Afghanistan

Political history
Institutional/ political culture
National identity
Soviet Invasion
Afghan jihad
Taliban
Taliban 2.0
Country Profile
 A geographically well-defined country.
 Afghanistan has a far longer history as a distinct national entity
with continuity to the present than most of its neighbors.
 Two hundred years older than Pakistan, Central Asian states
to the north (breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991)
 Ethnically diverse:
 Afghanistan's national anthem recognizes 14 ethnic groups
among the country's 27 million people: Pashtuns, tajiks,
hazaras, Uzbeks, Balochis, turkmens, nooristanis, Pamiris,
Arabs, gujars, Brahuis, Qizilbash, Aimaq and Pashai.
 Some of its borders were artificially delineated—in particular the
Durand Line along the border with present-day Pakistan-
contentious issue because it did not have a clear ethnic or
geographical rationale.
 Afghanistan’s borders were shaped mainly through processes of
conflict and resistance.
Afghanistan thy name is
misery
Afghanistan is a country marred with
perceived fragility: political instability,
socio-economic deprivation, lack of political
stability, deteriorated infrastructure-
connectivity networks- non functional state
structure.
 domestic rivalries: successive civil wars,
post soviet withdrawal/ post US invasion
succession disputes:
 external challenges: hostile neighbours,
regional power politics (pak-india), great
power politics (US-USSR)
Afghanistan an enigma
 With ethnic diversity and considerable levels of interethnic tensions
and conflicts,
 Yet there has never been a serious separatist movement in the
country, let alone one with any significant prospects of success.
 Second, contrary to some views, Afghanistan can be effectively
governed and be politically stable.
 The monarchical state that ruled from 1933 to 1973 differed in
many ways from the typical modern state in industrialized countries.
 Though it did not penetrate deeply into the countryside in large parts
of the country, nor was it very successful developmentally.
 What it did:
 keep the peace and maintain order,
 was perceived as legitimate internally and externally,
 maintained reasonable control over its borders,
 exercised independent diplomacy in a difficult region,
 and limited and monitored the activities of foreigners within the
country.
Afghanistan as a state
Before 1978:
 Ahmad shah Durrani 1747-1772
 Afghanistan as a state was born in the mid-eighteenth century as
a dynastic, expansionist Pashtun-led power under Ahmad Shah
Durrani (1747–72), who conquered Delhi and took over parts of the
Indian subcontinent.
 The country was moulded into its present territorial boundaries
during a century-long process of wars and diplomacy known as the
Great
Game (a geopolitical rivalry between British interests in India to the
East and South, Russia expanding from the North, and to some
extent Iran to the West)
 Three Anglo-Afghan wars were waged during that time:
 from 1839 to 1842,
 1878 to 1880,
 and briefly in 1919.
First great game
 Afghanistan became a buffer state between the
British and Russian empires, and in the process was
both buffeted and strengthened.
 From 1880 until the end of 1979, no foreign troops
occupied Kabul or other Afghan cities.
 For several decades following the third Anglo-Afghan
war in 1919 Afghanistan was left somewhat alone.
 Afghanistan’s geopolitical role again became
important during the Cold War, when it benefited
from major Soviet and U.S. assistance programs.
 The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s saw gradual
modernization in what remained a very poor
country with extremely low social indicators.
First reform effort: by king
Amanulla 1919-1929
 Amanullah Khan: 9 Jun 1926 to 14 Jan 1929

 1st King

 Modern agenda of Afghanistan

 Differences with conservative forces

 Forced to step down while on visit to Europe

 The country went through a major but aborted reform

process under King Amanullah (1919–29) and then

maintained its neutrality during World War II.

