Afghanistan Battles Will Determine U.S. Influence In Central Asia

Afghanistan Battles Will Determine U.S. Influence In Central Asia

Special to the U.S. Veteran Dispatch
By Al Santoli
June/July/August 1997

High in the barren windswept Hindu Kush mountains, surrounded by Pakistan, Iran, China and the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union, a critical series of battles is now being fought in Afghanistan that will determine the stability of oil and gas rich Central Asia and America's influence in that strategically important part of the world.

Similar to its pivotal importance in the Cold War battle between the West and the Soviet Union, the outcome of the current struggle between the extremist Islamic Taliban forces and the coalition of moderate Afghan factions will have significant impact on the spread of worldwide Islamic terrorism, the flow of narcotics to the West, Russia's ambition to regain military control of resource-rich former colonies and China's ambitions for dominance of the ancient "Silk Road" that links East Asia to the Middle East and Europe.

Civil war has raged since the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces. Although the United States government withdrew its involvement with the Afghan "mujahideen" warriors after the Berlin Wall collapsed, competing Afghan ethnic and political factions have been supported by regional powers. After a five year see-saw battle for the control of Kabul reduced the capitol to rubble, in late-1994 a mysterious armed movement of extremist Islamic students called Taliban reentered Afghanistan from religious schools in Pakistan under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar. Within six months, Taliban guerrillas reached the outlying mountains around Kabul. In September 1996, Taliban captured the capitol and declared Afghanistan as a "completely Islamic state."

The Taliban immediately imposed a campaign of tyranny in the areas under its control, destroying the remnants of functional institutions that survived the devastating Soviet occupation and civil war. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has become a major opium/heroin producer and a haven for international terrorists.

As Sunni Muslims, Taliban has demonstrated hostility not only to the West and Russia, but also to Shiite Muslim Iran. The movement has also instilled fear in the neighboring moderate Sunni Islamic republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and in Turkey which has a growing fundamentalist movement. Inside Afghanistan, the Taliban comprised of ethnic Pashtun tribesmen (representing 40 percent of the population whose stronghold is in southern Afghanistan) have suppressed all other ethnic groups. As a result, a resistance movement comprised of ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Shiite Hazaras (descendants of fierce Mongols) has controlled the northern provinces, which makes up one-third of the mountainous nation.

While the famed mujahideen tactician General Ahmed Shah Massoud's ethnic Tajik forces found refuge in the nearly impassable Panjshir Valley, vast areas of the north were controlled by the forces of a ruthless Uzbek warlord, Abdurashid Dostum. Headquartered in the administrative town Mazar-e Sharif, 200 miles north of Kabul, Dostum, whose forces had been fierce shock-troops both for and against the Soviet-controlled Najibullah regime, ruled the north with an iron fist. Despite his reputation for unpredictably switching alliances, after the Taliban victory Dostum was perceived by moderate Muslim nations, Turkey and Russia as the front line buffer against the spread of fundamentalist revolution.

Wary former mujahideen such as Massoud operated independently, accepting some aid from India and his former enemy Russia, to withstand continual Taliban military offensives. However, during late 1996, the balance of power was dramatically altered when perceived involvement by Dostum in the assassinations of two of his senior commanders led to his downfall.

In mid-May, 1997 a coup within Dostum's forces led by General Abdul Malik led to Dostum fleeing the country. On May 24, anti-Dostum Uzbek forces swept into war weary Mazar-e Sharif unopposed and announced a peace agreement had been reached to reunify Afghanistan under Taliban control, with only Massoud maintaining the last pocket of credible resistance. Within 48 hours a delegation of 60 Taliban leaders led by Foreign Minister Mullah Mohammad Ghaus arrived in Mazar-e Sharif to sign a peace treaty.

The Taliban victory was celebrated by Pakistan, the major benefactor of a gas pipeline that international oil companies have offered to build in Central Asia after stability in Afghanistan is attained. In addition, corrupt factions within Pakistan's security forces have been enriched by the opium trade that has proliferated under Taliban rule.
Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of conquerors. Pakistan may now be added to that list. Within 24 hours after arriving in Mazar-e Sharif, the Taliban broke its promises to General Malik. Mullah Ghaus had pledged a peaceful political transition, with respect for the culture of the moderate north, and permission for the northerners to maintain their weapons. Instead, more radical Taliban leaders demanded in Pashtun language that all women drop out of school and cover themselves from head to toe, ordered all men to grow beards or face severe penalties. In addition, 5,000 of the Taliban's elite forces swept in and began going house to house to confiscate weapons. By late afternoon the Taliban were blustering through a market area controlled by the Shiite Hazara, and began confiscating money. After the first shots rang out, armed Hazara men, fierce warrior descendants of Genghis Khan, began pouring our of their houses to join the fighting. The battle spread into Uzbek neighborhoods, as shadowy warriors crept across rooftops to ambush Taliban armored vehicles.

By the following morning, more than 300 were dead and some 2,000 prisoners included Mullah Ghaus and the other Taliban leaders. Fighting spread across the north, with some 2,000 Taliban reinforcements trapped and surrounded in the town of Phul I Khumri. General Massoud's Tajik forces, joined by the Shiite Wahdat militia broke out of the Panjshir Valley and overran Taliban outposts within 50 miles north of Kabul. With the tyrannical Dostum deposed, Uzbek General Malik, Tajik General Massoud and the Hazara leadership formed a unified National Front against the Taliban.

By June 5, reeling from the dizzying reversal of fortune, Taliban leader Mullah Omar made an urgent call for help. Thousands of pro-Taliban Islamic students began pouring out of fundamentalist religious schools in Pakistan to volunteer to defend Kabul and to attempt a counter offensive. The Pakistani government, desperate to keep Kabul in the hands of its Taliban allies, announced that Mullah Omar had conceded that the north should retain its unique culture and join in peace talks. However, while continuing the siege of Phul I Khumri, General Malik conveyed a counter proposal for a conference of Afghan notables representing all factions to plan for free elections to allow all Afghans to have a role in determining a sovereign future.

Under General Malik's proposal, the conference which would be held in Mazar-e Sharif would include Afghan notable who live outside of the county, including King Zahir Shah, who has been courted by all Afghan factions as the symbol of national unity. In addition, representatives of all neighboring countries and the United States would be invited as observers. General Malik, resisting support from Russia and Iran, has dispatched an emissary from his headquarters to Washington and New York to meet with the American government and United Nations officials to seek support for his peace proposal.

General Massoud's apparent strategy is to intensify military operations near Kabul to encourage the large number of ethnic Pashtuns who have lived in fear of the Taliban's extremist regime to join the revolution. The coalition seeks battlefield success to encourage the more conciliatory Mullahs to rise within Taliban to override the radical militarism of Mullah Omar. Experts in the region believe that a freely-elected Afghan government, with the former King in an advisory role, will foster stability in Central Asia and stem the tide of fundamentalist terror in the region. The fiercely independent Afghans, with a legitimate sovereign government, may also serve as a buffer to the competing interests of its neighbors. Redevelopment in Afghanistan will also benefit American anti-drug efforts by returning opium fields to the traditional farmland that was prevalent in southern Afghanistan before Soviet and Taliban rule.

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