Creating A Stable Afghanistan

  HISTORY

Introduction

History

Defining the Problem

Policy Alternatives

Cost Benefit Analysis

Policy Recommendation

Conclusion

Bibliography

HISTORY

Those who wish to assist in the restructuring of Afghanistan must keep in mind that they will be working from the ground up. Any sort of infrastructure that may have existed at any given time has been decimated by the last 23 years of war, first for independence from foreign control and then amongst themselves for dominance. As we look at the reasons behind those wars, we come to realize that despite the many different players and root causes, there are two main underlying reasons why Afghanistan is so prone to bloodshed.

The first is geographical. Afghanistan has always been a border country between great and often warring peoples, and has many times served as the front line for their wars and territorial skirmishes. It has been overrun, or attempted to be overrun, by just about every great conquering force history has ever known, from Alexander the Great in 333BC, the viscous hordes of Genghis Khan in 1219, Tamer lane in the 14^th century, the Arabs (who brought Islam in the 7^th century), the Turks, and more recently, the British, the Soviets, and last but not least, the Americans. Peace has existed, at times, in the region, but it is always tentative and short lived.

Afghanistan has always had the land-thirsty aspirations of great nations to deal with. The “Great Game” was “played” throughout the 18^th century, the major players being Czarist Russia and Britain. There were also many subsidiary players who took one side or another as their own interests warranted, including Napoleon, the Turks, the Germans, the Iranians, the Japanese, the Central Asian Khanates and the Chinese[1]. The British wanted a hold of Afghanistan because it saw the region as the gateway to India, and they wished to protect their economic interests there, and Russia, at the time, was simply decidedly expansionist.

Historically, the theory has been that whoever held the key to Central Asia held the key to the world. In practice, those who have “won” control of Afghanistan have usually ended up getting more trouble than they thought. Between 1850 and 1878, The British gradually expanded their influence over Afghanistan.[2] By 1878 they had managed to set up a loose administration in the whole of the Balustan from the Guamanl river to the Persian frontier, those that dwelt in the area standing northeast from the Guamanl river remained an agglomeration of tribes of Pushtun descent, who for the most part were masterless.[3]

            The border between the British and the independent tribes remained blurry. In the year of “peace” leading up to the Second Afghan war; there were 37 “notable border skirmishes”.[4]  Theses skirmishes had escalated into the Second Afghan War by 1879, which was finally resolved by the rather arbitrary drawing of the Durand Line, which split the Pushtun tribes in two and drove the boundaries of British India deep into tribal Afghan territory.[5] The Durand Line never really pleased anyone, and continued to serve as a bone of contention in the following years, undergoing many incarnations as the sides invaded and counter-invaded.

            Relative peace was achieved when in 1901, King Habiullah came to the throne, who, though he did not actually side with the British, did not side with the Russians or with the tribes either, maintaining a policy of neutrality. Unfortunately, King Amir Habiullah was shot dead in his camp in 1919.  Though never officially proven guilty, the main suspect was Habiullahs’ third son, Amunllah, who soon proclaimed himself King and declared a constitutional monarchy.[6] The Russians accepted Amunllah’s regime as legitimate, but the British were reluctant to reward Afghanistans’ neutrality with complete independence, and so the two countries plunged into the Third Afghan War. Mercifully, it was short, lasting only two months (May-June, 1919).[7] Afghanistan thus became fully independent in 1919.

Independence did not mean peace. This is where the second root cause of Afghanistan’s propensity for bloodshed comes into play; ethnic tension. Afghanistan as we know it is a rather recent concept. Although it has been the setting for great empires and flourishing trade for over two millennia, the area's heterogeneous groups had not been recognized as a single political entity until 1747.[8] A sense of national unity had never really taken hold. The Afghanistan over which Amunllah declared sovereignty was basically a loose association of people, most with very little or no loyalty to Kabul. Afghanistan was by that time, and still is, structured on a basically tribal system. The majority of the people are Muslims, who tend to organize themselves into paternal clans. Loyalties lie first with the family, then with the clan, and then with the larger tribe. Historically, there has been little or no national identity among Afghans, and hence little unity.

In the midst of a particularly violent outbreak of civil unrest in 1929, Amunllah fled the country, leaving his son, Nadir Shah in power[9]. Nadirs Shahs reign was brief, lasting only until 1933,when he was executed by a young man carrying on a blood feud against the Shah since he had executed a member of his family a year before[10].

