Global Policy Forum

by Kesava Menon

A post-Taliban Afghanistan looks a far more remote prospect now than it did when the U.S. bombing campaign began nearly four weeks ago, with the Taliban showing unexpected resilience. However, the U.S. administration insists that its military planning is going according to plan. Perhaps the campaign is going according to plan, but it is apparent that the schedules have had to be re- worked since the post-Taliban phase is not getting the attention it got in the early stages of the campaign. Off-schedule or not, the contours of the concept for the post- Taliban phase do not appear to have been fundamentally changed. A Loya Jirga (gathering of traditional clan and tribal chiefs and other leaders of society) is to be held as a precursor to the fall of the Taliban, on clear evidence of its collapse or after it has lost control of the major nodal points in Afghanistan.

This Loya Jirga, which will probably be convened under the patronage of the exiled King Zahir Shah, will elect a transitional authority, which will govern the country till a more permanent form of Government can be established. To enable the transitional authority to establish its presence in the country, it will be provided either with a U.N. peacekeeping force, an amalgam of the various Afghan forces fighting the Taliban, or a peacekeeping force drawn from the Muslim world. With the military campaign barely crawling forward, if at all, and with the onset of winter by mid-month likely to slow the pace further, all talk of a post-Taliban phase looks a little absurd. While the Northern Alliance has retained its unity despite the loss of Ahmed Shah Masood, the initial contacts between it and the King's camp have led nowhere. But the far bigger problem the anti-Taliban alliance faces is that it has not been able to forge any sort of unity among the Pashtuns, and the loss of Commander Abdul Haq was a further blow. If the transitional authority, part of the post-Taliban conception, has run into these difficulties, the other part - that of getting together a military/security force that can impose the will of the transitional authority - need not attract much thought now.

Ironically, the difficulties on the political front loom so large that the prospects for progress on the other part of the post- Taliban conception appear better at the moment. A U.N. peacekeeping force of the Blue Beret kind does not appear very likely since the two armies that could have given real teeth to such an operation - those of India and Pakistan - are most certainly going to be left out. Cobbling together a pure Afghan force from the troops of the Northern Alliance and various Pashtun war-bands might be possible in the long-term but not very likely in the short. Therefore, the greatest likelihood is of a peacekeeping force drawn from the Muslim world.

Bangladesh, which too has quite a record in U.N. peace-keeping operations and has the advantage of its South Asian location, has been mentioned as one of the possible sources for such a peacekeeping force. But the foremost target is Turkey, whose contribution to peace-keeping operations in Afghanistan will have several advantages. It has a tough professional army fully integrated in the NATO and a ferociously secularist tradition. If the West needs an army that is Muslim in origin yet secular, friendly to it and with no qualms about crushing remnants of the Taliban, it need look no further than Turkey.

Ankara has its own interest in making a contribution in Afghanistan. Its efforts at building a pan-Turkish association of countries, and thus increasing its influence over the Caucasus and Central Asia, will get a great boost if it marks a presence in the eastern end of the Turkish sphere. Turkey would be able to protect the Turkic-speaking minorities in Afghanistan - Uzbeks, Turkomans, Aymaks, etc. A Turkish presence will probably be less irksome to the Pashtuns and Pakistan than an Iranian presence, for instance, would be. According to some reports, about 50 Turkish special operations personnel have been sent to train and assist the forces of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam and other Northern Alliance commanders.

While professional advice, increased supplies and the bombing of Taliban frontlines have boosted the Northern Alliance's prospects in the course of this week, the one factor expected to lead to a swift victory - disintegration of the Taliban - has not occurred. In concentric circles, layered by degrees of loyalty to the Taliban's leadership, the outermost circle of regime fighters consists of the tribal, local and regional warlords who had either been bought off of coerced into supporting the Taliban in 1995-96. There are also the Pashtun elements of the old Soviet- era army who shifted loyalties to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Haq and other Pashtun commanders after Kabul fell to the mujahideen in 1992. These elements are probably still not very loyal to the Taliban but they will only break off after they see that the Taliban power is about to crumble.

That the core of the Taliban - the cullings from the madrassas and the Arabs - have not as yet disintegrated shows the success of those who have welded them into a force in the last four or five years. As India saw with the Khalistanis at the time of Operation Bluestar, it took only one retired Major General Shahbeg Singh and a few retired JCOs and NCOs to weld the defenders of the Golden Temple into a formidable outfit. Those - probably retired or even serving Pakistani officers and other ranks - who have worked with the Taliban have equally committed material to work with.

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