pull-out would mean British soldiers who died in the conflict so far died in vain, he replied: “Yes, they died in vain. So we mustn’t say we should wait for others to die in vain.”

Mr Paul criticised his government of following “flawed” US policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. “They also wasted lives in Iraq. If we had not followed George Bush into Iraq, 110 British would not have died in Iraq. But did they die in vain? Yes, they did die in vain. They achieved nothing. We are tied in to American policy, and American policy on drugs is columbiaisation.”

Afghanistan on brink of narco-state

Afghanistan is heading for a bumper opium harvest this year amid growing fears the country could become a narcotics state controlled by drugs cartels and warlords.

Sharp increases projected demonstrate failure of the British-led counter narcotics mission that has cost more than two billion dollars since the ouster of the Taleban in 2001.

The UN’s annual world drug report 2006 indicates a 22% drop in world drug supply – with substantial reduction in Asia's Golden Triangle, the border zone between Burma, Thailand and Laos that was once the world's main drugs supplier area.

But Afghanistan’s drug situation, according to the executive director of United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), remains “vulnerable to reversal because of mass poverty, lack of security and the fact that authorities have inadequate control over its territory”.

Opium cultivation fell by 21 per cent last year after President Karzai declared jihad against opium poppies. But farmers resumed growing the illicit crop early this year because of worsening economic conditions and international community’s failure to provide them with alternative livelihoods assistance.

The lucrative business is believed to be funding terrorism and fuelling insurgency. “The various militias – local warlords, Taleban groups and others – all have the capacity to exert control over different aspects of the whole production process to access finance for their own purposes,” says Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford.

There is substantial evidence that many local farmers have joined the ranks of insurgents, as drug smugglers and the Taleban are said to be offering them protection and cash inducements to continue growing the illicit crop.

“Drug cartels now offer Afghan farmers more protection and incentives than aid agencies,” says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani analyst of Afghan affairs and writer of the best seller ‘Taleban’.

The drug economy has also fuelled widespread corruption amongst government officials and undermined the government authority.

An official of Afghan Interior Ministry’s counter narcotics department speaking on condition of anonymity revealed that majority of the ministry’s personnel, local police chiefs and provincial governors are benefiting from the trade. “A network of drug smugglers have created a state within the state and are crippling the government apparatus,” he said, adding that it was too difficult for the president to remove “these corrupt powers”. He also said that many drug smugglers captured were released within days as they had close links with high-ranking officials.

In addition to security, the drug business is seriously hampering the smooth implementation of reconstruction, development and democratisation process as well. “Afghanistan's huge drug trade severely impacts efforts to rebuild the economy, develop a strong democratic government based on rule of law, and threatens regional stability," the US State Department report recently concluded.

Drug addiction is on alarming increase in Afghanistan. A joint survey by UN and Afghan authorities last year estimated nearly one million addicts across the country. This is at a time when addiction treatment facilities in the country are almost non-existent.

Dangers resulting from the multi-billion-dollars trade are not just confined to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan produces 87 percent of world opium production. Almost 90 percent of heroin consumed in Britain, according to Drugscope, originates in Afghanistan. A BBC survey recently learned that three quarters of people in the UK have problem with drugs in their area – almost all of which are smuggled from Afghanistan.

Britain has been leading the counter narcotics campaign in Afghanistan since 2002. But all initiatives taken so far have failed to tackle the booming trade – ranging from soft approaches such as offering compensation and incentives to harsh ones like aerial spraying of poppy fields with herbicide.

“There is no short-term fix, and it at least needs a five or ten-year programme.
You also have to bear in mind the fragile state, and you have to be prepared for the high risks,” warns Labour MP Ann Mcketchin.

She believes the problem could not be addressed only through use of force. “Thailand at one time produced a lot, and now it doesn’t. It is because it established an alternative economy and also provided incentives for farmers to join the legal economy. It is a carrot and stick approach.”

While British officials rule out forced eradication without provision of alternative livelihoods, their American counterparts are emphasising to wipe out opium fields with crop-spraying planes – a controversial approach that not only met stiff opposition of Afghan farmers but also caused health hazards to local communities in 2004when the scheme was tested in Afghanistan for the first time.

But many analysts reject the militaristic approach to tackle the opium crisis and warn of terrible consequences. They argue that such measures have failed in Columbia – where chemical spraying of coca fields made millions of people destitute, yet the price of cocaine is still dropping in world markets.

UN figures suggest that two million Afghans are engaged in opium poppy cultivation. Many farmers say they are willing to stop opium cultivation if they are provided with an alternative source of income. Infertile land, grinding poverty, family debts, chronic droughts and lack of agricultural facilities such as irrigation systems have made them helpless to continue with the illegal trade. Opium prices exceeded 200 dollars per kilogram last year, which means the revenue from opium is at least ten times as much as that from wheat and other licit crops.

Thus the question remains as to how the monster of drugs could be defeated.

To tackle the illegal production and trafficking of opium in Afghanistan, the Senlis Council, a European drug and security policy forum, is proposing licensing Afghan opium for the production of opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine.

The council’s executive director Emmanuel Reinert says the licensing scheme could not only turn the illegal Afghan opium economy to a “legitimate, medicinal market”, but also help tackle acute deficit of morphine-based painkillers around the world.

Opium licensing system, according to the think tank, would not only contribute to resolving the Afghan opium crisis, but also help boost its shattered economy, facilitate reconstruction process and establish the rule of law by reducing the amount of opium flowing into illegal market and into the hands of insurgents.

The proposal however has yet to meet approval of UK and American officials – who believe that the system could not be implemented successfully under currently inadequate law enforcement agencies in Afghanistan. The officials argue that the central government has not yet established its complete rule in provinces to control the system and avoid diversion of drugs into illegal market.

Although the licensing scheme has been rejected in the past, British officials are urging for reconsideration of the proposal as forced eradication efforts not only failed but recently undermined security and escalated insurgency as well.

Foreign troops are encountering the fiercest insurgency in southern Afghanistan since the fall of the Taleban in 2001. Much of the disaster is blamed on forced eradication drive that has antagonised local farming communities and is believed to have driven farmers into the hands of the Taleban. And if the current militaristic approach is continued without substantial aid to farming communities, Afghanistan is feared to lapse back into anarchy and chaos.