.

November 11.1996

19

TheNation.

it was amazing, she said. There were Jews, Gentiles, wealthy,

poor-most of them women-all stuffing envelopes for Cynthia.
It was a beautiful sight. And I dont think any of us are going to
let some politician pull us apart. This is a coalition thats been
waiting to be born for a long time. Cynthias brought itinto
being, and its not going away..

Representative McKinney, who has supported aid to Israel and

. worked closely with Jewish members of the House, suggests that

the real impetus for Mitnicks attacks on her is a desire to break

apart the black-white coalition her campaign has forged.
But Shirley Reams doesnt think that will happen. I had
a chance to stop by Cynthias headquarters the other night and

FIGHTERS ARMED BY PAKISTAN HAVETURNED THE AFGHAN CAPITAL INTO A NO-WOMANS LAND.

Kabuls Patriarchv With Guns

FRED HALLIDAY

he capture by Taliban guerrillas of the

Afghan capital, Kabul, however short- or
long-lived, has come after two years of one
of the most obnoxious interventions by one
state in the affairs of another in many years.
Reported in the West asan indigenous struggle,
in fact Pakistan set up the Taliban as a semiregular fighting force in 1994, recruiting the
leaders from religious schools, or madrasas, in
Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and providing them with the guns, money, fuel and technical support to conquer first the western part of Afghanistan
and now much of the rest of the countrf. Since its creation in
1947, Pakistan has harbored the goal of dominating its northern
neighbor, and its desire to do so has increased all the more since
the Central Asian republics declared their independence from
Moscow in 1991. Now Pakistan believes that it can not only
achieve this strategic goal but also monopolize trade, and the
export of oil and gas, from Central Asia, thereby cutting other
contenders-Russia, Iran, Turkey-ut
of the game.
The Taliban fighters claim to be simply religious students,
followers of Islam. But the cla&, crumbles upon examination.
The religious schools they originated from in Pakistan are part of
a tendency known as the Deobandi, named after an antimodern
theological college established in India in the nineteenth century
that opposed the more liberal, reform-&nded college at Aligarh.
When Pakistan was established as a Muslim state, the Deobandis at first refused to recognize it. But, tactical as ever, they .soon
changed their minds and have worked ever since through the Assembly of Islamic Clergy (a conservative political party currently
,alliedwith Pakistans d i n g Peoples Party) to gain as much.influence as possible. Like many Christian fundamentalistshthe United States and the ultra-orthodoxharedim in Israel, they,understand
the importance of controlling social behavior and education, and
of forming tactical alliances with the military. In Pakistan this in-
cludes the Interservices Intelligence Directorate, the main security body responsible for running arms to Afghanistan during the
eighties, and HomeAftairs Minister Gen. Naseerullah Babar, who

is, like the Taliban, from the Pathan ethnic group.

Once established and armed, the Talibanhave
been able to recruit widely among the Pathan
tribes of Afghanistan, who represent about half
the population. Of the six members of their
ruling council, five are mullahs from the Pathan city of Kandahar, while the sixth is from
a breakaway faction of Tajiks, or Persian speakers, in the northeast province of Badakhshan. It
8 is this ethnic character of the Taliban that has
alarmed so many others in Afghanistan, leading nearly a quarter-millionTajiks and Uzbeks to flee an already
battered Kabul (which is far more badlydamagedthan Sarajevo,
as Jonathan Steele recently reported in the London Guardian).
The Pathan identity of the Taliban also explains, in part, the alliance that grew up against it, which involves Uzbeks under the
semi-independent warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum; Tajiks
under former defense minister Ahmad Shah Massoud; and the
Shiite Muslim Hazara, who make up about 20 percent of the
countrys population.

