Asia Times: Moves to get a foot in Afghanistan's door


	November 20, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Moves to get a foot in Afghanistan's door
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - While numerous factions within Afghanistan are jockeying for power and position following the Northern Alliance's takeover of Kabul, hectic diplomatic activity is also under way to safeguard the strategic aspirations of other interested countries, notably Iran, Russia and India.

Pakistan, however, which more than any other country has a vested interest in seeing a compliant administration in Kabul, if only to keep the peace in its Pashtun-dominated tribal areas, is falling behind in the race to stamp its influence on a post-Taliban government.

Iran is likely to become the first country to open an embassy in Kabul since the Taliban withdrew in the face of Northern Alliance forces last week. India and Russia, too, are expected to follow suit. All three of these countries favor the Northern Alliance.

Russia has already sent a high-power delegation to Kabul. Russian officials said a 17-member team, drawn from the foreign, defense and other ministries and headed by special envoy Alexander Oblov, would work with US and United Nations officials in Kabul on the political makeup of an interim government. But Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has ruled out any Russian participation in an international peacekeeping effort. Ivanov, angling his comments at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries which are considering contributing to a peacekeeping force, said Afghanistan was "not Kosovo" - a reference to the 1999 NATO air strikes against targets in Yugoslavia over Slobodan Milosevic's policies.

"In Afghanistan, things are much more complicated. I would caution against the euphoria of victory over the Taliban. The Taliban have not disappeared. They can switch to the tactic of Chechen fighters - carry out ambushes, explosions, diversionary operations," he said, referring to the separatist conflict in Russia's troubled province.

Reports emerging from across Pakistan's border suggest that negotiations have started to form a strategic alliance of India, Iran, Russia and the Northern Alliance government in Afghanistan. Under the pact, if any of the concerned countries were attacked the others would come to its defense.

Commenting on the reports, a former director-general of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence, Hamid Gul, said that moves to form a strategic alliance of regional countries was not a new one. Previously, China, Russia and India tried a establish an alliance, but later China backed out and a pact could not be made. However, if the US maintains a presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, neighboring countries such as Iran, India and Russia would be forced to take counterbalancing measures. "Obviously, every country, including Iran, and even India, will perceive US forces in the region as a long-term threat. China also has reservations. In these circumstances, Pakistan would once again be isolated because of US designs in the region," Gul said.

He stressed that the United Nations should play its role in Afghanistan. He said that Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, an ethnic Pashtun warlord exiled in Iran, was an ace in Pakistan's hands which it could play if the Taliban left the scene. He said that Gulbaddin would be acceptable to all Pashtun tribes. But, he said, under US pressure, Pakistan is in danger of losing this option.

Recently, Hikmatyar wanted to return to Pakistan but he was refused a visa. "The Pakistani decision makers should realize that Hikmatyar is their only friend in Afghanistan after the Taliban," he insisted.

Within the country, meanwhile, the divisions are growing deeper despite the alliance's about-turn in agreeing on Sunday to join other anti-Taliban forces in talks in Europe on forming a government. The agreement, announced by Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with US envoy James Dobbins, marked a climbdown by the alliance which previously insisted the talks be held in Kabul. Abdullah said that the talks could take place in any one of several neutral venues proposed by the United Nations, including Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

At present, Afghanistan is divided into many ethnic groupings, such as the Hazara, Uzbek, Pastuns and Tajiks, each headed by a warlord and dominating a particular region. And to further complicate the issue, the warlords share little friendship among themselves.

The Taliban handed over Nanagarhar province to the Hizb-i-Islami (Khalis group) but the tribals instead selected Abdul Qadeer, a loyalist of former monarch Zahir Shah, as their governor. However, pockets of the Khalis group still control parts of the province.

Khost, Paktia and Kunhar are controlled by Hizb-i-Islami (Hikmatyar) forces, with some pockets in the hands of the Taliban, who also remain strong in the south around Kandahar.

In the north, Mazar-e-Sharif is ruled by Uzbek General Rasheed Dostum, and Herat in the west is under a Tajik, Ismail Khan. The main faction of the Northern Alliance that took Kabul was the Jamiat-i-Islami of Tajik Burhanuddin Rabbani, while hundreds of people from the Hazara tribe are said to converging on the capital to push for their maximum representation in any future set-up.

The United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, is in Kabul to speak to as many faction leaders as possible. The United Nations, however, has ruled out creating a traditional peacekeeping force for Afghanistan. The international community is inclined toward a multinational force rather than a "classic" UN blue-helmet force, Vendrell says. "We've got to have our terms very clear," he adds. "A multinational force is not necessarily a peacekeeping force."

There are three options before the UN Security Council in its search for peace and stability in Afghanistan: an all-Afghan security force, a multinational force and a UN peacekeeping force. The preferred option is an all-Afghan force, but this is not expected to materialize, primarily because of the factionalism among the country's main ethnic groups.

Vendrell said that a UN peacekeeping force entails "blue helmets - a force to maintain peace, a force that does not act aggressively, and a force that does not have a robust mandate". However, he noted, "there is no agreement yet to verify, there is no peace agreement, and so the issue of a classic blue-helmet force does not arise for the moment". Vendrell said that he envisages some form of "international security force that would be available to maintain order, help [a] new provisional or interim council work inside Kabul".

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard says that a multinational force is something "that the Security Council would ideally give its blessings to". However, some country with the necessary military capacity would have to take the lead to form it. "So, there you really have to look at the members of the Security Council and members of the United Nations more broadly to see whether a coalition force is in the making," he added.

(Additional reporting by Inter Press Service)

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