Afghanistan Read online

  This deep conservatism is by no means an across-the-board rejection of change or nostalgia for the Taliban.34 Most Afghans, including the most religiously conservative, point with pride to the constitution, the elections, the Loya Jirgas, and the parliament. Repeated polls show that Afghans of all classes support education and want their children—including the girls—to go to school.35 The Hazaras—the poorest large ethnic group in Afghanistan—have since 2001 been in the forefront of pushing for girls’ education and enabling women’s involvement in the political process. The media revolution, following decades of exposure to international radio news and the widespread experience of being a refugee or working abroad, has brought the outside world to rural Afghanistan.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DWELLERS IN THE VORTEX

  “Rule the Punjabi, intimidate the Sindhi, buy the Pathan, and honor the Baluch.”

  —British colonial-era aphorism

  attributed to Sir Robert Sandeman, c.1890

  Geographically, the heart of the Vortex corresponds to the Pushtun world. This has meant that the shift from the Frontier to Vortex has had a tremendous—in some ways devastating—impact on life and culture in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because of the centrality of ethnic Pushtuns to the post-2001 conflicts, the politics and culture of the Pushtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan have risen to a level of importance that is not shared and is often resented by the other ethnic groups in these countries. In 2008–10, those carrying out insurrections and supporting terrorists—as were those suffering from them in both Afghanistan and Pakistan—were largely Pushtuns, although both insurgencies were reinforced by substantial number of volunteers from Pakistan, especially Punjabis, and from would-be jihadis with worldwide roots.

  In neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan was there large-scale violence between ethnic groups through armed organizations, the type of fighting that marked the conflict in Iraq at its height, though anti-Shia violence in Pakistan has dramatically increased since a campaign was opened against the Touray Pushtuns near Parachinar in November 2007. If, in either country, the insurgency became widespread among other ethnic groups, such as Punjabis in Pakistan or Tajiks in Afghanistan, then it would transform the nature of the conflicts emerging from the Vortex. The conflicts waged by Pushtuns have an intrinsic ethnolinguistic firebreak. If it leaps over these firebreaks, then it will greatly enlarge the Vortex’s heart of darkness and potentially engulf both countries, with global ramifications.

  Other dwellers on the Pakistan side of the Vortex include Pakistan’s security and intelligence services, especially the military’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) but also the civilian Pakistan Intelligence Bureau (PIB), the Federal Investigation Agency, and provincial police Special Branch organizations. Pakistan’s radical Islamic parties and their associated organizations also have a strong presence there. A third category of the dwellers in the Vortex (discussed in subsequent chapters) are those defined by their activities, including terrorism, insurgency (and crime), and narcotics cultivation and trafficking.36

  The Durand Line

  Sir Mortimer Durand actually knew what he was doing in 1893. The Durand Line, when it was the Frontier, was the limit of colonialism and of the post-Westphalia rational, ordered world of states, rulers and ruled, a seam between different civilizations and worldviews, the wild and the sown. In other ways, it is more comparable to the missing lines between countries in the Arabian Peninsula, put aside as too hard for mapmakers, independent sovereigns, or colonial administrators to draw. There are 350 known unofficial crossing places to the current Afghanistan-Pakistan border, many more in practice.

  Much as Afghans will claim that the line is an arbitrary one imposed on Afghanistan to deprive them of control over the Pakistan heartland of what became Pakistan by the British Indian government at its Victorian zenith, there is actually a clear firebreak between the tribes that lived on each side, with a few exceptions primarily among traders (such as the Afridi, “lords of the Khyber”) and truly transborder tribes (such as the Mohmands and Wazirs, both of whom took up arms to oppose the line without the help of their neighbors). The line reflects a meaningful seam in the human geography of the Pushtun world, and the impact of over a century of separate history has increased pre-existing differences between the Pushtuns on both sides. The Pushtun world was so diverse that it required the policies of multiple Pakistani governments and the impacts of Afghanistan’s 1978–2001 wars to change it from a Frontier to a line dividing an insurgency into two halves, helping the Pushtun insurgents on each side, enabling their own cross-border activities while preventing those of their opponents.37

  The Durand Line was transformed by the migration of Afghan Pushtuns, over four million refugees who fled into Pakistan in 1978–92. The vast majority of the Afghan refugee camps were in Pakistan’s Pushtun areas in the FATA and Baluchistan and North West Frontier Provinces. Pakistan supported the Durand Line as an international border, but its policy of aiming to control the Afghans through the Peshawar-based resistance parties and Pakistani institutions in the camps and elsewhere meant that they ended up encouraging resistance from Pushtun Afghans who did not accept the Durand Line and whose daily actions ran across it.

