John Jennings traveled widely with the mujahideen as a Peshawar-based freelance writer from 1987 to 1991, reported from Afghanistan for the Associated Press and the Economist from 1991 to 1994, and covered the rout of the Taliban for the Washington Times in November 2001. He visited Afghanistan again in September 2003.

Earlier this month, Afghanistan's 502-delegate loya jirga approved the draft of a new constitution that concentrates power in the hands of a directly-elected president, with no prime minister as an alternate source of executive authority and only limited legislative oversight. In light of the country's multi-ethnic makeup and long history of tyranny, such weak checks on the presidency would appear to be utterly inappropriate. On January 20, however, the New York Times editorialized: "Debates about . . . the division of powers between the central and provincial governments seem secondary when people are afraid to sow their fields or transport their crops to market."[1]

That the New York Times editorial desk should so readily dismiss concerns about civil and political rights is odd. But even more striking, the sentence's final clause is demonstrably false. Afghanistan's largely agricultural economy could not have grown by 30% during the last year, as the IMF recently reported, if most farmers were afraid to sow their fields or transport their crops to market.[2]

The editorial is not an isolated case of poor fact checking. It reflects a broader trend in the Western media, which portrays the new Afghanistan as "sliding back into chaos, poverty and despair" two years after the ouster of the Taliban.[3] This view is said to reflect "a consensus" on a "deteriorating security situation" among "officials of the UN, the European Union, other US allies, aid agencies, US officials in the field, and Afghans loyal to Mr. Karzai."[4] The purported anarchy is blamed on misrule by regional "warlords," portrayed as savage robber barons who exploit their unholy alliance with the Pentagon to brutalize the helpless populace. Virtually every Western news report on Afghanistan, regardless of length or main topic, employs similar language to describe the general situation.

Such portrayals merit special scrutiny because they mirror official statements by one of the country's main political factions - interim President Hamid Karzai and other returned exiles in his government, who have exploited the notion that Afghans are suffering under the iron grip of evil "warlords" to enlist foreign support for creating a strong presidential system of government. The draft constitution Karzai presented in November - dubbed a "a murky blueprint for a repressive state" by Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom[5] - gave the president sweeping powers to rule by decree. Although some minor changes were made during the recent loya jirga, Karzai largely succeeded in getting his way.

Background

Hysteria about Afghanistan's "warlords" is rooted in enduring myths about the proximate causes of Afghanistan's last decade of warfare. According to this story, after defeating the Soviet Union's occupation army and ousting its communist puppet regime, Afghanistan's mujahideen turned on one other and created a "state of anarchy that gave rise to the Taliban and allowed al-Qaeda to base itself there."[6] In the mid-1990s, it is said, the Taliban conquered areas that were racked by lawlessness and anarchy and met little resistance during their march to Kabul, which they entered unopposed.

In fact, writes Anthony Davis of Time magazine and Jane's Defence Weekly, "services and schooling in [mujahideen-controlled] regions were far in advance of anything delivered by the Taliban . . . [whose] energies were focused almost exclusively on war." Contrary to the myth, the Taliban "fought their way into regions that were at peace and in many instances . . . recognized as being relatively well administered."[7] As for Kabul falling without a shot being fired, this too is a canard. Mujahideen commanders resisted the Taliban tooth and nail - Agence France Presse reported that hundreds died fighting on the day the Taliban finally seized the capital.[8]

This is not to say that the country wasn't divided prior to the Taliban conquest, or that factions of the mujahideen were not fighting among themselves. But it was not anarchy that enabled the Taliban's rise. They were the latest and most successful of a series of militias armed and trained by Pakistan's intelligence services in hopes of installing a "friendly" government in Afghanistan. To Pakistani officials, "friendly" implies Pashtun-dominated. Afghanistan's rulers have traditionally been Pashtun, who comprise nearly half the population (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and smaller groups comprise the majority). Pashtuns are also substantial minority in Pakistan, with political influence disproportionate to their numbers. Despite their brutality and their reliance on Pakistani support, the Taliban were portrayed by the Western media as a popular movement; its apologists argued that engagement, not confrontation, would promote "moderates" among the militia's leadership.

Meanwhile, Taliban apologists pilloried the United Front (erroneously labeled the "Northern Alliance" in the Western media), a coalition of mujahideen who continued to resist the Taliban after the fall of Kabul, and its leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a famed commander known as the "Lion of Panjsher" for his success in resisting Soviet efforts to seize the Panjsher valley in central Afghanistan. Some American observers raged at Massoud for accepting military aid from Russia and Iran to fight the Taliban,[9] but the United Front was unapologetic. "When you're dying of thirst," one mujahideen spokesman explained to me, "you don't ask who fills your glass. We even tried to buy munitions from the Israelis, but their price was too high."

