The warlords casting a shadow over Afghanistan
They are brutal, bloodthirsty – and becoming increasingly influential in Afghan politics.
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One of the most feared of the Afghan warlords, Faryadi Zardad, was notorious for robbing, raping, torturing and killing travellers on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad. He kept a savage assistant in a cave who would bite and rip the flesh of his victims; other captives were murdered or imprisoned until they died of their sufferings or bribes were paid for their release.
Uniquely among the warlords of Afghanistan, many guilty of actions similar to his own, Zardad is in prison for his crimes. In 1998, as the Taliban overran Afghanistan, he fled to Britain on a fake passport. He was running a pizza restaurant in south London in 2000 when he was unmasked by the BBC, and in 2005 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Britain.
Zardad must consider himself exceptionally unlucky. Other warlords, who were once his comrades in arms, are now part of the political elite in Kabul, prominent members of the government or multimillionaire owners of palatial houses in the capital.
At the time Zardad was torturing and killing at his much-feared checkpoint at Sarobi on the Kabul-Kandahar road in 1992-96, he was a valued military commander in the forces of Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, the leader of the fundamentalist Hizb-e-Islami party.
Rockets and shells fired into Kabul by Hekmetyar's soldiers devastated the city and killed thousands of people before it was captured by the Taliban. More recently, Hekmetyar's forces, who are particularly strong in Logar province just south of the capital, have been fighting as allies of the Taliban.
But in the latest twist in Afghan politics, in which leaders switch sides and betray each other as swiftly as any English duke in the Wars of the Roses, Hekmetyar is reportedly about to start negotiations to join the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Under a power-sharing deal, his party would supposedly fill several ministerial posts and governorships in return for abandoning the Taliban. He himself would go into exile in Saudi Arabia for three years at the end of which the US would remove him from its list of "most wanted" terrorists.
A deal between Hekmetyar and President Karzai's government is not impossible, although a government spokesman has denied it. The Taliban have made plain in the past that they neither like nor trust him. It was in opposition to warlords such as him that the Taliban first arose in 1994.
If Hekmetyar's party does enter the government, its members will find themselves surrounded by many familiar faces. Just before Mr Karzai went to Washington to see President Barack Obama last week, he neatly divided the opposition, and almost certainly ensured his re-election as President, by selecting as his vice-presidential running-mate Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a powerful Tajik former warlord.
Human Rights Watch protested that General Fahim had the blood of many Afghans on his hands, but President Karzai stressed his courageous role in the war against the Soviet occupation.
Though Mr Karzai is increasingly unpopular because of failing security across Afghanistan and the extreme corruption of his government, he is likely to win re-election easily because he has co-opted the warlords who are Afghanistan's main power-brokers. Frequently denounced for being weak and indecisive, Mr Karzai, never a warlord himself, is again showing his skill in dancing between the rain-drops of Afghan politics.
US criticism of his rule, which reached high volume a few months ago, has died away because Washington sees nobody who can replace him. Unfortunately for Afghans, the political landscape of their country gelled at the time of the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and has not really changed since.
One reason the Taliban had been able to conquer most of Afghanistan in the 1990s, aside from the support of Pakistan, was by taking advantage of a popular reaction against warlords. Zardad ruled only a small area, but far more powerful rulers were just as cruel and corrupt as he was. Much of northern Afghanistan was ruled by the Uzbek general, Rashid Dostum, who had been part of the Communist regime and commanded a powerful army. The Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid once arrived to interview him in a fort overlooking his capital of Mazar-e-Sharif. Noticing bloodstains and scraps of flesh in the muddy courtyard he asked the guards if they had slaughtered a goat. They explained that an hour earlier General Dostum had punished a soldier for theft. "The man had been tied to the tracks of a Russian-made tank," records Mr Rashid, "which then drove around the courtyard crushing his body into mincemeat, while the garrison and Dostum watched."
At the time of the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, warlords including General Dostum and General Fahim were fighting for their lives or were in exile. But within hours of 9/11, the US was looking for local allies to provide the ground troops which, backed by US airpower, advisers and money, would overthrow the Taliban in Kabul.
In a couple of months warlords, many from the main opposition grouping, the Northern Alliance, were the new rulers of Afghanistan. Few of them now wear uniform, but they have held power ever since. General Dostum has gone into luxurious exile in Istanbul after a murderous assault on a Turkoman leader, but he remains influential among his followers and owns a fine pink palace in the famously wealthy Kabul neighbourhood of Sherpur.
Aside from Hekmetyar, most of the other warlords no longer exercise power through their private armies, but through a mafia-like control of jobs, security services, money, contracts and land.
