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B E A R I N G S
Engaging the Enemy by James Norton
Afghanistan’s ruling government has an international PR problem. Other governments might be worried by a problem like this. Foreign aid, diplomatic options and direct investment are all dependent upon the goodwill of other nations in general, and the hegemonic influence of the United States in particular. Thus, sentencing women to an extreme, legally enforced form of seclusion, dynamiting precious archeological relics, banning the use of the Internet, requiring Hindus to wear yellow identity tags, and prohibiting chess boards and kite flying may not be wise tactics for a new government attempting to stabilize its position on the international stage. But the Taliban isn’t just any government. The policies of the Taliban have had a real impact on world opinion, but the world’s opinions apparently have not deterred the fundamentalist Islamic group from carrying them out. At this point, Westerners looking at Afghanistan’s Taliban see a self-parody of the Islamic terrorist. They see crazy, wild-bearded, fanatic, towel-headed militants waving guns and denouncing all the fruits of the civilized world. They see barbaric, irrational isolationist Luddites bent on plunging an entire nation into darkness. Parts of this vision are exaggerated, or false. Others are true. But upon Western perceptions of Afghanistan dangle the lives of hundreds of thousands of starving, freezing, war-weary refugees. Western sources have had difficulty analyzing the internal politics of the Taliban, due to limited access. The group’s most infamous exploit, the destruction of the precious Buddha sculptures of Bamiyan, provided some insight into the group’s internal makeup. According to BBC reports, the Taliban was initially divided on the issue of the statue’s destruction. The pragmatists saw the destruction of the statues as wasteful, while the hard-liners viewed it as a religious imperative. But Western sanctions infuriated and united the Taliban, leading the group to destroy the relics. One shouldn’t paint all of Afghanistan — or even its government — with a single broad brush. There is a faction within the Taliban, which rules most of the country, that certainly hews to a vision of Islam that is so radical and inflexible that it perplexes even Muslims in countries as strictly devout as Saudi Arabia. There is also a faction, however, that views a strong religious code as the key to finally bringing some semblance of peace and order to a country that has been war-riven for centuries. The factions aren’t mutually exclusive; they both spring from the same, largely forgotten historical roots.
One hundred-fifty years before Mujahadeen fighters eviscerated Soviet air power with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles, Afghan tribesmen were using deadly smooth-bore sniper rifles and fearsome guerrilla warfare to smash an entire British army. Before that, the region now known as "Afghanistan" had a history as a provincial annex of other empires: the Safavids of Persia, or the Mughals of India. It was also part of the world-empire of Ghenghis Khan, who once exterminated the Afghan city of Bamiyan to avenge a grandson slain in battle. For centuries, with the exception of a relatively peaceful period under a dynasty established by Tamerlane in the 15th century, the various peoples of Afghanistan have been fighting for their lives against armies, empires, and each other. While other nations have had the chance to evolve stable patterns of trade and centralized government, the peoples of Afghanistan have had to deal with isolating, mountainous terrain and the unenviable geographic role as the gateway to India from the West. Is it any wonder that Afghans are not rushing with open arms to follow the dictates of the United Nations? While a violent, isolated history is certainly no absolution for the violation of human rights, it is an explanation for the Taliban’s disinterest in bowing to international diplomatic pressure. For its entire modern history, Afghanistan has been used as a pawn by larger powers and its people constantly pressed into service or slaughtered by foreign armies. Most recently, the Soviet Union saw Afghanistan as a useful buffer state, a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism and a key geographic stronghold. The United States saw Afghanistan as a chance to hand the Soviet Union its own Vietnam. Between the two superpowers, billions of dollars worth of weapons (mostly small arms) were pumped into the nation, leaving it militarized to an incredible degree. As the Cold War faded, so did the Western world’s interest in Afghanistan as a nation; it became just another third world cesspool, what we now politely call "a developing nation." But now that the Taliban has risen as a specter of Islamic fundamentalism gone terribly overboard, there is a sudden, understandable interest — and disgust — in Afghanistan as a country. To deal with the Taliban, however, the West must understand that government’s priorities. First, there is a desire to get its house in order. Afghanistan has a terrible refugee problem. Armed splinter groups — some with impeccable anti-Soviet credentials — still threaten the central Taliban government. As long as this remains true, the Taliban will be clinging to the same sort of draconian law always practiced by desperate governments in desperate situations. Secondly, there is a desire to establish patterns of commerce that will lift the country’s internal refugee population, which is numbered by some at 800,000 (external refugees, who have chiefly fled to Iran, Pakistan and India number 2,562,000, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), into some sort of survivable situation and eventually provide reasonable sustenance for its people. These goals may be years away. And, for now, Afghanistan stands as a state with almost no infrastructure, few easily exploitable natural resources and very few friends to help it to its feet. The Taliban is radical because history has taught it the importance of war, and because it has nothing to lose. What remains for the West is a painful choice. By isolating the Taliban, it can hope to hasten the group’s demise, either from internal collapse or pressure from other armed groups within the country. In the process, millions of Afghans will suffer, and many will die. Alternatively, it can embrace the Taliban on a humanitarian level, and attempt to set up commercial and cultural ties that could greatly moderate the level of suffering now being experienced by the nation’s ordinary people. At the same time, this risks legitimizing a government that has made some truly offensive choices about the way it governs its people. History makes this choice a little easier. Hundreds of years of trying to break the Afghans by force have failed. They are still there. They are still armed. They are still fighting desperately to preserve their independence and their ability to lead themselves. Whether cultural and commercial embrace would moderate or just encourage the Taliban’s worst excesses is worth debating. But an immediate infusion of humanitarian relief, with substantial investments pegged to improving conditions for women and refugees, may very well be considerably better for the people of Afghanistan, and lend credence and support to more moderate factions within the government. As a country, Afghanistan suggests few easy answers. But the United States and other Western nations have a duty to look to history and Afghanistan’s refugees before taking a hard line against a group of people who look and act very differently from us. James Norton lives in Boston and works as an online news editor for The Christian Science Monitor. His fictional ramblings are available at jrnorton.com. He also edits Flak Magazine. Related Sites |