Only weeks before the September 11 terrorist attacks, American diplomats were still arguing that Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition was "part of the problem, not part of the solution." This attitude persisted even after 9/11, when a State Department official remarked that it was "a little premature to be hatching plots with the Northern Alliance."[10] With the war underway, State, CIA and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate tried to organize a revolt by Taliban military commanders in (misguided) hopes that the defectors would pre-empt a military takeover of the capital by the opposition. The plan fell apart when the proposed figurehead, Abdul Haq, was seized by Taliban authorities, tortured and murdered.

Concerns about the United Front's takeover of Kabul (which, unlike the Taliban's capture of the city five years earlier, met only a few hours' token resistance) proved unfounded. Rather than installing one of their own as president, in December 2001 Afghanistan's regional "warlords" agreed to the selection of Hamid Karzai, having judged him to be the candidate least likely to exploit the presidency to further his own ambitions or the agenda of meddlesome neighbors. United Front leader Qasem Faheem (who succeeded Massoud after he was assassinated by al-Qaeda just prior to 9/11) assumed the post of defense minister.

Since then, due to the slow pace of reconstituting the Afghan army (currently slated to reach a strength of just 9,000 by June 2004), security in most of the countryside has by necessity been maintained by regional leaders - mujahideen commanders in the north and west, and Pashtun tribal leaders loyal to Karzai in the south and east. Despite the pressing financial and manpower needs of reconstruction, Karzai has demanded that international donors accelerate the training and equipping of Kabul's fledgling army, regularly inveighing against the "warlords" who hold sway outside of Kabul. His allies claim the mujahideen do not maintain law and order, constantly feud with one another, and are heavily engaged in the opium trade.

Warlords Run Amok?

During a September 2003 visit to Afghanistan, I discovered that Western media portrayals of the Afghan countryside as a lawless Wild West were wildly off the mark. I visited three of the country's five largest cities - Kabul, Mazar-i Sharif and Jalalabad - and the countryside around each, with side trips to the Panjsher Valley and the Pakistan border. I traveled overland, on public transport, unarmed, unaccompanied, sandwiched between ordinary Afghans, querying them and my drivers about conditions near their homes and along the highways. I haunted bazaars and teahouses, chatting with fellow patrons and the staff at my lodgings.

With few and very localized exceptions, the countryside was safe and peaceful. The highways linking these regions were open, the cities themselves calm, food and fuel relatively cheap. These are sensitive indicators of excellent security and economic recovery. It's clear the "warlords" are not running amok: If they were, extortionate roadblocks on the main highways would be the first sign of it, because that's where the money is. Transit trade is a pillar of the economy.

Truck and bus drivers plying the road to Herat road say highway robberies, their main worry, remain relatively rare. Afghan visitors to the west and Herat residents alike give regional leader Ismail Khan rave reviews for maintaining security and protecting commerce. I met a Panjsheri driver for a transport cartel who recently traveled to Herat via Kandahar, then drove back a new vehicle his bosses had bought: a journey until recently unthinkable for a northerner. Today, the biggest health hazards on Afghan highways are drivers passing on blind curves and unprecedented clouds of dust and diesel fumes.

Everywhere I went, I saw signs of a private-sector construction boom and the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Pakistan and Iran. If lawlessness were truly widespread, if local warlords were truly the rapacious thugs they've been portrayed as, it is inconceivable that Afghans would be risking their safety and their private capital in this fashion. In short, that huge majority of ordinary Afghans living in areas not actively contested by Taliban remnants have it better today than at any time since 1978.

There are, of course, major security problems in Afghanistan, but they are mainly restricted to the former Taliban heartland bordering Pakistan, where 12 aid workers were killed in 2003. The media-amplified perception that humanitarians face danger everywhere they go appears to derive from sweeping and incautious language common in western charities' press releases.[11]

As for "warlord feuds," journalists have reported ad nauseam on a single rivalry - between followers of Balkh governor Atta Mohammad and ex-communist militia chief Abdurrasheed Dostum - and often misrepresent it as typical. Tensions between the two sides erupted into violence in October 2003, leaving as many as 50 dead. But Dostum is the only prominent "warlord" who fits the robber baron profile. During the Soviet occupation, his militiamen won infamy as Moscow's most brutal indigenous shock troops. Since 1992, he has repeatedly attacked his neighbors and betrayed his patrons and allies. No wonder there's trouble in Balkh.

