villagevoice.com
Northern Alliance Tells U.S. to Butt Out
Afghan Plan Unravels
by Camelia E. Fard
Ravam Farhadi, the Northern Alliance ambassador at the United
Nations, said today that deciding who should take over in Afghanistan "is
not the American business.''
The U.S. has been quietly pushing to keep the Northern Alliance from
taking Kabul for fear that would unleash a bloody massacre. Farhadi said
American leaders were wrong on that point. "This is the fault of the
State Department, which always follows Pakistani propaganda,'' and the
Pakistanis hate the Northern Alliance, he said. "All of the Arab fighters
who went to Afghanistan to support the Taliban came from Pakistani
intelligence. If we take power in Afghanistan, it would be under the UN.
If the U.S. can attack the Taliban and Kill Supreme Leader Omar or two
or three other important persons, the Taliban is finished.''
According to Barnett Rubin, the director of studies at the Center on
International Cooperation and the pre-eminent independent American
expert on Afghanistan, any U.S. plans to annoint a leader would alienate
Afghans. "If we start naming the individual or individuals who would lead
a postwar Afghanistan arrangement," Rubin said, "Afghans would
immediately say that there is a conspiracy being hatched behind their
backs."
But Rubin also said the Northern Alliance should not be allowed to
capture Kabul.
Their comments come just days after Ismail Khan, a legendary Afghan
war hero, returned to the Herat area of northwest Afghanistan and
quickly began to re-establish his once formidable power base by taking
control of a string of villages and small towns from the Taliban, according
to well-informed Afghan sources. Khan is known for having rebuilt
infrastructure, including roads and schools, and for his willingness to offer
education to women.
Meanwhile, with the U.S. running a psy-ops—psychological
operations—campaign to win over Taliban leaders and conscripts with
promises of jobs and cash. The idea is to win their loyalty without
causing them to physically leave the ranks. That way, they'll be in place
to support the U.S.-sponsored provisional government.
Washington has been trying find some way of cobbling together a
provisional government that would include groups capable of moderating
the hard-line northern fighters. Washington worries that the Northern
Alliance would be overly independent and push its own agenda, getting
too close to the Russians, Iran, and India. Most of all, the U.S. frets
about antagonizing its edgy ally Pakistan, which detests the Northern
Alliance.
Khan's re-emergence eases pressure on U.S. hopes that the elderly
former Afghan king Zahir Shah—long holed up in Rome—could ride herd
over the country's many factions. Shah has come to seem less and less
capable of that, raising the specter of American troops having to remain
on the ground in an extended post-Taliban peacekeeping mission.
A former army captain, Khan began fighting the Soviets in 1979. He
became a noted mujahideen warlord, then declared himself emir of Herat
in 1992. The area had a reasonably peaceful existence until the Taliban
took it over in 1995 and Khan fled to Iran. He then returned to battle the
Taliban, was captured, and escaped. Now he's back, aiming to be a
player in the new Afghanistan. |
