Russia in Global Affairs

One night, an Afghan friend of mine and I were thumbing for a taxi on the outskirts of Kabul. He had lived in Moscow for many years and we knew each other quite well. The drivers would slow down one after another, flash their lights at us and then dash off. Finally, one of the drivers put his head out of his window, shouted a few phrases, and sped away.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said, you’re one of those who slaughter the dogs that the Americans throw to us,” my friend replied.

“We’re dressed as Europeans, and he thought we’re from among the Afghans who are servicing the American contingent,” he went on. “The cab drivers hate the Americans and have contempt for their fellow-countrymen who work for the Yankees.”

Any correspondent knows perfectly well that talking to cab drivers is the best method of getting acquainted with the local atmosphere once you enter an alien city. Specific details will come up later – mostly to confirm the first impressions that you get from chatting with the first driver you meet.
People in Kabul really dislike the Americans. The keepers of dukans, or small street cafes, would say: “Now we can see the difference between the Russians and the Americans. You Russians are simple and unpretentious, and you treated us as equals. As for the Americans, we don’t even know how to approach them, they don’t treat us as people.”

“But the Afghans warred against the Russians.”

“That’s true, but the Russians helped us. They taught us, built schools, roads and hospitals. We don’t hate them.”

ILLUSIONS ASIDE

That real and formal power in Afghanistan is not identical becomes clear once you set foot on Afghan soil. Kabul airport is not adorned with portraits of Hamid Karzai, the head of the interim administration, but rather with numerous leaflets featuring Mohammad Mirwais Sadiq, who died in March 2004. He held the post of Commercial Aviation and Tourism Minister under a quota that the interim administration had issued to his father Ismail Khan, a widely known field commander and governor of Herat. Mirwais Sadiq was killed in a clash between supporters of his father and the troops reporting to Kabul. The details of the incident are not exactly known. However, few people in Afghanistan have doubts that the man fell victim to an unsuccessful attempt by the central administration and its American patrons to dislodge the recalcitrant “Herat lion,” a nickname that Ismail Khan received during the years of Soviet intervention. The developments in March peaked in the restoration of his authority, and one of his protégés, formerly the head of education in Herat, moved to the minister’s office in Kabul.

So, what kind of a political power settled in Afghanistan after the victorious U.S.-led war against the Taliban in the fall of 2001? Debates around the issue are especially intensive now that the U.S. presidential election is drawing near. In this connection, it is important to consider an article entitled Afghanistan Unbound by the acclaimed U.S. journalist Kathy Gannon (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004). In it, she dwells on the opportunities that the U.S. lost and the Afghan lessons it ignored. “How exactly did things get so bad so quickly? How did the fall of the Taliban – a great victory for Washington, and one that seemed to herald a new dawn for a battered country – lead to the return of the old status quo?”

Kathy Gannon investigates how the infamous field commanders and Northern Alliance leaders – Marshal Mohammad Fahim, who became defense minister, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, whom Hamid Karzai appointed as special envoy to Afghanistan’s Northern provinces, and all the others who share responsibility for the atrocious murders of the mid-1990s – returned to power. Gannon also asks why Karzai is unable to do anything about it.
She must certainly know, however, that Karzai making allies with Fahim was an important achievement for the former as a political leader. Today, Fahim acts as a guarantor of support to the interim administration on the part of the law enforcement agencies. Fahim had to pay a dear price for his loyalty, though – he lost most of his supporters in Punjsher. Fahim has refrained from traveling to that region because the locals may think he sold out to the Americans.

Gannon criticizes Washington for picking allies from the personalities who terrorized Afghanistan even before the arrival of the Taliban, and who espoused an ideology as radical as theirs. She wonders how one could admit a situation, where the militarily weak Pushtoon majority stands in opposition to the strong Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara factions. While saying this, she justly indicates that this weakness partly stems from the fact that the Pushtoons are led by the former exiles, who returned to Afghanistan after decades of living abroad, mostly in the U.S.

Gannon is generally very critical of the George W. Bush Administration’s Afghan policy, and her most critical remark goes like this: “The United States is betting that the same men who caused Afghanistan so much misery in the past will somehow lead it to democracy and stability in the future. The evidence, however, suggests that the opposite is happening. Opportunities have been lost, goodwill squandered, and lessons of history ignored.”

Her criticism is absolutely valid if she renders Washington’s ideas correctly. Yet it is doubtful that the U.S. decision-makers really have faith in the Afghan

field commanders’ commitment to democracy. I would risk suggesting that Ms Gannon’s attacks on the White House and the Department of State are unjustified. The Americans had no illusions about the Afghan mojaheds from the very start, and extremely simplistic people only could hope in earnest that General Dostum, Marshal Fahim, Commander Sayyaf, or their accomplices, could become the heralds of Afghan democracy. U.S. policies in Afghanistan reveal a totally different pragmatic approach, which stipulates that anything that brings results is good for that country. As an Afghan once said to me: “One cannot buy us out, one can only lease us for a while.”