  Resistance from Pushtuns—widespread in both Afghanistan and Pakistan—to the Durand Line ranges from traditional pre-1978 understandings intended to enable the movement of Pushtun Kuchi nomads to the widespread view of Pushtuns that the line should not to apply to them (though they do not see that other groups should be able to do the same). To the Government of Pakistan (and most of the international community), the Durand Line is a recognized international border. No Afghan government, even the pre-2001 Taliban that greatly depended on Pakistan for assistance in Afghanistan’s civil war, has felt itself able to say the same, giving up its claim to the Pushtun borderlands. Younis Khalis, the Afghan 1978–92 resistance party leader, spoke for many Pushtun nationalists when he described the Durand Line as “written on water” a generation before Pakistani Pushtun insurgent leader Behtullah Mehsud said “there are no borders in Islam,” universalizing its illegitimacy to all lines on maps that divide the umma and, implicitly, the governments that keep them divided.

  The Pushtun World

  The Pushtuns38 share the basics of their culture: language, tribe, clan, collective tribal leadership, the idea of a shared patrilineal descent, and the importance of Pushtowali (the code of the Pushtun). But there are vast differences between Pushtuns. Not all Pushtuns are part of a tribal structure. Many—especially those that have settled throughout Pakistan and those living in northern Afghanistan, where they were moved as a result of Kabul policies dating back to the nineteenth century—have become effectively detribalized. Detribalized Pushtuns in Pakistan or as far away as the UK, without the moderating effects of a tribal leadership, are frequently targeted for recruitment by terrorist or extremist organizations, according to Western anti-terrorism experts. In more peaceful times, Pushtun culture was a glorious mosaic of tribes and individuals.39 By 2008–10, the insurgencies being waged by Pushtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan—despite the fact that most of their victims were other Pushtuns—were of global concern.

  While predominantly Sunni and adhering to the Hanafi school of Islamic law, the Pushtuns’ traditional practice of Islam, while intense, was heavily Sufic-oriented and reflected local or tribe-specific practices. Shia Pushtun tribes traditionally lived alongside Sunni neighbors; their shared Pushtun links outweighing the religious tension. In Pushtun culture, politics and identity are strongly linked. Traditionally, Pushtun tribes were governed by Pushtowali as they understood it. The themes in Pushtowali were melded with Sharia and were interpreted locally in a tribal context. While often at variance with Sharia law, the tenets of Pushtowali are diverse but powerful. They include nanawatai (hospitality), badal (revenge), nang (honor), izzat (respect), and namus (women’s honor). Traditional Pushtun culture reflects an overriding concern with honor, respect, and lineage, all in an Islamic co
ntext. Pushtowali means men must defend their women to maintain not only their honor, but that of their family and lineage. For example, this makes searches of Afghan dwellings, especially by male foreigners, more than an inconvenience, a grave insult not only to the men involved, but to the core values of their society. Badal—revenge—is the only appropriate result. To the follower of Pushtowali, honor is a powerful force. A world without honor would be a world unfit for anyone, especially Pushtuns, to live in.

  In Afghanistan, Pushtun leadership has been primarily local and tribal/collective. Traditionally, in Pakistan and, to an extent, in Afghanistan, tribes were less interested in the national power than in gaining an advantage against other, competing groups, usually other Pushtuns. There has been a tendency for any ethnic Pushtun official with access to power to reflect patronage ties and support first his own village or clan.

