The ‘Democracy of Warlords’ in Afghanistan

As Afghanistan Presidential elections approach the promise of change, stability and inclusive democracy have gained momentum across the country. There is little doubt that the polls, scheduled for August 20, will be hailed as a victory for the Afghan people in the Western media. Before explaining how things might change after the elections it is important to assess the current state of governance in the country. The U.S. has been blaming President Hamid Karzai for rampant corruption while President Karzai has expressed concern with regard to the role (and to some degree interference) of the NATO forces in the country. In the midst of these allegations and counter allegations there is one aspect of Afghanistan’s emerging political structure which has been overlooked: the role of warlords in Afghanistan’s emerging democracy.

{Picture Courtesy: Press for Conversion!}

Malalai Joya was the youngest female to be elected to the Afghanistan Parliament in 2005. She has been a staunch critic of the presence of warlords in the new government of Afghanistan. In May 2007, Joya was suspended from the parliament on the grounds that she had insulted fellow representatives in a television interview. Her reinstatement is under consideration and she has been likened to Burma’s Aung San Suu Ki for her political struggles. The PBS played a documentary on Malalai Joya titled “A Woman Among Warlords” in 2007. In an article in the Guardian, she asserts that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.
An article in the Kabul Express last month criticizes the U.S. non-action with regard to the return of Rashid Dostum to the Karzai government. Rashid Dostum, on the payrolls of the CIA, and his militia has been involved in the  mass killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners of war. The inaction of President Obama on the issue has made his policies appear similar to that of his predecessor in the eyes of the common Afghans. According to Pierre Prosper, former American ambassador for war crimes issues, “If you bring Dostum back, it will impact the progress of democracy and the trust people have in the government”.
The Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid once arrived to interview Rashid Dostum 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.”
President Karzai’s running mate Mohammad Qasim Fahim is the most despised warlord in Afghanistan. As a commander of the Jamiat-eIslami militia, he was named by Human Rights Watch in its 2005 report Blood Stained Hands as a key commander in the Afshar Massacre. About 800 members of the Shia Muslim Hazara minority were killed in a bout of murder, rape and looting in a civilian area of Kabul in September 1992.
The Afghan Parliament is controlled by a generation of current and former warlords whose views are not so different from those of the Taliban. Men like Abdul Rasul Sayyaf – one of the most powerful politicians in Afghanistan, who dominates parliament and has the ear of President Hamid Karzai. He, rather than the Taliban, may have been the person who first invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan.
The hold of the warlords is evident from the fact that even common people look to them for guidance before casting their votes. Gul Mohammed, a farmer, is excited about the upcoming elections but is waiting for the erstwhile warlord, now christened as community leader’s directive specifying which candidate Gul should support.
The Taliban were able to establish their initial hold over Afghanistan as an alternative to the in-fighting among the warlords. The people of Afghanistan had developed sympathies for the Taliban as the latter had promised to deliver them from the corrupt rule of the feudal warlords. Given the current state of politics in Afghanistan it is not difficult to deduce the reasons hindering the defeat of the Taliban. While the U.S. is shrinking its responsibilities to ensure that Afghanistan emerges as an ‘electoral democracy’, national politics is turning Afghanistan into a democracy of warlords.