TERM OF LEASE

Strictly speaking, the claims that the Northern Alliance leaders teamed up with the U.S. in fighting al Qaeda and its patrons from among the Taliban in September 2001 are not quite correct. In actuality, it was the U.S. that joined the Northern Alliance, which had borne the main burden of the war before the 9/11 tragedy.

It is worthwhile noting that many Afghan Tajiks are asking themselves what could have happened had the legendary leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masud, remained alive. (Let us recall that his assassination on September 9, 2001 was a bloodletting prelude to the attack on the WTC in New York.) The answer they give is this: the power in Kabul would have been different, since the U.S. would have had difficulties coming to agreement with Masud – he had no interest in strengthening the people who had supported the Taliban. Soon after the charismatic mojahed’s killing the Talibs were blamed for his murder. However, they disappeared shortly later, and success shone to the part of his disciples who had befriended the U.S. An investigation of Masud’s murder began some two years ago, but it has died down quietly somehow. Another interesting thing: Masud used to tell people – including in conversations with the author – that he was not warring against the Talibs, whom he could always come to terms with, but with the Pakistani Army. This was true, since the armed units of the Pakistani Armed Forces made up the military core of the Taliban movement. As for Islamabad, it had Washington’s backing, and although Masud did not mention the fact, he always bore it in mind. Does this mean that the U.S. had no interest in defeating the Taliban at the time?

A definitive answer is scarcely possible, but there were numerous attempts when U.S. diplomats tried to tame the Talibs. Contacts between the U.S. emissaries and “Islamic students” were reported soon after the latter had come to power in Kabul in 1996. A little later, Washington’s interest toward the Taliban certainly grew when Taliban-ruled Kabul and Teheran began to develop bitter contradictions. Their relations went into a tailspin after the Sunni Talibs killed Sheik Abdul Ali Mazari, a leader of the Afghan Shiite community. An enemy’s enemy does not have to necessarily be your friend, yet Washington could not ignore the emergence of another potential to deter the Iranian ayatollahs.

The Afghan situation has one more aspect influencing U.S. policy. From the very beginning, domestic resistance to the Taliban came from the Northern Alliance, which is a coalition of Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities – the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, whose leaders, primarily Ahmad Shah Masud, made use of an undeclared support from Moscow. The latter offered tangible military and technological aid to the Alliance, often through its CIS allies, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. For this reason, the U.S. was uninterested in the Alliance’s domination in Afghanistan.

It was much later that the antiterrorist cooperation between Moscow and Washington acquired definite contours. This happened after the Taliban leaders, who had lost hope for international recognition, allowed Osama bin Laden to deploy bases on the Afghan territory, and the al Qaeda network became the main headache for the U.S.

Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001, and ended in a quick collapse of the Taliban. I have no intention of downplaying the role of Washington’s victory, but the truth is that the Taliban units were not defeated: they simply pulled out of Kabul. They did it the same way as the units of Masud’s mojaheds had left Kabul five years earlier under the Taliban’s onslaught. In the fall of 1996, the Tajiks loyal to Masud returned to their mainstay – the Punjsher Valley, while the Pushtoon Talibs returned to the southern and southeast provinces of Afghanistan adjoining the Pakistani border in the fall of 2001. As a result, both the Tajiks and Talibs saved their potential; victories turned defeats are typical of Afghan feuds. The Pushtoon tribes’ resistance was overpowered by millions of U.S. dollars that the Pushtoon leaders had received as bonuses. But let us recall that one cannot buy the Afghans, one can only lease them. Is the term of lease now expiring?

NO ONE IS VIRTUOUS

Kathy Gannon’s assertion that Pushtoon intellectuals who have been “faceted” in the West and may act as operators of democracy in Afghanistan if assisted by the U.S., appears to be questionable. No doubt, Hamid Karzai or Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani did not take part in the civil war, nor instigate repressive acts against civilians, but they bear a share of the responsibility for the Taliban regime coming to power.

Karzai makes no secret of the fact that he was one of the people behind the Taliban’s inception, but dissociated himself with the Taliban after they had disillusioned him. That is what Hazrat Vahriz, former editor-in-chief of Kabul’s most popular newspaper Sedai Mardom, says. Vahriz, 35, from Hazara, embodies the new breed of Afghan politicians. He was compelled to go into hiding during the Taliban rule, but is also critical-minded as regards the mojaheds. No one is virtuous in today’s Afghanistan, not even the former exiles, says Vahriz. Ashraf Ghani was a highly positioned official at the World Bank back in the U.S. He tried to convince Washington of the importance of making agreements with the Taliban, while the President of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, Anwarul Haq-Ahadi, formerly a teacher in the U.S., sent a telegram of congratulations to the Taliban on the seizure of northern Afghan provinces, calling them “the country’s worthiest sons.”

Many in Afghanistan fear that the attempts by the Pushtoon elite to demonize the leaders of the ethnic minorities – the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras – as villains of the tragic last decade are highly dangerous and prone to divide the nation with new confrontations between the Afghans. Fairly recent Soviet, and earlier British, experience shows that there is no external force to cope with the internal Afghan discords.

