Afghanistan has been under the magnifying glasses of friends and foes for over four centuries. This is because its strategic importance rose and fell and has risen again in relation to regional developments and changing world priorities and interests. This article is an effort to bring to the limelight some factors that have made “Afghanistan Watching” a political and economic hobby of significance among regional and world interest groups, politicians, and leaders. This brief account of Afghanistan’s contemporary history is meant to familiarize the reader with some of the intricacies that surrounded and surround Afghan politics and the world’s interest in Afghanistan, not solely for the sake of the Afghans, but for furthering of their own designs.

How it Was?

In early 17th century not much was known about Afghanistan in the Western world. Even when the British colonized the sub-continent of India, they referred to Afghanistan as northwestern hinterland and uplands where fiercely fighting bearded men defended their country vehemently. The world had forgotten the rather recent splendors of the Timorides of Herat, the Ghorides, the Ghaznavides and the conquests of the Afghan Durrany Dynasty and the civilizations they had created and disseminated around them and in the conquered lands. The silk route was slowly giving its place to the Sino-European contacts by sea and through India.

In Afghanistan itself many ethnic groups consisting of Hazaras, Tajiks, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Nooris, Baloochis and a majority of Pashtuns and a few other minor groups lived mostly confined within their regional and cultural cocoons. However, historically all of them united automatically when faced by foreign intruders to defend their country. One of the main unifying factors was Islam. By then, the revivalist Sayed Ahmad Sirhindi, also known as the renewer of the second millennium in Islam had sent many Afghan Khalifas, or religious agents from Sirhind in India into Afghanistan and elsewhere in Central and South Asia. While the objective of Mojadedi of Sirhind was to deliver Islam from being drowned in Hindu rituals, he created the Naqshbandi tradition that preached strict abidance by the book. The Khalifas however, did exactly that with little accommodation provided for modernity.

Unlike India, China and Iran in the east and south, and Central Asian Khanates that were economically important for European colonialists, Afghanistan’s natural resources were unexplored and were considered insignificant.

But as European colonial powers expanded in the region and rivalries steamed up between them, the strategic position of Afghanistan gave her enormous importance in the military and political spheres. She was located at the gateway of the sub-continent between the expanding Russian empire and the British Raj, the new masters of rich Indian land.

In the troubled history of Afghanistan in the 18th and 19th centuries where there was perpetual infighting between Afghan princes and wars against the British empire, one Afghan King, Abdul Rahman Khan managed to unify the country and try to keep in check the intrusions from the North by Russia and from the South by the British by adopting a policy that allowed the British to believe that he will keep the gates of India safe against the Russian intrusions and expansionism.

Winds of Change:

Early 20th century brought the biggest change in the standing of Afghanistan. The small country in the hinterland stood up against the most powerful colonial power and fought and won its last and third war for independence in 1919. The event shook the foundations of the British Empire upon which the sun never sat. The defeat of the British in 1919 drew all eyes, friends and foes, on Afghanistan. The question was whether freedom won in the battle field would translate into improved civil life in the country. King Amanullah Khan took it upon himself to demonstrate the will of his monarchy to adopt modernity, acquire political significance, launch economic programs and give the country a constitution. He traveled to Europe and was received in all centers of European power with awe and respect, as for the first time, an Afghan Queen was accompanying her husband in a public sojourn.

The old colonial power of the British could not allow the rebel monarch score high and serve as an example for the many colonies of the British throne. The failure of the Afghan monarchy would serve as repellent for freedom movements elsewhere. Therefore colluding with the religious leaders who were given to believe that King Amanullah had endangered Islam, adverse conditions were created in the country leading to a deep rift between the King and the nation. A Mojadedi Islamic leader from Shamali, north of Kabul, and the Mojadedies of Shorebazar in the heart of Kabul broke ranks with the court and helped a revolt by the water-bearers son, an illiterate insurgent from north of Kabul to succeed.

Still all eyes were on Afghanistan. People all around the world wondered what would happen to a country that had broken up with the British Raj? This is not to say that gaining of complete independence by Afghanistan had played no role in India’s struggle for independence. On the contrary, King Amanullah’s portraits went high up on the walls of the houses and huts of Indian patriots and freedom fighters.