--

Fred Halliday, a professor of international relations at the London

School of Economics, is the author o f Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (I.B. Tauris).

he Taliban interpretation of Islam, which claims to derive all

its authority from theKoranalone, without reference to any
other sacred text or source, is open to doubt. One of their
first acts was to ban images of living beings. They have
carried out pubiic executions of television sets and have
banned photography. But the trend within Islam that is against
images-strongly influenced by e i l y Christianity and Judaismis based not on the Koran at all but on the supposed sayings of
the Prophet, the hadith. It is in one of the hadith that Mohammed reportedly said that no angel will enter a house in which
there is either a dog or a painting. Another says that on the day
of judgment the worst punishment will be reserved for artists.
For the tribal authoritarians this contradiction does not matter,
any more than does the fact that their ban on womens education
and employment is an attempt to impose tribal custom, not Islamic law, on Kabul and other cities. Patriarchy with guns is the
realitl, not piety or theological consistency.
The secret of the Talibans success involves a further dimension, one that ties them into the whole recent history of Afghanistan: They have also received support from some military
elements associated with the most hard-line wing of the former

20

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November 11,1996

Communistregime. A former defense minister, Lieut. Gen. Shahnawaz Tanai, who fled Kabul for Pakistan after a failed coup in
1990, and a former Interior Minister, Gen. Sayed Gulabzoy,now
living in Moscow, have aided the Taliban, providing some of
the tank crews and pilots needed in their campaign.
The Taliban have not hesitated to settle scores from the Communist period. One of the first things they did when they entered
Kabul was to seize former Communist president Najibullah, who
had ruled Afghamstan from 1986to 1992 and played a key role in
the process that led to the Soviet withdrawal. He gave up power in
April 1992on the understanding,underwrittenby the U.N., that he
could leave the country. But the new government reneged on that
deal, so Najibullah remained cooped up in the U.N. compound in
Kabul. The Taliban had told him they were willing to work with
him,so he declined offers from the fleeing regime to take him with
them. Only a few hours before his death he telephoned his family
in Delhi to assure them that he had good relations with the Taliban.
He soon learned the truk They took him to the former presidential palace, beat and castrated him,and then, when he asked
to make a final statement for posterity, shot him in the side of
the head and hung his body, alongside that of his brother, from
a traffic control tower. In adnteresting,reflection of old intiaCommunistfeuds, neither Gulabzoy, who worked with Najibullah
for several years, nor Babrak Kannal, the Communist leader he
replaced in 1986, attended the mourning service at the Moscow
mosque at which the local Af&an community had gathered.

ince taking Kabul the Taliban have not only killed associates.of
the former Commhist and Islamist regimes but have banned
women from appearing in public without a veil and (in marked
contrast to Iran) from education and working outsidethe home.
The worst fate befalls women in need of medical attention:
Men are not allowed to treat them, but neither are women allowed
to work in most clinics or hospitals. Although this has aroused
international outrage, three states in the U.N.Security CouncilChina, Indonesia and Egypt--opposed a motion condemning
the Taliban for their policies on women. Pakistan, of course,
immediately recognized the new government. From the private
sector, the California-basedoil company Unocal also voiced its
support: Unocal has been involved in planning a pipeline from
Central Asia through western Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.
Others, however, have not been so welcoming. Pakistans ambitions in Central Asia have long caused alarm in Iran, in Russia
and in the majority of CentralAsian states.Within days of the Taliban seizure of Kabul,theleaders of the Central Asian counlries,
plus Russia, met in the Kazakh capital, Almaty, to work out a response. They called for noninterference in Afghanistans affairs,.
but this is the last thing that will happen. While Pakistan is busy
reinforcing the Taliban, Iran, which sees them as a branch of what
the Ayatollah Khomeini called islam-i imrikai, American Islam,
has denouncedthem for their retrograde policies. Iranalso blames
the Taliban for murdering a Shiite leader last year after they invited him to join them in discussions.Tajikistanfears that the Talik~an
will back the fundamentalists in its own country. Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan are more ambivalent: The Turkmenianshope to
export gas through western Afghanistan and keep the Taliban
from interfering in their affairs; the Uzbeks have been exploring
an alliance with Pakistan that would enable them to trade via
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November 11,1996

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TheNation.

