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Afghanistan: As Bad As Its Reputation? | the Washington Institute MENU Policy Analysis / Articles & Op-Eds Afghanistan: As Bad as Its Reputation? Sep 7, 2000 Articles & Testimony nly Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (and the breakaway Chechen government) O recognize the Taliban state, but the self-styled Islamic Emirate is a fact of life. Taliban rule began in 1994, when students from madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan and Afghanistan took up arms to end civil strife and restore order to an increasingly anarchic country. In September 1996, they captured Kabul, and reports reached the West of harsh new restrictions against women and public executions of criminals. The Taliban (Arabic for "religious students") have now ruled southern Afghanistan for almost six years and have been in Kabul for nearly four. So how goes life in the Islamic Emirate? Are Hollywood entertainers1 and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright2 accurate when they declare the Taliban have driven the country back into the thirteenth century? To find out, I went to Afghanistan in March 2000. Three months earlier I had met the Taliban’s representative in New York, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, at a Middle East Forum event. I expected him to rebuff my request for a visit, and so was pleasantly surprised by his invitation to visit Afghanistan and see the situation for myself. The Taliban permitted me to travel unescorted and without a translator in their territory during a two-week period. I had the opportunity to speak to government officials and the man on the street. I visited major towns and cities: Jalalabad, Kabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar (the last being the seat of the Taliban leadership). This was my second trip to the country, having been there in May 1997, when I guest lectured at Balkh University in Mazar-i Sharif, one of Afghanistan’s last coeducational institutions, and was forced to leave when the Taliban attacked the city. Through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan The two sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border provide a sharp contrast. The former is patrolled by armed officers; the latter relaxed with no weapons in sight. Pakistanis assign foreigners an armed guard to protect against banditry in their tribal territories, while banditry has all but disappeared on the road to Kabul since the Taliban’s rise to power. Driving through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar, Pakistan, toward the border, the Afghan driver kept pointing out people on the hills above the road whom he identified as Pakistani Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agents taking down license plate numbers of cars heading to the frontier. (The Pakistani intelligence agency is often accused of supporting the Taliban regime.) At the border post of Torkham, Pakistani soldiers mingled among the hundreds of people walking each way through the border, stopping those who looked obviously Western. I was ushered into a Spartan office to process my visa, and my passport was passed back and forth until, some twenty minutes later, it was stamped and I was allowed to proceed. On the Afghan side of the border, in contrast, there were no soldiers and no weapons in evidence. The Afghan passport office, basically an empty room with a table and ledger, was about 100 yards down the road. The officer—a jovial, elderly man—stamped the passport with hardly a glance at the visa, welcomed me, and let me continue on my way. (When I left Afghanistan, the office was unlocked and unattended; I ended up having to go to his apartment to interrupt his breakfast.) The Afghan half of Torkham bustles, though it is basically a one-road town. Money-changers have stalls openly stacked with piles of currency—local afghanis, Pakistani rupees, U.S. dollars, Iranian rials, and United Arab Emirates dirhams—displaying an openness unmatched even by money markets in other relatively crime-free Muslim countries like Kuwait. Despite dire poverty, the money-changers clearly are not afraid of snatch- and-grab robberies. Although on January 13, 2000, thieves stole approximately $200,000 from Kabul’s money market, all indications point to an inside job, perhaps by the Taliban guards, rather than a random act of violence.3 Other shacks along the road served meat, bread, and tea. Many shops operate out of old American truck trailers and train cars. A dusty field had become a parking lot for taxis, trucks, and buses, drivers and their friends each seeking out passengers to fill their vehicle before the ride onward to Jalalabad and Kabul. Perhaps Afghanistan doesn’t have a strong government, but first impressions indicated at least a functional status quo. Jalalabad, forty-six miles from the border, is the first major Afghan city along the road to Kabul. The seat of many international and Afghan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), it is the