naive policy? samo samo? expensive war, cheap victory?
AWSJ(10/18) Pressure On US, Allies To Form Post-Taliban Govt
By AHMED RASHID IN LAHORE, PAKISTAN, and NEIL KING JR. IN WASHINGTON
The failure of the U.S. air war over Afghanistan so far to create serious disarray within the Taliban has intensified pressure on the administration of George W. Bush and its allies to create a swift political alternative to the ruling militia.
Much of the attention for now is falling on the United Nations, where concerted discussions have just begun, and on the former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, whom many see as a key rallying point for any successful opposition.
In Washington, U.S. officials conceded that while the bombing campaign has caused heavy damage to Taliban military assets, it has not sparked the sort of revolt, especially among ethnic Pashtuns in the south, that many in the administration predicted would be a key effect of the air strikes.
As a result, the U.S. and its European allies have stepped up pressure on the former king to quicken the pace of putting together a broad-based multi-ethnic government that can replace the Taliban regime in Kabul, according to European diplomats and the king's aides in Rome.
"The reality is that after all this bombing no senior Taliban leaders are defecting. And the reason is that there is at present no entity to which the Taliban can defect to," said a senior European diplomat in Rome who has been intensely involved with efforts to form a new government.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told reporters after meeting Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Islamabad that the political process "needs to be placed on a fast track in order to forestall the possibility of a political vacuum." He also expressed worry that a political solution is lagging behind "the fast-moving events in the military field."
Much attention is focused on the U.N., which is expected to play the largest single international role in helping to bring about a new government for Kabul. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, briefed the Security Council in what diplomats described as a preliminary session. "He did not come with a master plan," said a European diplomat.
U.S. and European officials said an alternative to the Taliban is crucial, not just to fill a possible political vacuum but also to help lure away moderate members of the Taliban. The Taliban draws its strength from the majority Pashtuns, who are unwilling to defect to their hated enemies in the opposition Northern Alliance -- also known as the United Front -- which is largely drawn from northern Afghanistan's ethnic Uzbek and Tajik minorities. The Taliban have brutally suppressed these minorities in the past four years, and the furious blood feuds between them could prompt interethnic massacres if the rebels were to take Kabul and other cities.
Both President Musharraf and Secretary Powell spoke Tuesday of including moderate Taliban members in a future government, a theme that provoked immediate suspicions among Taliban foes in the north, who have long been hostile to Pakistan. "All of this shows how deep a hand Pakistan still has in Afghan affairs," said Haron Amin, a Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington.
The suspicions deepened after an unconfirmed report emerged that the Taliban's foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, had met secretly with Pakistani officials in Islamabad to urge a halt in the air strikes so that Taliban moderates could hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.
The 87-year-old King Zahir, who was deposed in a palace coup in 1973, has been at the center of several failed efforts to form a broad-based government in Kabul. The ex-king is a Pashtun, but his mother tongue is Persian, and the Pashtuns around him are drawn largely from the emigre community that served in his court in the 1960s.
Hoping to stir unrest among Pashtuns in the south, the king's people and the Central Intelligence Agency have both attempted to mobilize Pashtun tribal chiefs and former commanders from the anti-Soviet war, most of whom are now based in the Pakistani border towns of Quetta and Peshawar. But so far, the efforts to lure Taliban defectors have been unsuccessful. "The problem is that the moderate Taliban still don't know what will emerge," said one of the king's aides, who was in Quetta.
President Bush has held at least two meetings over the past week to discuss options for a post-Taliban government in Kabul. The administration has also appointed Richard Haass, head of policy planning at the State Department, and Geoffrey Lunstead, a seasoned diplomat and Afghan specialist, as the principal U.S. coordinators to help the Afghans make a new government.
Members of the rebel Northern Alliance met with the former king two weeks ago and agreed to form a 120-man "Supreme Council for the National Unity of Afghanistan," which would be made up of 50 representatives each from the royalists and the Northern Alliance. The other 20 seats would be chosen by both sides or left open for defecting moderate Taliban leaders.
According to Western diplomats, both King Zahir and the Northern Alliance have already drawn up mutually acceptable lists of names. Their next meeting, however, has been delayed because rebel leaders are stuck in the war zone and are unable to fly out from Afghanistan.
King Zahir has in turn told the European foreign ministers that agreement on the composition of the Supreme Council would be followed by the creation of a 10- to 12-man committee, which could become a provisional government in exile. Both the former king and the European ministers privately agreed on the need for a small international peacekeeping force to protect a future government in Kabul. The force could be drawn up with troops from neutral Muslim countries such as Turkey and Morocco, and would include Afghan fighters from all factions committed to the peace process, sources close to the talks said.
The U.S. has agreed for the time being to hold off bombing Taliban front lines outside Kabul to prevent an early capture of the city by the Northern Alliance. In a significant concession, the Northern Alliance in turn declared, after a lengthy and stormy meeting Sunday in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, that it would postpone any attack on the capital for one month until a political solution can be reached.
The need to create a new Afghan government has become even more pressing with the approach of November -- the month of Ramadan for Muslims and the onset of winter -- and the country's worsening humanitarian crisis.
Any premature attack on Kabul by the northern forces would further alienate the Pashtuns, prevent defections and rally moderate Pashtuns around the Taliban, whose rhetoric has become increasingly nationalistic. Taliban Intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah has even urged United Front fighters to join the Taliban. "We will forget the past problems with those people, who join us because now it is the question of our religion and country," he told a news agency on Sunday.
Once the king's political process is under way, Western diplomats say, the U.S. would then begin to weaken Taliban ground forces by bombing their tanks, artillery and fortifications around Kabul. In the meantime, U.S. bombing is helping the northern forces capture the cities of northern Afghanistan. On Monday, the United Front's Uzbek commander, Gen. Rashid Dostum, captured the airport of Mazar-e-Sharif, the largest city in the north. By Wednesday, Northern Alliance troops were reported to be within six kilometers of the city. U.S. air strikes have pummeled the Taliban defenses in the city in recent days. The fall of Mazar would allow U.S. special forces based in neighboring Uzbekistan to create a bridgehead at Mazar airport for further attacks on Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban leadership, which is thought to be hiding in the south of the country. In the northeast, Tajik forces within the Northern Alliance are aiming to capture the city of Taloqan, while ethnic Hazaras are making a bid to surround Bamiyan in the center of the country.
Diplomats in Rome, however, say both the former king and Western countries prefer to see the liberated cities governed under the authority of the Supreme Council rather than by individual commanders like Gen. Dostum. This would avoid a repetition of the bloody warlordism of the early 1990s, when cities were captured by individual commanders and turned into personal fiefdoms. Such a step, it is hoped, would also avoid inter-ethnic killings and massacres of surrendering Taliban troops.
Some European politicians and U.N. officials are demanding a suspension of the bombing to give aid agencies a chance to deliver food to Afghanistan before winter. "We need massive access at the moment to the civilian population in Afghanistan, and you cannot have access when there is military bombardment," Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in Geneva on Sunday. |