Two Thorny Issues:

That Afghanistan survived the blow by the collusion of the colonial power intent on revenge and a cleric too eager to grasp a chance to reassert its own power against an impatient King who wanted to traverse the path of decades in years, is another story in Afghan history and presently beyond the scope of this short paper. But Afghanistan remained under the magnifying glasses of politicians and social scientists for many years to come. This time, the new look was prompted by the departure of the British colonial power from the Indian sub-continent in 1947. The British leaving India left behind two great problem areas namely Kashmir and what they called the Northwest Frontier Tribal area populated mainly by the Pashtun tribes and attached by the outgoing British to Pakistan.

The two issues have ever since served as thorns in the eyes of the angel of peace in South Asia. The so called Durand Line dividing arbitrarily the heartland of the Pashtun tribes and separating families-brothers from brothers and sons from fathers-drawn to serve the colonial designs of the British by Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893 and never ratified by any Afghan parliament has served as a focus of conflict between the otherwise two Moslem and fraternal nations.

During the forty five years of rule by the Nadir Shah dynasty consisting the reign of King Nadir Shah who succeeded to the Afghan throne after toppling down the water bearer’s son and King Nadir Shah’s son, King Mohammad Zahir Shah, a period of relative peace prevailed in the country. During this time, the Nadir brothers, who served as strongmen and prime ministers in Afghanistan overshadowing the young Zahir Shah, Afghan history shows little real progress, general apathy of the government in serving the immediate needs of the people and insignificant political stance in the region. The monarchy saw benefits in the status quo for its own survival.

The world however was watching with interest the emerging new nation’s conduct in South Asia, the political powers in play in the creation and dismantling of two Pakistans, namely East and West Pakistan separated by thousands of miles, the new relationships between a Hindu dominated India and Moslem Pakistan, and above all what stance would be taken by the superpower in the north, namely the Soviet Union which was thirsty for many years for reaching the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

US Error of Judgment and the Soviet Chance to Enter Afghan Politics:

In early 1950s, the then Vice President Richard Nixon in President Eisenhower’s administration made a quick trip to Afghanistan where he was warmly received by the King and the common alike. He shook hands with people in the center of Kabul, students at Habibia School where this scribe extended his tiny hands to shake his big ones, sipped tea at a tea shop among the customers, smiled profusely and left the country to report to his administration that Afghanistan bore no significance for the United States. History has proven him repeatedly wrong on that judgment.

As a consequence of his decision Afghanistan was alienated from the West to the degree that the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud, a cousin of the King, decided to instead befriend the Soviet Union. This policy laid the foundation for the future intervention and occupation of Afghanistan by its great so-called friend to the north.

The Soviet Union developed great interest in Afghanistan, agreed to provide her with military support and selling her weapons of all kinds including refurbished old WWII tanks, Meg jet fighters, arms and ammunitions- at times the arms themselves much cheaper than their ordinary spare parts. Soviet experts and spies under the guise of technical advisors flooded the country and the Soviets took it upon themselves to train the Afghan military both inside Afghanistan and also in the Soviet Union. Afghan young students were also given scholarships in almost all fields to study in the Soviet Union where their curricula mandated study of communism and its history in the Soviet Union. The Soviets also started to look at the natural resources of the country and conducted, at high price, oil and gas exploration programs in the country. They found large amounts of natural gas in northern Afghanistan which they started pumping up into the Soviet Union at a price much cheaper than they got for it from Europe and kept quiet on the issue of the oil reserves that were also detected. They feared that announcing the find might affect the Soviet oil fields in Central Asia and or give Afghanistan a new status in the eyes of the West. The “polar bear” politics had the luxury of time in its favor and could wait for more opportune times to benefit from conditions in Afghanistan in such a way that she could be used as a stepping stone for its next hop closer to the Indian Ocean. The Soviets also played their cards cautiously with India with whom they remained close friends even when the Soviets staged a coup through their puppets in Afghanistan in 1978 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.

The cold war was on and a new movement called non-alignment had been born with the participation of a number of countries including Afghanistan and confirmed by the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. The group voiced concern over alliances with the superpowers. However, the Soviet Union tried to introduce a theme saying that the Soviet Union was the natural ally of the non-aligned countries. Thus she came closer in comparison to the United States to India and Egypt and Afghanistan and a number of African countries.

