Afghanistan

  In Afghanistan, enmities between ethnolinguistic groups have tended to be localized rather than nationwide divisions. Tensions between neighboring groups often reflect issues such as differing economic spheres, such as the competition between urban Pushtuns and rural Tajiks in Kunduz. Competing agricultural practices include conflicts between Pushtun herders and Hazara and Uzbek farmers, long-standing in places such as Bamiyan and Jowzjan provinces. Conflicts between loyalties to competing warlords became widespread after the 2001 defeat of the Taliban. Most were between Pushtuns, but some, such as that in 2002–04 between Mohammed Atta’s largely Tajik and Dostum’s largely Uzbek supporters near Mazar-e-Sharif that led up to corps-size clashes including artillery and armor, brought different groups into conflict. The ever-present land and water disputes also frequently bring groups into conflict.

  However, the longest-lasting and most severe division is that between Hazaras and Pushtuns. This reflects the generations of identification of state power with Pushtun ethnicity and Hazara resentment at having gotten little from Kabul since being brought under its rule by force of arms in the late nineteenth century. Multiple factors—race, religion, language, land use, water rights, social status—have lined up to increase tensions between Pushtuns and Hazaras, exacerbated most recently by the brutal pre-2001 occupation of the Hazara Jat by the Taliban and its foreign allies. The Shia, Mongol-descended Dari-speaking Hazaras, were historically at the bottom of Afghan society. Mobilized and organized as a result of their participation in the 1978–2001 conflicts, the Hazaras have little desire to return to a subordinate status. The current insurgency is seen by Hazaras as the latest Pushtun campaign to bring them under their domination.

  In Afghanistan since 2001, terrorism, insurgency, and narcotics cultivation alike have been largely carried out by Pushtuns. Most of the post-2001 violence in Afghanistan has been within the same ethnolinguistic group, mainly Pushtun insurgents killing Pushtuns living in Afghanistan. Infighting has prevailed within clans and families. Cousins are often competitors for a kinship group or clan’s resources, leadership, or access to patronage (a dynamic termed tarborwali in Pushto). This reflects the impact of decades of conflict on the social structure. In many Pushtun tribes, especially in the south, there is no agreement as to who the leadership figures are or should be, resulting in competing or authority-less chiefs or shuras. The acephalous nature of Pushtun society means that each male is a potential leader. As a result, after decades of conflict, there is often no clarity or agreement about where authority or leadership, tribal or otherwise, lies.

  However, there is still significant tension between the largely non-Pushtun regions in the north, central, and western parts of Afghanistan and the Pushtun regions in the east and south, where the insurgency and narcotics cultivation are concentrated. In areas where Pushtun and non-Pushtun groups are mixed, there is local tension and competition. The non-Pushtuns of Afghanistan resent the large share of state power in Pushtun hands, the Pushtun role in terrorism, insurgency, and narcotics, and the allocation of a large share of development and other state resources to the site of the insurgency in Pushtun Afghanistan. “We should take up arms against Kabul and we would receive more aid” is a frequently heard remark from dissatisfied non-Pushtuns in Afghanistan. Non-Pushtuns see Kabul and foreign donors effectively rewarding the Pushtuns through concentrating aid in their areas. To those allocating aid, using it to counter the insurgency is an obvious priority. This is an area where Mountstuart Elphinstone’s identification of envy as among the Afghan’s most intense (and enjoyable) vices has remained valid. As Afghanistan became more dependent on outside aid for development and coalition forces for security, every Afghan became convinced that his or her group was being cut out.

  Within Pushtun areas, the rivalry is especially severe between tribes and clans. The insurgents often capitalize on resentments that the coalition or Kabul may have created. Every time one tribe benefits from Kabul’s actions, its rivals, aggrieved, often turn to the insurgents. This has been matched by Pushtun resentment of non-Pushtun claims to a share of power commensurate with their numbers (which Pushtuns answer with probably inaccurate, but nonetheless passionately believed, claims to be an absolute majority). The failure of the national leadership to interact with the Pushtun grassroots in a way consistent with Afghan expectations of legitimate authority, governmental or otherwise (including holding darbars, receiving petitions, and resolving disputes), has contributed to the Pushtun alienation from the Afghan government that has been motivated by the rise of the Taliban Culture and radicalization. In any context, alienation can easily morph into extremism, with the Pushtun insurgents offering an alternative. The emerging Afghanistan media may offer a potential alternative way to interact with the grassroots, but this has yet to be demonstrated or effectively used.

