KABUL (dpa) – The hardliners among Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban have achieved their goal.
With the destruction of the huge Buddha statues in Bamiyan last March, they succeeded in isolating the country even further and in making it impossible for a long time to come that the Taleban will be looked on as the legal government.
This is a serious setback for the moderates among the Taleban. But worse still, it is a tragedy for the people already living under such hardship.
War, drought and starvation are turning life into hell in Afghanistan, and experts agree that any effective aid is scarcely possible as long as the Taleban regime remains isolated.
“If you don’t work with the regime, you punish the population,” one Western diplomat said, describing the quandary. At the moment, cooperation is largely restricted to emergency assistance to the starving.
But there is no possibility of any large-scale development aid which the country so badly needs after ten years of war against the Soviet occupiers and 12 years of civil war.
People in Afghanistan have been suffering for three decades from the worst drought in memory. The pictures of the refugee camp Jalozai in Pakistan with its 70,000 people were shown around the world. But refugees are also on the move inside Afghanistan, for example to the town of Herat.
“In order to stop this, we must repair the irrigation systems in the villages and provide seeds for crops,” says Eliane Duthoit, a United Nations official in Kabul. This is happening on a small scale. But anything larger would be classified as development aid, and this is taboo.
“The problem is this: there is no recognised government,” another U.N. official said.
Even many U.N. employees in Afghanistan do not agree with the world community’s policy towards Kabul. It was under pressure from the United States that sanctions were imposed by the U.N. against the Taleban in order to force the country to extradite suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden.
“An arms embargo aimed only at the Taleban is one-sided,” a U.N. representative said. The war between the Taleban and the militia forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud is still raging. When Massoud was received by the European Union in April, this encouraged Iran to keep up its support for him, observers said.
“People are fleeing not only because of the drought, but also for fear of new fighting,” a U.N. expert said.
The Taleban control 90 per cent of Afghanistan. Up till a year ago, observers thought it was possible that the world community would recognise the actual power situation and treat the Taleban as the government to deal with.
Many people also hoped then that the radical-Islamic Taleban would gradually change, that women would be permitted to go back to work and that girls would be allowed to attend school.
But the radicals among the Taleban, including the Arabic advisors to Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, were afraid of precisely such things happening. It was for this reason that they orchestrated the campaign against the Buddha statues, experts say.
Similar motives may have been behind the actions of the public morals police in drafting their plan to make religious minorities wear a special badge.The hopes of liberals in the Taleban for recognition by the United Nations were destroyed by such moves by the radicals.But the calculations of the radicals just might boomerang on them. Due to the country’s isolation, massive aid from the West is impossible, and so dissatisfaction is growing among the people.Support from the population is the most important capital that the Taleban possesses, says Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who is counted among the liberals.“If we do not serve the people, then we are in danger,” he warned. “Nobody from outside can topple us – only the population can.”Mohammad Yakub, a merchant in Djalalabad, sees things this way as well. “There is no justice,” he complains. “When there is a dispute over land, those who have good connections to the Taleban win. The Taleban put their own people in the administration even though they are not specialists.“The people are angry about this, but not yet outraged enough to risk starting an uprising against the Taleban,” Yakub added.Khalid Khan, a Kabul pharmacist now unemployed, fears that an uprising would not produce many results.“The people are dissatisfied. But where is the power which could replace the Taleban?” he asked. Khan said that Massoud and the other mujahedin forces had already destroyed the country before the Taleban came. Nobody wants them back either.