Mr Karzai has experience in keeping them divided by giving each a big enough cut of the cake to make sure that no credible replacement for himself as President ever emerges. Had Zardad played his cards a little differently, and chosen his place of exile more carefully, he might now be looking forward to profitable government employment in Kabul.
Gulbuddin Hekmetyar
*Nicknamed "Engineer" he is a former prime minister of Afghanistan and a rebel military commander in the anti-Soviet war. He is wanted by the US for his links to Bin Laden.
Rashid Dostum
*Born into a peasant family in 1954 the burly Uzbek and former plumber has a reputation for ferocious brutality. Changed sides numerous times and once backed the Taliban.
Faryadi Zardad
*Former Mujahedin leader, aged 45, ran a violent milita that robbed, abducted and killed travellers. He fled to Britain, ran a pizzeria and is now in prison.
Mohammad Qasim Fahim
*On America's "most wanted" list of terrorists, he is one of the most notorious warlords with, according to Human Rights Watch, "the blood of many Afghans on his hands".
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Comments
With friends like these................. !
Are they running the rendition camps for the allies ?
What a lovely bunch of chaps; these good fellows would adorn any tea party.
Who gave the world the Russian mafia? The Yanks, who gave their wholehearted support to the arch-criminal Boris Berezovsky and his sockpuppet Boris Yeltsin, who together tore robbed the USSR blind and smuggled the loot abroad, killing any who stood in their way, including the American author of this book that exposed their mind-blowing crimes. Now Berezovsky is called a "businessman" or even a "dissident" and from his Mayfair mansion, uses British libel laws to bully and silence anyone who reminds us of who he really is.
Who violated the UN charter to give the world the narco-human-trafficking state of Kosovo? The Yanks, who else, who saw in the KLA bandits kindred spirits, reminiscent of their injun-killing, privateering, stagecoach-robbing forefathers.
Who turned Somalia into a pirates' den? The Yanks, who installed the chief of the Puntland pirates, Abdullahi Yusuf, as their stooge-president in Mogadishu.
And now they are giving Heymatyar, who killed 50,000 in Kabul and razed the city with CIA-financed guns and rockets, a chunk of Afghanistan so that he will stop killing NATO troops and closing off NATO's last escape route through Uzbekistan.
How comforting it must be to the families of the 10 French soldiers Hekmatyar killed to know that they died in order to enable his return to power and greatness. How comforting it must be to the families of the 4 Brit servicemen who bought it 2 days ago in Helmand to know that they made the ultimate sacrifice in order to ensure that the Taliban does not take the country away from narco-trafficking thieves, murderers, torturers, and rapists.
So this is what lies under the vague rhetoric of Obomber's "Afpak policy:" Massacre civilians from the air and let criminal/terrorist scumbags rule the country.
F. Ahmad
Fahim is a totally different kettle of fish. He is a common criminal, like all the rest of the northern warlords. To quote Seymour Hersh:
The narco-warlords' popularity means nothing. Even the fabled "lion of Panshir" Massoud was a turncoat crook like all the rest of them. The "lion of Panshir" made a deal with the Soviets in 1983 and stopped fighting them and they gave him guns, which is why the Yanks let the Taliban defeat him. Here's what, according to a UN worker, makes a popular leader in Afghanistan:
Massoud indeed forced the soviets to sign a ceasefire in the Panjshir - time bought which he used to intensify the war outside Panjshir in the north..... a ceasefire which the soviets eventually saw was a failure and ended. The other parties never had the might to first stay in Afghanistan all through the wars and to make the soviets pay such a heavily toll that they are forced to sign a ceasefire with them.
The Taliban were indeed proxies of the US - as were the previous Hekmatyar crew - and still both are - and yes the US disliked Massoud - for he was not under their control - and independent minded. You are not even worth talking to about Massoud.
Fahim is no sycophant like Hekmatyar - Taliban and Zardad - and he is no criminal - a whole bunch of allegations against him - as to why he is building so many buildings in Kabul - from the money he received from whomever - at least he is building something - instead of shelling Kabul endlessly like Hekmatyar or torching the homes of hundreds of thousands of people like the Taliban. The people against Fahim are against hi - not because they are clean and morally righteous - but because they have an ethnic agenda - that agenda which they applied to Ismail Khan aswell.
Ismail Khan was no puppet of IRAN either - he was removed partially at the behest of Iran - whom is paying Karzai hundreds of millions for influence on such matters - Karzai duly appointed a Hazara Shiite governor - whom together with Afghan Mellatis have been working to destroy all the semblance of progress in that province - shutting down over 200 factories and bringing corruption and bribery - and drugs and insecurity - dolling out land to countless Hazara and Pashtun - all of it out of spite against Tajik Ismail Khan.
