Afghan government needs to be broad and strong

Afghanistan has never had been a pluralistic society, which makes the transition of power in the post-Taliban era a very tricky process, writes Derek Brown
After all the talk in recent days of the urgent necessity for a new "broad-based" government in Kabul, there is a dawning realisation that Afghanistan has never had such a thing.

For centuries the land has been ruled by the strongest man of the moment, or by an alliance of such men. Since the mid-18th century, the rulers have been almost all from the Pashtun minority community, concentrated in the south and west.

The Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmen and other ethnic groups have had, from time to time, important influence on Kabul, but rarely a share of power let alone the monopoly of it.

The Northern Alliance, which presently rules the Kabul roost, is itself an amalgam of rival factions. The most important is the Jamaat-i-Islami - not because that is the group headed by "president" Burhanuddin Rabbani, nor because it commands mass loyalty, but rather because its fighters physically control the capital.

It was ever thus. Possession, in Afghanistan, is ten tenths of the law.

If the United Nations and the international community really hope to nudge Afghanistan towards consensual government, they will have to face the torments of the diplomatically damned. They would do well to study closely the events of 1989, as the Soviet occupation army finally withdrew.

The Russians had been fought to a standstill by the loosest possible coalition of mojahedin groups. Most of the credit, quite unjustly, was claimed by the alliance of seven parties based in Peshawar, Pakistan. Three of them were, in journalistic shorthand, "moderate"; that is, they favoured a degree of pluralism. Most also wanted the return of the already aged king, Zahir Shah.

Ranged alongside them were four ferociously fundamentalist groups, notably the two versions of Hesbe Islami. The ferocity of their anti-American rhetoric was matched only by their lust for US military aid, which throughout the 1980s flowed through Pakistan to the extent of some £400m a year.

When the last Soviet troops finally pulled back across the Oxus river, the leaders of the Peshawar alliance were summoned to the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, for a shura, or council, to determine the future government of Afghanistan. There was brave talk, even then, of broad-based administration; of summoning a loya jirga or grand council, of consulting the king; and of including the groups, like the Hazaras, not represented in Peshawar.

Instead, the seven leaders and their cohorts blethered, dithered and squabbled for two full weeks, then solemnly chose themselves to rule Afghanistan.

What followed was a combination of farce and tragedy. The party leaders established their "ministries" in Peshawar, and got on with their work of maintaining their lavish establishments and wheedling arms from the Americans.

It was ludicrous: the finance ministry was a hotel room and the minister of defence had no telephone. On one of the few occasions that the "government" found the time to cross the border and meet inside Afghanistan, only four of the seven senior ministers turned up. Picnic lunches were provided for the visiting media, and nothing much else happened.

The far-from-comic opera continued for three years, until the communist regime in Kabul was brought low - not by military effort, but by an army coup. The mojahedin at last showed up in the capital, celebrated their "victory" for 24 hours, and then started a new civil war.

The man who emerged, shakily and temporarily, as the new national leader was Burhanuddin Rabbani, surrounded by his Jamaat-i-Islami fighters, most of them Tajiks from the north. And now they are back.

One of the fiercest factional disputes in the brief spell of mojahedin rule from 1992 to 1996 were between the Jamaat and the Hesbe faction led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He is now in exile in Iran, but he is said to retain formidable support among his own Pashtun people.

The other vicious firefight was between Jamaat and the Harakat Islami faction, which mostly consists of Shia Muslims from the Hazara central region.

Even now these forces are gathering again to challenge a nascent Rabbani regime. It may not be Hekmatyar this time who galvanises the Pashtun, but they will of a certainty insist on a major slice of power in any new set-up.

Indeed, there are already powerful forces being cobbled together in Jalalabad and around Kandahar, which are adamantly opposed to the Northern Alliance.

And the Hazara too, representing roughly 20% of the population, are mobilising to protect their kinsmen in Kabul.

There are no fixed lines in Afghan politics. At the height of the anti-Soviet war, local commanders switched back and forth between factions, and even between communism and the jihad. It shouldn't be all that hard, given time and effort, to stitch together a plausibly broad coalition in a war-worn land.

The really difficult bit will be to hold it together.

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