Claims that United Front commanders are responsible for the rise in Afghan opium production are patently false. In light of the fact that trade routes to Russia (a major market for heroin) pass through the northeast province of Badakhshan, it is likely that some of their local leaders are turning a blind eye to transit of opium. However, according to the United Nations, the largest opium-producing provinces in 2003 were Nangarhar and Hilmand, former Taliban strongholds still contested by militia remnants.[12]

Axes to Grind

Few foreign observers have much time for ordinary Afghans. Western reporters tend to rely instead for insight on Afghans close to Karzai - Westernized scions of the antebellum feudal elite. Keen to discredit the battle-tested commoners who rose to power after they abandoned Afghanistan for exile in the West, the more vocal of these so-called "technocrats" popularized the "warlord" slur. After one of them became interim president, others returned in droves to troll for business opportunities and political appointments.

They appear to have imagined that authority is purely a matter of title and office. But they swiftly found that de facto power rests with the local leaders to whom most Afghans have turned through a generation of warfare. The "technocrats" despise this restriction: Under the antebellum Muhammadzai autocracy, the very concept of government by consent of the governed was alien. Provincial governors were appointed from Kabul, just as they were under the communists and the Taliban.

Accordingly, Karzai's entourage has enlisted unwary reporters, diplomats and do-gooders in a quest to restore a semblance of the bygone feudal pecking order: a highly centralized regime dominated, naturally, by themselves. It's their agenda - not "chaos, poverty and despair" - that explains the purported consensus. UN officials and Western aid workers have proven particularly susceptible, perhaps because the Utopian mindset that is virtually de rigeur among professional humanitarians predisposes them to address perceived problems with centrally imposed "solutions."

Western officials in southwest Asia generally lead very sheltered lives, spending far more time trading rumors at each other's soirees than meeting real Afghans. Former CIA agent Raoul Marc Gerecht made the same point during our last days of clueless innocence.[13] Furthermore, the "experts" often have axes to grind. For example, most journalists, do-gooders, academics and diplomats I have met despise soldiers generically, and reflexively oppose their deployment in any role except peacekeeping. It's understandable (if indefensible) that they would misrepresent conditions in Afghanistan today, in order to discredit a successful policy they had opposed from the outset.

The Kabul Propaganda Mill

With all these agendas at work, it's no surprise that the gulf between report and reality is so wide. Much of the political "analysis" published in the Western media since the overthrow of the Taliban is stridently partisan. The writers appear either unconcerned or unaware of their Afghan informants' political leanings. Almost invariably, their spin promotes the ambitious "technocrat" clique.

Cases in point are efforts to link United Front officials with the 2002 killings of a vice-president and a pro-Karzai minister. Like all good agitprop, the charges can't be fully verified or disproven, but they are exceedingly implausible, on grounds ignored by the pundits who have given them the most credence.

In February 2002, Civil Aviation Minister Abdurrahman tried to commandeer one of the Afghan national carrier's airliners to fly to India on holiday. The already much-delayed flight was scheduled to fly to Mecca; the minister's move would have stranded several hundred religious pilgrims at the spartan Kabul terminal, with no heat and no food, in bitter winter weather. The pilgrims got wind of this, rioted, stormed the aircraft and defenestrated Abdurrahman onto the tarmac, breaking his neck. Afterwards, Karzai publicly accused Northern Alliance commanders of orchestrating the killing - a puzzling claim that his own investigators subsequently dismissed.[14]

The assassination of Vice President Abdul Qadir in July 2002 was followed by a "technocrat" whisper campaign linking Faheem to the killing. In fact, Qadir was much closer to Faheem than to Karzai; and both Qadir's aides and Kabul authorities linked the killers to Zaman Khan, a rival Pashtun leader from Nangarhar. But a senior Afghan official said Karzai personally embargoed reports on the case via state-run media, apparently so Faheem would keep getting blamed.[15]

Western news reports routinely portray Karzai as a popular underdog challenging a cabal of gangster warlords.[16] This is the same Karzai who, after an early 2002 assassination attempt, decided he couldn't trust his Afghan bodyguards and began relying exclusively on US special forces. In fact, many Afghans resent the Westernized latecomers. On Kabul's streets they've been dubbed sag-shui (dog-washers) - a mocking rejoinder to the "technocrat" label and a gibe at the grubby jobs that some held in exile.

