[Nettime-bold] Conflict Will Follow Taliban's Fall

[John Armitage <john.armitage@unn.ac.uk>]

[Or, get ready for 'Vietnam: The Sequel'?. John.]
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http://www.stratfor.com/home/0110091630.htm

Conflict Will Follow Taliban's Fall
1630 GMT, 011009

Summary

The United States has begun its military campaign in
Afghanistan without first forging a post-Taliban
regime. Although opposition forces will take
advantage of U.S. air strikes to attempt to drive the
Taliban from power, this will only usher in another
round of fighting among the victors. Because the
United States needs a friendly and stable regime in
Kabul to facilitate its primary mission of rooting out
Osama bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs, it will find
itself drawn into an attempt at nation-building in
Afghanistan. This is an intractable problem that could
draw the United States into a lengthy, costly and
ultimately doomed engagement in Afghanistan at the
expense of its primary mission.

Analysis

The United States on Oct. 7 began an active military
campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The move was premature -- driven by the approach of
Ramadan and winter -- and the United States had not
yet locked down political support or deployed the
forces necessary for sustained combat. But
Washington could not afford to wait until next spring
to begin operations.
U.S. Attacks Boost
Northern Alliance
Offensive

U.S. air strikes on the
Taliban greatly improve the
ability of the opposition
Northern Alliance to wage war
on the ground. The group
appears to be working closely
with Washington and will
focus its attacks on the
northern cities of Kabul and
Mazar-e-Sharif.

Analysis

In action coinciding with
U.S.-led military strikes in
Afghanistan, the opposition
Northern Alliance launched an
assault on Taliban forces
from the Bagram air base,
just north of Kabul, Oct. 7.
Northern Alliance forces fired
multiple-rocket launchers at
Taliban forces that control
the mountains surrounding
Bagram, and the Taliban
returned rocket fire,
according to the Associated
Press.
Click here to continue.

As the first round of cruise missiles slammed into targets in Kandahar, the
United
States and Pakistan had yet to settle on a successor regime to the Taliban.
The deep
fractures remaining among the Afghan factions opposing the Taliban, as well
as
competition between the countries that sponsor them, will return to haunt
the United
States as it attempts to achieve its military goals in Afghanistan, and
later as it
attempts to disengage from that conflict.

Reports from Afghanistan indicate that opposition forces already are
capitalizing on the
U.S. strikes. Within an hour after the first air strikes, Northern Alliance
troops based at
Bagram air base, north of Kabul, began Katyusha rocket attacks against
Taliban
positions in the surrounding mountains. Northern Alliance officials and
spokesmen in
Tajikistan told reporters that they had received forewarning of the U.S.
strikes and are
acting in close coordination with the United States. Rahimullah, an official
in the Afghan
Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, said the Northern Alliance may coordinate
with U.S.
air strikes to attempt to move into Kabul, the Associated Press reported.

Other Afghans are apparently rebelling against the Taliban as well. Several
local
commanders have reportedly defected from the Taliban. And according to the
Iranian
news agency IRNA, fighting has erupted between residents of the western
border town
of Ziranj and Taliban forces in the wake of the U.S. strikes.

Although there may be signs of promise for the U.S. effort to topple the
Taliban, there is
little to suggest that a viable plan is in place to replace the regime. The
United States
and Pakistan remain divided over the preferred composition of a post-Taliban
regime,
Russia and Iran have their own ideas and the various Afghan factions are not
necessarily inclined to cooperate with any externally imposed scheme.

The Taliban could be driven from power, but that will only mark the
beginning of U.S.
problems in Afghanistan. If the United States is to achieve its minimum
stated goal of
purging radical militants from Afghanistan, it will have to work with a
post-Taliban
regime. To do so, Washington will likely get dragged into trying to forge a
stable Afghan
government. Given the factors standing in the way of that mission, the
United States
may find itself bogged down in nation-building instead of militant-hunting.