Nadirs successor, Zahir Shah, was just 19 years old when he came to power. He was young and inexperienced, yet his government was one of the most stable eras for Afghanistan. This is in large part due to the efforts of politically astute counselors. The reigns of government were held by Zahir Shahs’ two uncles. The eldest of these, Muhammad Hashim, served as prime minister until 1946. He was an astute and talented statesman. Under his leadership, the new administration devoted itself to the development of the country, with an emphasis on transport and communication[11]. This undertaking, of course, required outside assistance. Wishing to avoid the political quagmire of involvement with either Britain or the USSR, Hashim turned to a new investor- Germany. By 1935 Germany was Afghanistan’s biggest provider of foreign aid[12]. This seemed the perfect solution, until the outbreak of WWII complicated the Afghani-German relationship. The Allies demanded that Afghanistan expel all Axis personnel from the country.[13] Although the Afghan administration was hesitant to comply, they were swayed by the example of Iran, which had refused to do so and had suffered an Allied occupation in 1941.[14]

After the end of the war, Shah Mahmud replaced his older brother as prime minister. His foreign policy was one of cooperation with the former Allied powers. New undertakings such as the Helmand Valley Project, which sought to create hundreds of miles of new farmland, brought Afghanistan closer to new allies, such as the United States, who bankrolled the project.[15] Unfortunately, the era also brought a rekindling of ethnic strife when Afghanistan inherited the Pushtuns east of the Durand Line in the aftermath of India’s independence from Britain.[16]  As the Pushtuns asserted their statistical and educational superiority, many smaller ethnic groups began to fear Pushtun dominance. 

This tension, as well as sporadic disputes over the exact location of the new version of the Durand Line (the border with Pakistan), came to a head in July of 1970 when Zahir was overthrown by his cousin, Daoud Shah.[17] Many within the country had become disenchanted with Zahirs’ Government and the strengthening of ties with the west, and Daoud astutely surmised that a change in regime would not be unwelcomed by the population at large. Daoud came to power mainly be courting leftist influences within the country. There had been a gradual expansion of Russian influence during the early years of the twentieth century. There had also been an influx of Marxist ideology that has led to the development of many foreign-supported local Afghan Communist parties. Daoud aligned himself with these parties not out of any particular ideology, but because the Soviets offered assistance in border disputes with Pakistan, and financial support that was not proffered by the United States.[18] Daouds’ reign, however, was short lived. As soon as he acquired power, he began to distance himself from the USSR and to seek more aid from the West. When Daoud ordered the arrest of communist leaders in April of 1978 he sparked massive unrest that eventually lead to his own demise and the rise of the communists in 1979.[19]

Sensing an opening, the Soviets seized control of the region in 1979 and set in motion an ambitious plan of secularization and modernization. Young officials were sent out into the countryside in order to promote new polices regarding land reform, credit reform, marriages, and mandatory education for both sexes.[20] Initial success was mixed. The situation in the country did improve now they were under the wing of Mother Russia. The Soviets pumped cash into the country by way of a huge line of credit, interest free loans, began construction of a gas pipeline and began to build a transportational infrastructure.[21]

Yet despite initial support for the Soviets due to these material improvements, Afghan culture soon proved incompatible with Communist social ideology. The Afghans had an understandable desire for good relations with their larger and far more powerful neighbor the USSR, but in the intervening years of war the country had become devoutly Muslim, heavily influenced by the growth of fundamentalism in Pakistan, where much of the population had spent time as refugees. They were fiercely independent, and had developed a traditional Muslim aversion to social development and foreign dominance. The communists eventually realized, (after many aborted attempts) the futility of attempting to abolish Islam, and instead tried to incorporate it into Marxist Dogma.[22] This lead to the development of a Soviet “official Islam”, which was sanctioned by the State. This, of course, was not acceptable to most believers. An “underground Islam” which sought to keep alive pre-Soviet ideas and practices soon formed. Perhaps as a backlash against oppression, these underground mosques later developed into the “Muslim brotherhood” whose extreme adherence to traditional Islamic ideas shocked even other Muslim countries.[23]

When the Communists attempted to replace the Afghan flag, which was Islamic green, with the Communist red, they committed a symbolic blunder that tipped off massive unrest in the countryside.[24] This unrest was of course, precipitated by deeper resentments. The attempted reforms had struck at the very heart of the existing socioeconomic structure of Afghanistan’s rural society. The bases of power were still the clan leaders, and they understandably felt threatened by the Soviet reforms. It was clear to the warlords that the new regime was under the thumb of the USSR; a foreign dominating power. They soon refused to pay homage to Mother Russia, but the Soviets would not let Afghanistan slip by so easily. The Soviets had inherited from their Tsarist predecessors a firm belief in Afghanistan as the gateway to Central Asia. Control of Afghanistan seemed integral to the spread of Communist ideology. As unrest amongst the Afghan population spread, so did the level of Soviet commitment to the country. By the spring of 1980 the Soviets had more than a hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan, and throughout the year they engaged in heavy fighting in all parts of the country.[25] This fighting intensified over the next two years, and by the end of 1981 all parts of the Soviet-Democratic Republic of Afghanistan were engaged in Guerrilla warfare. No province remained loyal to Kabul, which remained under the control of the Soviets. The United States and other parties interested in blunting the spread of communism covertly provided arms for faction groups with the country[26]. The vicious, destructive civil war, now underwritten by outside parties, continued to rage on until 1989, when the Soviets pulled out of the country in order to deal with more pressing internal strife[27].

  Although Afghanistan drove out the red menace, its troubles had just begun. For it’s part, the United States might also have mistakenly taken its involvement in Afghanistan to have had successful results. Soon they would be proven wrong.