Most mujahideen commanders enjoy grassroots support. Many adult males in Afghanistan have, or can easily acquire, firearms. Most villages have, or can get anti-tank weapons and light artillery. A community consensus generally decides whether, and for whom, its men will bear arms. Consequently it's very difficult to maintain authority at any level without popular backing. Despite their immense foreign support, both the Taliban and the communists learned this the hard way. The "warlords," in other words, have far less leeway to flout the popular will than is commonly assumed.

The "technocrats" and their foreign acolytes have pilloried mujahideen leaders for spending customs receipts locally to bolster their power bases. When Herat's Ismail Khan finally agreed to surrender these revenues to Kabul in May 2002, Karzai admirers gushed praise at the president's "bold new move . . . to bring regional commanders under his control."[17]

In fact, there are excellent arguments for leaving some, or most of the revenues in the hands of regional leaders who collect them. Ismail Khan used part of his customs proceeds to administer a generous, personalized social welfare operation.[18] The "technocrats" and their western allies excoriated him for using the rest to finance his "private army." But the Western bureaucratic distinction between the public and private sector is alien to Afghanistan. And Heratis weren't complaining, because the governor's troops keep excellent order, which has in turn enabled an economic boom.

The "technocrats," unlike local leaders, are not accountable to a grassroots following for how they spend their revenues. Moreover, they are heirs, or former courtiers, of a feudal regime brought down as much by its own corruption as by the 1978 communist putsch.[19] Ismail Khan surely suspects that some of those receipts will wind up in "technocrat" bank accounts.

There are sound practical reasons for the often-denounced "Tajik monopoly" over the defense ministry and intelligence service. Faheem is successor to the late Massoud and his Panjsheri troops are Afghanistan's most experienced and effective anti-terrorist campaigners; they resisted waves of invaders and quislings long after everybody else sold out, fled or hid behind their skirts. Karzai's cronies appear determined to replace Faheem with a Pashtun - any Pashtun. Yet there is no Pashtun candidate both capable and trustworthy enough to run the security forces, for their mission is Afghanistan's most crucial: confronting terror and sabotage by meddlesome neighbors.

There is no evidence that Islamabad's politico-military establishment has renounced its quest for "strategic depth." Taliban remnants have regrouped in safe havens in Pakistan and have intensified their incursions across the border. Pakistani authorities have treated the international media to several high-profile round-ups of al-Qaeda men, but Taliban leaders appear to have little trouble avoiding capture, or even lining up occasional media interviews.

It has been widely reported that Pakistani Pashtuns in the frontier tribal preserves are harboring Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants.[20] It seems likely they enjoy official sanction and support; the Pakistani tribes, far from being fiercely independent, benefit from government subsidies that give Islamabad tremendous influence over their behavior. Although Pakistan has deployed small numbers of troops along the border, this is little more than window dressing. Some Afghans question why Pakistani troops could not as easily abet Taliban raids as deter them, given Pakistan's history of cross-border meddling.[21]

Astonishingly, the Karzai administration appears less concerned about countering the resurgent Taliban threat than it is about disarming and demobilizing the Taliban's indigenous grassroots opposition in the outlying northern and western areas of the country. The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, now under NATO command, has endorsed this initiative, and the foreign media have excoriated Defense Minister Faheem over his reluctance to cooperate.

Meanwhile, Karzai issued an edict banning "armed factions" (i.e. the mujahideen) from fielding political candidates in national elections this year. As if this were not enough to compromise Afghanistan's transition to democracy, UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has warned that "lawlessness" might make UN supervision of the elections impossible. UN oversight is crucial in order to get Afghans to accept the results as legitimate.

There has been virtually no critical analysis of the "technocrat" agenda and its wholesale adoption by the UN, the media, the international diplomatic corps, and now NATO. Western observers haven't bothered to ask key questions: Who gains most if the "warlords" - proven allies in the war on terror - are disarmed? Will not expanding ISAF's presence merely create a target-rich environment for terrorists? Who gains most from disenfranchising anti-Taliban "armed factions"?

Skeptical Afghans, however, are asking those questions, and others: Afghanistan is not in chaos, so why is Brahimi really backing away from overseeing elections? Might UN officials be scheming to hold UN oversight hostage, in return for American and NATO concessions to their "technocrat" proteges? Might their demands include NATO military action against regional leaders who refuse to disarm, in the face of elections rigged to enable a "technocrat" power grab? How would that differ from imposing a puppet regime backed by foreign occupiers - the third in as many decades? There is a profound danger of a general revolt against any Kabul government that appears imposed by outsiders. Would the ISAF be prepared to quell it?

