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Read Omar Zakhilwal's Speech: Alternative Leadership and Governance Arrangements

Agenda

ROUNDTABLE ON AFGHANISTAN:

Governance Scenarios and Canadian Policy Options

Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa

12 October, 2001

10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Coffee and muffins available

10:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks

Steven Lee, Chair (Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development, DFAIT)

Setting the Scene

David Mulroney (Assistant Deputy Minister for Asia-Pacific, DFAIT)

Background

Speaker: Elliot Tepper (Carleton University)

Regional Perspective

Speaker: Reeta Tremblay (Concordia University)

Questions and Discussion

Failed States and Governance: Lessons Learned

Speaker: Steven Ratner (Professor of Law, University of Texas)

Questions and Discussion

Lunch

1:30 Prince Mostapha Zaher by phone from Rome

Afghanistan after the Taliban: Possible Scenarios:

· Afghanistan: Governance Opportunities and Challenges

Lead off speakers:

1. Annette Ittiq (Consultant)

2. Seddiq Weera (Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University)

Discussion

· Outside Assistance (with governance challenges, collapsed economy, role of the EU, the UN and the diaspora in trying to recreate a viable government structure/administration)

* We will break at noon to clear the table for lunch. From 12:30 to 1:00pm we will sit down for a working lunch.

I would like to start by expressing my sincere thanks and appreciation to the organisers, first for organising this very important and timely event and then for allowing me to be a part of it.

After I received the agenda last night, I noticed that I was assigned a topic that probably would have been best covered by Prince Mustapha -- since he has been one of the insiders in the on-going efforts for alternative leadership and governance arrangements.

However, as I expected, the Prince did touch upon the core of my topic. The picture the Prince presented to us was one of optimism. I hope he is right. However, as an Afghan who has had a first hand experience and a deeper understanding of the bitter reality on the ground, and also as a keen observer of the ongoing crisis in my country, I, on the other hand, am not as optimistic for what is awaiting for my devastated country.

Given the time constraint, it is not possible for me to discuss a full picture of all the possible post-Taliban alternatives. However, I can focus on one very alarming and therefore the worst yet a very possible case scenario: that is the return of the Northern Alliance to Kabul as a government. Unlike the Prince, I as an ordinary Afghan can afford to be less diplomatic and therefore more blunt in expressing what I believe is in making for a post-Taliban arrangement in Kabul.

Let me to share with you the fact that After the September 11 awfully tragic events as the US and its allies zeroed in on Afghanistan, many Afghans expected that before there is any military compaign, the US and its allies will push for and help with forging a post-Taliban provisional regime. A regime that was composed of personalities who at the minimum were not associated with any serious war crimes against their own innocent Afghan civilians.

It was also expected and still is that such a regime will be formed around the former King who enjoys an overwhelmingly popular support and respect among all tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan.

Realising his important role, the King started to gather a broad coalition against the Taliban and also started to position some of his influential people along the borders of Afghanistan. The news we were getting from the King’s people in the field was encouraging. There were reports of successful contacts with the moderate Taliban commanders and as a result there were reports of dissension with the Taliban.

However, the premature and hasty US attacks on Afghanistan not only hindered the King’s efforts but also greatly boosted the ability of the NA to attack Kabul and perhaps retake it. This made it a less likely for the NA to even become an ally to the efforts of the King.

If the US and its allies’ aim in their current involvement in Afghanistan, as stated by President Bush is to seek “justice” and not to get engaged in nation or state-building means that the US and its allies will abandon Afghanistan as soon as their objective of eradicating terrorists from Afghanistan is fulfilled.

And if the US feels obliged to reward the NA for being “an ally” in a fight against the Taliban, then the NA may very well be the post-Taliban government of Kabul. At the minimum it could be a detrimental part in such a government.

The Northern alliance is composed of the exact same warring factions that overthrew the Soviet-backed communist regime in 1992. Then the Taliban did not even exist. Soon after entering Kabul, a vicious struggle for power began. Toward that end they spared no method of terror. They killed, they raped, and they destroyed.

Within a year they levelled Kabul to ground and killed over 50,000 of its innocent civilians. Most of the civilian casualties were not due to being caught in cross-fires but to deliberate pre-meditated targeting. As a result the Afghanistan, just like its capital, was divided into zones controlled by competing warlord who had no regard for any basic human values. A complete chaos and anarchy ensued throughout the country.

The helpless and hopeless Afghan nation, fed up with some of the most unparalleled and incomparable excesses committed against them by the warlords (now the NA) were ready to welcome anyone who could put an end to them – even if that someone was the Devil. God gave the Afghans their latter wish and send them the Taliban. The credit of coming to existence and of the subsequent astonishing success of the Taliban first and foremost goes to Pakistan and to the NA.

Few outsiders know of the ground reality that although an overwhelming majority of the Afghans living inside or outside of Afghanistan, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic and regional background, distaste the Taliban regime, an equally parallel majority would not want them to be replaced by the NA. Because in the eyes of the Afghan public, every leader of the different faction that make up the NA qualify, at best, as a war criminal.