Political turmoil
 Longest period of relative peace and stability under
King Zahir Shah (1933–73).
• Zahir Shah: 8 Nov 1933 to 17 Jul 1973
• Joined League of Nations in 1934
• Improved relations with USSR, UK and USA
• 1930s, agreements on foreign assistance and trade with Germany, Italy and Japan
• Removed through a coup by his cousin and former Prime Minister in 1973
• Lived in exile for 29 years

 Leading to a bloodless coup by the king’s cousin

Mohammad Daoud in 1973- Afghanistan was instituted
as a republic.
 Followed by a bloody communist coup and takeover in
1978, and finally the Soviet occupation starting at the end
of 1979 (two decades of debilitating conflict).
Patterns of Afghan politics that resonate till date:

1. Afghanistan grave yard of empires- never

been subdued or conquered by invaders
Consequences : Construction of Afghan national
identity
 Afghan national identity was formed and defined
by “resistance against foreign incursions”

A religious dimension was later given to the

national identity because most incursions/invaders
were non-Muslim powers (Russia, Britain, USSR,
USA).
2. Problems of Dynastic
succession
 During the entire period from 1747 to 1978, with one
very brief exception in 1929, the country was ruled by
Durrani Pashtuns from a tiny number of clans within
that broader group .
 Dynastic succession was a chronic problem after the
death of a ruler.
 The usual pattern was violent contention for the
throne, sometimes lasting for years.
 Potentially eligible claimants within the ruling clan
were often numerous, and the tendency for some
failed claimants to be “pensioned” with a living
allowance in British India, able to return under the
appropriate circumstances, further added to the
complexities of succession.
 Although the dynasty established by Ahmad Shah Durrani
was decisively put down in 1978, its legacy and aura of
legitimacy remained.
 There had been number of calls over the years for the
return of former King Zahir Shah, at least in a figurehead
role, and his return and engagement after 2001 until his
death in 2007.
 Interestingly, President Hamid Karzai is a member of the
same Popalzai tribe of the Durrani Pashtun grouping as
dynastic founder
Ahmad Shah Durrani and his immediate successors.
 Hence some of this aura of legitimacy may have extended
to Karzai in the first years after 2001.
 3. Political Legitimacy
Lasting legacy of afghan national identity, wars of
succession/civil wars:

Is ,
Political legitimacy is conferred by the ability to
take power, defeat rivals, provide peace and
security, perceived independence from foreign
control.

