Hazara Nation

By Archie McLean, Canwest
Masto Khan and his family live in a tent made of canvas, mud and bits of foraged wood on a patch of land they don't own on the outskirts of Kandahar City. The emaciated goats grazing nearby are their only possessions.

``Right now, our lifestyle has completely failed,'' Khan says, glancing at the cluster of similar tents dotting the dirt field. ``There are hundreds of families here. It used to be that they all owned livestock and could feed their families. Now, if you ask them, they don't have a single heard of sheep.''

It wasn't always this way. Khan, 60, is a member of Afghanistan's Kuchi minority, a nomadic people who have roamed the central Asian plains for centuries. But a pair of droughts and 30 years of war have reduced a proud people to this hardscrabble and largely sedentary life.

In a country rife with poverty and political instability, the Kuchis may the poorest and least stable.

For years, they formed the spine of the Afghan economy. Their trading caravans bridged South Asia and the Middle East. According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, at one time they owned 30 per cent of the country's goats and sheep and most of the camels. They traded things such as dairy products, tea, sugar and wool with the sedentary people for food staples such as wheat and vegetables.

Many of them spent their summers in mountain pastures and their winters on the lowland plains.

``That life was so beautiful. We are starving for that life,'' says Kabul, a man who lives in a nearby camp.

But droughts - one in the early 1970s and another from 1998 to 2002 - killed as much as three quarters of the Kuchi's livestock. Landmines and bombings killed many others.

With few economic prospects, many Kuchis made their way to the cities.

Drought and war forced Khan Mohammed, 32, to Kandahar from nearby Helmand Province. What money he and his family have, comes from day labour in the city. A month ago, the owner of the land they live on told them they must leave.

``For god's sake, where will we go?'' he asked the owner, who plans to sell the land.

The owner hasn't relented, but Kuchis have long dealt with such problems, Mohammed says.

``We'll find another place, another way.''

Kuchis currently make up about 70 per cent of Afghanistan's 200,000 internally displaced people. Many live in camps like the ones outside Kandahar, others in UN camps in the city.

Because they are largely nomadic, Kuchis historically abstained from the country's politics, but under Afghanistan's constitution, they were given 10 seats in parliament. But despite supporting President Hamid Karzai in the 2004 presidential elections, Haji Wakil Abdullah, one of the Kuchi MP's, says they have seen little benefit.

Their best-known leader, Haji Niam Kuchi, even spent more than a year in US custody, including a stint in Guantanamo Bay.

Recently, Abdullah and the other Kuchi leaders met with Karzai, who is currently trying to shore up support for the upcoming presidential election. He promised them parcels of land, but although Abdullah plans to support Karzai, he has little faith the president will follow through.

``So far, nothing has been done for the Kuchi people,'' says Abdullah, who sports a neatly trimmed died black beard and a striking mustard yellow turban.

There is no reliable information on how many Kuchi's are in the country. Their greatest concentration is in the Registan Desert in the southernmost part of the country, where their camel trains still snake across the burnt red sand. Abdullah wants a census of the Kuchis done so they can get more representation and resources.

Their list of needs is long: basic health services, land and livestock, but Abdullah believes their number one priority is education. It's this lack of education he blames for the Kuchi's ties to the Taliban in some parts of the county.

In Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, Kuchis have engaged in armed clashes with ethnic Hazara's over grazing land. The Hazara's are another historically oppressed group, Shia Muslims who are thought to have descended from Mongols who ruled the area in the 13th century.

The Hazaras say the Kuchis are targeting them with the help of the Taliban - fellow Pashtuns and Sunni Muslims - who want to stoke ethnic and sectarian tensions.

For their part, the Kuchis allege the Hazaras are propped up by Iran and are driving them from grazing land they have always used for centuries.

Abdullah believes the Kuchis have a role to play in the future of the country, if the government would only help them.

``The Kuchis are able to deal with every other tribe,'' he says. ``The Kuchis can even play a role in bringing the Taliban onside.''

The families living in camps outside Kandahar don't know who their political leaders are. In the short term, they want one of two things: livestock or land. If they get livestock, they will resume a partially nomadic lifestyle, if they get land, they will farm it.

Until then, it's hard for Khan Mohammed not to look backward.

``We used to have everything. Our hearts were full, our stomachs were full and our children were healthy.''

Fatema, a woman from the Naw Abad village of Bamyan province and a mother of seven children is actively participating in a new literacy class. Fatema is 34 years old but after being in class for just three months, she has learned how to read and write, skills that she never learned during her childhood. "When I read my text books and learn something new, I feel a great sense of pride and honour in my heart. I am no longer an illiterate woman," she said.

