Afghanistan

by David Isby

  The Afghan Taliban have had an international dimension since their inception. Mullah Omar assumed the title of Amir al Mumin in 1994, a title requiring obeisance by all Muslims, across frontiers. Though starting as a Pushtun movement, there was never a sense that their message was limited to that group. The shift from the more traditional Pushtun internal worldview to one that increasingly saw themselves as part of a global struggle for Islam initially reflected the camps’ location in Pakistan, support networks running to them from throughout the Islamic world (which, in the 1980s, saw a growth of non-government organizations), and the ISI’s desire to carry the war to then-Soviet central Asia, which they saw as vulnerable to Islamic resistance. With guerillas and aid crossing the Durand Line daily to fight the Soviets, the Afghan Pushtun view that it was not a border that was legitimate to them or should restrict their movements became widespread. “The Taliban were raised in the refugee camps in Pakistan and, rather than a sense of Afghan nationhood, were indoctrinated in an Islam without borders,” said a veteran Afghan political observer.

  The pre-2001 Afghan Taliban’s Islamic universalist and cross-border ideology, which was often difficult to reconcile with its more parochial Pushtun roots, was not brought in bin Laden’s luggage, but was there from the roots of the movement in Pakistan in the 1970s and 80s. The Taliban’s ideology easily evolved, from the belief that the Durand Line should not be a barrier to the Pushtuns it divided, to a belief that “there are no borders in Islam.” Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership’s attraction to the goal of a restored Sunni Khalifait in which they would play a major role predated Al Qaeda’s transnational appeal.

  All these factors made the original Afghan Taliban a formidable force. They were able to achieve a degree of legitimacy with Pushtun Afghanistan that HiH, their predecessor and rival, was unable to achieve despite having the full backing of Pakistan and a more sophisticated party organization. In the final analysis, HiH’s explicit Islamist ideology—looking to Islam as a modernizing force that will transcend the backwardness of tribal, divided, underdeveloped Afghanistan—was less attractive to the conservative Afghan Pushtuns than the Taliban’s implicit fundamentalist ideology, looking back to an Islamic past of piety which, if as imaginary as Pushtun tribal lineages, was no less powerful for that fact.

  Shaping the Vortex: The Post-2001 Afghan Insurgents

  The post-2001 Afghan Taliban, revived in Pakistan, has since been re-exported—by cross-border insurgency and propaganda—into southern and eastern Afghanistan. What has emerged in the Vortex is different from the pre-2001 Taliban in Afghanistan. The pre-2001 Taliban had lost legitimacy, and this was further undercut by the scope of their military defeat.

  Driven into sanctuaries in Pakistan following their defeat in Afghanistan in 2001, the remaining Afghan Taliban were largely cut off from their bases of support back home. With little interest shown by the winners, Afghan and foreign, in cutting them in on the post-conflict settlement, they had no choice except to transform.

  The beaten Afghan Taliban of 2001 became part of an insurgent coalition that by 2008–10 threatened the future of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They rebuilt where the “Taliban culture” strong and state institutions weak in both countries. Motivation was provided by Al Qaeda-developed propaganda and the alienation of many Pushtun leaders. The failure of post-2001 Kabul and its foreign supporters to use effective patronage, strengthen the institutions that meant something to Afghanistan’s rural Pushtuns, create effective and legitimate governance, and provide meaningful conflict resolution, when combined with the aggressive Taliban culture, meant that the insurgent threat has gained strong inroads where its predecessors were defeated less than a decade before.

  The Afghan Taliban and their insurgent allies that have emerged from the Vortex are not the same pre-2001 organizations.56 In 2002–06, the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan accelerated their cross-fertilization from other organizations that had marked the later years of their rule in Kabul. This included participation in the rise of the Pakistani Taliban. The government of Pakistan refused to move against the Afghan Taliban in their sanctuaries in Pakistan.