Hence, continuation of afghan political culture of

civil wars
4. Afghan Political/institutional
Culture
 De jure Afghanistan was always a unitary state under a monarch (first
amir and later king) and in accordance with the several constitutions.
 The degree of de facto power concentrated at the center relative
to regional interests varied over time.
 Local Afghan governance remained largely traditional and
informal, .
 When the country was stable and at peace, the two systems
synergistically reinforced one another, and even when instability and
change afflicted the top, local governance was largely insulated.
 The physical reach of the state into the countryside was
limited especially in the more remote areas, but its legitimacy and
overall authority were broadly accepted.
 At its best, the system provided workable arrangements
between centralized monarchical rule and the highly diverse,
decentralized, and traditional Afghan reality in most parts of
the country.
5. Reaction to modernization
efforts
 A lesson from Afghanistan’s twentieth-century experience is
that in this kind of context, overly ambitious and rushed
modernization efforts, even if internally rather than
externally driven, resulted in sharp domestic reactions
that set back development, sometimes for decades.
 This was particularly true of reforms disturbing established
power relations in the rural areas and affecting religion,
culture, and the role of women.
 King Amanullah’s : The most notable example was King
Amanullah’s effort to impose reforms and modernization,
which stimulated a violent reaction and eventually his ouster
from power.
 The forceful and violent changes that the communist regime
of 1978 to 1992 tried to impose in its initial years in power
elicited an even stronger reaction.
 a gradual and evolutionary approach could achieve modest
progress.
 A good example during the decades of the 1950s to the
1970s was female education—including coeducation
in Kabul University.
 It changed social norms in Kabul and a few other cities,
where educated women began not wearing the traditional
Afghan veil.
 Historically evolutionary reforms had been
concentrated in the cities where receptivity was greater.
Consequences :
 Opening a widening urban-rural cultural divide that
with the existing bifurcation/division of centralized state
power and traditional local governance.
6. Culture of ‘external
financing’
18th centaury :Reliance on military campaigns
 Afghanistan has relied to varying degrees on external financing to
run its state and for public investments.
 In the second half of the eighteenth century, frequent military
campaigns in the Indian subcontinent and associated plunder and
tribute were the main source of funding, used primarily to
support a large army of an estimated 120,000 at peak.
 Over time, this approach became increasingly unviable given
weaker Afghan rulers and the rise of the Sikh confederation-
empire centered in the Punjab.
 By the end of the eighteenth century, it no longer worked at all,
and the country progressively lost much of the territory outside
present-day Afghanistan that Ahmad Shah Durrani had
conquered.
19th Centaury : subsidies from British India
In the nineteenth century, external financing
came in the form of subsidies from British India.
These were intended to prevent unrest and
uprisings fomented in Afghanistan and to
support Afghanistan as a buffer state against
the expanding Russian Empire to the north.
20th Centaury :
From the 1950s to 1970s, considerable aid was
provided by both the Soviet Union and the
United States as part of their global Cold War
rivalry, resulting in Afghanistan’s becoming one of
the highest per-capita recipients of development
assistance in the world.
Since 1978, large quantities of material and sizable
financial support were provided to the state and
its mujahideen opponents during the Soviet
occupation.
Opium economy also became a fertile source of
funding.
7. A rentier state
 The regime in most periods did not have to mobilize large
revenues from the Afghan population or businesses to cover
its costs.
 Consequently resulting into failure of ‘state building’
 Secondly, the rentier state did not guarantee Afghan
responsiveness, let alone loyalty, to the source of the
external funding. Why ?
 Cutting abrupt aids never helped.
 Moreover, Shifting allegiances among Afghan tribal armed
forces were common in times of unrest and uncertainty
over who would be the ruler.
 E.g. The government’s decision in the 1950s to seek
military aid and training from the Soviet Union resulted, to a
considerable extent, in an ideologically indoctrinated officer
corps and sowed the seeds for the 1978 coup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHVpF
85CIIY&t=582s
Soviet Occupation
 1978 onwards:
 A Coup brought a pro-Soviet communist Afghan government PDPA
(People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan) into power in April 1978 was followed
by:
 Ambitious reforms (notably land reform and gender
equality), wholesale arrests, torture and execution of
opponents, and ruling-party.
 Actions were unpopular with the conservative Afghans
 Saw them as a threat to the Afghan religion and customs
 Short term soviet goal:
 Soviets wanted to maintain the Communist government – invaded in 1979 to intervene
 Long term goals:
 Maintenance of communist sphere of influence and spread of communism
 Speculated goals :
 Access of Indian ocean through India.
 Trade with India and its large population
 Natural resources: iron ore, natural gas, uranium, Copper
Afghan- Soviet invasion
Soviet Action: placing of Babrak Karmal Regime in Afghanistan
Afghan Reaction: Leaders launch a jihad against communism and
communist govt
Soviet Counter Reaction:
Playing Brezhnev Doctrine: “Right of the Soviet Union to militarily get
involved to prevent the overthrow of a neighboring communist
government”
Seizure of Kabul as well as other major Afghan cities and highways
Afghan Counter-counter Reaction: Guerilla warfare
Mujaheedeen got foreign assistance from the US
1983- US, UK, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, PRC become supporters
for Afghanistan.
Weapons supplied through Pakistan.
1986- US and UK supplied antiaircraft missles and ground to
ground rockets that allowed Mujahideen to shoot down Soviet
aircrafts.
In 1988, the Soviet Union, now with the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev
agreed to withdraw the Soviet troops within a 10 month period.
1988- Geneva Accord
1989- Soviet government withdrew troops from Afghanistan-
Mujahideen take over Kabul
Mujahideen Groups