Geography

Geography is perhaps the main factor standing in the way of a unified
Afghanistan. The
country is nearly bisected by the Hindu Kush mountain range, running
southwest to
northeast through its center. Lowlands surround the mountains in an arc.
Military
resistance has historically been strong in the mountains, making it
extremely difficult to
link the northern and southern halves of Afghanistan. Compounding the
problem,
Afghanistan's generally poor infrastructure diminishes to almost nothing in
the
mountains, which are largely inaccessible to motorized vehicles.

When the Taliban first entered Afghanistan, they pressed north from Kandahar
to Kabul,
where their advance was balked north of the capital. There, the eastern
plains taper to a
mountain-ringed cul de sac. The valuable Bagram air base is located on the
plain north
of Kabul, and north of that is the mouth of the Salang Tunnel -- the main
pass from
Kabul to northern Afghanistan.

This is a perennial killing zone, where Tajik forces emerge from the
Panjshir Valley to
the northeast, Hazaras occupy the mountains to the northwest and Pushtuns
press
north from Kabul. Unable to continue north from Kabul, the Taliban then
swept
southwest, skirting the mountains to take Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif before
arriving north
of Kabul.

Afghanistan is also landlocked, rendering any government and any opposition
dependent on one or more of the six neighboring states for trade and
transit.
Afghanistan's borders are generally porous, making smuggling easy for any
aspiring
opposition force.

Finally, Afghanistan is geographically significant in the strategic
calculations of its
neighboring states. It is a crossroads for legal and illegal trade from
Central Asia, South
Asia and the Middle East. It is also a buffer between these regions.
Afghanistan's
strategic value has enticed foreign powers to meddle in it for centuries.

Ethnic Competition

Ethnic divisions run a close second among factors keeping Afghanistan
divided.
Afghanistan is home to several major ethnic groups, the most prominent of
which are
the Pushtuns, who make up 38 percent of the population. The Pushtuns are
divided into
two main branches: the Durrani and the Ghilzai. Tajiks make up 25 percent of
the
Afghan population, while the Hazara comprise 19 percent. Uzbeks are the
final major
ethnic group in Afghanistan, at 6 percent, while the remaining 12 percent of
the
population are drawn from a host of tribal and ethnic groups -- including
the Aimaks,
Baloch and Turkmen.

Language and religion divide Afghans as well. Nearly all Afghans are Muslim,
though 84
percent are Sunni and 15 percent -- primarily the Hazara -- are Shiite.
Language reflects
the geographic and ethnic divisions of the country. Some 35 percent speak
Pushtu, 50
percent speak Dari -- an Afghan variant of Persian -- and 11 percent speak
Turkik
languages, primarily Uzbek or Turkmen. Thirty minor languages are spoken in
Afghanistan.

Though there is some distribution across Afghanistan, the major ethnic
groups are
concentrated in geographically distinct regions of the country. The Pushtuns
occupy the
southern plains, from around Herat in the west through Kandahar to Kabul.
Within that
territory, the Ghilzai Pushtuns are concentrated in the eastern provinces,
near Kabul
and along the Pakistani border.

The Tajiks are concentrated in the northeast, from Kabul to around Feizabad
and into
the Pamir Mountains, with smaller concentrations around Herat and scattered
in the
southwest. The Hazara live primarily in the Hindu Kush, centered around
Bamiyan. The
Uzbeks are concentrated in the north, around Mazar-e-Sharif, Baghlan and
Kunduz, and
the Turkmen occupy the strip along the border with Turkmenistan.

Afghanistan's politico-military factions also are formed around ethnic and
geographic
lines. Until his assassination in early September, Ahmad Shah Massoud led
the Tajik
armies from his base in the Panjshir Valley. Gen. Rashid Dostum leads a
predominantly
Uzbek army. The Hizb e Wahadat army represents the Hazaras.

The Taliban members are, for the most part, Durrani Pushtun, though they
have been
reaching out recently to the Ghilzai Pushtun in hopes of precluding the rise
of opposition
in areas under their control. Pakistani daily The News quoted Taliban
minister
Rahmatullah Wahidyar recently as saying the Taliban regime was ready to
share power
with tribal leaders in the eastern provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika.

