Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict

Michael Vinay Bhatia, Mark Sedra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134054213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive assessment of small arms and security-related issues in post-9/11 Afghanistan. It includes case studies which reveal the findings of in-depth field research on hitherto neglected regions of the country, and provides a distinctive balance of thematic analysis, conceptual models and empirical research.

Exploring various facets of armed violence and measures to tackle it, the volume provides significant insight into broader issues such as the efficacy of international assistance, the 'shadow' economy, warlordism, and the Taliban-led insurgency. In an effort to deconstruct and demystify Afghanistan's alleged 'gun culture', it also explores some of the prevailing obstacles and opportunities facing the country in its transition period. In so doing, the book offers valuable lessons to the state-builders of Afghanistan as well as those of other countries and regions struggling to emerge from periods of transition.

This book will be of much interest to all students of Afghanistan, small arms, insurgency, Asian Studies, and conflict studies in general.

Part I
Mapping insecurity

Weapons flows and armed groups in Afghanistan

1 Violence in Afghanistan

An overview

Michael Bhatia

Distressingly, ‘the rule of the gun’ is a term often applied to many post-conflict environments. In essence, the term refers to the continued dominance of armed groups and commanders and their influence over a broad range of sectors, from the political to the economic. While the fighting may have ended – whether as a consequence of a negotiated agreement, external intervention, war fatigue, peace-building or a changing international system – for the local population, the situation remains characterized by a high degree of insecurity. As will be demonstrated throughout this book, it is an appropriate description for Afghan politics over the past three decades.

This chapter reveals how, after three decades of armed conflict and arms transfers, security remains the primary concern of Afghans and disarmament is overwhelmingly supported by the majority of the Afghan citizenry. The chapter examines the varied domains in which insecurity is felt – chronicling both the legacy of conflict (in terms of victimization, underdevelopment, chronic deprivation and psychological trauma) and its varied dimensions. It describes the consequences of small arms proliferation and the link between small arms and the role of militias and commanders, locally and nationally.

This chapter also reveals the linkage between small arms, militias and commanders, revealing how the influence of the gun is felt far beyond direct combat, particularly in the political arena, whether in the newly established Parliament or in village politics. It concludes by engaging with three common dimensions of violence: varieties of inter-factional conflict, the role of the Afghan state and the discussion of the ‘Afghan security dilemma.’

The latter two dimensions introduce the particular role of legitimacy as a prominent factor in the relationship between communities, commanders and states. The chapter shows how the absence of a state able to act as an arbiter accountable in local disputes allows the commander to acquire community legitimacy in exchange for protection. As will be demonstrated throughout this book, there is a particular need to examine the links between the different governments involved, businesses, private security companies, commanders, communities and combatants.

Afghanistan’s outlook today is a mixture of hope and despair. Substantial progress has been made over the past five years:

• Emergency and Constitutional Loya Jirgas were convened;
• a president (2004), Parliament (2005) and provincial councils were elected;
• the 60,000-strong Afghan Military Forces were demilitarized and the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme was initiated;
• a locally legitimate, multi-ethnic and operationally effective Afghan National Army was created;
• roads and highways were rebuilt and schools were reopened;
• a new stable and anti-inflationary currency was promulgated.

Some prominent commanders are far weaker and less entrenched than at any point in the last 25 years. Others continue to expand their power into the economic and political realms. The conditions established under the Bonn Agreement were met with the inauguration of the Parliament, and a new Afghan Compact was signed indicating continued donor commitment in 2006. Although there are continued complaints from the Bush administration as to the lack of European burden-sharing, NATO has assumed command over Operation Enduring Freedom, with the Canadians, British and Dutch deploying substantial forces to the southwest and incurring casualties in the process (Jalali, 2006).

And yet, while the progress made since 2001 is considerable, a number of developments introduce cause for concern. Many critics point to the lack of military and financial resources provided to Afghanistan (initially considered the primary frontline of the ‘war on terror’), particularly in comparison to the resources sent to Iraq. The consequences of this are threefold.