Peshawar Seven (Islamic Unity of

Afghanistan Mujahideen)
Formed May 1985
Sunni Muslims, Pashtuns
Two Categories
 Political Islamists: Khalis faction (Khalis), Hezbi –e-
Islami (Hekmatyar), Jamiat- i-Islami ( Rabbani),
and Islamic Union for the Liberation of
Afghanistan ( Sayyaf )
 Traditionalists: National Islamic Front for
Afghanistan ( Gailani ) Afghanistan National Liberation
Front ( Mojaddedi ), and Revolutionary Islamic
Movement ( Mohammadi).
Support: US, UK, China, KSA and Pakistan
Mujahideen Groups-
Tehran Eight
Shiite Muslims mainly Hazara supported by
Iran
Groups
 Afghan Hezbollah
 Nasr Party
 Corps of Revolutionary Guardians of Afghanistan
 Islamic Movement of Afghanistan
 Committee of Islamic Agreement
 Islamic Revolution Movement
 Union of Islamic Fighters
 Raad
Lessons learnt:
Several significant characteristics of the early post-1978
period :
 Overly ambitious reforms led to strong domestic reactions
and setbacks, leaving the country worse off and stifling
progress for decades.
 Excessive optimism on the part of the Soviet Union in
launching a military intervention with initially limited
objectives and a short time frame proved unwarranted—
same as in the case of the first two Anglo-Afghan wars.
 The Soviet Union was unable to exert strong control over
Afghan politicians, despite their being nominally subject to
Communist Party discipline.
 A purely military solution proved impossible despite
massive injection of forces and brutal counterinsurgency
methods.
Post soviet withdrawal :
 The Najibullah government supported by Soviet was attacked
by the mujahideen immediately after the Soviet withdrawal.
 Afghan security forces could only hold onto the larger
cities and proved unable to exert any meaningful
control over the countryside.
 the government /co-opted/paid/ bribed a range of tribal
leaders into not fighting, often using Soviet-provided aid—
including weapons, food, and fuel—to make local deals.
 Some militias joined the army and were deployed in other
regions when needed.
 The militia based approach worked in the short run but
carried serious risks, given that leaders and their militias
easily could (and did) change sides and turn against
the government if funding was cut off.
The most dominant cause of the Najibullah
regime’s collapse was the cut off of Soviet
material assistance, financial aid, and
military supplies in 1991 and 1992.
This did not reflect policy as much as lack
of resources given that the Soviet Union
was coming to an end.
 The Afghan government began to see
military defeats and militia defections, and
Kabul fell in April 1992.
Emergence of Taliban
 The mujahideen regime that took over was highly
factionalized and faced opposition from other groups.
 To a large extent, it was a government in name only, and
the situation
soon degenerated into a vicious and bloody civil war that
destroyed Kabul, which had largely escaped damage
during the Soviet and Najibullah periods.
 Much of the country descended into warlordism, brutal
human rights abuses, and criminality.
 This created the conditions for the emergence and rapid
expansion of the Taliban movement starting in 1994, which
took over Kabul in 1996 and by the end of the decade
controlled some 90 percent of Afghanistan’s territory.
Conditions that contributed in
emergence of Taliban
Legacy of campaigns of terror to eliminate
opposition especially educated elites in urban area,
Islamic scholars, tribal chiefs in countryside since
1978.
Lack of political organisation and political process
created a muddle for mass mobilisation, political
and national unity.
Two types of elites were left on countryside:
 Tribal chiefs and religious leaders with different
ideologies and different bases of power.
The tribal elites were strengthened and were relied
upon by the Afghan government whereas the
religious elites were marginalized.
Interestingly every government since Amir
Abdul Rahman Khan in the 1880s, has tried
to marginalize these people and keep them
from declaring jihad.
They even created a new class of religious
elites based on state madrasas some of
whom were also sent to al-Azhar to try to
marginalize those old rural elites who
subsequently became the Taliban.