Foreign Intervention

Competition for control of Afghanistan among neighboring and colonial powers
has been
heated for centuries. Arabs, Persians, Mongols and Greeks invaded
Afghanistan. The
Great Game pitted the United Kingdom against imperial Russia for control of
Afghanistan's trade and transit routes. The Soviet Union tried to secure
Afghanistan as a
base within reach of the Straits of Hormuz. And since shortly after the end
of the Cold
War, Pakistan has nurtured the Taliban as a proxy for control of access to
Central Asia.

This struggle for control is only heightened by the potential collapse of
the Taliban, and
this is reflected in deep disagreements between the United States, Pakistan,
Iran and
Russia over the eventual composition of a successor regime.

The United States initially sought to draw on the combat potential of the
Northern
Alliance to topple the Taliban, while building a post-Taliban government
around exiled
King Mohammad Zahir Shah. The idea was that Zahir Shah, a Durrani Pushtun,
could
bring together the Pushtuns of the south and the primarily Tajik, Hazara and
Uzbek
Northern Alliance.

The Northern Alliance was not amused with this arrangement and has refused
to cut a
power-sharing deal with the king. Not only was the burden of fighting put on
its forces,
with the benefits of rule falling to a Pushtun, but Zahir Shah is no
even-handed Pushtun
moderate. He has been a vocal proponent of a greater Pushtun nation, a
stance that
has alienated even the Pakistani government.

The Durrani Pushtuns ruled Afghanistan from the late 1700s to the early
1970s, and the
Taliban nearly succeeded in resuming that reign. The Northern Alliance
rejected the
Taliban's efforts to create a Pushtun-dominated state almost more than it
rejected the
Taliban's religious extremism. For them, Zahir Shah is little better.

Instead, the Northern Alliance is moving swiftly to take advantage of the
U.S. air strikes,
seize Kabul and present their government as a fait accompli. After all, the
Northern
Alliance includes the exiled government of President Burhanuddin Rabanni,
which the
United Nations continues to recognize as legitimate.

Pakistan, eager to maintain its grip on Afghanistan, initially proposed a
plot for a coup
by former foreign minister Mullah Mohammed Hasan Akhund against Taliban
leader
Mullah Mohammed Omar, according to a Tehran-datelined article in The
Guardian. The
idea was allegedly to put a moderate faction of the Taliban in control and
thus maintain
Pakistani influence over the Afghan government. However, Washington has made
it
clear that it will not tolerate any form of Taliban government. Pakistan's
leadership has
acknowledged this and is looking for a substitute.

Pakistan is deeply concerned about the potential for the Northern Alliance
to seize
power and has warned the opposition against such a move. But it is not
comfortable
with Zahir Shah in complete control of Afghanistan, either. Islamabad has
now proposed
supporting Syed Ahmed Gialani, former advisor to Zahir Shah, to control the
king and
the alliance around him. Gialani organized a meeting of Afghan exiles in
Peshawar to
build support for this plan.

Russia and Iran are not absent from the current struggle for control of
post-Taliban
Afghanistan, either. Russia wants to secure its control of Central Asia. To
do so, it
needs to keep fundamentalists out of the region. To this end, Moscow
supports the
Uzbek and Tajik Afghan armies. That is not to say Russia seeks a complete
victory, as
a small fundamentalist threat in Afghanistan justifies a Russian troop
presence in
Central Asia, and Russia prefers not to open Afghanistan as an export route
for Central
Asian resources.

Iran, like Russia, wants to protect its access to Central Asia by denying
Pakistan a
route through Afghanistan. Tehran supports the Shiite Hazara, and it appears
to have
already encouraged a split within the ranks of the Northern Alliance.
Northern Alliance
spokesmen in Tajikistan all claim to be coordinating actively with the
United States,
with an eye toward seizing Kabul. However, Touriali Ghiassi, the alliance
representative
in Mashhad, Iran, said U.S. attacks made the opposition forces' job easier,
but that the
Northern Alliance was waging its own campaign for northern and western
Afghanistan.

