If Not Taliban, What?

We created a “democracy” in a heavily tribalized (laced with regional mistrust), fractured and largely uninformed and illiterate country, easily succumbing to rule by local warlords. With a 14% literacy rate, Afghanistan is further fractured into two main languages, Pashtu and Dari and a litany of secondary regionalized tongues such as Uzbeki, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi and Nuristani. Despite the American commitment to democratic principles, this was hardly the soil in which a truly free and democratically elected government could ever take root. Indeed, the “democratically elected” government we did impose failed to take hold anywhere except the area immediately surrounding the capital, Kabul, and is renowned for rigged elections and exceptional levels of bribes, kickbacks, cronyism and general corruption.

The Taliban, the most fundamental adherents of Sunni Islam, managed to consolidate their rule of the country, until toppled by the U.S. invasion, with a ruthless brutality combined with an intolerance of the kind of corruption that typified most regional leaders across the Afghan spectrum. They created a miserable stability, but in a largely agrarian society, the ability to farm this harsh land without soldiers exploding across the fields generated a begrudging acceptance of severe religious limitations imposed by the Taliban, particularly against girls and women… and a rather complete crackdown on entertainment or anything Western.

Yet the Taliban seem to represent the only force capable of replacing the incumbent and very unpopular Karzai regime and its highly ineffective national army or its concomitant police force, a military operation that, with the “green on blue” attacks of uniformed Iraqi soldiers on their fellow NATO troops, has proven to be virtually untrainable. No one much believes that the “democratically-elected” Karzai regime will be around very long after NATO departs in 2014.

But old habits die hard, and in a land where warlords have resisted even Taliban attempts to impose local control, the specter of all out civil war may be a possible challenge to the assumption that on NATO’s exit, the Taliban are the only game in town. “One of the most powerful mujahedeen commanders in Afghanistan, Ismail Khan [pictured above], is calling on his followers to reorganize and defend the country against the Taliban as Western militaries withdraw, in a public demonstration of faltering confidence in the national government and the Western-built Afghan National Army.

“Mr. Khan is one of the strongest of a group of warlords who defined the country’s recent history in battling the Soviets, the Taliban and one another, and who then were brought into President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet as a symbol of unity. Now, in announcing that he is remobilizing his forces, Mr. Khan has rankled Afghan officials and stoked fears that other regional and factional leaders will follow suit and rearm, weakening support for the government and increasing the likelihood of civil war.” New York Times, November 12^th.

While Khan speaks of protecting the government and the country from domination from the Taliban, no one is swayed by his assurances. “‘People like Ismail Khan smell blood,’ Belqis Roshan, a senator from Farah Province, said in an interview. ‘They think that as soon as foreign forces leave Afghanistan, once again they will get the chance to start a civil war, and achieve their ominous goals of getting rich and terminating their local rivals.’

“Indeed, Mr. Khan’s is not the only voice calling for a renewed alliance of the mujahedeen against the Taliban, and some of the others are just as familiar… Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik commander who is President Karzai’s first vice president, said in a speech in September, ‘If the Afghan security forces are not able to wage this war, then call upon the mujahedeen.’” NY Times. Whatever happens when we leave, despite what we have repeatedly told the American public, we won’t leave the Karzai government in a position to continue power for long, and we are very likely to see a new phase of civil war. Another American misstep, hundreds of billions of dollars and untold death and destruction later.

I’m Peter Dekom, and once NATO forces leave Afghanistan, how long will it take before our presence there will have been erased… just the way the Soviets’ mark has long-since disappeared?