  Ethnolinguistic conflict is complex due to the fluid multiple nature of Afghan identity. The Taliban’s 1994–2001 demands that a unitary Sunni Islamic religious identity trump all others (in theory) were never widely accepted in practice even by their supporters and were hard to reconcile with the overlapping, competing, and often fluid representations of Pushtun identity. In addition to Islam, links to the nation as well as family, clan, and tribe remain important to the Pushtuns of Afghanistan.

  By 2008–10, relations between ethnolinguistic groups were deteriorating, reflecting the insurgency and the continued political polarization in Afghan politics. President Karzai, whatever his failings, was a sincere, if romantic, Afghan nationalist at his core. This image has been undercut, especially among non-Pushtuns, by the perceptions of increasing reliance on Pushtun power to rule during his first term, culminating in the extensive corruption reported in the 2009 elections. Karzai’s willingness to personally declare allegiance to Massoud in his conflict with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2000 and his original lack of interest in advancing a Pushtun ethnic or especially tribal agenda, or in taking up the trappings of a khan that belonged to him after the Taliban’s assassination of his father, has reduced his support among many Pushtuns, who initially saw this nationalist approach as an ethnic betrayal. To the Pakistani military, Karzai’s pre-2001 allegiance to the Northern Alliance, his lack of links to Pakistan, and his education in India makes him a likely tool of Pakistan’s enemies.

  These nationalist origins were part of the hope for a better future that Afghans of all ethnic groups embraced after the fall of the Taliban. Karzai was put forward by his foreign supporters but had broad-based Afghan support, reflected in the 2004 presidential election. Since then, this support has eroded. Non-Pushtuns see Karzai as an instrument of Pushtun power, while many Pushtuns have turned against him for failing to adequately represent their interests. The result has been the tainted 2009 election, ethnic polarization, and an unpopular presidency: 2009 polling showed that Karzai’s support in his native Kandahar province has dropped to 16 percent from 90 percent in 2004.288 Additionally, Karzai is blamed for Kabul’s failure to provide security and economic opportunity. He is derided by Afghan Pushtun nationalists as a “fake Pushtun” set in place by the foreigners to serve at the behest of minorities and prevent genuine Pushtun power in Kabul.289 In response, Karzai has appeared as a spokesman for Pushtun concerns, denouncing collateral damage by coalition airpower and raids by special operations forces. The appearance of presidential incompetence and ineffectiveness and the power of Karzai’s family despite widespread beliefs of their links to narcotics and political patronage have tended to dominate other perceptions and undercut the trappings of legitimacy in the eyes of both Pushtuns and non-Pushtuns. By 2009, polling showed that all Afghans, not just Pushtuns, holding a favorable view of Karzai had declined to 52 percent—still enough to win the election—from 83 percent in 2004.290 The impact of the 2009 election is likely to diminish it further. His popularity among Pushtuns, despite widespread disappointment, is still significantly higher than that nationwide.

  What has killed more Afghans than violence between ethnolingu
istic groups in post-2001 Afghanistan has been conflict within groups. Tribes, localities, and kinship groups all compete for patronage, access to irrigated land, and trade, as well as to exercise long-standing resentments. In Afghanistan’s Pushtun areas, tribal dynamics dictate why some areas tend to be more cohesive supporters of Kabul and the foreign presence while others send men across the borders to join the insurgents. Such divisions are not limited to Afghanistan’s Pushtuns—they also have led to conflict among Afghanistan’s Nuristanis and other groups—but among no others are they as severe nor have they led to as much conflict.

