Afghanistan
History
Ahmad Shah
DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded
Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer
between the British and Russian Empires until it won
independence from notional British control in 1919. A
brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and
a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union
invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan
Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive
war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless
pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist
mujahedin rebels. A series of subsequent civil wars
saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a
hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in
1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy.
Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in
New York City and Washington, D.C., a US, Allied, and
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance military action toppled
the Taliban for sheltering Osama BIN LADIN. The
UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001 established a
process for political reconstruction that included the
adoption of a new constitution, a presidential
election in 2004, and National Assembly elections in
2005. In December 2004, Hamid KARZAI became the first
democratically elected president of Afghanistan and
the National Assembly was inaugurated the following
December. Karzai was re-elected in August 2009 for a
second term. Despite gains toward building a stable
central government, a resurgent Taliban and continuing
provincial instability - particularly in the south and
the east - remain serious challenges for the Afghan
Government.
According
to Human Rights Watch, in late May 1997, some 3,000
captive Taliban soldiers were summarily executed in and
around Mazar-i-Sharif by Dostum's Junbish forces and
members of the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat faction. The
Taliban defeated Dostum's Junbish forces militarily by
seizing Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. Dostum went into exile.
According
to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban,
while trying to consolidate control over northern and
western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres
against civilians. U.N. officials stated that there had
been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001.They
also said, that "[t]hese have been highly
systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban]
Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." The
Taliban especially targeted people of Shia religious or
Hazara ethnic background. Upon taking Mazar-i-Sharif in
1998, about 4,000 civilians were executed by the Taliban
and many more reported tortured.The documents also
reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in
these killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was
responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The
report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many
villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives
used for slitting throats and skinning people.
Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf - then as Chief of Army Staff
- was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to
fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the
forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be
28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside
Afghanistan.About 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers
either from the Frontier Corps or army and an estimated
8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling
regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban
regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani
nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department
confirms that "20-40 percent of [regular] Taliban
soldiers are Pakistani." The document further
states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals
"know nothing regarding their child's military
involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are
brought back to Pakistan." Further 3,000 fighters
of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian
militants. From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin
Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the
Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the
fight against the United Front. Of roughly 45,000
Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting
against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan.
Ahmad
Shah Massoud remained the only leader of the United
Front in Afghanistan. In the areas under his control
Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the
Women's Rights Declaration. Human Rights Watch cites no
human rights crimes for the forces under direct control
of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the
assassination of Massoud in September 2001. As a
consequence many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad
Shah Massoud. In total, etimates range up to one million
people fleeing the Taliban. National Geographic
concluded in its documentary "Inside the Taliban":
-
"The
only thing standing in the way of future Taliban
massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud."
In early
2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in
Brussels asking the international community to provide
humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan.He stated
that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a
very wrong perception of Islam" and that without
the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would
not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to
a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his
intelligence had gathered information about a
large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
Recent
history (2001–present)
Further
information: War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Taliban
insurgency, and Civilian casualties of the
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
On
September 9, 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud died in a suicide
attack by two Arab suicide bombers in the Afghan
province of Takhar. Two days later 3,000 people died on
U.S. soil in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks the U.S.
government identified Osama Bin Laden alongside Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed as the faces behind the attacks. When
the Taliban refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden to U.S.
authorities and refused to disband Al Qaeda bases in
Afghanistan, the U.S. and British air forces began
bombing al-Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Afghanistan
during Operation Enduring Freedom. On the ground,
American and British special forces along with CIA
Special Activities Division units worked with commanders
of the United Front (Northern Alliance) to launch a
military offensive against the Taliban forces. These
attacks led to the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul in
November 2001, as the Taliban and al-Qaida retreated
toward the mountainous Durand Line border with Pakistan.
In December 2001, after the Taliban government was
toppled and the new Afghan government under Hamid Karzai
was formed, the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to
help assist the Karzai administration and provide basic
security to the Afghan people.
From 2002
onward, the Taliban began regrouping while more
coalition troops entered the escalating US-led war with
insurgents. Meanwhile, NATO assumed control of ISAF in
2003 and the rebuilding of Afghanistan began, which is
funded by the international community especially by
USAID and other U.S. agencies. The European Union,
Canada and India also play a major role in
reconstruction. The Afghan nation was able to build
democratic structures and to make some progress in key
areas such as health, economy, educational, transport,
agriculture and construction sector. It has also
modernized in the field of technology and banking. NATO,
mainly the United States armed forces through its Army
Corps of Engineers, is rebuilding and modernizing the
nation's military as well its police force. Between 2002
and 2010, over five million Afghan expatriates returned
with new skills and capital. Still, Afghanistan remains
one of the poorest countries due to the results of 30
years of war, corruption among high level politicians
and the ongoing Taliban insurgency backed by Pakistan.
U.S. officials have also accused Iran of providing
limited support to the Taliban, but stated it was
"at a small level" since it is "not in
their interests to see the Taliban, a Sunni
ultra-conservative, extremist element, return to take
control of Afghanistan". Iran has historically been
an enemy of the Taliban.
NATO and
Afghan troops in recent years led many offensives
against the Taliban, but proved unable to completely
dislodge their presence. By 2009, a Taliban-led shadow
government began to form complete with their own version
of mediation court. In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama
deployed an additional 30,000 soldiers over a period of
six months and proposed that he will begin troop
withdrawals by 2012. At the 2010 International
Conference on Afghanistan in London, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai said he intends to reach out to the Taliban
leadership (including Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani
and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar). Supported by senior U.S.
officials Karzai called on the group's leadership to
take part in a loya jirga meeting to initiate peace
talks. According to the Wall Street Journal, these steps
have been reciprocated so far with an intensification of
bombings, assassinations and ambushes. Many Afghan
groups (including the former intelligence chief Amrullah
Saleh and opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
believe that Karzai's plan aims to appease the
insurgents' senior leadership at the cost of the
democratic constitution, the democratic process and
progess in the field of human rights especially women's
rights. Dr. Abdullah stated:
- "I
should say that Taliban are not fighting in order to
be accommodated. They are fighting in order to bring
the state down. So it's a futile exercise, and it's
just misleading. ... There are groups that will
fight to the death. Whether we like to talk to them
or we don't like to talk to them, they will continue
to fight. So, for them, I don't think that we have a
way forward with talks or negotiations or contacts
or anything as such. Then we have to be prepared to
tackle and deal with them militarily. In terms of
the Taliban on the ground, there are lots of
possibilities and opportunities that with the help
of the people in different parts of the country, we
can attract them to the peace process; provided, we
create a favorable environment on this side of the
line. At the moment, the people are leaving support
for the government because of corruption. So that
expectation is also not realistic at this
stage."
According
to a report by the United Nations, the Taliban were
responsible for 76 % of civilian casualties in
2009. Afghanistan is currently struggling to rebuild
itself while dealing with the above mentioned problems
and challenges.