  In Pakistan, Afghan insurgent groups have access to networks running outside the FATA, and money from Karachi, Lahore, and elsewhere made involvement in Pakistani internal politics even more important. In 2001, the Taliban had found few willing to fight to the death for them except some foreigners. By 2008–10, there was no shortage of insurgent fighters: Afghans, Pakistanis, and a new generation of foreigners. Despite the increased internationalization of the conflict, the leaderships of all Afghan insurgent groups are Pushtuns. Those Afghans fighting in the insurgency were, in 2008–10, almost exclusively Pushtuns. The current Afghan insurgents have, like the 1994–96 Afghan Taliban, been able to present themselves internally as the banner carriers of Pushtun nationalism and the restorers of Pushtun power in Kabul while holding fast to a transnational ideology of Sunni Islamic radicalism.

  The post-2001 Afghan insurgent groups rely on the networks used by its pre-2001 Taliban predecessor and also share them with Al Qaeda and other threats, terrorist and insurgent alike. Post-2001, the Afghan Taliban and other insurgent groups have managed to come out from under Osama bin Laden’s effective control. The post-2001 Taliban has become the leading Afghan insurgent group, dominating but not controlling a diverse insurgent coalition, but has retained its links with Al Qaeda. But while Al Qaeda focused on its global mission, the post-2001 Afghan Taliban instead aims at seizing state power in Afghanistan as part of an insurgent coalition that includes, among other groups, its pre-2001 rival HiH.57

  It remains, however, that the insurgents, including the post-2001 Afghan Taliban, have not been able to claim the allegiance of all the ulema that had given at least passive support to its predecessor. Many of those with links to Kabul and those that still retained ties to the Sufic orders have not supported the insurgents, although signs that the Taliban have been increasingly penetrating brotherhoods in southern Afghanistan in 2008–10 have been disconcerting.58 Other pro-government mullahs continue to resist the insurgents.59

  Before 2001, many of the cultural restrictions that made the Taliban a brutal occupying force in Kabul or the Hazara Jat were applied more leniently—or at least more haphazardly—in the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan. The current Afghan insurgency combines some of this approach. In many areas, the insurgents make use of outreach to local inhabitants where possible. But more brutal and direct methods associated with the cross-border insurgency are also widespread. The Afghan insurgency is a mix of Afghan Taliban Pushtun origins and a potential Islamic Khmer Rouge. Xenophobia has been exalted, reflecting the need to de-legitimate the foreign presence that supports Kabul and reflecting the Al Qaeda-provided narrative that Afghanistan is one front in a global struggle against Crusaders and Zionists. It builds on a shared sense of deep humiliations to Muslims worldwide.

  The worst crimes of the pre-2001 Afghan Taliban and their allies—the massacres in the Hazara Jat and Mazar-e-Sharif, the despoliation of the Shomali Plain, the repressive rule in Kabul and other cities—are likely to be the standing operating procedures of their successors. In south Afghanistan by 2008–10, the murder of pro-government religious figures and aid workers, and the massacre of civilian Afghans, have been widespread. Perhaps most telling, the intimidation of rural Afghan Pushtun leadership figures has forced many to flee to Kandahar, Kabul, or Dubai. Many of these were the bedrock of local support for the pre-2001 Afghan Taliban. The Afghan insurgent coalition is a different type of force.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PAKISTAN IN THE VORTEX

  “The most dangerous geography on earth.”

  —Ambassador Richard Burt, 28 February 2008

  It is questionable whether there can be any lasting improvement in the security of Afghanistan, and with it the lives of Afghans, without addressing the conditions and policies in Pakistan that turned the Frontier into the Vortex. Many countries, organizations, and
individuals created the Vortex. But the government of Pakistan, through overt action and enabling or not countering the actions of others, began the creation on its own territory, with the intention of affecting Afghanistan. But, from the start, Pakistan has been reaping the unintended consequences of these actions.

  “Pakistan does not want to own Afghanistan, just run it, like the [pre-1919] Brits” is the view of one veteran journalist. In 2008–10, for Pakistan’s military and elites, the goal of their Afghanistan policy is the creation of what eluded them in the past: a Pakistan-friendly, Pushtun-dominated (often styled “moderate Taliban”) government in Kabul. They believe that the US and the coalition are preventing the achievement of this goal, even though it is also in their interest. By 2008–10, the US had become wildly unpopular in Pakistan, both among elites and in mass sentiment. The US is seen as waging a war on Islam both in Afghanistan and through their links with India and Israel. US policies are seen as being aimed at destabilizing or dismembering Pakistan to weaken or eliminate a nuclear-armed Muslim state.

