In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate
A Monthly Publication of the
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Year One - Number Two-------------Single Copy $1.00------November 1997
Afghanistan Voice:
A publication of
The Association for
Peace and Democracy
for Afghanistan
(APDA)
The Voice Demanding:
Democracy, Freedom,
and Dignity for All,
Seeking to Enhance the Cause of
A Free, United
Afghanistan
Editorial:
The most important development this month was the Organization of Islamic Conference gathering in Iran and its focus on the Afghan problem. Three major regional players on the Afghan scene namely Pakistan and Iran and a more distant yet very significant player, Saudi Arabia, started to cooperate with one another to find a political solution to the Afghan problem. Of these countries, Pakistan is the country that created the Taliban militia, Saudi Arabia one that supported the training of this ideologically rigid group, and Iran the country that has seen the Taliban as dangerous to her regional interests.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan and Iran sided with the Northern Alliance recognizing Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani’s ousted government as legitimate.
Cooperation among these rivals which seems to have been pressed by the United States, in her new active role in the Afghan question, is a rare development which in itself is predicated on some new developments in the region. Among them is the gradual possibility of improvement in U.S.-Iranian relationships since the election of Iranian President Mr. Mohammad Khatami.
In our view this is a very hopeful development because we feel that not only was the creation of the Taliban militia in some ways a political move against Tehran, but also that the Afghan political destiny has somewhat been a hostage of the Iranian situation. If at one point, the Taliban would have been contemplated as a force to be used against Iran, now, with the Taliban failing miserably in Afghanistan, it would be feasible for the U.S. to seek accommodation with Tehran and grant her the pipeline route which Washington was unwilling to do at the beginning.
However, the problem as far as the Afghans are concerned revolves around the concept of legitimacy of government in Afghanistan. The simple fact that the neighbors band together and endorse one party or another as legitimate does not necessarily mean that that party is the legitimate govern-ment in Afghanistan. Broad-based, from the Afghan point of view, does not mean a dividing of government posts among the various armed groups and their arriving at an agreement to jointly impose a system of governing on the governed. In Afghanistan, both traditional practices and Islamic norms dictate that legitimacy come from the consent of the governed and this is the one thing that the Afghan people have been denied since the Communists grabbed power. The years after the Soviet departure have been years that failed in bringing a lasting peace and an enduring broad-based government of the people’s choosing. Peace is a function of people’s civil rights being observed and social justice to prevail, and since the Afghans have been denied both, it is absurd to talk of enduring peace and broad-based government until an elected government comes into being.
The proposed nine month provisional government during which time it is foreseen that the national army will be built and ways will be sought to give the people an opportunity to choose the governing body in the traditional grand assembly may be a realistic time frame, but who is to guarantee that the previous mistakes and shattered hopes of the past will not be repeated?
The addition of the Taliban in the formula, if anything, has added to the complexity of the issue, not subtracted from it. The recent peace initiatives by Pakistan, rebuffed by the Taliban, show that Pakistani desperate attempts presented under an alternative disguise will not bear any fruit, because the Afghans have the common sense to see through the Pakistani duplicity.
The Afghans, one must note, are fed up with others trying to control them. Whatever channel Pakistan chooses, her ill-will is transparent. Pakistan may be gaining consensus from major players on the Afghan scene, but the single most important player, the Afghan people, she is ignoring. It is high time Pakistan proved her friendship to the people of Afghanistan. No need to bring up the millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Their miserable condition and the Pakistani opportunistic use of them for bringing in foreign capital are clear enough.
It is possible to see the present attempts as increments in the direction of a lasting peace. Synchronizing the efforts of belligerent parties, internal and external, is one increment. There should be many more increments to this complex and tragic situation. Stopping of weapons shipments to the belligerent parties in an equitable way, demilitarizing major cities such as Kabul, focusing on humanitarian aid (food, health, education, demining efforts, etc.), and moving away from ethnic, sectarian formulas in favor of unified national goals are some of issues to be addressed soon.
What agency is best suited to address such needs? No doubt, it is the United Nations with the U.S. support. The U.S. active involvement can bear fruit only if the U.S. government will see to it that the unsavory appetites of energy-hungry Afghan neighbors and U.S. companies such as Unocal will not stand in the way of equitable solutions that should be sought in the interest of human rights and fair international relationships. Making deals with any party ready to go against the Afghan interests may serve the interests of greed; it cannot be a prescription for durable peace and prosperity in the region.
America has very real energy and trade objectives in the region especially after the demise of the Soviet Union. Let a fraction of the dividends reaped from the ending of the Cold War be spent on the people who paid dearly for this windfall.