First, after several years of covert regeneration (evidence of which was dismissed throughout 2005), the revitalization of the Anti-Government Forces (AGF)¹ insurgency has graphically challenged these impressions of progress. More than 4,000 people (primarily AGF militants) died in violence in 2006 (AFP, 2006c). Spring 2006 witnessed a renewed willingness by the Taliban to engage in sizeable set-piece battles and massed attacks against Coalition and Afghan government forces, although NATO was generally viewed to have successfully rebuffed their offensive. Perhaps even more significantly, however, it decisively demonstrated the Taliban’s command of the mountains and countryside in significant areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Moreover, the AGF felt sufficiently reconstituted so as to forego the traditional winter lull in fighting and was even able to overrun government positions in Musa Qala, Helmand in February 2007 and administer the province (imposing Shari’a law and collecting taxes) through to July 2007 (IRIN, 2007).

Second, as will be demonstrated in this chapter, questions remain as to the degree to which the positive steps detailed above are actually felt at the local level. Indeed, some individual Afghans, both in press accounts and in personal interviews, even question whether they are better off now than they were under the Taliban (Zahid, 2002a). Insecurity, whatever its sources (whether from crime, warlords, Coalition operations or the Taliban), remains the primary concern of most villagers. The Afghan National Army’s (ANA) development has not been accompanied by the strengthening of the police and the judiciary, whose corruption has served to compromise the legitimacy of the emerging Afghan government and to undermine the counter-insurgency effort. While the government of Afghanistan has limited the role of commanders in the Presidential Cabinet and the Ministry of Defence, figures who maintain militias have moved to the Parliament and to positions in provincial and district administrations (Jalali, 2006; Bhatia, 2007). While these figures may provide protection to certain constituencies, they also produce vulnerability for either opposing groups or for those without connection to an armed group.

Third, the graphic increase in opium production and the inconsistent and flawed approach to both eradication and police, judiciary and local governance reform, threatens to turn Afghanistan into a narco-state. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime indicated that the area under opium cultivation reached a record 165,000 hectares in 2006 compared with 104,000 in 2005. In the southern province of Helmand, where Taliban insurgents have scaled up their attacks on Afghan government and international forces, cultivation soared 162 per cent to 69,324 hectares (Mansfield, 2006). Far from reducing the Taliban’s sources of funding, the counter-narcotics campaign has increased local support for Taliban activities in the northeast and south. Moreover, appropriation of the counter-narcotics effort by local powerbrokers to consolidate their hold over land, markets, cotton, poppy and wheat produces a sense of injustice and hypocrisy among local populations (Mansfield, 2006).

The combination of a revived AGF insurgency, continued dominance of the opium economy (and its influence on national politics and institutions) and local dissatisfaction due to insecurity and underdevelopment presents a major challenge to both the international community and the Afghan government.

The consequences of small arms proliferation and conflict in Afghanistan

Since 1975, with the first failed rebellions by the political-military party Ikhwanun-ul-Musulman in the Panjsher and Charikar, Afghanistan has experienced a succession of civil wars of varying intensity. In 1978, community rebellions in Nuristan and military rebellions in Herat evolved into a decade-long sustained insurgency against the Soviet-backed Karmal and Najibullah governments. Much to the surprise of the West, the Najibullah government was able to retain control of the government until 1992, with its collapse producing vicious inter-factional conflict around Kabul and the northeast and dividing the country into regional fiefdoms of varying size. Both through negotiations with local communities and with the support of Pakistan’s government, the Taliban was able to conquer and administer as much as 90 per cent of the country, prompting the formation of the Northern Alliance between the remaining armed groups.

The deployment of American forces to Afghanistan, which, in the early phases, involved meetings between Special Forces soldiers and intelligence officials with militia commanders in Islamabad, Quetta and throughout Afghanistan, revitalized flagging militias through the provision of financial and military assistance. Elder authority was re-invoked in Kandahar by the Aliokzai, Barakzai and Popalzai qawms, remobilizing individuals who had left the fighting during the Taliban regime. In addition, the presence of any number of private security companies and their employment of combatants created new incentives for individuals either to retain or pick up arms.

For these reasons and due to the revitalized insurgency, the post-9/11 era in Afghanistan, while not as comparatively violent as the previous three periods, should still be viewed as a renewed period of conflict and mobilization.

Here, the consequences of small arms proliferation and conflict are examined. First, the role of small arms in the dominance of commanders and militias in local and national politics are revealed. Second, the profound human costs and legacy of more than three decades of war are reviewed. Third, the continued human impact of small arms, in terms of human rights abuses, land conflict and abuses against the humanitarian presence are reviewed.