Who do you think took advantage of

these marginalised rural religious
elites?
Long lasting repercussions of
afghan Jihad in the 80s
 The politics post soviet late 80s withdrawal becomes more
complex and multi-dimensional.
 why ?
 The role of volunteers begin!
 Many afghan put down their weapons however, CIA and ISI had
different goals: the overthrow of Najibullah.
 Gulbuddin Hikmatyar was on an ideological quest
 creation of a transnational Islamic movement
 CIA, ISI, Al-Istakhbara al-‘Ama , China
 The US alone supplied approximately $3 billion in economic and
covert military assistance to mujahadeen groups between 1980
and 1989.
 Consequences: destruction of networks of governance : there was
no government in place and everyone was armed.
 The human capital needed to run any society had been massively
destroyed.
Taliban’s achievement of
Legitimacy
 Years of ‘mujahideen tyranny’ post soviet withdrawal.
 The Taliban come from southern Afghanistan, the area we
can call Kandahar: there was no government after 1992.
 In Kabul there was civil war, but a little bit of
infrastructure/ state structure was left.
 Herat, under Ismail Khan, actually was running rather
well.
 Jalalabad in the east was under a kind of a shura:
chaotic and the security situation was not very good.
 But in Kandahar the security situation was really
terrible, that’s where the warlordism was the worst.
 It’s also where the mujahideen parties were the weakest
because there are no Kandaharis in the leadership of
the mujahideen in Peshawar.
Taliban’s achievement of
Legitimacy
 The taliban were affiliated with Deobandi madrassas .
 They comprised of two factions:
 Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami of Mawlawi Nabi Muhammadi and
Hizb-i Islami led by Mawlawi Yunus Khalis.-Graduates of
Haqqaniya madrasa in Akhora Khattak, NWFP/KP Pakistan.
 Had close ties with Jamiat-I Ulema Islami, especially the Fazlur
Rahman group. (Muhammadi studied with Fazlur Rahman’s father).
 Most of the Talibs were too young to have been in the Afghan
jihad .
 In fact, the Taliban partly represent a generational revolt against
the mujahideen.
 The Taliban : cleared area- popular with local people- Kandaharis
taking over Kandahar, bringing order in a way people there
understood.
 The Taliban (supposedly) fought to restore the honor of Islam and
Afghanistan.
Taliban Rule (1996 – 2001)
Once in power, the Taliban enforced a strict
set of rules, based on an extremist
interpretation of Islam and shari’a law.
gender-based restrictions
The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and
the Suppression of Vice
Ethnic cleansing and massacred
Loss of local and int’ support
Strengthening of Northern Alliance
(Rabbani, Massoud and Ismail Khan)
On October 7, 2001, a coalition of international
forces, led by the US, declared war on the Taliban
government.
Following the September 11 attacks, the US and its
allies pursued military action with the primary goal
of eliminating Afghanistan as a safe haven for
international terrorists.
In May 2003, the US announced an end to major
combat operations.
The Bonn Agreement 2001: forming an interim
administration headed by Hamid Karzai and
authorizing an international peacekeeping force to
maintain security in Kabul.
Northern alliance
North alliances: predominantly Uzbek
and Tajik led by Ahmed Shah Masood
A loose alliance of primarily Pashtun Islamic
groups which took control of Kabul in 1992.
 It disintegrated in 1993, but the alliance
was reformed in 1996 as its leaders
retreated from the Taliban offensive.
 It controlled less than 10 per cent of
Afghan territory between 1999 and 2001.
It became the principal ally of the USA after
9/11 and US invasion of Afghanistan.
The Bonn Agreement 2001: did
it bring peace?
 Unlike most peace agreements, Bonn did not force the
warring factions to lay down their arms; nor did it
institute a process for establishing truth or
accountability for past crimes.
 Rather, it marked a clear continuation of a policy of
