One man's plan for south Afghanistan
Dan Chapman - Staff
Sunday, November 11, 2001
Quetta, Pakistan --- Seven hundred al-Qaida troops zeroed in on Hamid Karzai earlier this month as he tried to start a revolution in the Taliban heartland in Uruzgan province.
A villager sympathetic to Karzai's mission ran for an hour to warn the Afghan nobleman of the impending assault.
The Taliban zeroed in. A firefight ensued. U.S. helicopters helped rebuff the attack and spirited Karzai to safety in Pakistan.
That, at least, was the version U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Pakistan-based supporters of Karzai told early last week. By midweek, though, Karzai and others denied any U.S. assistance and insisted that the Pashtun leader never left Afghan soil.
Details of Karzai's adventures in Afghanistan remain murky. But Karzai clearly remains the United States' best hope for spreading its anti-Taliban offensive to the crucial southern Afghanistan regions.
The Bush administration has been criticized for failing to rally to its side Pashtuns, Afghanistan's predominant ethnic group, which holds sway from Kabul south through Kandahar.
All tangible successes have been in northern Afghanistan, where the alliance of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras captured Mazar-e-Sharif.
In addition, five weeks of bombing failed to persuade the hoped-for legions of Taliban troops to defect.
Enter Karzai.
''Hamid, so far, is very confident and happy about his work,'' Ahmad Karzai, Hamid's brother, said late last week during an interview in this southwestern Pakistani city.
The brothers talk daily by satellite phone.
''We have the support of the people [in] south Afghanistan, which has always played a big role in the history of Afghanistan,'' Ahmad Karzai said.
''Without the south, it is impossible to have a government in Afghanistan.''
The Karzais' goal is to rally Pashtuns --- former Taliban commanders and soldiers, as well as tribal, religious and village leaders --- to their side. They also are asking Afghans to support ex-King Zahir Shah, who pledges his largely ceremonial support if Karzai prevails.
''I'm asking for help from the U.S., Europe and Muslim countries,'' Hamid Karzai told the BBC, ''to help the Afghan people to regain independence, regain peace and once again live among the nations of the world as a dignified, honorable nation.''
Karzai's task is fraught with peril --- both personal and political. If caught, the Taliban surely will execute him, just as it did another ex-Afghan official who last month tried to rally Pashtuns.
And even if Karzai and the United States succeed in driving the Taliban from power, there is no guarantee that the mishmash of Afghan ethnic and tribal groups will ever peacefully co-exist, let alone govern.
''It's a very difficult task, but you have to start somewhere,'' said Sohail Mahmood, a political science professor at Islamabad's prestigious Quaid-i-Azam University.
''You need someone to run around like mad these days and try for some kind of consensus. But creating a strong government in Afghanistan will be a political nightmare.''
Once Taliban allies
The Karzai clan hails from the Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan. Their Pashtun tribe, the Populzai, dominates the area, which also is the home base of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban supreme leader.
Abdul-Ahad Karzai, the brothers' father, served in the Afghan senate during King Shah's rule. But the family fled Afghanistan not long after the Soviets entered Kabul.
They settled first in Arlington, Va., where Ahmed studied English, before moving to Chicago to open the city's first Afghan restaurant. He named the restaurant Helmand after a province in southern Afghanistan.
Hamid established a restaurant in San Francisco. The family also opened other eponymous restaurants in Boston and Baltimore; the Chicago restaurant is closed now.
Hamid Karzai joined the anti-Soviet mujahedeen, or freedom fighters, in the late 1980s, and, although never a combatant, he supplied Populzai commanders with weapons and money.
In the early 1990s, with the mujahedeen in control of Kabul, Hamid Karzai became deputy foreign minister.
Much of his family moved to Quetta in 1992, where it had kept a house for two decades in Satellite Town, the city's high-walled upper-class suburb.
Quetta is an 80-mile drive from Kandahar. Many people in the Afghan resistance settled here.
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Hamid Karzai was intrigued by his fellow Pashtun nationalists. Ahmad Karzai said his older brother also knew many of the Taliban leaders from their struggles against the Soviets.
But relations soon soured. Karzai, a moderate, opposed the Taliban's brand of Muslim radicalism.