  Many Pakistanis see US policies since 2001 as having led to the emergence of the radicalized Taliban movements that by 2008–10 threatened both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They still believe that, in the end, the US and the coalition forces will disengage from Afghanistan and that their Afghan allies and the current Kabul government will flee into exile at that point. The non-Pushtun Afghans—perceived as a minority—will deal with Pakistan’s enemies and rivals—India, Iran, and Russia among them—to try and hang on to power, setting the stage for a potential resumption of the Afghan civil war that the US could have avoided by supporting Pakistan’s goals.

  The continued cross-border nature of the terrorism, insurgency, and narcotics traffic make Pakistani policy decisions vital to the future of Afghanistan. The future of Afghanistan is more dependent on what happens in Pakistan than any other country (including the US and its coalition partners). It is questionable whether there can be any lasting victory over terrorism, insurgency, and narcotics in Afghanistan and with it improvement in the lives of Afghans without solving the long-running crisis of governance problems in Pakistan.

  There remain significant differences between the conflict in Pakistan and the one in Afghanistan. No one wants to secede from Afghanistan, while the greatest threat to Pakistan is that their insurgency may cause the country to come apart at its ethnolinguistic seams. The insurgency in Pakistan—emerging from the Vortex but not limited to it—was widely recognized by 2008–10 to have become a threat to its future.

  Creating the Vortex: The Roots of Pakistani Policy in Afghanistan

  Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan has been more extensive than any other regional power and has played a direct role in events back to the 1970s. Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan is inherent in the contradictions of Pakistan’s political and cultural identity; it is not just the conflation of issues and actors. It dates back to when Pakistan recruited Pushtun tribal lashkars (armies) from both Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight the Indians in Kashmir in 1948. Pakistan later withdrew the regular military from its garrisons in the FATA; it would embrace the Pushtuns and their ethos—while denying them the vote and access to Pakistani justice, and underdeveloping their heartland in the FATA—and not be an occupying power like the British.

  Pakistan’s long-standing perceptions of national security have led to a necessity to shape the political situation in Afghanistan. This has led to participation as a frontline state in the conflicts in Afghanistan. Pakistani strategy in Afghanistan reflects what can be seen as a succession of two geostrategic thrusts.60 The first (from the 1950s until 1989) was southward by the Soviets. The Soviets threatened Pakistan through their actions in Afghanistan: first, widespread aid, trade, and internal penetration; and, in 1979–89, through invasion and a major military commitment. The Soviet relationship with India in these years further increased Pakistan’s fears that the Soviet goal was to surround and destroy Pakistan and achieve access to the “warm waters” of the Indian Ocean. This provoked a Pakistani northward thrust. Pakistan saw Soviet and Indian support for this Afghan policy as being much more important than the minimal amount of cross-border violence that resulted from Kabul’s Pushtunistan claims. Indian influence in Kabul encouraged Afghanistan to create and use the Pushtunistan issue as a lever to dismember Pakistan. Even though Afghanistan did not militarily cooperate with India in any of its conflicts with Pakistan, the Pushtunistan issue contributed to the lasting concern Pakistan has about threats that may emerge from Afghanistan.

  Pakistan’s northward thrust became a political and military search for the elusive “strategic depth,” otherwise denied it by geography, that put most of Pakistan within easy striking range of India. This strategy was always viewed through the prism of its security competition with then-Soviet ally India on one hand and domestic (especially dealing with military and ethnic Pushtun access to power) politics on the other.

  The northward thrust was viewed as a counter to the two threats that Pakistan’s military thought could destroy the country. These were outside attack by India (aided by the Soviet Union), or outside-aided internal strife that would pull Pakistan apart. Because of India’s links with both the government in Kabul and Pakistan’s own Pushtun population—both dating to before partition in 1947—the strategy had both an internal and external dimension.

