Selig S. Harrison: Afghanistan's Tyranny of the Minority
[Selig S. Harrison is the director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.]
As the debate intensifies within the Obama administration over how to stabilize Afghanistan, one major problem is conspicuously missing from the discussion: the growing alienation of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun tribes, who make up an estimated 42 percent of the population of 33 million. One of the basic reasons many Pashtuns support the Taliban insurgency is that their historic rivals, ethnic Tajiks, hold most of the key levers of power in the government.
Tajiks constitute only about 24 percent of the population, yet they largely control the armed forces and the intelligence and secret police agencies that loom over the daily lives of the Pashtuns. Little wonder that in the run-up to Thursday’s residential election, much of the Taliban propaganda has focused on the fact that President Hamid Karzai’s top running mate is a hated symbol of Tajik power: the former defense minister Muhammad Fahim...
...The Obama administration is pinning its hopes for an eventual exit from Afghanistan on building an Afghan National Army capable of defeating the insurgency. But a recent study by the RAND Corporation for the Pentagon, noting a “surplus of Tajiks in the A.N.A. officer and NCO corps,” warned of the “challenge of achieving ethnic balance, given the difficulty of recruiting in the Pashtun area.” The main reasons it is difficult to recruit Pashtuns, one United Nations official recently said, are that “70 percent of the army’s battalion commanders are Tajiks” and that the Taliban intimidates the families of recruits. It doesn’t help that many of the army units sent to the Pashtun areas consist primarily of Tajiks who do not speak Pashto.
Pashtun kings ruled Afghanistan from its nception in 1747 until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973. Initially limited to the Pashtun heartland in the south and east, the Afghan state gradually incorporated the neighboring Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek areas to the north and west.
It was understandable, then, that Pashtun leaders tried to make the last king, Zahir Shah, the president of the interim government that ruled from 2002 until the first presidential election in 2004. The king, revered by the Pashtuns, was to have limited powers, with Mr. Karzai, as prime minister, in day-to-day control. The Tajiks, however, objected, and on the eve of the national assembly that set up the interim government, the Bush administration’s special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, sided with the Tajiks and had a bitter 40-minute showdown with the king, who then withdrew his candidacy.
Pashtun nationalism alone does not explain the Taliban’s strength, which is fueled by drug money, Islamist fervor, corrupt warlords, hatred of the American occupation and the hidden hand of Pakistani intelligence agencies. But the psychological cement that holds the disparate Taliban factions together is opposition to Tajik dominance in Kabul. Until the power of the Panjshiris is curbed, no amount of American money or manpower will bring the insurgency to an end.
Read entire article at New York Times: International Herald Tribune
As the debate intensifies within the Obama administration over how to stabilize Afghanistan, one major problem is conspicuously missing from the discussion: the growing alienation of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun tribes, who make up an estimated 42 percent of the population of 33 million. One of the basic reasons many Pashtuns support the Taliban insurgency is that their historic rivals, ethnic Tajiks, hold most of the key levers of power in the government.
Tajiks constitute only about 24 percent of the population, yet they largely control the armed forces and the intelligence and secret police agencies that loom over the daily lives of the Pashtuns. Little wonder that in the run-up to Thursday’s residential election, much of the Taliban propaganda has focused on the fact that President Hamid Karzai’s top running mate is a hated symbol of Tajik power: the former defense minister Muhammad Fahim...
...The Obama administration is pinning its hopes for an eventual exit from Afghanistan on building an Afghan National Army capable of defeating the insurgency. But a recent study by the RAND Corporation for the Pentagon, noting a “surplus of Tajiks in the A.N.A. officer and NCO corps,” warned of the “challenge of achieving ethnic balance, given the difficulty of recruiting in the Pashtun area.” The main reasons it is difficult to recruit Pashtuns, one United Nations official recently said, are that “70 percent of the army’s battalion commanders are Tajiks” and that the Taliban intimidates the families of recruits. It doesn’t help that many of the army units sent to the Pashtun areas consist primarily of Tajiks who do not speak Pashto.
Pashtun kings ruled Afghanistan from its nception in 1747 until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973. Initially limited to the Pashtun heartland in the south and east, the Afghan state gradually incorporated the neighboring Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek areas to the north and west.
It was understandable, then, that Pashtun leaders tried to make the last king, Zahir Shah, the president of the interim government that ruled from 2002 until the first presidential election in 2004. The king, revered by the Pashtuns, was to have limited powers, with Mr. Karzai, as prime minister, in day-to-day control. The Tajiks, however, objected, and on the eve of the national assembly that set up the interim government, the Bush administration’s special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, sided with the Tajiks and had a bitter 40-minute showdown with the king, who then withdrew his candidacy.
Pashtun nationalism alone does not explain the Taliban’s strength, which is fueled by drug money, Islamist fervor, corrupt warlords, hatred of the American occupation and the hidden hand of Pakistani intelligence agencies. But the psychological cement that holds the disparate Taliban factions together is opposition to Tajik dominance in Kabul. Until the power of the Panjshiris is curbed, no amount of American money or manpower will bring the insurgency to an end.