Comments on: Pashtun Genocide in Afghanistan and How to stop it

By: Péter

Péter — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:01:11 +0000

I don’t like the idea of any civilian casualties, either, as I myself have written about this before. By now I can see however how the press is zeroing in on this subject, and as a result, quite logically actually, insurgents are using more propaganda nowadays to influence news coverage. ISAF has contributed to this situation by giving at times ridiculously accurate (and high) numbers for ‘militants killed’ after incidents in the wake of which it’s not realistic to imagine somebody really did a careful count. It was also obvious from the start that when ISAF announced, say, 124 insurgents killed, all by air strikes on a given target area, it cannot realistically be assumed that everyone in the area was insurgent (even if the actual number of people killed in the given strikes was in fact just a tenth of what ISAF was talking about). The Taliban on the other hand can get village elders to call AP or Reuters and say that a hundred civilians died in my village and so on. Civilians are killed, true, but now we have even less reason to believe we can have a clear picture as to how many civilian victims there really are.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:21:24 +0000

Like Zaimal, I am deeply sympathetic to the argument that the killing of civilians must be absolutely stopped, no question. As an American with some understanding of the military I am deeply outraged at how the over reliance on air power has led to a simply unacceptable number of civilian deaths (much of my recent writing on here attests to this).

However, I must take issue with the term, “genocide.” While the killing of innocents is absolutely tragic, and without question a moral outrage, it is not genocide. A genocide is the deliberate slaughter of a single people group. Pashtuns are not being specifically targeted by NATO (the Taliban simply tends to hide among them), and NATO is not deliberately killing them. The deaths are the result of some carelessness and bad tactics and a lot of really bad luck. In other words, they are unintentional. Calling such a status genocide only cheapens the term, and makes it more difficult to apply it to actual genocides (like, say, Darfur, or Rwanda).

By: zalmai

zalmai — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:24:24 +0000

Dr. Azari’s frustration is understandable on the issue of civilians being killed by NATO forces in Afghanistan. It is most regrettable and those killings must be stopped. However, he is wrong in pin-pointing the reason for war in South and East Afghanistan. He implies that the Pashtuns are unhappy because they are under-represented in the current administration of Kabul and that the non-Pashtun “warlords” are holding much of power and the warlords are the hindrance to what he call the Pashtun “reconciliation” process. He further claims that the Pashtuns are the majority in Afghanistan and they comprise 60% of the total population. So, they must be represented accordingly in the state.

One can raise several objections. First of all it is very problematic to argue that the insurgency in South and East Afghanistan is because of Pashtun under-representation in the centre. I think it has to do with the radicalization of the youth population these areas in Pakistani madrasas and Pakistan’s overt policies radicalization of the Pashtun belt in Afghanistan. This is because Islam helps to balance Pashtun nationalism (Durrant issue), pressurise the Afghan state to accommodate these radicals who then will have good relation with Pakistan. Also, they will naturally oppose India to mention few reasons.

The insurgency in the South and East Afghanistan has little to do with “warlords.” Let me ask Mr. Azari who are these warlords? Aren’t they the very legends who fought against the Soviet occupation in 1980s who were branded as “freedom–fighter” by the West? Aren’t they those who fought against Taliban and Talibanism and Pakistani plots in 1990s? Mr. Azari himself accepts that they are sidelined from power. Indeed, they were pushed to periphery by being branded as “warlords.” Ironically, contrary to Mr. Azari’s claim, in the current administration the non-Pashtuns are under-represented and the dominant party is Afghan–Milat Party: an ultra Pashtun nationalist party.

Mr. Azari claims that 60% of the population of the country is comprised of Pashtuns. No scientific statistic has taken place in Afghanistan, apart from one in early in 1970s which is deemed as unscientific and biased. Most estimates rate Pashuns in Afghanistan between 30 to 40% and the rest non-Pashtun (see Zalmai Khalilzad, “The Politics of Ethnicity in South Asia: Political development or Political Decay?” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 4 Winter 1984 – 1985, p. 660 to give only one example). Accordingly, one can claim, Afghanistan is actually a country of minorities.

The article has been written with a lot of carelessness and factual mistakes, or at best, ideologically loaded passion: the mythical ideology the superiority of one ethnicity over the rest, Pashtun.