History

The past 12 years of blood-letting in Afghanistan make forging a coherent
and cohesive
government even more difficult. The Taliban initially invaded Afghanistan in
response to
brutal warlordism among the factions that now make up the Northern Alliance.
The
shifting loyalties of opposition factions, encouraged by bribes and the
tides of battle,
greatly facilitated the Taliban's rapid advances and bloody setbacks.

Most of the factions in the Northern Alliance have fought against one
another as often as
they have fought side by side. The combat has generally been merciless, and
it will be
nigh impossible to forge trust between these factions in a future
government. All factions
look first and foremost to self-preservation and will be unwilling to risk
disarming.

Treachery is prevalent even within the Northern Alliance armies. In one
prominent
example, Mazar-e-Sharif fell in 1997 when Dostum's right-hand man, Gen.
Malik
Pahlawan, defected with his forces to the Taliban. Six days later, and after
handing over
opposition commander Ismael Khan and 700 prisoners to the Taliban, Malik
turned on
his new allies. In two days of heavy fighting, Malik drove the Taliban out
of
Mazar-e-Sharif, killing 300 and capturing thousands. In the course of the
subsequent
offensive, Malik's troops and those of his Hazara allies massacred thousands
of Taliban
and buried them in mass graves.

Economy

The central government is, by the very nature of Afghanistan, weak. Besides
the
problems of geographic and ethnic fragmentation, the government in Kabul has
to face
the fact that there are no national-level structures to govern. Afghanistan
is basically
functional at village level. Its cities are rubble, it has no infrastructure
to speak of and the
economy is all but nonexistent. There is not much to the legitimate economy
beyond
subsistence farming and animal herding.

The three major sources of income and one potential source of income for any
future
Afghan regime are all major sources of corruption. These include the control
of aid
distribution, control of smuggling and control of narcotics cultivation,
processing and
export. Oil transit fees provide a potential, though unlikely, source of
income as well.

All these sources of income are windfalls, requiring no investment or fiscal
discipline.
They require only collection and distribution of the wealth, something
unlikely to be done
in an even-handed or forward-looking manner.

Balance of Power

One last feature precluding the formation of a stable regime in Afghanistan
is the
country's precarious balance of power. Afghanistan is divided between
several large
ethnic groups -- each firmly rooted in a particular section of Afghanistan,
and each with
a sponsor in a neighboring state -- all ready to vie for power. Due to the
country's
isolation, poverty and rugged terrain, combat in Afghanistan is so
low-grade, low-budget
and low-tech that even a small influx of resources can shift the balance of
power
between these groups. This means that at any one time, with minimal effort,
a group or
its sponsor could torpedo any coalition.

By the same token, since disruption is cheap and the candidates for
rebellion are
plentiful, maintaining a strong central government in Afghanistan is
staggeringly
expensive.

Conclusion: Quagmire

In the end, overthrowing the Taliban is no panacea, even given the limited
goal of
eliminating Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan will be quickly divided between
feuding
factions, making it difficult to stage search-and-destroy missions for bin
Laden and his
estimated 10,000 Afghan Arabs. In order to forge the minimum stability
necessary just
to carry out the primary mission, the United States is likely to get bogged
down in an
exercise in nation-building.

Long occupation or operation of Afghanistan as a protectorate by the United
Nations or
some third power would be extremely costly, given the primordial state of
the country's
economy, infrastructure and politics. Logistics alone would be nightmarish,
as
Afghanistan is landlocked and the transport facilities available to anyone
wishing to
supply the country are crude.

Given the competing agendas of the various factions in Afghanistan, as well
as of their
external sponsors, an attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan would be
more
analogous to Somalia than to Bosnia.

Even if overthrown, the Taliban are guaranteed to fight on, as will other
factions that are
not satisfied with their piece of the post-Taliban pie. The United States
could quickly find
itself targeted by feuding post-Taliban factions.

As the United States begins the military campaign to destroy bin Laden, his
supporters
and his hosts, it may be taking the first step toward a protracted, costly
and ultimately
doomed engagement in Afghanistan at the expense of its primary mission. It
is entering
a quagmire.

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