Future generations of Afghans will remember the present conditions which history is bound to record. Let them remember that decent people in the world not only responded to their dire need at this darkest hour, but that they also gave a hand directly to rid them of opportunists seeking to exploit the condition of the civil war in Afghanistan to achieve their own ends. Mr. Talbott may talk of win win win formula, but it will not be a winning situation for the Afghans unless they have a government which safeguards the interests of the people and speaks for them in the international assemblies. Those who rule over the victimized people of Afghanistan by the weapons given to them by their sponsors represent only themselves and cannot speak for the Afghan people. Concluding contracts with such people does not make good business sense.
The December Issue of The Voice of Innocence, a publication of Help the Afghan Children had the following article by Suraya Sadeed, the director of the humanitarian organization, from her direct, personal observation, during a recent trip to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Journey To Kabul Reveals Desolation And Misery
I went to Kabul after 23 years. I knew that the city was devastated because of the war, but what I saw was very different from what I have seen and read through the media. Kabul, quite simply, looks like Hiroshima after the detonation of the atomic bomb! When one goes to Kabul, and sees the magnitude of the destruction, one realizes how little the media portrays this, and how the reality is far from what one hears. I thought I was in another planet and what I was seeing was a nightmare and was hoping to simply wake up. Yet, the bitter realty slowly became apparent when I heard the constant plea of children and women for money and food during the eight days that I was in Kabul. These children, many amputees, were searching for food in the pile of garbage, not knowing that people do not have enough food to throw away. Many children were walking barefoot in the cold weather. And, I was thinking. How many of them are going to survive this harsh winter to see the next spring. They are the children of a war that destroyed Kabul and the rest of the country. “We learned that some women and children were retrieving landmines for a cash reward from the United Nations.”*
As we were driving and viewing the destruction of the city, I was thinking about thousands of people that were buried under these ruins.
Kabul’s dilemma is just a small portion of a war that claimed almost two million lives. I asked myself that Afghanistan is going to be rebuilt within a year or two when the peace comes to this country. But, who is going to run it? Who is going to teach? And who is going to be equipped with the knowledge to take charge of the new buildings that come with new technology? We have lost so many of our educated people to the war. How long it is going to take to educate a child? For the past 19 years, our children and youngsters have seen the unspeakable pain and agony of war, crimes and hunger, losing their loved ones and burning of their homes. Are they going to be psychologically ready to learn?
These children are the ones who will take Afghanistan to the 21st century. Providing health and education for them, is a must. Help the Afghan Children, Inc., in addition to establishing a primary care clinic, has just begun its home-based education program in the city of Kabul, in order to teach hundreds of our street children, girls in particular, who do not have the opportunity to go to school. We care about health and education of Afghan children. We should care! After all, they are the soul, hope and the future of Afghanistan.
*Bruce Richardson. Afghanistan
Field Report, Nov. 23, 1997.
Feature Article
Talebans Ties With Extremists & Terrorists
By: A Staff Writer
Islamic fundamentalist movements are generally divided into moderate and extremist groups. Both groups, however, seek to establish an Islamic state, particularly the caliphate system. Among the moderate groups that have not opposed democracy are the Tunisian Al-Nahda party, the Tajik Islamic Revival Party, and the Turkish Welfare Party. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, with most of its branches in the Middle East and North Africa, is pro-caliphate but not against democracy.
The extremist Islamic movement may be divided into radical fundamentalist groups and regressive fundamentalist groups. Both radical and regressive groups are pro-caliphate and strongly anti-democratic. Among the radical fundamentalist groups are the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (AIG), the Egyptian Islamic Group (IG), the Egyptian Al-Jihad Group, and a large number of splinter factions operating under different names in North Africa and Egypt. Most of the regressive fundamentalist groups tend to use violence and military force to fight the influences of modern civilization in an Islamic society and establish a salafi or purist Islamic state.
The Afghan Taleban Movement, which is heavily influenced by the Jamaat ul-Ulema of Pakistan, a traditionalist pro-caliphate movement, is an extremely regressive movement, which uses organized military violence to achieve its goal, which appears to be the establishment of a tribal type of Islamic caliphate.
The Taleban Movement has much in common with the AIG, which would have turned Algeria into another Talebstan if had a gained a similar Taleban-style military victory. It is true that the Taleban Movement is not a terrorist organization; however, wherever and whenever it has failed to achieve a direct military victory, it has resorted to assassinations, forced evacuations, massacres and other acts of domestic terrorism, such as the assassination of Alla a-Din Khan, one of the greatest commanders of the Afghan jihad in Herat. The Taleban have also assassinated several other opposition figures in Peshawar and Islamabad.
Despite its tribal character, the Taleban militia force considers itself a global movement ardently bent on spreading its jihad beyond the Afghan borders into Central Asia and thus paving the way for restoring the old caliphate system in the Islamic world.