cooption of warlords and commanders to achieve US
objectives.
 Al Qaeda and the Taliban were excluded from this
process and many of the participating factions were
still being armed by the US to fight against them.
 Bonn further legitimized these warlords by granting
them prominent positions and power within the interim
government.
Following Fall of Taliban
Afghan constitution was adopted in January 2004.
However, Forces serving in the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) remained largely confined to
Kabul, until expanding into the north, west and south
of the country in 2004, 2005 and 2006, respectively.
The UN also initially pursued a “light footprint”
approach, opening only two provincial-level offices
before 2006.
Fall of Taliban : 2006, the security situation rapidly
deteriorated. Roadside and other bomb attacks
nearly doubled from the previous year, suicide
attacks increased six-fold and there were more than
a thousand civilian casualties.
Afghanistan’s dangerous
neighbourhood
 Pakistan, Iran, Central Asian states: interests ?
 High Afghan officials in previous regime have regularly accused
Pakistan of tolerating militant recruitment, training camps, and
arms depots on its territory.
 Accusations of support for “Pashtoon dominated” transnational
jihadist/militant organisation
 And exploitation of Afghan ethnic diversity for strategic goals.
 Is search for strategic depth is rooted at Pakistan’s proactive
F.P in Afghanistan ?
 or is it linked with Kashmir issue?
 Energy corridor to Central Asia:
 Peshawar, Jalalabad, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Tashkent or Quetta,
Kandahar, Herat, Turkmenistan (general baber and Benazir
Bhutto)
Rise of Taliban 2.0
Doha process
The Taliban’s 11-day Blitzkrieg: With almost no
resistance, one provincial capital after another fell.
The Afghan army, trained by the United States, was
nowhere to be seen as the Taliban entered Kabul. Is it
a new trend?
Since 2001, the United States has spent $83 billion to
train Afghan National Defense and Security Forces
(ANDSF) including the military, elite forces, and
national police.
Had the Taliban not taken over Kabul, Washington
previously allocated $3.3 billion for 2022, with a
pledge of increasing it to $4 billion until 2024.
 Iran and Pakistan could have the most influence or be the worst
affected by Taliban-run Afghanistan.
 If Afghanistan’s troubles worsen, it could result in the spilling
over of unrest, refugees and militancy to neighboring countries,
especially Pakistan and Iran.
 Iran: apart from the refugee flows, terrorist threats and illicit
trade in narcotics, status of Shia Muslims and other minority
groups under Taliban rule, such as the Hazaras, who are mostly
Shia Muslims, and Tajiks, with whom Iran has close ties.
 Tajikistan’s concerns
 India: Taliban 2.0 regime appears receptive to the idea of
normalizing ties with India: The recent restarting of Indian aid,
with 50,000 metric tons of wheat sent to Afghanistan in
February 2022, signals a pragmatic approach to the Taliban
regime.
With the United States freezing former
Afghan government foreign reserves and
the meagre prospects of the Taliban
accepting the Afghan constitution as the
system of governance, the original
conditions of the 2020 US-Taliban
agreement stand diluted.
Why did the USSR involve itself in
a war in Afghanistan (1979-1989)?
 Answer : Brezhnev Doctrine
 Before the USSR had become involved in the war in
Afghanistan, a commitment to the Brezhnev Doctrine was
established.
 This doctrine stated that the Soviet Union would get
involved if a friendly communist government was
being overthrown and try to prevent any
consequences.
 So, as Afghanistan delved into civil war in 1979, the USSR
was obliged help and pursued towards a military
intervention.
 This assistance consisted of not only 4,500 combat advisers
released by Leonid Brezhnev but also Soviet aircrafts that
were ready to conduct bombing raids. This doctrine was the
point of instigation that led the USSR to becoming involved.