  Religion

  Religious alliances have been used to cross ethnolinguistic boundaries in Afghanistan’s conflicts but have not been determinative. The Sunni Islamist Ahmad Shah Massoud opposed the Sunni HiH and was able to make alliances with the Shia Hazara Hezb-e-Wahdat party and with Dostum’s Uzbek Junbish party, whose roots were as a pro-Soviet militia. When the Afghan Taliban invaded the Hazara Jat in the 1990s, their Pushtun mullahs were able to make common cause with Tajik mullahs to persuade Sunni Afghans of different ethnicities to wage a campaign of destruction against the Shia Hazaras. The post-2001 Taliban have attempted to reach out to non-Pushtun Sunni mullahs (Shias being beyond the pale) as common defenders of Afghan Islamic culture against the foreign infidel presence.291

  While the original Taliban regime saw its legitimacy erode prior to its rapid collapse in 2001, it still retained at least the nominal allegiance of the informal patronage-based networks of mullahs and other religious figures that cut across Pushtun Afghanistan and into Pakistan’s borderlands of the FATA, Baluchistan, and North West Frontier Province. When the Taliban were defeated, the majority of these religious figures did not flee into Pakistan. They remained where they were, central pillars (in the absence of effective secular authority) of Afghan society. Neither Kabul nor their foreign supporters came after them to remove them.

  The Afghan ulema have better internal links and an ability to mobilize Afghans, through the mosques, than does Kabul. The inability to win over much of the Afghan ulema to the government and their continued opposition to the foreign presence (largely from its cultural impacts) raises a cloud over the legitimacy of the government. The trends are not running in favor of the religious practices of old Afghanistan: “Older alims retire, the new ones are graduates of Pakistani madrassas,” said Haroun Mir, an Afghan political observer.292 Another pro-Western Afghan scholar said in 2008: “In my mosque in Kabul, every Friday the sermon is about the evils of the foreign presence and the need to banish them. Goodness knows what they preach down south. In Egypt, where they have state-controlled ulema, they would end up in jail or at least lose their financial support from the government for such preaching. In Kabul, it is simply accepted.” The Afghan government and its foreign supporters are losing—or, frequently, not even participating in—one of the most important parts of the battle of ideas, that taking place in the mosques throughout Sunni Afghanistan.

  One of the most capable networks in Pushtun-speaking Afghanistan, ulema linked by their madrassa educations or Deobandi-influenced teachings in Pakistan, is effectively controlled by the insurgents. Despite this, it is likely that in 2008–10 only a minority of the Pushtun ulema supported the insurgency.293 Many have strong links to Kabul or anti-insurgent sources of patronage. Others, with ties to the Sufic brotherhoods, oppose the insurgents. As the Taliban increasingly overcame or penetrated the Sufic brotherhoods that were part of traditional religious practice in southern Afghanistan in 2008–10, this has reduced their capability to organize resistance to them.294 Mullahs continue to resist the insurgents for many reasons.295 But all of these alike have often been targeted for assassination.296

  The days when power of the village mullah or a madrassa’s maulavi was limited to the moral, not the political, realm are unlikely to return to Pushtu-speaking Afghanistan, especially in the light of the continued weakness of secular and tribal leadership in many areas and Kabul’s inability to assert effective secular governance or provide any sort of service at the grassroots level.297 The local mullahs in Pushtun Afghanistan, because this group provided much of the resistance leadership in the war against the Soviets as well as grassroots leadership under the Taliban, have not reverted to being the subject of jokes as they were in the Golden Age. The Pushtun ulema of rural Afghanistan remained in their villages after the Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan in 2001–02. These mullahs were marginalized and became bitter and resentful. They did not see themselves as benefiting from the new political order the Bonn process put in place. Kabul had little interest in or capability for outreach. The US seemed intent on sending as many Afghans as possible to Guantanamo. In many cases, it was the mullahs’ contacts and networks—which they maintained when their previous allies the Taliban leadership ran across the border—that turned what started as a cross-border insurgency in 2003–04 into one which by 2008–10 had a grip on districts throughout Pushtun Afghanistan.