capital of the subtropical Nangrahar province and an important trading center. Prior to the arrival of the Taliban, the road from Torkham through Jalalabad and onward to Kabul was infamous for its various warlord and bandit robberies and checkpoints; now the ride was surprisingly smooth. Huge trucks, laden with petrol, tires, and smuggled hardwood, rumble through town. Opium While U.N. anti-narcotics programs flourish inside the towns, bright red opium blossoms bloomed outside. In October 1999, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention released a finding that Afghanistan would produce 75 percent of the world’s opium in 1999, although Taliban officials hotly deny this. According to U.S. anti- drug officials interviewed in Peshawar, the Taliban benefit from the opium production in two ways: The first is direct trade, smuggling the dried opium gum through Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Iran to Europe and the Middle East, where it is converted into heroin. The second way is by taxing farmers, who gladly grow opium because it is a far more lucrative crop than wheat. While some label Afghanistan a failed state, its efficient taxation suggests that perhaps Western governments should not allow such a designation and should instead hold the Taliban accountable for activities in the country. Moreover, the Taliban have brought stability to Afghanistan and recreated a central government, capable of taxation, infrastructure improvement, and war. But this year’s drought in Afghanistan has had a severe impact on the opium crop, especially in the south where production is reportedly greater. It has been so severe that Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Muhammad ‘Umar closed the Kandahar bazaar on the morning of March 7 so that the population could go to the mosques and pray for rain (but much of the population instead seemed intent on drinking tea in the shade). The poor prospects for the opium crop combined with allegedly uncontrolled currency printing by the United Front opposition have caused the currency to plunge from 54,000 afghanis to the dollar in mid-March to 75,000 a month later; although the rate has since rebounded to 63,000. Oddly enough, the lack of a functioning national bank and state economic policy means that a currency black market does not exist, and Afghans (except, I am told, in Khost), accept their own currency alongside Pakistani rupees and U.S. dollars. Mercenaries and Terrorists Much of the opium grown in Afghanistan does not directly affect the United States. However, the revenue raised has a corollary impact. Afghanistan is a desperately poor country engaged in a brutal civil war that, according to Doctors Without Borders, has cost 1.8 million lives over the past two decades. Of the more than 100 Afghans I interviewed inside the country, I found not a single person who thought the civil war would end soon. The most optimistic answer I got was, "maybe in four years." It is opium money that helps fund the Taliban’s war effort. While Iran reportedly donates equipment to ethnic Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud’s forces in the north, and Pakistan’s ISI allegedly supplies the Taliban, there is always a need for more equipment and more men. In particular, Arab mercenaries are important to the war effort. I did not go to the front line, but I was on the lookout for non-Afghan mercenaries and foreign soldiers among the Taliban. Guarding the foreign ministry, I found, were Taliban soldiers who were clearly foreign. They did not speak Dari nor, according to Afghan friends, Pashto, but rather Urdu, the language of Pakistan. Unlike Afghan Taliban who were perfectly polite and hospitable, these were condescending and rude, spat out orders at passersby while making a point of waiving their weapons around. (Afghan frustration with foreign mercenaries resident in the country was clear.) I also made a point of talking to money-changers. In Jalalabad especially, they dealt in Arab currency, and Arabs in kafiya were wandering around the Jalalabad market, many more than could possibly be employed by a nongovernmental organization. Clearly, the Taliban not only receive funds from Islamic radicals overseas but also use foreign volunteers to press their cause. When a friend sought a visa in Pakistan a week before I did, he met five Sudanese heading into the country; they did not appear to be educated enough to be working for the U.N. or any of the other NGOs. Storekeepers in Kabul told me about the foreigners—mostly Punjabi Pakistanis—coming to fill out Taliban ranks. Julie Sirrs, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, visited Mas‘ud’s territory in March and interviewed foreign prisoners-of- war held by the north, mostly Pakistanis, but also some Yemenis and Chinese Uighurs. Afghans would point out Pakistani Talibs along the road. Most said there were fewer around than during the previous year, although they added that their numbers were on the increase again.
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