Other Afghans worry that the West will simply forget Afghanistan, as in the past. Indeed, a few are counting on it. Where would a "technocrat" regime turn for foreign backing, when and if that happened? The obvious answer is, to Pakistan - the neighbor with the means, the motive and a stubborn recent history of seeking to extend its hegemony across the border.

Afghanistan was never a nation-state; the bureaucratic institutions of modern government were blighted by the grasp of quislings and invaders before they took root. Today, after 25 years of invasion and proxy war, the country is just a collection of estranged cantons, within which authority is based on personal and local loyalties. If this Afghanistan is to develop into a nation-state, it must be through consensual cooperation among the de facto regional authorities. This can't be imposed by NATO or Pentagon fiat, much less by UN or "technocrat" machinations. All these elements and institutions, however, may have legitimate facilitating roles to play - as long as their officials grasp their limitations.

Legitimate regional leaders, far more widely regarded as war heroes than as robber barons, have taken the first steps toward national unity by endorsing a weak and (so far) mutually acceptable central authority. For the most part, they are cooperating with each other, and with the US-led war on terror. If they get their way, the "technocrats" may benefit in the short term. But the real winners will be the Taliban - and the powerful anti-Western interests in Pakistan who keep them on military life support, against the day that the United States turns its back on the country.

Notes

  [1] "The Taliban Creep Back," The New York Times, 20 January 2004.
  [2] "An Afghan Constitution," The Washington Post, 24 December 2003.
  [3] "Rumors of Bin Ladin's lair," Newsweek, 8 September 2003.
  [4] Ahmed Rashid and Barnett Rubin, "SOS from Afghanistan," The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2003.
  [5] Paul Marshall, "'Taliban Lite': Afghanistan fast forwards," National Review Online, 7 November 2003.
  [6] Rashid and Rubin, "SOS from Afghanistan," The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2003.
  [7] Anthony Davis, "How the Taliban became a military power" in William Maley, ed., Fundamentalism Reborn? (NYU Press, 1997).
  [8] "Afghan civil war leaves tens of thousands dead," Agence France Presse, 27 September 1996.
  [9] Fred Starr, "Afghanistan land mine," The Washington Post, 19 December 2000; Fred Starr and Marin Strmecki, "Time to ditch the Northern Alliance," The Wall Street Journal, 26 February 2002; Marin Strmecki, "Winning, truly, in Afghanistan," National Review, 20 May 2002.
  [10] Julie Sirrs, "Has the war on terror been won?" in Afghanistan and 9/11: An Anthology [New Delhi: Roli Books, 2002].
  [11] Afghanistan 'out of control', BBC World Service Online, 10 August 2003.
  [12] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2003, October 2003. Available in pdf format at http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afghanistan_opium_survey_2003_exec_summary.pdf
  [13] Raoul Marc Gerecht, "The Counterterrorist Myth," The Atlantic Monthly, June/July 2003.
  [14] "Afghan officials dispute official account," United Press International, 17 February 2002.
  [15] Not by coincidence, anti-Taliban officials identified Zaman in late 2001 as Pakistan's new post-Taliban proxy in Nangarhar. US officials ignored the warning: Zaman later failed to press the attack at Tora Bora, letting top al-Qaeda officials, likely including Osama bin Ladin, escape to Pakistan [Personal conversations with senior United Front officials in Charikar, Jabal Seraj and Kabul, November 2001].
  [16] "Defense minister denies reports of split with Karzai," The Washington Post, 7 October 2003. See also Patricia Gossman, "A government of warlords threatens Kabul," The International Herald Tribune, 16 October 2003, and CNN special report on Afghanistan by Christine Amanpour, 2 November 2003.
  [17] Ahmed Rashid and Barnett Rubin, "SOS from Afghanistan," The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2003.
  [18] Barry Bearak, "Unreconstructed," The New York Times Magazine, 1 June 2003.
  [19] Nasir Shansab, Soviet Expansion in the Third World: Afghanistan: A Case Study (Silver Spring, MD: Bartleby, 1986).
  [20] Tim McGirk, "In these remote hills, a resurgent Al Qaeda," Time, 22 September 2003.
  [21] Personal conversation, Nangarhar Province, September 2003.