Indian Ocean ports and so lessen their dependence on Russia.

Despite what was said in Almaty, interference in Afghanistan
will continue. The new anti-Taliban coalition is receiving aidfrom Iran, Russia and India. Only if Uzbekistan forces its Uzbek
ally in Afghanistan, General Dostum, to make a deal with the Taliban will some solution be found. But Dostum has other backers,
and with his autonomous region in northern Afghanistan, site of
gas, gold and uranium, he has little reason to give in. When asked
why he opposed the Taliban, he replied that it was because of
their ban on music and alcohol. If Dostum does make a dealwill
somethingthe Taliban were urgently seeking at press tim-it
involve a de facto partition of the country into different ethnic
areas, with the Taliban holding the Pathan regions and the Tajik,
Uzbek and Hazara forces controlling their own.
It is easy to exaggerate the extent to which events in Afghanistan correspond to some broad game plan involving great-power
rivalries. Despite Pakistans interference,much of the impetus for
these recent developments lies in the disruption of Afghan society over nearly two decades of war, the growth of an arms trade
and a narcotics trade that no one controls, and the pull of different ethnic groups. The street value of Afghan heroin exports is.
reckoned to be $80 billion-a strong source of independence for
the Afghan growers and Pakistani middlemen handling the trade.
(Althoughthey publicly denouncethe drug trade, the Taliban have
used it to finance their operations.) Yet international agendas,
stretching across the Asian continent and the former U.S.S.R.,
of course will play a part in the countrys future.

or Moscow, the calculation and fears are clear enough.A fundamentalist re&e in Kabul would threaten the stability of
the Central Asian post-Communist regimes. Short of that it
would encourage those regimes to trade through Pakistan,
thus depriving Russia of important economic influence in
formerly dependent republics. This new Central Asian threat is
subsumed under a broader pattern of geopolitical anxiety: In
the West, NATO is pressing inexorably nearer the Soviet border,
and Moscow cannot stop it; in the Far East, China is a rising economic and military power, whose interests challenge those of
Russia; now, in the middle, there has emerged this third challenge, complicated by echoes of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in the eighties.
Washington, for its part, is working farther west, in the Caspian, to reduce links between Russia and the Transcaucasian.
republics, and at the same time to contain Iran and cut it out
of oil and gas transit deals. Anything the Iranians can do, we
can undo, one senior State Department official recently said of
Iranian policy in this area. The U.S. Central Asian policy has a
similar logic. For this reason alone, leaving aside its links to the
Pakistani intelligence services or the role of Unocal, Washington is seen as sympathetic to a Taliban victory. American officials have already talked to the new leaders, thereby granting
them a measure of legitimacy. While Washington may criticize
the Taliban on select issues, the fact remains that Pakistan, a
U.S. client, is behind them; that they are opposed by Iran may
enhance their position.

Read what General Colin L. Powell says about

ALL THAT W

what has been accomplished by the

also discuss how the Armys lessons

A Twentieth Century
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Published by
Basic Books

The Twentieth Century Fund

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41 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021

For a free catalog of all TCF books call 212-535-4441

22

November 11.1996

The Nation.

American responsibility for recent events in Afghanistan is

greater than Administration officials pretend. The United States
in fact sabotaged the prospects for a peaceful settlement in the
late eighties. The U.S.S.R. agreed to pull out its forces in return
for a cessation of U.S. and Pakistani aid to the anti-Communist
Islamist forces fighting Najibullah. Confidentthat Moscow could
do nothing about it, Washington ignoredthat agreement and continued to arm the guerrillas. His regime survived much longer
than most had anticipated, but in the end, following the August

1991 coup attempt in Moscow, Soviet financial and military aid

to Kabul ceased and the government collapsed. It was then that
the fundamentalists came to power in a coalition,and a new round
of chaos and destruction began. Much of the responsibility for
that, and for the military and patriarchal terror that has followed,
lies with Washington. One would like to think that as they watch
reports of the Taliban victory in Kabul, Ronald Reagan, George
Shultz, Robert Gates and their ilk will lose a little sleep. It does
not seem very likely.