About three months ago there were no literate women in the entire village of Naw Abad in the Shaidan area of Bamyan province in the central highlands of Afghanistan. The area is most famous for the ruined Buddha statues. Now with the Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA) programme, Fatema and other women from the village are gathering everyday to achieve a common goal - to challenge the traditional idea that women don't need to be educated.

UNESCO with the cooperation of the Ministry of Education and funding from the Government of Japan started the pilot literacy programme in Bamyan province in November 2008. Over the next five years the literacy programme will provide educational assistance to 600,000 men and women in 18 provinces of Afghanistan. Ultimately the goal is to ensure that 60 per cent of the beneficiaries of the programme will be women. In addition to the literacy intervention, the programme provides vocational skills and micro-credit opportunities to the newly-literate women to help them get involved in income generation opportunities and to help their families economically.

Fatema, who is one of the most outstanding students in the Bamyan class, explained her motives: "There is a big difference between a literate and an illiterate woman; being literate means being able to help oneself and one's family. I will encourage my daughters to go to school. Now I can help them with their homework, and sometimes we have discussions on dictations and writing or reading words correctly, which is both interesting and encouraging for me and my children."

But some relatives and neighbours still criticize Fatema's participation in the literacy class. In turn Fatema believes that such a critical attitude is what condemns women to illiteracy. "Despite some criticism, my husband now supports me coming to this class. At first he couldn't believe that at this age I can learn reading and writing, but now things have changed dramatically. He is happy that I help our children with their lessons as he cannot do it himself. I am proud of my achievements and my reading and writing skills, I never want to give up learning even if I must fight against criticism or any other problems," said Fatema.

Afghanistan is described as the Graveyard of Empires. The new US administration of Barack Obama expressed its concern regarding the dangerous situation in Afghanistan and this concern is only likely to increase as the winter season comes to an end and military operations between the two sides, that is the Taliban and the Allied Forces, are expected to resume.

It was apparent that the 45th Security Conference that was held in Munich at the beginning of February focused on finding a way out of the Afghan quagmire and an alternative route for weapon supplies because Pakistan is now vulnerable to all kinds of threats.

On January 26 in the Belgian capital of Brussels, NATO’s Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called upon the United States and NATO member states to deal directly with Iran in order to build a regional consensus that would include Afghanistan, India, China and Iran. He also called upon NATO states to cooperate with Iran bilaterally so as to find an alternative supply route for NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan.

For a long time, US military and NATO figures have striven to come up with an alternative supply route for Afghanistan because the [current] routes pass through the seaport of Karachi, or Khyber or Chaman to reach Afghanistan. Despite that they are short and inexpensive, they have become very dangerous. Today, airplanes are being launched from US aircraft carriers located in the sea to accompany freighters transporting weapons and protect them from any potential attacks from the Pakistani Taliban and Jihadists. The US military leadership considered routes via Central Asia or the Caucuses and saw that the closest point is the Port of Chah-Bahar in Iran.

Iran feels that the time is right for it to contact its enemies i.e. the United States and the Taliban, as both parties require its help in dealing with the other. But if NATO member states such as Italy and Canada agree to transporting supplies through the port of Chah-Bahar to the NATO bases in Herat and Kandahar then these supplies might be subjected to attacks or might be stolen in Nimruz by Iranian-backed armed militants. This is what happened to British forces in Basra, south Iraq; they were subjected to attacks at the hands of armed militants supported by Iran. Iran is turning a blind eye to the activity of extremist elements in the Taliban in the Afghan provinces of Farah and Nirmuz and in most cases these [elements] seek refuge in Baloch regions in Iran. Some armed groups in northwest Afghanistan have excellent ties with Iran and receive weapons and ammunition from it in order to confront NATO forces in Afghanistan.

After Scheffer’s statement, General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command said that Iran and the US have common interests in [stabilizing] Afghanistan. That was followed by the US Department of Treasury’s decision to add the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) to the list of terrorist organizations. This party, the members of which are Iranian Kurds, launches attacks every now and then inside Iran and its target is to overthrow the Imamate regime in that country. However, this step does not eliminate the internal concern in Iran since the Mujahideen-e-Khalq movement remains based in Camp Ashraf in Iraq and Washington refused to surrender the group to Iran or Iraq. Moreover, Tehran demanded assurances that this group will not reorganize its ranks and threaten the Iranian regime. The European Union removed Mujahideen-e-Khalq from the list of terrorist organizations giving its members the opportunity to claim political asylum in Europe so that the US and Europe can keep Mujahideen-e-Khalq as a playing card with which they can bargain with Iran, which has its own playing card in Afghanistan in the form of some Taliban and Al Qaeda members.

