Afghanistan: A Convoluted Mess

Sami Alrabaa

The Mullas is an Afghan family that fled Afghanistan in the early 1980s and settled in
Bielefeld/Germany as asylum seekers. They were granted one and since then they have
been living in Germany. Muhsen, the eldest son was born in Germany. Now he is 26
years old and works as a mechanical engineer for the German Society for Technical
Cooperation (GTZ) which builds a water treatment facility in Kandahar in the conflict-
ridden south of Afghanistan, financed by the German Government. Hasna, his sister, who
was also born in Germany, is 24 and works as a nurse in a hospital in Kabul.

Before going to Afghanistan one year ago, both Muhsen and Hasna knew Afghanistan
only from maps and photos.

Back in Bielefeld on a short visit to their parents they depicted a bleak picture of current
Afghanistan.

Muhsen says, “Afghanistan is still in ruins after 20 years of war and destruction. In order
for us to work on the project, a water plant for Kandahar, the GTZ pays protection money
to the local Taleban war-lord, Abdulqader Mohammadi. We have never seen the man. He
monthly sends his men to cash the money, about $ 20.000 a month. For working 12 hours
a day, I get only $ 5000 a month. In addition, Mohammadi forces workers in the project
to pay him $ 2 from the $ 5 each of them earns a day from hard work under tough
conditions.”

Hasna works for a local hospital in Kandahar, called Mirwais. “The hospital is in a "state
of complete decay ... When I arrived in the hospital it was very cold, I could see my
breath. The hospital lacks heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. The
place is filthy, and there is absolutely no medical equipment, except a couple of blood-
pressure cuffs. The hospital does not have any diagnostic equipment, oxygen, or even a
reliable supply of medicine. Patients, including children, are dying from treatable
ailments ranging from dehydration to war inflicted injuries. Since then, the situation has
hardly improved." Hasna said.

“Further”, said Hasna, “because there is no medication, a lot of people use opium. It
contains morphine which acts as a painkiller. It also contains codeine which suppresses
coughs, something which especially children suffer from due to the harsh winter in the
area. I was shocked when I once visited Khaula, a mother of 7 children and a distant
relative of my parents. She used opium as a tranquilizer by sucking the smoke from a
hookah and then blew the smoke into the mouths of her children. One of the children had
pneumonia and the others suffered from bronchial diseases. They looked skinny and pale
due to their opium consumption. But thanks to the morphine, the children kept quiet and
had stopped crying. Khaula is unaware that the smoke would only aggravate her
children’s disease, and that they would become addicted, just like she is.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that a million people
all over Afghanistan have now become addicted to opium.

Muhsen and Hasna emphasized that hardly a day goes by without horrifying news of
deaths and bloodshed coming out of Afghanistan – and what reaches the West is just a
tiny portion of the actual brutal truth.

Most of Afghanistan experts assert that Afghanistan is ruled by a motley alliance of

former warlords, former Mujahedeens, old communists, and royalists. Hamid Karzai, the
President of Afghanistan, called the great “accommodator” by Western observers, is
tolerated as long as he does not jeopardize the interests of members of this alliance.
Karzai hardly has any power. He is only able to leave his compound by helicopter.

The alliance comprises:

- Former warlord and Karzai’s current chief of staff General Dostam.

- Ex-Governor Ismail Khan, known as the “Lion of Herat” during the anti-Soviet
resistance is currently the Minister of Energy.
- Former Minister of Defense and former head of the Northern Alliance’ secret
service Marshal Fahim.
- Retired General Olumi who was Najibullah’s chief in Kandahar.
- Yunus Qanuni, currently Speaker of Parliament and a former Mujahedeen
member..
- Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy, a former communist lieutenant who toppled the
regime of Daud in 1978.
- Prince Mustafa, the grandson of King Mohammad Zahir.
- Burahanuddin Rabbani, the President of Afghanistan under the Mujahedeens and
Talebans, is a radical Islamist and opponent of democracy.

The alliance is a gathering of men who were bitter enemies and accused of a number of
serious human rights atrocities. During the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal,
men like Rabbani and Dostam turned Kabul into a pile of rubble, and killed thousands of
civilians.

Ayman El Amir, an Afghan expert who has just toured Afghanistan, told Al Ahram
Weekly (July 23), “If these people were living in the Balkans, they would most likely be
sitting in a cell at the International Tribunal in the Hague today.”

Rabbani and Dostam issued a joint manifesto calling for abolishing the presidential
system and replace it with a “governor” one. The aim is nothing less than weakening
Karzai and establishing a tribal-chief system and provincial warlords which would locally
have all the say. The Afghan Times said in an editorial (July 15), “De facto, warlords
have all the say all over Afghanistan.”

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In an interview with the German Radio, WDR5, (July 2) Prince Mustafa said,
“Corruption under Karzai has become worse. Billions of dollars of international aid have
disappeared in private pockets.”

Both the USA and Europe are looking at Afghanistan with deep concern. The country –
torn by 20 years of civil war and Taleban rule and now occupied by US-let troops –
appears to be spiraling out of control. The Talebans are omnipresent and the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is only capable of reacting, rather than acting. Peter
Scholl-Latour, a veteran German international reporter, who recently toured Afghanistan
said in his latest WDR TV report on June 5, “The country is edging closer to the abyss.”

The German right-leaning newspaper, Die Welt writes (July 19) “It is illusionary to think
that 54,000 ISAF soldiers are enough to appease a huge rocky tribal country (647,500
km2). International security experts point out that more than 300,000 would be needed to
bring the level of violence there up to that in Kosovo. The recent visit by the German
Foreign Minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier to Herat in western Afghanistan to inaugurate
a water plant can be described as symbolic, at best.”

Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, once said in Afghanistan, “You cannot
have development without security, and you cannot have security without development.”

We should add that national security is also an integral part of international security. The
Scandinavian countries and Germany, for instance, have realized that national security is
only possible through social security. Social security is capitalism plus a fair tax system
which primarily takes form the haves, from the strong and gives the haves not, the weak
in society. Therefore, the violence and crime rate in these countries is the lowest in the
world.

Security and development in Afghanistan go hand in hand and are an indispensable

investment in terms of international security, for all, for the USA, Europe and for the
world at large. Without these peace pillars, Afghanistan will never see peace and will
continue breeding and exporting terrorism.