Going beyond Kabul

THE Security Council has now done what it should have done much earlier — decide on the deployment of the international peacekeeping force outside Kabul. Ever since it was formed and deployed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has been mandated to operate within the limits of the capital city. This has had several negative effects on the situation in Afghanistan. For instance, many sections of the Afghan public opinion have tended to view the ISAF as a force meant to prop up a pro-US government. Mr Hamid Karzai, no doubt, enjoys American support, but he moved into Kabul after the fall of the Taliban regime as a result of the consensus achieved at Bonn. It was hoped that the situation would gradually normalize, and the Karzai administration would be able to pursue Afghanistan’s post-war reconstruction with undivided attention. However, nearly two years after its induction into office, the Karzai government has not been able to show much by way of Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Because of the ISAF’s limited role, the government’s writ does not run much beyond Kabul, making the task of security and rebuilding difficult.

The Taliban seem to be regrouping and sometimes they enjoy the support of local chieftains. Not all those who pass for the Taliban are actually so. Many of them are freebooters who use the present anarchy to rob and kill. The tribal warlords are virtually independent and do not cooperate even with UN relief agencies. Often, international aid workers have been attacked and robbed. Dismissed recently as Herat’s governor, Ismail Khan ran his own administration and did not share revenues with Kabul. Another warlord, Rashid Dostum, did not bother to go to Kabul when he was appointed defence minister. He maintains a well-armed militia and is trigger-happy. Last week, fighting between his faction of Jumbish-i-Milli and the Tajik militia led to over 80 deaths. The Karzai administration has been a helpless spectator to all this. The new professional army which he was supposed to raise is nowhere near the planned strength of 70,000.

With Tuesday’s unanimous resolution passed by the UN Council, the Nato-led ISAF should now be able to make a difference to the situation. However, this is still a hope, and one does not know how the ISAF will actually fare. Policing Kabul is one thing; taming the vast Afghan countryside with its tradition of regional autonomy quite another. By a modest estimate there are 100,000 irregular soldiers, and they are unlikely to be reined in by military means alone. In fact, the ISAF’s mostly European soldiers are uninitiated and unfit to tame Afghan militiamen who can prove a formidable adversary. America’s own military has achieved little by way of Afghanistan’s pacification.

The truth is that Afghanistan cannot be stabilized easily. What the country needs is a broad-based regime. The Karzai administration is dominated by the Tajiks. This has alienated the Pushtoons, who constitute Afghanistan’s largest ethnic community. The fact that the Taliban were predominantly Pushtoon should not stand in the way of their adequate representation in the present administrative set-up. One doubts if without a political agreement for a more broad-based government, foreign soldiers alone can restore peace in the country. The presence of foreign troops has traditionally been a provocation to the Afghans.

Human rights triumph

THE Iranian human rights campaigner, Shirin Ebadi, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has returned to Tehran to a rapturous welcome. She was in Paris when the award was announced, becoming the first Muslim woman to be so honoured. There was muted coverage and official comment in Iran when the Nobel committee’s decision was made public. President Mohammad Khatami, although regarded as a moderate, appeared to downplay the award, saying it was given on the basis of “totally political criteria”. It is true that the Nobel peace and literature awards have often been coloured by political considerations and have been governed by a particular western view of events and personalities. Iran happens at the moment to be among the countries considered an obstacle to America’s expansionist policy in the Middle East, and those standing up to the clerics’ regime in Tehran can expect to get backing and praise in western capitals. But the courage and conviction of Ms Ebadi and other rights campaigners like her cannot be devalued on that account.

Iran is going through a period of political confusion, with hardliners determined to prevent any relaxation in the rigid order that was initiated after the Islamic revolution. However, the failure of the conservatives to significantly improve the life of the ordinary people, coupled with their tight control on individual freedoms, has intensified resistance to their policies. There is ferment on the social and cultural fronts, with Iranian filmmakers, writers and civil rights workers striving to make their voices heard. Since the Islamic revolution was a political act, and not a non-political intervention, Iranian society has never been free of strong political currents and the political process has not been blocked. That people like Ms Ebadi can continue to write and work and create an impact while living in Iran is testimony to Iranian society’s resilience and vibrancy. The Nobel award will strengthen the hands of those who want the people to enjoy the fullest extent of democratic freedoms promised by the overthrow of the monarchy while preserving Iran’s pursuit of an independent and anti-imperialist policy.

Journalists’ murder

IT is about two weeks since unknown armed men gunned down Amir Bakhsh Brohi, a Sindhi journalist, barely 50 yards from the Shikarpur district police officer’s office. That the gruesome act took place in broad daylight in the heart of the city and in front of the district police headquarters and the assailants got away so easily is a sad commentary on the state of law and order in the province. What is worse is that the police have made no arrests so far. The victim’s family alleges that a powerful local feudal lord is behind the murder, and that the police are pressuring the uncle of the murdered journalist to withdraw his FIR. The allegations sound plausible, knowing the police collusion or apathy in many such cases in the past.

This is not the first time that a journalist has been targeted in this brutal manner. Another local journalist was gunned down in Karachi only last month. Shahid Soomro was killed in a similar manner by unknown attackers in Kadhkot in October last. The on-going protest by journalists and demands by their representative bodies, as well as by several rights groups, to hold a judicial inquiry into the murder have gone unheeded. The anger and bitterness within the journalist community are so strong and widespread that on Tuesday the members of the fraternity in Islamabad boycotted the coverage of the National Assembly proceedings as a show of protest. So far, the government has only given assurances but done nothing to apprehend the culprits. Killing of or violence against journalists anywhere in the world raise serious questions, including those of possible official connivance at these, more so in our country where intolerance is pervasive and all forms of criticism are detested. The government should know that any further delay in bringing the killers of journalists to book will only make things on the press front infinitely worse.