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A fresh outbreak of fighting between Northern Alliance factions highlights the continued ineffectiveness of Afghanistan’s central government. Warlords who have a stake in the government are behaving only long enough to receive international aid while those outside the government are motivated to cause its collapse.
The Afghan Islamic Press reported that clashes occurred Jan. 20 and 21 between forces belonging to ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and ethnic Tajik fighters in the northern Kunduz province.
The violence is further evidence that Afghanistan is rapidly devolving into the factionalism and warlordism that gripped the country a decade ago. Those groups that are represented in the new interim Afghan government will attempt to keep a lid on ethnic infighting only long enough to receive Western aid while those factions left out will encourage the use of violence to expose the government’s frailty.
Afghanistan is breaking apart faster than the new government is coming together. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that leaders in Kabul will be able to establish any degree of authority in the country. This puts extended reconstruction plans at risk and will encourage the industrialized world to step away from its involvement in Afghanistan.
Details about the fighting in Kunduz are sketchy. All sources agree that Dostum’s Uzbek forces were engaged in the battle, but the affiliation of the Tajiks is unconfirmed. Media reports suggest that they may either be under the command of interim Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani or Rabbani loyalist Mohammed Daoud.
All three are Tajiks with strong support bases in the area. Fahim was allied with Rabbani until recently, when he and other younger Tajiks excluded the former president from the new government.
The clashes broke out around the Qala Zaal area, about 40 miles west of Kunduz. The fighting was fierce by Afghan standards: Some 11 men were killed and more than a dozen injured, Afghan Islamic Press reported. The battle appeared to be aimed at taking command of the Zaal district in order to control access to the Tajikistan border.
The fighting occurred at the same time that international donor states met in Tokyo to put together an aid package for Afghanistan. By the end of the conference on Jan. 22, the various participants had pledged $1.8 billion for Afghanistan’s reconstruction this year and $4.5 billion over the longer term. Most of the money will be funneled to the interim Afghan government headed by Hamid Karzai.
The recent battle itself is relatively unimportant in regard to Afghanistan’s future. But the cast of characters in the fight highlights important trends in the country’s internal politics.
If the Tajik fighters are under the command of Defense Minister Fahim, the fight will likely be an isolated incident — although it is probable that similar limited skirmishes will break out from time to time. Both Dostum and Fahim managed to get positions in the new government and are awaiting the aid money.
Neither has any affection for the other, but both likely realize the benefits of keeping open warfare to a minimum in the coming months in order to squeeze more financial assistance out of the international community.
They also know that international donors will tolerate, and probably expect, a low level of violence between the country’s various competing factions. But outright warfare will quickly turn off the financial taps. Once it appears that the international aid well has finally run dry, Dostum and Fahim will fall back into their old habits.
However, if Rabbani or his ally Daoud is controlling the Tajiks, there will be much more ethnic infighting with greater intensity. Rabbani held the Northern Alliance presidency for most of the last decade but was rather unceremoniously dumped when a new regime was installed after the Taliban’s collapse.
As such, he and others who are not included in the new government have a vested interest in making the interim administration look as inept as possible. Slowing the aid inflows, or sowing dissent between the Uzbeks and the Tajiks, may render the new government ineffective and allow Rabbani to return to power.
No matter what the case, it is clear that Afghanistan is rapidly returning to the state it was in when the Soviet army left over a decade ago. The authority of Karzai’s central government does not extend much past Kabul, and a recent bombing outside the U.S. Embassy there shows that the leader does not even have full control of his capital city. Afghanistan is being divvied up between the same ethnic groups and strongmen that controlled it in the 1990s.
Iranian-backed Ismail Khan controls the west, Dostum controls the north, Tajiks loyal to Rabbani or Fahim control the northeast, Durrani Pushtuns under tribal chief Gul Agha control the southern provinces by Kandahar and a number of Ghilzai Pushtuns control the southeast. Ethnic Hazaras control several central provinces, and warlords control the area around Jalalabad.
The only lever Karzai’s interim government has is its ability to distribute aid money. But Karzai is in a difficult position. If he gives out money too freely, the warlords will not need him. If he holds the aid close, the warlords will figure that they’ll never get the cash, so there is no use behaving. Either way, he faces an increasingly volatile situation.
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