However, Afghanistan remained under the eyes of the regional and international powers. On the west, the Shah of Iran, dreaming of the glories of the Persian empire of yore, watched the developments in Afghanistan with interest. India, weary of an unhappy Pakistan over the issue of Kashmir wanted to have good relations with Afghanistan. On the other hand, China after its military clashes with India wanted to establish its influence in the region. She had developed good relations with Pakistan and was desirous of better relations with Afghanistan. Chinese and Soviet systems started to show their differences and therefore, too, China wanted to expand its relations with countries of the region.

Pakistan, on the other hand because of the above developments had good relations with Pakistan. But Pakistani government itself was for the most part in the hands of its military leaders that gave little chance for any civilian government to prosper. Yet its successive military leaders and civilian politicians were weary of the fact that the Durand Line, although firmly recorded in the books of the colonial power of the British had never gained legitimacy in that it was never approved by any national assembly in Afghanistan and its alleged life time of a hundred years was rapidly coming to an end. Huge parts of Pakistan known as the Northwest Frontier, and even Free Front and autonomous tribal zones remained truly autonomous.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan:

Then the Soviets conducted the great invasion from the north. Soviet designs and years of training and brainwashing of military officers and civilian students had created two leftist parties namely Khalq and Parcham. In 1973, Mohammad Daoud staged a bloodless coup against his cousin King Zahir Shah who was in Europe for medical treatment. Mohammad Daoud relied heavily on a military that was trained in the Soviet Union and started showing leftist tendencies himself. But being a nationalist, he soon realized that his Soviet supporters had other designs. In an attempt to correct the situation, he cut short one of his trips to Moscow in protest and embarked on befriending the regional powers in the Middle East including Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. This stirred unrest among the leftist parties at home. In April 1978, Daoud issued a hastily worded proclamation and arrested the leaders of the communist groups. However, he had overestimated his own power and popularity. This led to a mutiny among the military that after consultations with their Soviet advisors, freed the party leaders, attacked the Presidential Palace and killed President Daoud, his close cabinet members and even members of his family including his sons and his brother Mohammad Naim.

Once again all eyes turned toward Kabul that had turned red overnight. The West and the United States were apparently taken by surprise and Kremlin was given a free hand in the establishment and organization of a new communist government, a copy of the Soviet system, in Afghanistan. The new government proclaimed its alliance to the masses and, copying the communist terminology, to the proletariat. However, Afghanistan was an agricultural society where more than 85 percent of the population engaged in agriculture. There were no significant industries and nor workers to unite in any organization. The communists aware of the flaw, called the new Afghan government chief, Noor Mohammad Taraki as the great teacher, who had replaced in his so-called revolutionary strategy, the workers by farmers. The communists in Afghanistan still could have had a smoother ride, had they played their cards with caution and had not tried to changed the cultural and especially religious values of the masses. But they hurriedly wanted to change the whole system and thus faced strong opposition by a traditionalist and religious nation that valued its culture profoundly and was not ready to change.

Taraki Inadvertently Helped Damage Soviet Credibility:

A decade of war by the Red Army supported communist regime and the Red Army itself against Afghan freedom fighters ensued. More than one and a half million Afghan civilians and at least fifteen thousand Soviet troops were killed. The body bags, even in a strictly secretive Soviet regime could not be hidden from the Soviet citizens. War expenses weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Politically, the Soviets could not sustain their pretense of having gone into Afghanistan on the invitation of the government and were losing the trust of the third world countries. The United States could not be happier. After all it was a small suffering nation that was serving as the Soviet’s Vietnam. The Soviets were perplexed. They could not win the war and could not abandon a puppet communist regime either. They were gradually losing the international propaganda war. But the exposition of their secrets and lies to their nation and the weight of the body bags carried by transport military aircraft back to the Soviet Union plus the never seizing pressure of the freedom fighters in Afghanistan who were now supported by some Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the indirect help she received from Pakistan and the US, made the Kremlin to rethink its policy. The Kremlin had played all possible cards such as changing the Afghan puppet government’s leadership, but to no avail. It had no other choice but to scratch the back of its ears, pack up and go home. Now the world knew that the Red Army’s invincibility was just a myth that was broken by freedom fighters of Afghanistan. The decade of war had also created more than five million refugees from Afghanistan that reminded the world of the misery caused by the Soviet war against Afghan Mujahidin.