UP FROM LIBERALISM: THE EMERGING CONTOURS O F A NEW PROGRESSMSM.

Left Turn Ahea

I

DAVID DYSSECAAIRD MALLIGK

hoever is elected President this

fall, the signs are that a tectonic .
shift in the American political
landscape is in the making. This
seismic realignment could throw
up anything from right-wing populism to corporate fascism.
But it could also give rise to a new progressive politics that goes
beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism.
Both Republicans and Democrats have lost their hold on the
voters, and in the coming years there is little likelihood of either
regenerating into a new, more attractive electoral identity. The
Republicans called for a revolution-and faltered. Bill Clinton
has talked about the revitalization of his party. He has cast himself as a New Democrat and has called for reinventing government. He has even flirted with a politics of meaning. But
Clinton is like a child whose attention span is too short to see his
way through a tough problem. His interest in proposals for party
renewal fizzles out before any real debate on them can begin.
No wonder Americans are fed up with the present political
parties and are ripe for an alternative. In 1992 the public voted
for change by supporting the Democrats; in 94 by voting Republican. The message is clear enough People have had enough
of both parties.
Progressives should stop acting defensive and embrace the
current state of public opinion. Liberalism has never been o d
thing anyway. Distrust of government, now a staple of right-wing
militias, was a rallying cry of sixties student movements. At that
time it was commminity organizers, not conservative politicians,
who attacked welfare bureaucrats for fostering a zookeeper
mentality. Decentralization and empowerment, conservative
code words today for statesrights and disentitlement,were once
cornerstones of progressive politics.
Breaking with liberalism-in a friendly way-would not be a
new notioh for progressives. But it would require a more public
airing of OUT criticisms of liberal programs than weve heard in

some time. And it would mean making

a sustained and serious effort to take
the lessons weve learned over the past
thuty years-in community organizing,
issue activism, economic development,
town p la d g - a n d forging from them a new synthesis.
The outlines of a new progressive politics can readily be
sketched. Lets focus, for instance, on three of the main areas of
disputed terrain in politics today: the role of government, assistance to the needy and management of the economy.
What is the proper role of government in society? Many progressivemovements have stressedthat the role of government is
not to solve problems for people but to create a climate in which
people have the resources and access to power to solve their own
problems.Who are the actors we see carrying out a social agenda?
Rather than envisioning only two arenas of action-private enterprise and govekent-we must see both these sectors together
with and balanced by a third, strongly enhanced, public sector,
made up of unions, the media and activist and advocacy groups,
as well as an array of organizations and informal groups captured under the current buzzword civil society.
Liberalism has been too single-mindedin its emphasis on government and, in the process, it has inadvertently let other sectors
off the hook.,The womens movement understood this when it
called for a politicizationof personal life. The E.R.A. and family
leave were government responsibilities,but changing the balance
of power in personal relationships was a matter. for individuals
and groups in civil society.Few feminists envisioned laws requiring men to share in housework or child care; what most expected
was a combination of social pressures, small groups supporting
those seeking change and gradual consciousness-raising of
individuals. This would go hand in hand with the educational
work of large organizations.and government measures supporting changed relationships between men and women, such as
actions to require equal pay for equal work, prevent sexual harassment and increase opportunities for girls in school. We cant
give up on government action, but neither should we assume
David Dyssegaard Kallick, editor of Social Policy magazine (w.that government is the best mechanism for all social action.
socia2policyorg;),is writing a book about politics beyond liberal and
The environmentalmovement also seems to be moving in this
conservative.