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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (9692)	12/8/2001 4:37:09 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 23908

Told you so.... The "Molotov-Ribbentrop" carve-up of Afghanistan is no longer smothered: Why Not Redraw Afghanistan's Borders - or Even Break It Up? Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune Saturday, December 8, 2001 NEW DELHI According to the English Civil War rhyme, "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." Given the agreement this week in Bonn, it may be overly pessimistic to question whether Afghanistan can be glued back together. That effort must be made. However, we also need to think the unthinkable on two counts. First, is Afghanistan, as now constituted, necessary? Second, why is a redrawing of national boundaries considered impossible, even though so many are unnatural creations of former British, Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian and other empires? The past 30 years has seen the fragmentation of several states, usually along ethnic lines. Many people rejoiced at the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The international community accepted the breaking away of Bangladesh and Eritrea, and fathered the escape of East Timor from Indonesia. But it has failed to get to grips with the irrational borders which are the root of many ethnic and inter-state conflicts. There is at least one major conflict which can, if at all, only be resolved by an internationally accepted redrawing of a boundary - to allow Israel to keep part, however small, of its 1967 conquests. So might it be better to admit the wisdom of redrawing other boundaries - in southeastern Europe, in the Caucasus and Central Asia - before they too become subject to de factor changes by right of conquest, or causes of more ethnic cleansing. The 1945 redrawing of European maps and consequent migration of populations was painful but has contributed immeasurably to central Europe's subsequent tranquillity. Modern Afghanistan is not a natural construct. It is the rump of a Pashtun kingdom created in the 18th century from bits of declining Persian, Mogul and Uzbek entities by the Durrani clan, from whom the former king Zahir Shah is descended. It once extended east of the Indus River. The Durranis lost half their Pashtun heartland to the British and hence to Pakistan, but thanks to Afghanistan being seen as a useful buffer state between the British and Russians they were able to hold their non-Pashtun territories north of the Hindu Kush. Memories of their brutal suppression of Uzbek and other uprisings have been an important ingredient in post-1989 tribal bloodletting. With the Russian retreat, a buffer state is no longer needed. Successor states such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan need fewer distractions: Stalin's cunning map drawing ensured that each allegedly autonomous central Asian republic contained a large minority of a rival ethnic group. If we look now at central Asia as a whole, the dismemberment of Afghanistan is not without historical precedent or justification. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan could absorb the land of their kin in the north and Iran take the western fringe. [snip] iht.com