The leader of the movement, Mullah Omar, calls himself Amir ul-Mumineen (the commander of the faithful),who has repeatedly announced that the Taleban mission is to conquer the corrupt, heretical, and pagan world before the establishment of caliphate. The AIG and other pro-caliphate movements, in a more sophisticated way, have been fighting for achieving a similar goal, which has cost thousands of innocent lives in Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan.
Talebans links with some of these groups have dramatically increased since the capture of Kabul last October. In addition, the movement has re-opened the old terrorist camps, which were closed under the previous regime, and established new ones in the areas under their control. There is substantial evidence that the Taleban Movement is indirectly involved in international terrorism.
The first report about an indirect involvement of the Taleban Movement in international terrorism was published by the Paris-based Al-Watan Al-Arabi (September, 15, 1995), which quoted French sources, as saying that the Taleban movement had established secret links with the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (AIG). The source wrote that Taleban provided military training to some members of the AIG in their military bases in southeast Afghanistan. Al-Watan Al-Arabi wrote that Ahmad Zawi, an AIG former leader, had a close relationship with the Afghan Taleban.
When Mustafa Hamza, the military leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group and the mastermind of the assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in June 1995, spoke from a Taleban stronghold in Kandahar, it became quite evident that the movement was protecting Arab terrorists in the areas under its control in Afghanistan. It should be added that Mustafa Hamza is currently in Afghanistan, most possibly in Kandahar, which is the headquarters of the Taleban. The Egyptian government has also accused him of having been behind the recent terrorist attack in Luxor, which killed more than 50 foreign tourists.
A reporter of the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper (April 21, 1996) visited Kandahar and conducted an interview with Mustafa Hamza. In the interview, Mustafa Hamza said that he was granted freedom of movement by the Taleban in their areas: We move from place to place in the areas under their control, he told Al-Hayat.
The Taleban Movement has also been charged with protecting the top financier of international terrorism, Ossama Ben-Ladin, who is currently operating from a mountain base in Afghanistan. Last year a correspondent of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi visited Ben-Ladin in his mountain hideout in Afghanistan and published a long interview with him. In the interview, the Saudi billionaire said that the Afghan issue to him is more important than the problem of Jerusalem ... I will not return to Sudan, nor will I go to Iraq. My place is in the mountains... We who expelled American troops from Somalia and Aden will soon expel them from Saudi Arabia.
While the international community is deeply concerned about his threats, the Afghan people fear that the Arab billionaire may be perpetuating the tragedy of the Afghan war by protecting one faction against another. He was a great supporter of the Afghan cause against the Soviet aggression, but currently he appears to be radicalizing Taleban in his own way to serve his own objectives. Ben Ladin has also been engaged in forging an alliance between the Taleban and Hekmatyar. Al-Hayat reported (December 9, 1996) that Ben-Ladin was involved in mediating between Taleban and two fundamentalist leaders, Rasol Sayyaf and Gulbudin Hekmatyar. If such an alliance takes place, Afghanistan will become a most destabilizing force in the region, threatening Central Asia in the north and the Indian subcontinent in the south and the Arab Peninsula in the West, with a mushrooming of terrorist camps throughout the country and its terrorist cells reaching the Middle East and the West.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry also reported that the Afghan Taleban have been involved in providing military training to members of the extremist Egyptian Islamic Group. The government-owned daily Al-Jamhuria (January 8, 1997), citing from a recent police investigation, wrote that the Taleban Movement was involved in the recent attacks by the Islamic Group on Al-Muntaza palace in Alexandria. According to the source, a large number of Egyptian extremists are being trained in Talebans military bases and camps in Afghanistan.
AFP (February 15, 1997), quoting Egyptian security officials, reported that Ossama Ben Ladin ... is training 1,000 new militants in two camps in Afghanistan. The Egyptian security experts had said that the Afghan Taleban militia had reneged on a pledge made after it captured Kabul in September to expel all foreign Islamic fundamentalists living Afghanistan. The source added that Ben Ladin is secretly running two camps -- Badr I and Badr II -- where around a thousand foreign Islamic militants are being trained in combat techniques.
According to the report, Ben Ladin is preparing a second generation of Afghan Arabs to establish fundamentalist regimes in several Arab and Islamic countries. This is a confirmation of what former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani had revealed to French officials during a visit to Italy and France. According to the source, Mullah Khairullah, the Taleban minister of the interior, in a press conference in Kabul, announced that it is obvious that other true mujahedin from other Islamic countries want to be involved and assist us in our fight against the enemies of Islam.
It appears that the mullah was directing his message to about one thousand Afghan Arabs who are believed to be living in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of them fought along the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan Some of the Afghan Arabs live under Talebans protection in Kandahar and Jalalabad. They have provided arms and financial support to the Taleban in return for their protection.