With the Soviets gone home to lick their wounds and deal with their own failed system, because of the defeat in Afghanistan, the world and the region still remained focused on Afghanistan. They observed, some with interest and some with dismay, the blunders made by the Mujahidin governments. The leaders of the Mujahidin, euphoric over the victory of the Afghan nation, wanted personal rewards in the form of the country’s leadership and positions in its government. This led to infighting among them that devastated the country further and led to fresh loss of life and the destruction of what had remained of the infrastructure in the capital city and the country. The Mujahidin governments failed drastically to establish and maintain an effective administration or peace in the country. Warlordism and the rule of the gun became the prevalent culture of the land. The people were soon disillusioned with the so-called leaders that each was claiming power for himself.

The Birth of Taleban Their Initial Success and Eventual Blunders:

Under the wide open eyes of the world, and encouraged by Pakistan who had the backing of the United States, a new phenomenon was introduced into the Afghan civil war. This was the Taleban religious student’s movement who were organized, armed and sent into Afghanistan to replace an inefficient Mujahidin administration with a more Pakistan friendly government. After all Pakistan considered the reemerging Afghanistan as its own backyard and wanted it to be led by its own puppets or friends. The Taleban were led by a one-eyed Mujahid, a Mullah, named Mohammad Omar who was known to the Pakistani ISI, Inter-service Intelligence, and the Arab Islamic Fighters of Osama and his friends in Afghanistan. Both the ISI of Pakistan and the CIA were well aware of the nature of activities of Osama’s Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Taleban, by virtue of their promise of brining peace to the country and establishing of justice swept through Afghanistan in a short period overtaking the administration of towns, districts and provinces from Mujahidin government at the time led by Burhanuddin Rabani. Soon they were able in reality to establish peace in the country, disband the bandits and highway robbers and give the government the semblance of a powerful administration. Disillusionment with the Taleban happened soon. Except a prejudicial reliance on religious attitudes, they lacked experience and foresight on all other aspects of running a government. They proved to show their real nature as black reactionaries that would want to drag Afghanistan backward a thousand years. They did not understand or appreciate human rights and equality of genders. Education to them meant study of the religious texts only and only by men. They, who had served as unimportant religious technicians, now had the power of life and death over a whole nation. Inebriated by this newly found power in the community they started committing excesses, claiming that the justice system they were implementing was the Sharia Law. As to their relations with Osama’s Al-Qaeda they would say these were regulated by tradition because in Afghan culture whoever takes refuge within your territory is your guest. The Taleban claimed that they had kept in check Al-Qaeda activities and that this group cannot conduct any terrorist action outside Afghanistan. But this claim was repeatedly proven wrong and it served in the alienation of the movement from the United States especially after the 9/11 attacks by Arab terrorists on American soil and destruction and casualties that resulted from these attacks.

The world was watching. This time, it watched with awe the stubborn stand of the Taleban who refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States. It also watched in awe, the heaviest bombardments of the Afghan soil by the United States military that used the most powerful bombs, short of nuclear, in Afghanistan. The US colluded on land with the remaining forces of a loose alliance that was breathing its last breaths against the Taleban. The renewed alliance gave them the stimulus to join the US war against Taleban that was called the War on Terror.

Mullah Omar curled his tail and went underground. His government dissolved and his men went in hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan to reappear as insurgents against the new government that was installed in Afghanistan as a result of the fateful Bonn Conference in Germany.

Post Taleban Afghanistan and the Rebirth of Democracy:

A new transitional government headed by Hamid Karzai took over in Kabul. The government was able to score many political successes among them the convening of two Loya Jirgas, one of them for the approval of a new constitution for the country. The government helped by the United Nations was also able to conduct presidential elections that elected Hamid Karzai as the first President of a democratic Afghanistan. The government further was able to conduct parliamentary elections to establish a bicameral parliament that includes the Wolesi Jirga, or the national assembly and the Mishrano Jirga that is the Senate. The world witnessed again with awe these significant achievements made by Afghanistan as she was helped by its main supporter the United States, a coalition of Western forces including NATO, and the United Nations mandated by its Security Council to deliver relevant assistance to Afghanistan.