As in perhaps no other conflict, the presence of small arms in Afghanistan is so overwhelming and easily apparent that an exploration of their significance appears almost redundant. Whether over land, water, business or marriage, conflicts between individuals, families and communities become all the more violent by the ready stockpiles of mines, explosive ordnance and guns. While the possession of weapons is the most visible way of distinguishing the power of commanders and militias, it is not the exclusive manifestation of power. Availability and victimization are only one determinant of influence and impact. The rule of the gun incorporates not only active violence but structural violence, such as the distortive effect of arms proliferation on political reconstruction and development (UNDP, 2004).

The proliferation of small arms and light weapons had significant (but by no means exclusive) consequences:

• stressing, and potentially undermining, traditional methods of conflict resolution;
• aggravating and intensifying local violence;
• empowering new elites distinct from religious and tribal institutions;
• steadying the loss of a central monopoly on force in favour of regional and local militias;
• exacerbating intra-village violence;
• intensifying communal conflict throughout South Asia;
• extending the influence of commanders from the military to the economic and political dimensions;
• undermining attempts at negotiation, particularly from 1988–2001;
• strengthening extremist factions and, later, strongmen, to the detriment of traditional community elders.

The Afghan arms pipeline – the global effort to supply the warring parties, both government and non-state – has had profound regional and global reverberations. Weapons from Afghanistan and Pakistan were used by criminal agents in Karachi and Mumbai; and were later said have been utilized in Kashmir, the Philippines (Abu-Sayyaf group), Burma (anti-government forces) and Sri Lanka (Liberation Tigers of Tamir-Elam). The Abu Sayyaf group received as many as 3,000 weapons (from AKs to anti-tank rockets and landmines) in 1999.² Arab and other international veterans of the Afghan jihad returned home to sow disorder in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The regional implications of arms proliferation remain most apparent in Pakistan. The scale of money and arms moving through the pipeline is proposed to have distorted Pakistan society. According to Attar Ansari of the Frontier Post,

The money that flowed in has brought drugs, arms, and so much corruption that it has changed life here beyond recognition.... The lawlessness on both sides of the international border, the centuries-old smuggling networks, and the tribal loyalties that rule the trade in drugs and sophisticated arms are likely to ensure that Peshawar’s frontier flavor will endure for many years to come.

(quoted in Zubrzycki, 1996)

The scale and manner with which funds moved to Afghanistan considerably strengthened anti-democratic and Islamist forces within Pakistan’s government. The Arab mujahideen introduced into Pakistan’s borderland, Zia’s appropriation of an Islamist message, Soviet/KHAD infiltration and the arms influx into Pakistan, all graphically increased internal violence in Pakistan, between Shi’a and Sunni, as well as between a number of ethnic and tribal groups (Baluch, intra-Pathan, Bihari, Sindh, etc.) (Nasir, 1987, p. 32; Hilali, 2002, pp. 299, 301, 304, 306). By 1998, there were as many as 7,000 Darra-made AKs in Karachi (Sullivan, 1998). In summer 2001, Pakistan’s government was able to collect 86,757 weapons alone over a two week amnesty period, and 55,000 weapons at checkpoints, with weapons then redistributed to the police force (Terzieff, 2002). President Musharraf’s attempts to limit weapons proliferation in Pakistan included a ‘ban on the issuance of new gun permits and production licenses’ in March 2000. Until the escalated demand that followed American intervention in Afghanistan, this induced a substantial decline in weapons production in the border areas (Terzieff, 2002).

Small arms and the rise of the ‘warlord class’

Here, the impact of commanders and small arms on traditional shuras, the judiciary and prominent political events are briefly examined. To put it simply, the dilemma is not the weapons but the individuals and networks behind them. For this reason, there is a graphic need to assess both the role of the gun and the role of militias, their combined effect on local and regional politics and their broader societal impact. The legacy of small arms has emboldened commanders and militias at the expense of both government and traditional local institutions. A ‘warlord-class’ has arisen – which is either distinct from traditional elites or which has been able to acquire independence from other ‘checks and balances’ on their local and national power. While their possession of arms may be the physical manifestation of their influence, it is not, however, the exclusive expression or source of their influence.

Even after a sizeable disarmament campaign, the number...