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However, the government still faces serious challenges in transforming Afghanistan into a viable state. Its writ beyond Kabul remains limited. Afghanistan has no professional national army to help the central government expand into areas still controlled by local warlords. The United States and its allies promised to build such an army, but progress has been slow -- not least because Washington has armed and financed some local hegemons in order to pursue remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the United States has resisted the Karzai government's repeated requests for the expansion of ISAF operations in order to ensure security beyond Kabul in other major cities and at border entry points. As a result, fighting has increased in parts of Afghanistan, especially along the border with Pakistan. Some Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have regrouped, forging an alliance with the maverick Islamic extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with support from elements of Pakistan's military intelligence and radical Islamic parties.
An al-Qaeda-Taliban-Hekmatyar alliance against the Karzai government and its foreign backers is not yet capable of causing countrywide disturbances, but it does require greater vigilance by U.S. forces and ISAF, and for longer than first anticipated. Afghanistan won't have its own professional army for another seven to 10 years. Until then, Washington and its allies must remain engaged, and the ISAF must expand and sustain its operations on a long-term basis.
Security problems can't be resolved unless Afghanistan quickly establishes a lasting, stable political order, and rebuilds its physical and social infrastructure. So far, factional and ethnic politics have impeded the process of establishing sound administrative, legal and security structures. This will likely affect the government's ability to fulfill one of its key obligations: to hold a fair and free general election before the middle of 2004. Old Afghan practices of nepotism, bribery, kickbacks and favouritism haven't been eradicated. The government has yet to make appointments based on more than family and factional connections -- which makes it hard to lure talented expatriates back to rebuild.
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I've just been reading a collection of R. T. Naylor's essays entitled
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In the spring of 1986 the Soviet Union made clear its intention to
withdraw its forces from Afghanistan at the earliest opportunity. It was a
decision that had nothing to do with military defeat or much to do with
the economic drain. Rather it reflected the fact that the Afghan adventure
had been highly controversial even in Politburo ranks. Since continued
military involvement in Afghanistan was a political obstacle to Soviet
diplomatic objectives elsewhere, the end of the Brezhnev era made withdrawal
inevitable.
In preparation, the USSR began a military and political offensive.
Some rebel groups were smashed; others had supply bases destroyed by
indiscriminate saturation bombing; others deserted to the government
side. And a mixture of bullets and bribes coaxed some clan leaders living
along the eastern border to hamper the inflow of military supplies from
Pakistan to the rebels.
Furthermore, the USSR reshuffled the Afghan leadership, dropping in
as strongman, Mohammed Najibullah, the former secret service chief.
Najibullah wooed the religious establishment by re-enshrining Islam, placated
feudal landlords by stopping land redistribution, and skillfully manipulated
the clan and tribal rivalries in the government's favorr.
The Soviet-Afghan government moves sowed panic in the Reagan
Administration, and sent former National Security Advisor, "Bud"
McFarlane and Acting President of the United States, Oliver North,
scurrying to the Iranian capital of Teheran in the spring of 1986.
Their objective was to use the lure of American arms to persuade the
Iranians, whose war against the Soviet-backed Afghan regime had remained
largely rhetorical, to open a second front against the Red Army across the
Iran-Afghanistan frontier. The US was to supply arms and the Iranian
government would unshackle the Iran-based Afghan mujihadeen factions
which it had formerly kept on a tight leash.
It was the exposure of the McFarlane-North springtime-in-Tehran
junket that got off the misnamed Iran-Contra Scandal, killing the
second-front scheme in the process.
Meanwhile the Soviet withdrawal proceeded according to plan.
And the first of three separate wars, that of the USSR versus the
Afghan mujihadeen, had drawn to a close. Prospects for such an easy
settlement of the remaining two are far from bright.
The second is the civil war between, on one side, the various mujihadeen
factions and, on the other, the government supported by a weak army,
by powerful party and intelligence agency paramilitary forces, and by
regional militias that either defected to or were always with the
government.
For contrary to Western propaganda, no matter how universal the dislike
for the USSR, many Afghans have reservations about being ruled by the
mujihadeen leaders. Hekmatayar Gulbeddin, the best armed of them,
used to send his followers to scour the university campus looking
for unveiled women into whose faces acid would be thrown. His military
operations also included hijacking food supplies bound for other
mujihadeen factions, and kidnapping foreign aid workers and antagonistic
journalists. Based on these credentials it was only natural that when
the mujihadeen leaders met in Pakistan last week to select their new
interim "government", Gulbeddin was offered his choice of the Scientific
Research, Agriculture or Defence portfolios.
Even more problematic is the outcome of the third war, one to be fought
between various political, ethnic and religious factions within the
mujihadeen. With the common enemy, the Red Army, gone from the
scene, it seems only a matter of time before the Afghan "freedom
fighters"' fall to armed bickering over such questions as to whether or
not democracy can ever be understood by "communists", non-believers and
women.
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