People are not stupid - Heratis will eventually rise up and smash the schemes of their enemies - as will the people of the north and Kabul.... no matter how much propaganda is pumped out against them and their leaders.
The "Goodfellas" of Afghanistan are doing a roaring trade, it is only a matter of time that the "Afghan Poppy" will tarnish everyone's life in one form or another. Amazing how democracy can increase the narcotic trade.
Wasn't there a famous phrase about "Something being the Opium for the masses"; well it looks like it is already here !
Islamists ALREADY rule Kabul and Islamabad, thanks to the Yanks. The Yanks' valued, nuke-armed, military-aided ally Pakistan is an Islamic Republic that exports state-sponsored Jihadi terrorism and hosts Osama, if you haven't heard, just as is Saudi, the country that sends suicide Al Qaeda bombers into Iraq and bankrolls the ISI's Jihadi terrorists.
The Yanks not only printed the Jihadi schoolbooks with which the Pak ISI brainwashed the Taliban in their madrassas, they graciously hosted the Taliban in Houston to sweet-talk them into signing a pipeline deal. When the "carpet of gold" didn't work, they gave them the "carpet of bombs," using Osama as an excuse.
Now it's Richard Holbrooke who's talking to the murdering Jihadi terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Do you actually believe that Karzai has any shred of power or authority whatsoever besides what the Yanks give him? There is nothing that he can do on his own and this sick, perverted alliance with Hekmatyar is entirely the fruit of Obomber's "Afpak strategy."
This disgusting Yank maneuver is entirely in character and is reminiscent of Petraeus's "Awakening councils" in Iraq, where the Yanks paid and armed Sunni insurgents and got them to switch sides, then bragging that it was their "surge" that stopped the violence. Similarly, when Saddam's forces cut off their supply lines and pinned them down outside Baghdad during the 2003 invasion, they bribed the Republican Guard generals and flew them off to a new life of luxury in the US in exchange for telling their troops to abandon their positions and go home.
Sickening, these dark-age Islamists always using words of violence to threaten any woman/girls speaking up! Go back to your caves and live with those criminal fascist and prinmitive barbaric Taleban//al-Qaeda/Islamist male monsters, who only know how to abuse women/girls as sexual slaves or animals!
It makes a mockery of their claims to want to establish democracy & freedom in Afghanistan; by supporting these mad dogs?
Exactly the same as when the US/UK/EU supported Osama Bin Laden for all those years so the Russians would be defeated in Afghanistan.
And we all know how that particular mad dog reacted - turned round and bit the master first on 9/11 and continues ever since.....
We need to really act with more morals when we get involved in other countries or best not get involved at all.
therfore, you better think a bit your future, before writing anti war articles about afghanistan.
Ever since the liberation of Afghanistan, there has been 500% increase in drug trafficking into Europe and America. There is no liberation yet. There is fighting as many die daily.
Let me read this correct.
There are warlords who do not want to give up the reign to anyone as they are reaping the cash from the crops. Then there is USA that need this drug but keeps the eyes shut and says, ?We want to destroy these crops." Then we have Karzai Brothers running the businesses, and there many in UK.
What is the story?
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
Only the perverted would think that the mighty USA would interfere in the internal workings of a free and democratic state. It has never happened and will never happen.
I just wrote that for balance. :D
You are either the most nieve uneducated moron on planet earth or just born to lie through your teeth. Try reading "Hedgemony or survival" by Noam Chomsky. It details the 167 or so nations the USA has attacked in the past 50 years in an attempt to "spread democracy to the for corners of the planet" (G W Bush Quote). A glorious history of Americas foreign policy of "Globalisation" under a one world government.
Now whos the uneducated one now,you do know that Iraq was the first war in which the US acted like an aggressor and that the US has only intervened after requist from a state. Now the Warlords is a hard subject to discuss for they are can help defeat the Taliban but can also fuel on Taliban support due to their techniques and past history of brutal rule. I personaly believe Massoud would of been the only ex Mujahedeen leader that I would get help from for his back ground of greed is low to non abundent and he has the support of many of the major minority groups while strong respect from the Pashtuns. His death is a cruel case of Osamas ability to destroy what hope a failing state had. I believe that Karzai is a weak leader and he needs to strenghen his grip of influence on the people give them hope not just in the Urban centres. Afghan people are strong people the Afghan future security gains which will occur in the next couple of years will lead to a weakning of Taliban influence and a major boost in rebuilding of major infastructure which will reboot the Afghan economy and socialy address the famine and suffering which is occuring.