The London-based Arabic Al-Hayat (July 19, 1997) reported that 350 men of Ben Ladin are fighting north of Kabul against the anti-Taleban forces. It cited reliable Afghan sources as saying that hundreds of Arab fighters associated with Ben Ladin are fighting along the Taleban forces against the forces of Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Massoud north of Kabul.
The sources said that the support of the Arab fighters enabled the Taleban to stop the advance of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance. However, the Taleban forces suffered a major setback in Mazar-i-Sharif late in May. For the first time after their defeat in northern Afghanistan, the Taleban forces with the support of the Arab fighters managed to halt the advance of the Northern Alliance toward Kabul.
When experts argue that the Taleban brand of Islamic fundamentalism is different from the type of extremism the Egyptian and Algerian militant groups follow, they tend to ignore the growing hard-core ideological faction within the movement, which has recently established cells in Kashmir, Bangladesh, and perhaps India. Recent reports about Talebans or pro-Talebans activities in Bangladesh demonstrate that the movement is expanding its activities beyond the Afghan borders.
Early this month Bangladesh security forces arrested a group of representatives of the Afghan Islamic Taleban on charges of threatening the countrys security. Itar-Tas (February 6, 1997) reported from Dhaka that Taleban emissaries were arrested in two areas in Bangladesh ... after they arranged for the military training of the students of religious schools there with the use of weapons smuggled into the country across the border. The report adds that the Afghan Taleban fundamentalists have established contacts with banned Islamic fundamentalist groups and organizations in Bangladesh. According to the source, the Bangladesh government is deeply concerned about a possible alliance of different Islamic militant groups under the leadership of the Taleban Movement.
Concerns about Talebans infiltration of the neighboring countries go very deep in the Central Asian republics. Last year China, despite assurances from Pakistan, expressed deep concern about the Taleban involvement in training and arming Chinese fundamentalists to mount small-scale attacks against Chinas rule over the restive Xinjiang autonomous region. (See Asia Times, Bangkok, 12 February 1997) According to Asia Times, the fundamentalists who in recent months had attacked ethnic Han Chinese and Uighurs collaborating with Beijing received arms and training from Afghanistan and weapons from the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan.
The London-based Arabic weekly Alwasat wrote (July 27, 1997) that a number of youths from Uzbekistan are receiving religious lessons from an Uzbek shaykh in a house in the middle of the Afghan capital, Kabul, under the control of the Taleban forces. A group of Uzbek leaders of the Islamic Revival Movement in Uzbekistan escaped from the regime of Islam Karimov to Afghanistan in 1992, particularly after it was reported that a number of the movement leaders, led by Abdullah Ota, were arrested by the Uzbek government. More members of the movement escaped into Afghanistan following the last August arrest of Abdul Wali Al-Qari, a spiritual leader of the movement.
The London-based Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat reported (August 4, 1997) that the the ruling Afghan Taleban movement, which has sustained heavy losses in recent fighting in Afghanistan, launched a global campaign for recruiting volunteers from Pakistan and Arab countries.
In interviews with Western correspondents, Taleban leaders deny any involvement in regional troubles and links with extremist groups, but in their rallies and local publications they speak about conquering Central Asia, converting the populous China to Islam, and crossing the Seven Seas to the remote corners of the world. The official spokesman of the movement, Mullah Ahmad Mutawakkal, in an interview with Alwasat (February 10, 1997), admitted that the movement supports the true mujahedin, such as the Tajik mujahedin, who are fighting the Russian government. Talebans leaders speak different languages to different sides, with different sides having different illusions about the movement.
There has been a great deal of misunderstanding and illusion about the Taleban movement. Some experts called it a UN army, but it is the only Afghan faction that has repeatedly rejected UNs calls for a cease-fire. (Mahmud Mistiri, the former UN envoy to Afghanistan, in an interview, told Alwasat that the Taleban Movement never showed any desire for peace talks with other factions.) Others called it the army of former Afghan King Mohammad Zaher, but some Talebans leaders threatened that he would face Najibullahs fate if he ever returned to Afghanistan.
Many Afghans consider the Taleban movement a Pakistani mercenary force, which is trained, armed and paid by Pakistans Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Saudi Arabia and the United States to protect their economic and political interests in Afghanistan by first crushing other minorities in the country and then establishing a puppet regime.
A small number of Afghans believe that the Taleban Movement will vanish after it disarms other factions in the country. What a wishful thinking! While there is some truth in some of these views, very few observers have taken the Taleban Movement as a dangerously ideological force -- perhaps because of its links with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. And perhaps its anti-Iranian stand has blinded us to apprehend the ideological lava boiling and swelling within the movement, which by its routine repressive and anti-democratic acts is not very different from its totalitarian predecessors in Cambodia, China, and the former Soviet Union.