  In 2009, only some ten percent of respondents in a national poll cited Pushtun ethnicity as their primary identifier, ahead of Afghan nationality.40 The educated Pushtun Kabuli or exile is more likely to see Pushtuns as a whole; his cousin who has never been a day away from his village is likely to define himself through his tribe, clan, or sub-clan. Urban elites may care about the competition between, for example, Ghilzay and Durrani Pushtuns or Pushtuns and Tajiks in general; but at the grassroots level, competition tends to be between a group and its neighbors in a perceived zero-sum competition for governmental support, irrigated land, or other benefits of patronage.

  Pushtuns and State Power in Afghanistan

  Power—especially state power—in Kabul has traditionally been held by Pushtuns. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the first Englishman to report from the then “Kingdom of Caubul” (though he never made it to the capital itself), was first among the many that equated Afghan with Pushtun. To him, this kingdom—not yet a country—was a Pushtun one. Those brief intervals when Afghanistan was not ruled by a Pushtun—the brief rule of Habibullah, an ethnic Tajik (known by his Pushtun enemies as Bacha-i-Saqao, “son of the water carrier”) in 1930 and the Northern Alliance-dominated ISA of 1992–96—have been associated with governments with limited legitimacy and capability. Both were, not coincidentally, greatly resented by many Pushtuns (although both retained significant Pushtun allies). The legitimacy of these governments was limited in Pushtun areas, requiring them to try to impose authority through local officials that were independent operators owing largely nominal allegiance to Kabul.

  No other Afghan ethnolinguistic group has comparable nationalist claims on the nature of Afghanistan. Others are merely “minorities” that are literally marginalized in the views of many Afghan Pushtuns. To Pushtun nationalists in Afghanistan, Persian-speakers were “junior partners” except if they were Shia Muslims, when they were not partners at all. The Turkic-speakers were conquered subjects. This view has remained strong among Pushtuns despite the challenge posed to Pushtun nationalism by Afghan nationalism. To other Afghans, this claim of Pushtun nationalist primacy is a direct threat. They have not fought since 1978 to return to living under Pushtun dominance.

  The Pushtun nationalist vision of Afghanistan as the land of the Pushtuns (with other groups as minorities in a subordinate role) was never explicitly accepted even in the pre-1973 Golden Age (however much it was implemented in practice).

  The 1978–92 war against the Soviets de-legitimated rule from Kabul and put weapons in the hands of Afghanistan’s non-Pushtuns, who discovered that they could lead themselves while the Pushtuns were divided by tribe and subject to Pakistani influence. This reflected the divisions of the Pushtuns: tribal structure, religious differences, followers of particular Sufic leaders. Pakistan’s forming six competing Peshawar-based parties with primarily Pushtun membership contributed to these divisions.

  Non-Pushtuns created political and military organizations and institutions of their own which proved, on the whole, to be more effective than those formed by Pushtuns. It also reflected the more limited Pakistani control of non-Pushtuns and the emergence of men such as Tajiks Ahmad Shah Massoud from the Panjshir and Ismail Khan from Herat as strong leaders in the anti-Soviet resistance (Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek leader, was a Soviet collaborator until 1992).41

  Despite this, in 1978–2001, Pushtun nationalism thrived in the exile communities, especially those from urban elites who maintained an emotional link with their tribal connection and a sense of entitlement to power. Without having the bitter but instructive experience of having to deal with other Afghans in the realities of fighting a war rather than the hothouse atmosphere of exile politics, they did not see that the “minorities” were politically mobilized, armed, radicalized, and unwilling to revert to a marginalized role or as subordinate to Pushtun power.

  The pre-2001 Taliban, in practice, embraced the Pushtun nationalist worldview despite their extensive rhetoric about a universal Islamic umma. The pre-2001 Taliban made a point of recruiting a few members of non-Pushtun groups (usually Sunni religious figures) that were given posts of high visibility and no authority.42

  The Pushtun nationalist vision has been rejected by the post-2001 Afghan political process aimed at creating a multiethnic democracy. It is also reflected in the Afghan refusal to consider formal divisions of administrative power or responsibility along ethnolinguistic, religious, or other divisions. Nor have the post-2001 Afghans redrawn provincial boundaries around ethnic lines.

