hadi hadad
Fri, 26 Oct 2001 08:45:03 -0700
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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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U.S. war turns ex-allies into enemies-at-arms
By Tom Hundley
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published October 25, 2001
TEHRAN -- The cockroach creeping down his guest's
sleeve caught the eye of one-time warlord and former
Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hikmatyar. He signaled
for an aide who appeared with an aerosol can of
pesticide. The aide, an elderly man in a skullcap,
bowed deeply and--pfffft--dispatched the critter.
That done, Hikmatyar smiled sweetly beneath his black
turban and continued his thought.
"America will be defeated," he assured his visitor.
"We believe that the Americans are doomed to repeat
the Russian experience in Afghanistan."
Not too long ago, Hikmatyar, 53, was a CIA poster boy,
a feared and respected mujahedeen leader in the jihad
against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His
guerrillas played a major role in the Soviet defeat
and afterward he became prime minister in the
government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former
president who is now the leader of the Jamaat-e
Islami, the main component of the anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance.
Both Rabbani and Hikmatyar were ousted by the Taliban
in the mid-1990s, but these days the two former allies
are sworn enemies, with Rabbani eager to do the
bidding of his new American backers while Hikmatyar
says he is sending his holy warriors "to stand
shoulder to shoulder" with their Taliban brothers.
The two men expect to be key figures in whatever
emerges from the rubble of America's war against
Afghanistan. They are only two among several dozen
tribal leaders, warlords, drug kingpins, mullahs,
sundry foreign intelligence agencies and an ex-king
who are angling for a piece of the post-Taliban
action. This mix leads some analysts to believe that
winning the war against the Taliban will be the easy
part; constructing some semblance of a coherent nation
out of this benighted land will be much harder.
Iran becomes political hub
Iran, which plays host to a number of rival Afghan
exile groups and has a keen national interest in the
outcome of all this, has become a hub of political
activity. One of the focal points is Hikmatyar's
down-at-the-heels villa in north Tehran, which in
recent days has received a steady stream of diplomats,
journalists and other visitors.
The beaming warlord is a gracious host. Yes, he tells
the journalists, he knew Osama bin Laden well during
the jihad days against the Russians. And while bin
Laden and Hikmatyar became political rivals over the
course of the civil war that followed, it seems they
have remained ideological clones.
"I see no difference between what happened in New York
and Washington and what the United States is now doing
in Afghanistan," Hikmatyar said.
"Who gives America the right to kill innocent
civilians in Afghanistan?" he inquired.
"The U.S. should solve its problem with bid Laden
outside Afghanistan. It should do it by removing its
troops from Saudi Arabia, by lifting the sanctions
against Iraq, and by stopping the killing of the
innocent people of Palestine."
Echoes of bin Laden
When it was noted that bin Laden raised these same
points in the videotape he released right after the
U.S. launched its first air strikes against
Afghanistan, Hikmatyar gave a beatific, bin Laden-like
smile.
"If I am repeating what he said, maybe it is because
some of the things he said are rational and logical.
Ask yourself why the U.S. flag is burned all over the
world," he said.
Like bin Laden, Hikmatyar was a beneficiary of
American largess when the Carter administration
decided in 1979 to orchestrate an enormous covert
operation to arm and finance a holy war against the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The project was a success. A humiliated Soviet army
was forced to pull out of Afghanistan a decade later.
But if it was gratitude the U.S. expected from its
former mujahedeen proteges, it was never forthcoming
from Hikmatyar.
Disdain for America
"The U.S. should have been thankful for our help, not
the other way around," he said. "The U.S. gave us a
few Stinger missiles. We gave them 1.5 million
martyrs."
The way Hikmatyar sees it, U.S. power and influence
were on the wane in the post-Vietnam era. The Soviet
Union was ascendant, and when Moscow invaded
Afghanistan, U.S. control of its Middle Eastern oil
supplies was suddenly in danger.
But after a decade of war against the Afghan
mujahedeen, it was the Soviet Union on the brink of
collapse and the U.S. poised to become the planet's
lone superpower. The U.S. showed its gratitude, said
Hikmatyar, by turning its back on Afghanistan the
moment the Russians were gone.
These days, Hikmatyar is opposing the U.S.-backed plan
to install Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's
86-year-old exiled king, as the head of a transitional
government. The idea is that the former monarch, a
member of the country's dominant Pashtun ethnic group,
could serve as a non-threatening father figure who
could rally his fractured nation.
"Zahir Shah can't come back as something temporary. He
left as a king; he can only come back as a king. A
king is not what the Afghan people want," said
Hikmatyar.
The idea is getting a somewhat better reception on the
other side of town, in the ramshackle south Tehran
district where the Hezb-e Wahdat, the main Shi'a
Muslim party of Afghanistan, has set up its
headquarters.
"If all of the leaders can agree on Zahir Shah, then
it could be a good solution. But it is unrealistic to
say that Zahir Shah will have a principal role," said
Yusef Vaeizi, director of Hezb-e Wahdat's Tehran
office.
Afghanistan's Shi'a minority, who mostly belong to the
Hazara tribe, have been persecuted by the mainly
Pashtun Taliban, who are Sunni Muslims. Not
surprisingly, the Hezb-e Wahdat and other Afghan Shi'a
parties are strongly opposed to the U.S. suggestion,
first mentioned by Secretary of State Colin Powell,
that "moderate" elements of the Taliban could play a
role in postwar Afghanistan.
`Moderate' Taliban a false idea
"This is Pakistan's idea. They have invested a lot in
the Taliban," said Vaeizi. "But we know there is no
such things as a moderate Taliban. They have a very
restrictive understanding of Islam that is absolutely
incompatible with any other school of Islam."
The problem, however, is what to do with the Taliban
once they have been defeated. Unlike invading
armies--the Soviets and the British a century before
them--that simply packed up and went home after
tasting defeat in the mountains of Afghanistan, the
Taliban are already home. They have no place else to
go, although, problematically for their foes, they do
have a strong support base in neighboring Pakistan.
"We can take away their power, and we can take away
their arms, but we can't just push them away from
Afghanistan," admitted Seyyed Mohammad Kheirkhah, the
"ambassador" who represents the Northern Alliance in
Iran. The alliance, which controls about 10 percent of
Afghanistan's territory, is made up mainly of ethnic
Tajiks and Uzbeks.
"It's the Taliban's way of thinking that is the
problem, but their thoughts don't come from
Afghanistan," said Kheirkhah, referring to the harsh
puritanical and xenophobic interpretation of Islam
that the Taliban have imported from the Wahhabist
tradition of Saudi Arabia.
Uphill battle for unity
Kheirkhah said Afghanistan after the Taliban would
need a unity government that included a role for all
of Afghanistan's ethnic and tribal groups, especially
the Pashtun. He suggested that it would take several
years to build such a representative government, given
the complex and disparate nature of Afghan society.
One area of agreement between the alliance and
Hikmatyar's party is their mutual disdain for the
ex-king.
"Most Afghans would see him as an agent of America,"
Kheirkhah said.
Meanwhile, there were reports in the Iranian press
that some of Hikmatyar's mujahedeen already have
hooked up with Taliban militias in Afghanistan's
Nimrooz province. According to the Tehran Times,
"Hikmatyar's forces were easily distinguished from
Taliban forces because their beards are shorter than
Taliban beards."
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