  The northward thrust began in the 1970s, after Pakistan’s defeat by India in the 1971 war and the secession of East Pakistan to become the independent state of Bangladesh. In 1971, the Pakistani military perception was that their outside supporters—the US, China, and Saudi Arabia—could not prevent India pulling off a piece of Pakistan or aiding movements aiming to secede from Pakistan. In their mind, at the end of the day, Pakistan could not count on outsiders. Therefore, Pakistan needed to build a strategy on national and especially religious bonds that would prove solid under pressure.

  To counter previous decades of Soviet and Indian involvement in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s involvement also started with internal penetration. Pakistan armed and trained anti-Kabul Afghan Islamist insurgents (including both Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud). These were launched in an abortive uprising against the Afghan government, the 1975 Panjshir revolt. Pakistan policy evolved to providing support for the Afghan war of national liberation after the 1978 Communist putsch seized power in Kabul.

  Pakistan’s military and especially the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate has remained the main internal generator and implementer of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policies. The ISI is both a military intelligence agency and the military’s “directed telescope” inside Pakistan. This military control of Afghanistan policy generation was not total and complete but was often to the exclusion of the Pakistani foreign ministry and other civilian governmental organizations (including, for example, the political agents in the FATA). While different Pakistani governments—military and civilian—have tried to involve other organizations, the military has remained the prime determinants of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policies.

  Since the Panjshir revolt, the Pakistani military’s main agents of change in Afghanistan have been Afghan guerrillas, who are motivated by Pushtun ethnicity and Islamist or fundamentalist ideology. Pakistan has enabled—either by direct support or an indirect hands-off approach—these guerrillas to fight against other Afghans and their foreign supporters (the Soviets in 1979–89, the US and ISAF more recently) opposing Pakistan’s policies.

  The 1979–89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan transformed Pakistan’s northward thrust into part of overall Cold War strategy. In those years, Pakistan was a frontline state and its actions received support from the US, China, Saudi Arabia, and others. The Pakistan-based Afghan resistance received extensive aid from the US, China, Saudi Arabia, the UK, France, and many other donors. Pakistan insisted on retaining control of both their own strategic vision and their relations with the Afghans waging the war and sheltering in their territory.

&
nbsp; The Afghan guerrillas of 1979–92 had the benefit of a seemingly open sanctuary in Pakistan that was, in the end, always denied by the government in Islamabad and a massive aid flow. The Afghan resistance managed to prevent Soviet political consolidation in Afghanistan until Moscow’s war effort was swept away by the final unsolvable crisis within the Soviet state. While Pakistan, unlike the Soviets, put much smaller numbers of military men—hundreds rather than some 150,000—into Afghanistan in 1979–89, their presence was much better thought out, their actions shrewder, and their impact more long-lasting.

  By 1987–89, the Soviet Union was coming to an end and their southward push was failing. Instead of aiming to counter the southward thrust, Pakistan now believed that its strategic interests required that state power in post-Soviet Afghanistan be held by Pushtuns, that a government in Kabul be “friendly” to Pakistan and Islamic in character, and that Indian involvement in Afghanistan be marginalized. Pakistan added to the strategic requirements motivating the northward thrust, re-opening central Asia after over a century under Russian rule. To the other strategic requirements were added that Pakistan now must have unfettered access to central Asia for trade and energy pipelines, with Karachi as the main port on the Indian Ocean for the landlocked nations that were formed from former Soviet territory in central Asia.

  The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan reopened the Kashmir issue, as India’s superpower ally was now in retreat. The ISI planned to achieve victory in Kashmir much as they had perceived that it was already being achieved in Afghanistan, through the use of Pakistan-hosted guerilla groups in a cross-border insurgency. The revival of conflict in Kashmir and the tensions with India that resulted lasted through the Kargil conflict of 1999 and beyond. A cross-border insurgency directed at India would require strategic depth, a source of manpower, and a deniable support infrastructure. Pakistan looked to post-Soviet Afghanistan to provide all three.