Hazara Nation

By Scott Taylor

His name is Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, which loosely translates to "Reverend Bazooka" and is a moniker he proudly earned for his battlefield proficiency with rocket-propelled grenades.

Although he originally fought against the Soviets, Rocketi still wears the black turban of the Taliban with whom he served as a commander until the U.S. intervention toppled the regime in 2001.

Rocketi is back in Kabul these days serving in the Afghan parliament as a democratically elected opposition member for the volatile southern province of Zabul. The former top-level Talib commander now finds himself in the difficult position of participating in a government that many of his former followers continue to violently resist.

The short, stocky, heavily bearded Rocketi still looks every inch the defiant fighter, but in a private interview he expressed sincere respect for the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan.

"Most of the problem comes from our neighbours: Pakistan, Iran and Russia," he said. "They are interfering with our internal affairs at all levels of government and fuelling the insurgents through the provision of weapons and other war material."

In order to counter this threat, Rocketi believes that the Afghan administration must undergo a thorough housecleaning to remove incompetent, corrupt officials.

"All discrimination within the government needs to be removed and replaced with people who can create an effective administration," said Rocketi.

Surprisingly, he has not only called for a continued presence of international troops, he has also recommended that the U.S.-led coalition and NATO forces work more closely with the Afghan National Army to help reduce the number of unnecessary civilian deaths.

"As soon as the international forces leave Afghanistan, civil war will erupt throughout the entire country between our narrow ethnicities and tribes," said Rocketi. "In that situation there will be insecurity in 80 per cent of the provinces as opposed to the current 20 per cent."

As for the timetable for such a scenario, Rocketi predicted the presidency of Hamid Karzai "would not last more than a few hours without foreign troops."

To stave off a widening of the current crisis, he recommends that an immediate dialogue be opened with Taliban moderates such as himself in order to reduce the influence of the militant insurgents.


'They Refuse to Listen to My Warnings'

While sharing the same strategic assessment as to the disruptive influence of neighbouring states, former warlord Pocha Khan Zadran believes that closing the border with Pakistan is the key to defeating the insurgency. More importantly, Pocha Khan claims that his followers are willing and able to accomplish the task.

As a Pashtun tribal leader, he controlled four provinces in eastern Afghanistan following the Soviet occupation. When the Taliban movement came to power in 1994, Pocha Khan's troops formed a loose alliance with the Talib leaders, rather than resisting them.

"I handed over my weapons to them believing at first they were religious students," explained Pocha Khan in an interview at his Kabul residence. "After six months, I realized they weren't what they said they were...and then I began to oppose them."

When President Karzai came to power in 2002, Pocha Khan was appointed governor of the province of Paktia. However, when allegations surfaced that the former warlord was trying to undermine Karzai's administration, he was stripped of his official title and, in fact, was briefly forced into hiding after a $1-million bounty was placed on his head.

Nevertheless, in the rugged tribal regions of eastern Afghanistan, Pocha Khan remains an unchallenged leader who insists that he can help defeat the insurgency.

"The problem is the foreigners. [The U.S. and NATO] are doing the wrong things based on the wrong information," he explained. "If they gave me control of the border provinces, within two months you will not find a single Talib in the region."

The Pashtuns along the Pakistan border are traditionally known to be a fiercely independent and isolated people.

"The solution to closing the border is to use my tribal military [forces] instead of the Afghan National Army or the foreigners to fight the Taliban," said Pocha Khan. "But the Americans remain opposed to this idea."

A senior official within the Afghan intelligence service confirmed that Pocha Khan's followers have the military means to eliminate the Taliban in their region.

"These people listen to and obey their tribal leaders, and in turn those leaders listen to and obey Pocha Khan," said the intelligence officer. "When the U.S. and Afghan army go into those villages and innocent people get killed, it only makes things worse."

Until the U.S. adopts a different strategy, Pocha Khan believes, the insurgency cannot be defeated.

"The Americans are like a blind man walking on a roof," said the ex-warlord. "I can see clearly that they are about to fall off, but they refuse to listen to my warnings."


'It Will Be the People's Will'

His office is a small tent erected on the shoulder of the highway that runs in front of the Afghan parliament building. Inside, a tattered flag of Afghanistan hangs behind a small desk that is surrounded by a half- dozen plastic chairs. Seated behind the desk is the slightly built Dr. Ramazan Bashardost, a former cabinet minister in the Karzai government turned anti-corruption crusader, and if he has his way, the future president of Afghanistan.

He rises, acknowledges Canada's commitment to Afghanistan's security, and then immediately delivers his message: "Your young Canadian soldiers give their blood for Afghanistan...but there is no reconstruction, only corruption. Canadian development money should be used for big projects, not for buying private luxury houses for government officials and luxury cars with television sets in them."

Bashardost certainly understands the extent of corruption in Afghanistan better than most and speaks out against it publicly more than anyone. After studying in France and obtaining a PhD in international affairs, Bashardost returned to his native Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

As a strong proponent for human rights for all Afghans, President Hamid Karzai appointed Bashardost as his minister of planning in 2004. In this capacity, he undertook a study of the effectiveness of the foreign and Afghan NGOs operating in the country. At that time there were approximately 2,300 agencies registered, employing nearly 52,000 people throughout Afghanistan.

"I recommended to close down over 1,900 of those NGOs that were in operation because they were not actually providing aid to the people," he says. "People were spending $10,000 a month to rent themselves a massive house and hiring their families at exorbitant salaries—and no one was benefiting from their work."

When President Karzai refused to act upon Bashardost's recommendation to shut down the ineffective NGOs, he quit the cabinet and was eventually elected as an independent member of parliament.

Although he would have been guaranteed a seat if he chose to run in his home province of Ghazni, as an ethnic Hazara, Bashardost wanted to secure a national mandate of anti-corruption by running in the capital of Kabul. Buoyed by his success, he now believes that the people of Afghanistan are prepared to set aside their past differences and unite behind him to eliminate corruption. He is registered as a presidential candidate to run against Karzai and he vows that, if elected, he will end the war between the government forces and the insurgents.

"The Taliban are not the problem. It is the corrupt mujahedeen warlords who have been returned to power in the form of the Karzai administration," says Bashardost. "My first priority after I'm elected will be to put the war criminals on trial and to replace all the corrupt governors with responsible, capable people."

One of the key messages that Bashardost keeps repeating is that the foreign aid being pumped into Afghanistan is more than sufficient to rebuild the country.

"To date, more than $60 billion U.S. has been provided in aid to this country, which is more than 10 times the pre-2001 annual GDP," he says. "But most of that money has ended up heading back out of Afghanistan rather than into the hands of Afghans."

One of the reasons for this is that most of the foreign aid-funded reconstruction projects are contracted out to foreign companies. Afghan construction firms end up providing labourers as sub-contractors, but the majority of the highly paid specialists and material are imported and therefore the money does not remain in Afghanistan. By eliminating the government corruption and maximizing the aid money already allocated to Afghanistan, Bashardost intends to then eliminate the rampant illegal drug trade.

When asked just how exactly he intends to eradicate Afghanistan of its warlords, corrupt politicians and druglords when he possesses no private army of his own, Bashardost simply shrugs his shoulders and says, "It will be the people's will."

After excusing himself from the interview, he steps through the tent flap and drives off in a battered little old car. It is hard not to admire the fact that this solitary man with virtually no means actually believes he can achieve his goal.

Scott Taylor is the publisher of Esprit de Corps military magazine and author of several books. Since the 1990s, he has covered conflicts in Iraq and the Balkans. This was his third unembedded trip into Afghanistan.

editor@embassymag.ca