In preparation for a new US strategy towards Afghanistan, which will be finalized by April, a high-level meeting is being held this week to discuss the Afghan-Pakistan borders. The US Secretaries of Defense, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton, will take part as well as the US Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, and Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pakistan will send its foreign minister, head of military and head of intelligence to attend the meeting and Afghanistan will send its foreign minister.

However, Afghanistan continues to be Russia’s playfield. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] conference on Afghanistan had been distributed. It is due to take place on March 27 in Moscow. As part of the strategic game between Moscow and Washington, the former succeeded in convincing Kyrgyzstan to shut down the US Manas airbase in the country. Washington is opposed to this conference.

Moreover, Iran is a playing card in the hands of Moscow, and Russia does not want America to have the pleasure of having complete control over Afghanistan because Russia, in return for allowing America to prove that it can achieve its goals in Afghanistan, wants Washington to communicate with it on everything that concerns the republics of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European states close to it. In other words, it is not enough for Russia that Washington withdrew from setting up an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Rather, it wants to further strengthen the idea that it has inherited the power and influence of the former Soviet Union over these countries and that it has control over the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran. Also, it wants to hints that it can sell long-range missiles to the Islamic Republic.

What is new however is that China has entered the Afghan sphere, standing by Pakistan and lessening the euphoria that Iran was experiencing as it believed that it will be the alternative that the US requires regarding its borders, its roads and its mercy. The ruling Communist Party of China sent an invite to the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami party headed by Qazi Hussein Ahmed who headed to Beijing on February 7 as the head of a high-level delegation made up of eight members.

China hosted US Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton recently and welcomed Holbrooke’s mission and called for extending it to include India. China believes that without the cooperation of Pakistan, America will not win the war on terror in South Asia and for there to be stability in Pakistan, the tension between it and India must be alleviated by finding a solution to the Kashmir issue. India rejects any intervention from a third party but China fears that India will utilize the Tibet issue as the 50th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution of Tibet approaches.

The Chinese invite to the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami is an attempt to strengthen its ties with new players in the region, especially after the development that has taken place in the Swat Valley between the Pakistani government and its Taliban.

Ideologically speaking, Jamaat-e-Islami is part of the international Islamic movement and has good ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its relationship with the Chinese is nothing new as at the end of the 1980s, at the order of Pakistani intelligence, Qazi Hussein Ahmed visited China to convince Muslim separatists there to end the rebellion.

In Afghanistan, Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami has deep-rooted ties with Hizb-e-Islami headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and has ideological ties with Jamiat-e-Islami headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan headed by Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf.

China’s stance on Jamaat-e-Islami does not contradict its stance on the Taliban in Afghanistan; it sees no problem in the Taliban participating in the government as part of a political settlement, just as in its meeting with Hillary Clinton, Beijing urged Washington to be more flexible with the current circumstances in Afghanistan. Also, because Afghanistan is lacking the modernity required for a state, China has come to believe that Afghanistan cannot be a unified state. Many other decision-making circles in the US and Britain agree that the new direction that should be taken in Afghanistan that may bring about a solution is to reduce the centralization of authority by allowing the Taliban to have some responsibility in running all Pashtun regions. This can also be applied to Hazara and Tajik areas.

The Chinese will take part in the SCO conference to be held in Moscow, and Iran and India will also take part as observers. It realizes that the fate of US strategy in Afghanistan is not set in stone in its confrontation against rebellion, and at the same time it knows that America’s long-term goal in Afghanistan might be strategic because it is the point where Europe meets Asia. The short-term goal is to eliminate the Al Qaeda organization whilst at the same time it does not want NATO member states to fail in their first military operation outside of Europe.

China has begun to strengthen its position regarding Pakistan-Afghanistan and will observe the Russian-US conflict in the region. It wants to curtail India’s support for Tibet by ensuring that there is more stability in Pakistan than in Afghanistan.

The Afghan field is packed with key players: America, Russia, and China. Pakistan will remain the fundamental passageway to Afghanistan. As for Iran, its role in Afghanistan has been marginalized by the ongoing bargaining between Moscow and Washington. We will know its direction when the foreign ministers of the two countries meet on March 6.