Of Minorities And Their Warlords

Our friends at neweurasia have posted another one of their regional surveys, on minorities. They kindly asked me to return, contributing a rather generalized piece on how various warlords carved out their own ethnic enclaves in Afghanistan over the past several decades. I have to cop to a last minute scramble, and there are huge holes in what I wrote—after all, the country itself is an incredibly rich, diverse set of ethnicities (even including, in the very recent past, an active Jewish community), and a single blog post cannot hope to capture more than a brief glimpse of what it’s like. Still, I hope what’s on hand might be insightful.

What is there to say about a country that is, technically, all minorities? For not a single ethnicity in Afghanistan breaches the magical 50% mark to become a true majority, and this has created friction, at the least. Indeed, in one sense, the story of Afghanistan itself is really the story of how its minorities battle for control, power, and the right to live.

By any common definition, the Pashtuns are Afghanistan’s ethnic majority, though they are really only a plurality. And much of Afghanistan’s recent history is the story of their struggle for national and tribal independence. For any discussion of the Pashtun must include a discussion of its tribal divisions, which have played major roles in Afghanistan’s power relationships. As but one example, President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban’s erstwhile leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are members of the Popalzai and Hotak tribes respectively, both centered around Kandahar. The history of conflict between their two tribes reaches back centuries. In 1715, Mirwais Khan Hotak overthrew the local Persian governor of Kandahar, and his son formed an Empire that eventually sacked the ancient capital Isfahan. In 1747, Ahmah Khan Abdali, of Karzai’s Popalzai tribe, was crowned King by a tribal Jirga.

Put differently, much of the fighting in Afghanistan today can be seen as simply the latest stage in a centuries-long conflict between Pashtun tribes.

Reducing Afghanistan to tribal warfare, however, is too simplistic. Abdali (who took the name Durrani and created the royal heritage the Taliban lay claim to in 1994) was named King because the ruler of the Persian Empire, a Turkmen named Nader Shah, was murdered. Today, however, the Turkmen are a comparatively miniscule slice of Afghan ethnicity, whose biggest contributions were to Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance, first against the Soviets, and later against the Taliban.

Massoud is perhaps the gold standard of Afghanistan’s ethnic warriors. A Tajik, the so-called “Lion of the Panjshir,” fiercely defended his home in the Panjshir Valley just north or Kabul for decades, until the Pakistani-funded Taliban drove him north to Feyzabad. Massoud earned a name for himself, and became the pride of Tajiks in Afghanistan, by remaining resolutely independent in his struggle for independence.

He was shunned by the CIA and ISI because he wouldn’t follow their orders, choosing the defense of his home instead of the role of a proxy crusader. He later was forced into virtual exile in the North as the Taliban made their sweep of death across the country. In fact, he was so important, Al-Qaeda assassinated him as part of their September 11 conspiracy—they knew Massoud could rally a U.S.-armed invasion force, and wanted him out of the picture when the towers fell.

Massoud was forced into an uneasy alliance with Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord known for his ferocity, massacres, and unyielding tactics during the 80s. Though he fought for the Soviet-backed regime, Dostum switched sides in 1992 and turned his back on the communist Najibullah, throwing in his hat with Massoud.

Upon taking Kabul, he initiated a reign of terror that rivaled the worst of the Soviets, turning the city into a pock-marked wasteland. He then switched sides again in 1994, teaming up with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun from the Kharoti tribe, against the new alliance between Massoud and Berhanuddin Rabbani. Rabbani, also a Tajik, was the President of Afghanistan until his murder in 1996.

In the ensuing fighting, these ethnic warlords turned Kabul into something of a meat grinder, killing tens of thousands of people in just a few years. It was, in every sense of the word, a battle for which race would rule the land—the collection of Tajik warlords, or the alliance of Uzbeks and Pashtuns.

Why go into the history of warlords in Afghanistan? For all intents and purposed, they served as proxies for their ethnic or tribal groups. Each warlord, from the 80’s onward, established his own ethnic enclave, and these would sometimes clash with frightfully bloody consequences. But even beyond the Big Three, as I call them, are a surprisingly large contingent of ethnicities, all of which lay claim to their own barren slice of the country.

Way down south, at the chaotic intersection of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran are the Balochis. They once harbored Mir Aimal Kasi, the man who murdered several employees of the CIA in front of their headquarters in 1993. They chafe at the influence and power of Islamabad, while bemoaning its negligence.

The Hazara live in the middle part of the country, and contributed their own warlord to Afghanistan’s decades of warfare, General Khalili. In stark contrast to the Pashtuns and Tajiks and Turkmen, they are Shia Muslims, which led to some tragic interactions with the Taliban, who considered them apostates.

There are more, of course, including a surprisingly large number of Hindus, and a fading Jewish heritage. But simply reviewing the decades, even centuries, of ethnic conflict doesn’t offer much insight into what happens now, today. And in that, I have to plead my own ignorance. I could draw inferences from the news reports I read, or canvass my friends serving in the military to see what they’ve noticed. There are clashes, theft, harassment, rapes, even murders.

None of it, though, captures the real situation on the ground—the real status of Afghanistan’s multitudinous ethnic groups. For that, you must consult one who has actually traveled there, absorbed the sense and feel of the people there. I, sadly, have not.