Ironically, Kathy Gannon finds that it is precisely this approach – the removal of criminal field commanders like Dostum, Sayyaf, Rabbani and others from politics – that can put Afghanistan on the track of democracy. Even if her assessment is justified, many Afghans, divided along the ethnic and regional principle, view the mojahed leaders as the only remaining authorities (or simply breadwinners or guarantors of physical survival) and defenders against repression by the Pushtoons. The residents of northern Afghanistan may still have fresh memories of the Arab mercenaries, who fought together with the Pushtoons, slaying whole families of ethnic Uzbeks. That happened before 9/11, however, and few outside Afghanistan gave the events much attention. Many people prefer to forget about what happened there after 9/11, as well. Take, for instance, the Talibs’ rebellion in the fortress of Kalai-Janghi near Mazar-i-Sharif, where they were placed in November 2001 after laying down their arms in the Konduz Province. I happened to be a witness of the bloodbath that occurred there, as Dostum’s soldiers suppressed the Taliban revolt. The U.S. Air Force, which Dostum called up for support, played a large role in the event, turning the rebellious fortress into a semblance of Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica.

A few months later, details surfaced of a mass carnage of Talibs that Dostum’s forces had imprisoned at Shibargan. Dostum never got punished for those crimes, nor was there any investigation into the accuracy of horrendous carpet bombardments. No doubt, anything is possible in war, all the more so in an Afghan war, but is it admissible to expose some crimes and hush up others?

Or, is it worthwhile blaming the West for what Ms Gannon calls vesting power in the figures who had caused so much suffering to the people? Does she really think that the chieftains, having virtuous morals and capable of exercising real power, can be found in Afghanistan? Suppose Hamid Karzai is that very person; staking him as the person who can rally the Pushtoons around him is also an illusionary act. A short while ago, in April, Karzai appealed to the former Talibs to forget their old feuds and join the ranks of builders of a new Afghanistan. He said all the members of the Taliban movement, except 150 persons accused of crimes, were entitled to full amnesty. The Talibs responded without delay. Their representatives, based in areas bordering on Pakistan, said cooperation was impossible until all of the foreign invaders had left the land of Afghanistan. The Talibs also made reference to the democratic movement, threatening death to all women daring to take part in elections. Responsibility for conniving at such immorality as elections would be shared by their husbands, the Pushtoon leaders said.

MONEY FOR DEMOCRACY

Quite possibly, Kathy Gannon would have had less grief over the chances that America ostensibly lost had she watched the sessions of Loya Jirga, convened in Kabul in spring 2004 to endorse a new Constitution of Afghanistan. She would have seen then how costly and effort-consuming the endorsement of the Basic Law’s democratic norms by this Council of Elders turned out for the Americans. How hurtful it was for many deputies of Loya Jirga when they discovered that the U.S. had paid bigger royalty fees to some of their fellow-deputies for correct voting than to them. Yet the U.S. paid less money this time than in 2001 for the Afghans’ renunciation of war.

How much spending and how many peacekeeping contingents will the effort to keep peace require, even though it is superficial? On the one hand, the world is developing an understanding that the money and troops will be needed in abundance, although the expenditure for Afghanistan is way beyond the resources earmarked for the regions of the world bearing far fewer threats to international stability. On the other hand, even that money does not reach the Afghans in full – it is the Western companies that assimilate Western aid packages. Western managers get Western-size salaries and ensure Western living standards for themselves, letting a small number of Afghans pick up what is left from their feast.

A remarkable thing about Kathy Gannon’s article is that she never mentions Russia. As she writes about international aid to Afghanistan, she means Western aid only. This is rather odd, to say the least, considering Russia’s assistance in the overthrow of the Taliban, the amount of construction projects that the shuravi [Russians] completed in Afghanistan since the 1960s, and the numbers of Afghans to whom they provided an education. Naturally, to build democracy is an expensive enterprise, especially in Afghanistan, while Russia does not always have enough money for its own democracy. What is more, Moscow has no right to become an official sponsor of the Afghans, since Russian law prohibits financial aid to any country that has not paid off their debts – and Kabul owes $10 billion to Russia by the most moderate counts.

Nonetheless, Russian officials believe that inviting Russian specialists to assist with restoration projects in Afghanistan as part of international aid could ensure real and rapid relief for its people. The bulk of the country’s ruined infrastructure was based on Soviet technologies, and Soviet geologists carried out minute research of its mineral resources. The Afghans themselves have great interest in Russia’s participation – they know perfectly well that cooperation with Moscow offers much greater benefits to them. But so far, not a single contract has been offered to the Russians in Afghanistan.
Many of Kathy Gannon’s conclusions, based on a liberal and idealistic outlook of the Afghan reality, are open to disagreement, yet one cannot but agree with her favorable assessment of the Taliban’s experience with suppressing the drug industry. She is quite correct when she recommends that the U.S. make use of that experience. She does not explain why the Talibs’ anti-drug practices proved efficacious; however, the Talibs understood specific aspects about the Afghan national character. Also, they knew how to influence it. It looks like the people trying to teach democracy to the Afghans should study it somewhat better as well.