Notwithstanding these huge achievements, the situations in the country did not change much. The central government remained weak, a national army is still in the making and a much needed police force too, needs to be trained. The goal was to train at least a seventy-thousand strong army and some 60,000 police. So far less than half of the above have been trained.

Afghanistan is also watched for its reconstruction efforts and for billions of dollars of aid money extended to it mostly indirectly through NGOs. The money that was given to the government too was used instead of reparation of the infrastructure mostly for regular expenditures of the government such as the salaries of government officials, the military and the police. The result of all this is only one road that leads from Kabul to Kandahar that was resurfaced and asphalted and improved with the aid money. There is widespread unemployment, hunger, disease and especially insecurity. The resurgence of the Taleban plays havoc with the psychology of the population especially in the restive south of the country.

“Afghanistan Watching” as a Political Hobby of Economic and Social Significance:

Afghanistan’s experience with democracy is also watched by the world at large that is interested to find out whether there is compatibility between Western style democracy and a strictly Islamic society in a third world country.

Furthermore, Afghanistan is watched for its efforts to deal, on behalf of the West, with the poppy problem, its cultivation and trafficking. The West, especially Britain and the United States, accorded priority to this thorny issue at a delicate time in the life of the country. So far, the issue has further alienated the needy farmers from their national government as well as its Western supporters. This is mainly because of lack of a coordinated well thought policy for the replacement of poppy cultivation with other practical and cash yielding programs.

But Afghanistan is also watched by her neighbors Pakistan and Iran, the former weary over her relations with India and the latter apprehensive over the friendly relations between Afghanistan and the United States. India on the other hand has found new venues to assert herself as a friend of Afghanistan forgetting the times that she had approved of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. India needs Afghanistan’s friendship also because of her long standing conflict with Pakistan and her rivalry of sorts with China. China on the other hand watches Afghan developments because of Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan, Russia, India, the United States and newly independent Central Asian countries.

The world watches also developments in Afghanistan because of her new strategic and economic importance after the demise of the communist system in the former Soviet Union. Afghanistan once again has gained the status of the crossroads of economic development in the region. The vast natural resources of Central Asian countries including Turkmenistan’s gas and the possible trade route between Central and South Asia make Afghanistan one of the most important countries that can facilitate commerce in the region and can open markets in the subcontinent of India to Central Asian countries and serve as a trade route for merchandise from Central Asia to South Asia and beyond. In this connection, the world is still watching developments of a proposed gas pipeline from Dawlatabad Gas fields of Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan. All of these may help Afghanistan become a new hub of commerce in the region.

The United States and the West watch Afghanistan because of their huge investments in men and material for the security of the country and for the US war on terror. The naïve ask the question of whether the world has extended a helpful hand to Afghanistan for her reconstruction, nation building and economic development out of the goodness of their hearts. In that connection it is to be said that in the highly politicized contemporary world no one helps any nation without considering the higher interests of their own nations and societies. Therefore, it is not charity that is extended to Afghanistan, but economic and political investment on the part of the aid giving nations.

And the Arab world watches Afghanistan because of her faith, and because of the war on terror that entails the fight against Al-Qaeda led by a renegade ex-Saudi citizen.

Afghanistan herself entangled with a multiplicity of problems looks forward to a time that she will be given a chance to breathe in peace and start in earnest to take up the long and arduous process of reconstruction. Those who have watched Afghanistan’s physical developments recently are aware that the erection of new and modern buildings in the capital and some of the provincial cities is a result of private investment of money raised during decades of war by gunmen and warlords and drug traffickers. They also observe that the government is still to show achievements for the aid money it has received from the international community. Afghanistan’s Compact which was presented to the international forum in London by Karzai’s government is expected to be implemented under direct observation of the United Nations. Whether it will prove a success or a failure is another story needing to be told by economists and politicians in other forums. 5/27/06