Capturing Kabul just the start

13 Nov, 2001 01:04 PM6 mins to read

PETER POPHAM sees no end insight to the agony of Afghanistan.

PESHAWAR - The stunning gains by the Northern Alliance in the past five days have given the West's war in Afghanistan much-needed impetus.

Two weeks ago, senior Western diplomats in the region were bewailing the stalemate and saying what were urgently needed were some striking successes before winter (and Ramadan) set in, and the coalition's wobbles turned to outright disaffection.

Now their prayers have been answered. The allies have the triumphs they craved, and more.

But what comes next is the hard part. The problems of stalemate have become the far more complex and intractable problems of success.

The difficulty is how to travel from a string of Northern Alliance victories in their northern heartland to the destruction of the Taleban and al Qaeda in the whole of the country, and then return a rehabilitated Afghanistan to the comity of nations?

The United Nations wants Afghan politicians to meet within days to start building a post-Taleban, broad-based government.

"As things are moving very fast, we need to bring the political aspects in line with the military development on the ground," said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Of the many daunting obstacles on the road to peace, the first is Kabul. Some alliance fighters entered the capital yesterday.

Afghan wisdom says that he who controls Kabul controls the country.

The universal faith in this dictum on the part of those feuding over Afghanistan's destiny is what has reduced a city which only 20 years ago was cultured, beautiful and in some respects modern to a patchwork of blasted ruins, among which the half-starved remnants of the population squat and survive any way they can.

Kabul and the ownership of Kabul mean too much for Afghans: they cannot be expected to yield it lightly. That is why the debate over the city's immediate fate has taken on an air of complete unreality.

Last weekend, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell called for an "open city" until an interim regime was installed.

"There would probably be a lot of tension ... if the Northern Alliance were to come in force with a population of Kabul that may not at the moment be friendly to them."

Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of the Northern Alliance, has repeatedly denied that his forces wish to take over the city, saying they intend only to send in a police force to keep order.

But he also dismisses Powell's fears about what would happen if the Northern Alliance did go in.

And he left his army a gaping get-out clause. While ideally his men would stay outside the city, "if there is a political vacuum," he said, "it is a different situation."

These are the facts: the Taleban have by no means given up Kabul. In Kabul, as in the northern provinces they have lost, they are foreigners, their core leadership being from the south; their rustic puritanism clashes harshly with the educated, liberal urbanity that was the culture of Kabul before they arrived.

But because of the capital's symbolic importance, they cannot be expected to yield it without an awesome struggle.

About 6000 Taleban fighters are solidly dug in in the hills 50km north of the city. A further 20,000 are in defensive positions between Kabul and Jalalabad to the east.

Compare those numbers with the 5000 Taleban spread across the provinces that the Northern Alliance has captured, and one gets some idea of the scale of the battle that could take place within days for possession of the city.

Suppose, however, that the Western coalition's dreams come true and the Taleban abandon Kabul in much the same way they seem to have abandoned Mazar-i-Sharif, almost without a fight. The city was reportedly empty of Taleban last night. If that happens, the problems will just be beginning.

America had said it did not want the Northern Alliance to enter Kabul, and Abdullah had agreed - up to a point.

But the US is attempting to lay down the law in Afghanistan from 20,000 feet up in the sky.

Lip service is the best sort of obedience the Americans can hope for; the Northern Alliance is not a cohesive force, nor are its fighters under a single command.

Abdullah's forces, formerly commanded by Ahmad Shah Masood, are backed by Tajikistan, Abdul Rashid Dostum's by Uzbekistan, Ismail Khan's forces have entered Herat with the backing of Iran.

Dostum is an atheist who has switched sides many times; the forces backed by Tajikistan are mostly Sunni; Khan's are mostly Shi'ite.

If the Taleban bolts from Kabul, the political vacuum cited by Abdullah would have come to pass - and would suck in as ruler whoever was first and fastest on the scene, followed helter-skelter by the rest.

The US, 20,000 feet up, will bark orders to no avail. The spectre of 1992 will return to haunt this tragic city as once again the proxy forces of Afghanistan's neighbouring countries, their flimsy facade of unity smashed, cudgel the city into ever smaller fragments as they fight for dominance. Last time round, more than 50,000 civilians died.

And all that is to figure without the involvement of Pakistan.

Of all the countries bordering landlocked Afghanistan, it is Pakistan whose concern about the country's political destiny is most pressing, because the common border, the "Durrand Line", has never been accepted by any Afghan Government, and because there is a huge, volatile population of ethnic Pashtuns inside Pakistan.

Also, Pakistan needs a friendly regime in Kabul because its other neighbour, India, is so chronically hostile.

That was why Pakistan became the midwife of the Taleban. And even with the destruction of the Taleban, Pakistan's need for a proxy force of Afghan Pashtuns to keep the northerners - backed by those perennial enemies, Russia and India - at bay, remains urgent.

Where Pakistan is going to find that Pashtun force is still a mystery. But among the mujahideen milling about these days in Peshawar, many of them veterans of the war against the Soviets, a thrusting and ambitious leader will emerge, and the weaker the Taleban become the more certain that is.

The iron rules of the Great Game, the demands of Afghanistan's northern and western neighbours battling it out, will remain unchanged.

And lasting peace for Afghanistan will look as remote as it did on September 11.

- INDEPENDENT

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