  This post-2001 change, however, while accepted by many ethnic Pushtuns—such as President Karzai—was ignored by some returning Afghan Pushtun exiles and Pakistani elites of all ethnicities, Punjabi as well as Pushtun. To them, Afghanistan is still land of the Pushtuns, and any arrangement of state power that does not reflect that is illegitimate. This has posed a challenge to establishing the legitimacy of the post-2001 Kabul government in the Pushtun heartland, a situation made worse by Kabul (and its supporters) failing to deliver effective governance and by the ability of insurgents to undercut arrangements. Others argue that Pushtun nationalism is reconcilable with a democratic, Islamic Afghanistan. According to Massoud Kharokhail, a Kabul-based scholar of Pushtun culture and politics: “Some countries have a core ethnic group, like the Punjabis in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, if you look at Kabul, post-2001, the president is Pushtun and most ministers are Pushtun.” A veteran journalist in Kabul observed “Pushtuns are still convinced of their entitlement to state power and the status of other groups as minorities.”

  The US and other international organizations, in supporting moving more Pushtuns into the cabinet, did not solve the problems of reconciling power and ethnicity in Afghanistan. Post-2001, the presidency of an ethnic Pushtun (albeit a committed nationalist), Hamid Karzai, and the increasing number of Pushtuns (often replacing non-Pushtuns associated with the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban in 2001) holding cabinet positions, has led to a continued identification, among non-Pushtuns, of Afghanistan’s state power with Pushtuns and resultant dissatisfaction at this shift of power.

  By 2008–10, among non-Pushtuns, the heavily centralized power held in Kabul was widely perceived as Pushtun power. President Karzai and a large number of Pushtun cabinet members, especially in the “power” ministries (Defense, Interior), were Pushtuns. Post-2001, the goal of empowering Kabul was widely seen as being a way to empower Pushtuns at the expense of other groups. That it was backed by the US (especially identified in Afghan eyes with Ambassador Dr. Zalmay Khailzad, himself an ethnic Pushtun) increased the suspicion of non-Pushtuns. Those insisting on the primacy of central government power in Afghanistan are often seen as using it as a tool to ensure the primacy of ethnic Pushtun power. By 2008–10, there was increasing support among non-Pushtuns to amend Afghanistan’s constitution to make power less centralized.

  This perception that the Pushtun ethnicity of those in positions of power and authority consistent with their (estimated) demographic proportion was sufficient to prevent “Pushtun alienation” was not accepted by many Afghan and Pakistani Pushtuns. These have attacked the Pushtuns
holding leadership positions in post-2001 Afghanistan as “false Pushtuns,” as many saw Karzai himself. Massoud Kharokhail sees extensive alienation from Kabul among many Pushtuns who are not rallying to the insurgents. “Pushtuns do not feel represented by the government.”43

  Pushtuns and Their Neighbors

  Centuries of encounters between Pushtuns and their neighbors built the foundation for the Pushtun self-image: spiritual, utopian, literally on the cutting edge of Islam and a threat to any, Muslim or otherwise, that falls short of their own ideas of social justice. It was a strategy of cultural resistance and self-preservation in the face of state power that collided with traditional Pushtun society. Indirect control—with money, opportunities for state service, and advancement for relatives—was widely practiced by governments on both sides of the Durand Line. It led to the malik system in Pakistan, in which the Pushtun leadership figures who interacted, with the government, through its political agents, with the government were eventually seen more as state representatives than as members of the tribe, increasingly de-legitimating them in recent years. “Being Pushtun does not mean you represent Pushtuns. Links to the tribal system are very important. There are no links with grassroots for Pushtun elites, unlike [the Afghan Taliban’s leader since 1992] Mullah Omar,” said Massoud Kharokhail.

  Pushtun nationalism evolved in its present form not through the narratives of the tribes and lineages, but largely through barriers to participation in the politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan. When ethnic Pushtuns have voted in open elections in either country, they have not elected standard-bearers for nationalism but rather fellow Pushtuns committed to working with other ethnic groups at the national level. Yet despite this, by 2008–10, substantial minorities of Pushtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan were participating in or, more often, passively supporting insurgencies that had an explicit aim of ending the multiethnic democracies in both countries and replacing them with an ill-defined Islamic regime that would, in practice, incorporate or enforce Pushtun rule.