He also rejected the power increasingly held by Pakistani and Arab supporters, including Osama bin Laden, who is from Saudi Arabia.
In 1997, Karzai and his father attempted to organize an anti-Taliban coalition. Two years later, Abdul-Ahad Karzai was assassinated behind the Quetta home. The Karzais blamed the Taliban.
Tribal elders tapped Hamid Karzai to replace his father as chieftain of the Populzai. The new ''King of Kandahar'' vowed non-Taliban Pashtuns someday would rule Afghanistan again.
''Mullah Omar has been ruling with a Kalishnikov for the last five, six years in the Kandahar area,'' Ahmad Karzai said as he fingered white worry beads in the red-cushioned receiving room of his family's Quetta home.
''We have had tribal relations there for centuries. So [Hamid] is not afraid to go there.''
Drumming up support
Hamid Karzai, 46, sneaked into Afghanistan on Oct. 8 and headed for the rugged central highlands north of Kandahar.
For nearly three weeks, Karzai roamed from village to village in search of anti-Taliban support.
For two of those weeks, his brother said, the Taliban probably did not know he was there. Ten days ago, though, there was no doubt.
Before sunrise, Karzai and his 300-man militia descended from a village in the Derawat district and soon spotted the Taliban below, Ahmad Karzai said. The gunbattle lasted until 3:30 p.m. Karzai escaped.
But how?
Rumsfeld said Monday, and repeated Tuesday, that U.S. helicopters rescued Karzai at his request and flew him to Pakistan for ''consultations.'' The defense secretary added that the United States had ''delivered ammunition and some supplies to him.''
Karzai, via satellite phone Thursday, vehemently denied Rumsfeld's claims. Karzai told his brother that he escaped by foot and survived for three days on bread and green tea.
The Karzais said the battle involved ''more than 800'' Taliban, including an al-Qaida contingent of hard-core Arab and Pakistani fighters.
''I am asking now in very strong terms for international assistance to help the Afghan people get rid of the foreign terrorist enemies of Afghanistan,'' Karzai told the BBC.
The Taliban, for its part, claimed to have captured 25 of Karzai's supporters. They will be hanged, the Taliban said.
Claims and counterclaims aside, Afghan experts said the United States blundered in publicizing its relationship with Karzai.
Rumsfeld's remarks were ''the most grotesque example possible of how not to run a war,'' said Selig Harrison, a terrorism expert for the Century Foundation, a Washington think tank.
''It's really, absolutely the gang who can't shoot straight,'' Harrison said, referring to the Pentagon.
Sohail, the Islamabad professor, said the Americans ''should stay in the background --- butt out.''
The Taliban readily jumped on Rumsfeld's remarks to try to portray Karzai as an American stooge who does not serve Afghan interests.
'A little push'
At week's end, Karzai remained --- supposedly --- somewhere in Uruzgan province continuing his search for Pashtun support, much as his friend and former anti-Soviet ally, Abdul Haq, had.
Haq was captured and executed by the Taliban last month while on a similar mission to rally anti-Taliban support.
The United States sent helicopters and troops in an unsuccessful attempt to save Haq from a Taliban ambush.
''He didn't deserve to die this way,'' Ahmad Karzai said. ''He lost his foot and fought for 10 years for Afghanistan [against the Soviets] and what happened? There were no charges, and they hanged him. It was an evil thing to do. My brother knows what will happen if they capture him.''
Yet Karzai perseveres, with hopes of convening a loya jirga, or council of Afghan elders, soon in Kandahar or Kabul.
The Karzais say they would include Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras --- the Northern Alliance --- in any future Afghan government, as long as Pashtuns lead the coalition.
Left unsaid is the military role that America should play.
The Karzais and their supporters could put themselves in trouble if they align themselves too closely with the United States or if they don't accept military assistance from Washington to hasten their advance on Kabul.
Ultimately, Ahmad Karzai says, non-Taliban Pashtuns will rule Afghanistan again.
''The Taliban [is] not functioning. There is no government,'' he said.
''They just need a little push into the ground. That's what Hamid is doing, for sure. There will be a change soon. Believe me.''
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