PERSPECTIVE
The UN Mission of Taming the Talibans
The world was stunned at the Talibans' military prowess when they occupied Kabul in a sharp swift expedition in 1996 - only within two years of their mysterious emergence from the obscure religious seminaries of Pakistan. Two years later in 1998 they also swept through the country's northern region where in Mazar-i-Sharif an impenetrable resistance was put up by the combined forces of the factions of General Dostum, former President Rabbani and Tehran-backed Hizbe Wahdat. The Talibans created a new mythology of their invincibility with effective control over ninety percent of strife-torn Afghanistan. But that was the elastic limit of the Talibans' power. With all the feathers earned in the battlefield they now reached a point of painful realisation that the conquests alone could not confer on them the legitimacy to rule the country. Their authority over Afghanistan was hardly recognised by wider international community; neither their man could get a seat in the United Nations.
On the contrary they fostered only animosity both internally or externally. The nations of the world saw them more as source of religious fanaticism and the West branded Taliban-held Afghanistan as a base of international terrorism. The US - the one-time patron of Afghanistan's Islamic forces - has apparently moved away from its earlier position of seeing the country as a counterweight to a recalcitrant Iran. The neighbouring states considered the Talibans as a menace to the stability of the region. At the height of the tensions generated by Talibans' massacre of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif Iran amassed troops along Afghan border triggering a war-like situation between the two countries. The trilateral pact concluded late last year between Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, who all despised religious extremism along their border, was yet another challenge to Talibans' consolidation in Afghanistan.
Internally, an intra-Afghan war escalated with Taliban militia launching an offensive against Ahmad Shah Masood's strongholds in the provinces bordering Tajikistan. In the meantime, intra-Taliban feuds are also on the rise while human right violations are rampant in Taliban occupied areas. The sharia rules imposed by the Talibans are at odds with the rights and freedom of most other non-Pushtun ethnic and religious groups. The Taliban interference with the NGOs, aid personnel and UN mission has bred widespread discontent. In spite of Taliban occupation of the country the civil war is still on and the peace in Afghanistan remains as elusive as ever.
Under the circumstances the good sense seems to have started prevailing on the Talibans as evident from their positive response to the recent visit of UN Secretary General's special envoy Mr Lakhdar Brahimi who undertook the trip to the region essentially to defuse the tensions between Iran and Afghanistan but at the same time held important talks with the parties concerned. Mr Brahimi apparently wanted to carry forward the UN peace initiative mooted in Six-plus-Two Conference in New York in September 1998. The crisis in South West Asia has substantially eased following Brahimi's visit and shuttle diplomacy taking him to Islamabad, Kandahar and Tehran. A looming war on Iran-Afghanistan border has been averted. Not only the Talibans agreed to release the Iranian prisoners they were holding, they also expressed willingness to meet the Iranian representatives face to face in Jeddah. Talibans signed a security accord with the acting UN coordinator on humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan. The UN mission pulled out of Afghanistan in August last year after one of its officials was killed there. Given the precarious conditions now prevailing in Afghanistan Mr Brahimi's was no mean achievement.
Mr Brahimi's trouble shooting mission was thrown up as a result of Six-plus-Two Conference which brought six of Afghanistan's neighbours as well as the US and Russia together to promote a peaceful end to the Afghan conflict and its regional ramifications. He is however still on the fringes of the problem and has to go a long way before he can claim unqualified success not only in diffusing Iran-Afghan tension but to bring back a political accommodation among the rival factions of Afghan political scene.
This presupposes also a return of sanity among the present wielders of power in Afghanistan. The task of the UN envoy is indeed complex in the backdrop of closely intertwined internal and external dimensions of Afghan crisis of which only one manifestation was the tension on Iran-Afghan border. True, the role of the neighbouring states has now found recognition in the Six-plus-Two conference but how Mr Brahimi translates those roles on the ground and relates them to different situation would matter a great deal. The impact of six neighbouring countries on the developments in Afghanistan has been profound and it is patent that without an understanding among them it is difficult to work out a settlement in Afghanistan. It would be interesting to see Mr Brahimi bringing about that understanding among those apparently irreconciliatory neighbours.
But of immediate relevance to the course of events in the region are the happenings in Afghanistan itself. Of course, the outside powers with some leverage in that country can exercise a measure of moderating influence on the various warring factions. But it is for Afghans themselves who are locked in a bitter internal conflict to come to terms with the realities of life in their country. The Talibans who have been demanding recognition as lawful authority in Afghanistan have so far failed to appreciate the principle of plurality and the virtue of coexistence in political dealing with different components of a polyglot society such as Afghanistan. This calls for a broadbased power sharing arrangements which would neatly accommodate diverse Afghan ethnic, linguistic and sectarian groups with adequate safeguard for their rights and interests. The two centuries of Durrani rules successfully did it, but both Rabbani government and Talibans miserably failed in it.
Afghanistan is too fragmented a country, both ethnically and politically, to easily submit to a monolithic pattern of rule by just one ethnic group - the Pushtoons, even if they are the largest group constituting forty per cent of Afghan population. The other groups - now either subdued or in retreat, are not likely to lick their wounds indefinitely. They are certain to reorganise and regroup to fight the Talibans back and hemorrhage the country in the process. In the absence of an agreement among the different political forces of the country Afghanistan will continue to be an inferno of internal turbulence and endless strife turning the country into the flashpoint of a regional conflict of unpredictable dimensions and intensity.
For a lasting peace and stability both in Afghanistan and in the region the Talibans will have to reach a political accommodation with their opponents if they want to win recognition as the rightful rulers of the country. But they have persistently refused to compromise and are reluctant, with their military victories, to enter into a political dialogue with the Northern Alliance. Mr Brahimi justifiably made it clear to the Talibans that they could be given the Afghan seat in the United Nations only if they associated all the communities in the political system of the country and ensured their representation in the power structure. The Northern Alliance also seems to be on another extreme when it puts up demilitarisation of Kabul as precondition for talks.
The UN initiative in holding Six-plus-Two conference followed by Brahimi's mission has so far been the only positive development with regards to civil war in Afghanistan and volatile situation that prevail in the South-West Asian region. It is the bounded responsibility of Afghanistan's neighbours to nourish the process with utmost care and restraint. It is they who will benefit maximum from a peaceful end of the conflict. It is again they who can together make the Talibans see the logic of moderation in both of their internal and external dealings. In the meantime one only hopes that the UN does not prematurely call off its efforts to bring about peace in Afghanistan.
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