What’s more, even if the NA takes over Kabul and perhaps the rest of Afghanistan with the help of the Americans, and even if the NA gets greater international recognition and acceptance due to their fight against the Taliban, they still will not be able to bring peace and stability and therefore a ruling government to Afghanistan.

First, the Northern Alliance is composed of five major factions. Each faction is sponsored by different neighbouring countries with competing interests in Afghanistan. In addition the factions have deep-rooted differences among themselves. Over the past few years even when the NA was reduced to one remote insignificant province in Afghanistan, it remained fractured and divided as always. More often its factions have engaged in fighting against each other than they have side by side.

Thus, as soon as the Taliban, a common enemy of the NA which has been the sole reason of the creation of the alliance itself, are removed from Kabul, the infighting between the factions in the NA is a guaranteed phenomenon. Afghanistan once again will plunge into the chaos and anarchy these exact groups once brought upon it some 10 years ago.

Second, although the cause of the Afghan war is not ethnic, the nature of the war is. The current military factions are formed around ethnic and regional lines. The Taliban are predominantly Pashtoons from the South and East and the northern alliance draws its military manpower from the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras from the North.

Thanks to neighbouring countries, particularly Pakistan and Iran for their deliberate creating and fuelling of ethnic tensions, ethnic divisions now run at the top among the factors that is keeping Afghanistan divided. All the warring factions in Afghanistan are extremely ethnocentric and at numerous times throughout the civil war, each faction committed serious war crimes against people of rival ethnic groups.

For that reason the NA does not and never did and perhaps never will enjoy the baking of the majority Pashtoons whose support is absolutely fundamental for the survival of any government in Afghanistan. In addition, the NA does not even enjoy a popular support among the ethnic groups they supposedly represent.

Seeing that weakness, a few weeks ago an envoy of the NA signed a memorandum of understanding, perhaps for power-sharing, with the King, who is ethnically a Pashtoon and therefore the NA’s association with him could bring them some vital support from the Pashtoons. However, that same day of the signing the president and foreign minister of the NA objected that their envoy did not consult with them before he put down his signature on the same document with the King. Even if the NA succeeds in reaching an agreement on an alternative post-Taliban arrangement with the King, it is not guaranteed that they will keep to it. In fact, the reverse is highly likely.

It is almost a full time job to keep count of the accords and pacts the NA has signed between themselves and then broken them over the past ten years. Few accords have survived beyond the day of signing and none have lasted over a year. As soon as one faction sees a better a chance of having a greater share of the pie than the accord would give it otherwise, it unilaterally breaks it. Thus they have become good, adept and quite effective in breaking pacts and agreements. This is exactly this reason, I believe, they stopped further serious negotiations for a post-Taliban arrangement with the King as they now see better chances of toppling the Taliban alone and then replacing them with their own UN-recognised but illegitimate government.

Third, the Afghan war to a large extent is a proxy war sponsored by neighbouring countries with different interests in Afghanistan. The independence of the Central Asian states has transformed the economic stakes of the neighbouring and some other countries in Afghanistan. No to mention the historic disputes that existed between Pakistan and Afghanistan and Afghanistan and Iran. Thus, success and failure of any government in Afghanistan depends also on the conducts of these countries with respect to Afghanistan.

Of the neighbouring countries Pakistan remains the one that is deeply and pro-actively involved. Since the collapse of the communist regime in 1992, Pakistan successively and successfully has nurtured one warring faction after another as a proxy for securing her interests. The object poverty in Afghanistan has made it even easier for Pakistan to influence the balance of power in Kabul since the cost of recruiting fighters in Afghanistan is next to nothing.

NA is the last government Pakistan would want to see in Afghanistan for reasons that I cannot go into right now because of the time constraint and Pakistan therefore will definitely create another force (if they cannot reactivate the Taliban) within Afghanistan to confront it successfully.These were just a few but enough reasons to convince us that the NA will not be able to rule Afghanistan.

It is beyond my ability and competence to predict as to what alternative post-Taliban arrangement will be successful in bringing stability and peace and a system of acceptable governance to Afghanistan. However, I believe, and those who have deep knowledge and understanding of the current complex and multi-dimentional situation in Afghanistan would agree with me, that for a post-Taliban government of the above peculiarities, the following minimum necessary conditions have to hold.

1. An immediate end to outside interference, particularly that of neighbouring countries and Russia.

2. No detrimental role should be given to any warring factions in the immediate post-Taliban government.

3. The government should be broad-based and inclusive but not formulated based on ethnic or regional distribution for that will further divide the already very divided Afghan nation.

4. Any provisional or interim government that replaces that Taliban should be protected by international peace-keepers until it can develop roots in all diverse tribes in Afghanistan and then relay on their support.

5. Any government, whether provisional or permanent, has to maintain friendly relations with all neighbouring countries.

6. Alternative meaningful and constructive professions (perhaps, through reconstruction of Afghanistan) should be created on urgent basis for the Afghan population, thus raising the opportunity cost of joining a military faction above the current one – which is zero.