  Today, traditional Afghan religious practices demonstrate only a limited ability to reassert themselves, especially in Pushtun Afghanistan, where the past three decades of violence have caused great disruption and social damage. Moreover, the intervening decades have seen the rise of Islamist demands for the enforcement of the Sharia (Islamic law) in Afghanistan as well as throughout the Muslim world. The Sunni response to the Shia Iranian Revolution as well as the rise of militant religious power in Afghanistan over the years has also hurt traditional Afghan Islam’s ability to re-assert itself. Perhaps more significantly, there has been limited aid or governmental assistance reaching traditional Afghan Islam. Deobandi and Wahabi influences that had been strong among Afghans in the refugee camps in Pakistan starting 30 years ago have not faded in Pushtun Afghanistan despite the defeat of the Taliban in 2001. Mullahs that are followers continue to receive outside funding. The Deobandi funding comes from religious parties in Pakistan, many with links to the ISI. Wahabi funding comes largely from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, either directly or through NGOs. In many cases, covertly pro-insurgent Afghan ulema have been able to make common cause with conservative Afghan or Islamist religious leaders, including those in Kabul that are supporters of the government or members of parliament. They have been able to use shared concern over Afghan culture being threatened by exposure to foreign influence and a realization that an effective secular government would undercut their power.

  Whoever “wins” the conflict over Afghanistan’s religion will determine what form of Islamic practice will help shape Afghan government and society. Political Islam is far from a dynamic and revolutionary force: rather, it currently serves as a conservative force, motivating parliamentary and judiciary opposition to the Karzai government, filling a vacuum that existed in the absence of a tradition of parliamentary loyal opposition and waving the nationalist flag to oppose foreign-backed social changes. What has given the issue of the direction of Afghan religion additional importance is the religious basis, through Sharia law, of the secular legal system of Afghanistan. Chief Justice Faisal Ahmad Shinwari (who held that post in 2001–06) and his allies aimed to make the judiciary a bastion of religious conservatism against socio-political change. This changed with the appointment of Karzai allies to judicial positions.

  Religion also has a direct impact on how dispute resolution reaches the Afghan grassroots. In much of rural Afghanistan, dispute resolution falls not to the largely distrusted or nonexistent state-run judicial process; rather, the local population administers traditional justice themselves, through the hoqooq (a specialist land-and-water-rights body), jirga, shura, or other local organizations. While the centralization of power in Kabul and its state institutions under the constitutions had led to these subnational institutions being undervalued and unsupported after the fall of the Taliban, they were by 2008–10 receiving more support from aid donors. In some areas, especially in the omnipresent land and water disputes, the mediative role of sayids (descendants of the Prophet Mohammed) continu
es as it has for centuries. In other areas, the mantle of conflict resolution has been taken up by the insurgents, who have come in and offered their own rough justice—with a veneer of Sharia law for acceptability included—administered by local insurgent shuras or, more often, individual mullahs—seldom with the qualifications to be a qazi (Islamic jurist)—or insurgent commanders, often from outside the local area.298 The insurgents have targeted jirgas, shuras, mediation, and other local approaches to dispute resolution as unIslamic, as such traditional justice undercuts their claim to totalitarian authority.

  There is no Afghan tradition of state-supported ulema. Indeed, the size of the Afghan ulema, an estimated quarter million, would make such state support unfeasible. Kabul has tried to instill loyalty by forming ulema councils at a national and provincial level. The National Ulema-e-Shura (NUS) (Council of Clerics), a group of 100 religious leaders from around the country, meets monthly in Kabul and provides Karzai with a stamp of approval on many issues. The clerics are financed directly from Mr. Karzai’s office, according to the secretary of the council, Fazel Ahmad Manawi (a Karzai ally, former deputy chief justice, and a member of the 2009 Independent Election Commission).299 Each province is supposed to have a comparable organization, although not all are apparently active. These efforts have not been terribly effective, with some exceptions such as the Kandahar council which includes religious leadership figures related to Karzai and senior ulema respected by all sides in the conflict. Kandahar’s and Nangarhar’s Ulema-e-Shura have been active, issuing fatwas against the insurgents and especially suicide bombing. In return, their members have been targeted for assassination, deterring ulema in areas within the reach of the insurgency from cooperating with the government or from preaching anti-insurgent messages. Ulema seen as having links to Kabul have been targeted, and many have been murdered by insurgents.300 In some areas, such as Uruzgan province, the security situation is too dangerous for the council to operate. Elsewhere, such as Paktika province, the council was formed by local ulema who complained they received no support (or help with security) from Kabul.